that one person is really a lot of different people. Back then, Mackenzie might have been both the man who wanted a family and a good career in teaching, and the lustful twentysomething who couldn’t quite resist getting together with a student. It would depend on the situation, and the difficulty is working out which version of Mackenzie was there that night. Which version of all of them,” he went on. “Was the Connor Dooley who was there the self-contained academic, or the angry teenager who regularly got into fights and was taking abuse from his dad? Was Brett Parker the conscientious athlete, or the libidinous jock who had previously hooked up with young girls?”
Hanson put a hand up to fiddle with her lip as she thought. “Any of them could have been anyone, in some ways,” she said. “But I don’t see how we can find out what happened if we don’t push them.”
“Maybe so,” Jonah said. “But there’s a right time for that. OK. I’d better go get my bike and then do the dutiful-son thing. Don’t stay too late or you’ll make me feel bad.”
28
Connor
Saturday, July 23, 1983, 5:20 A.M.
He could feel the hangover before he fully woke up. It was a full-on head crusher. He felt like he might vomit if he moved, and his body was on fire.
He lay there for a while, feeling like he was really dying this time, but the need to urinate grew too strong to ignore. He opened his eyes and turned his head away from the light.
It was early, probably not long past dawn. Jojo was lying next to him. She was on her side with one strong arm stretched out above her, the other bent so that her wrist covered her face.
He had a momentary worry that something had happened between them. He had cried, he thought. And she had comforted him. He had ranted and raged to her about Topaz.
It made him feel wretched. Humiliation fought with nausea. He tried not to think about it. He just needed to pee, and to drink something that wasn’t beer.
He watched the ground as he walked clumsily in the opposite direction from the campfire. He stepped carefully over an empty sleeping bag when it appeared in his vision. One of the others had to be up, then.
Relieving himself took a long time, and standing made him feel hotter and sicker. He was close to vomiting as he made his way back to the fire and his backpack. He dug in it, pulling out a lighter, a pack of mints, a compass—a selection of the useless shit he’d got in there. Where was the aspirin?
He found it in a side pocket in the end. He remembered that he’d put it there for easy access. He took a half-drunk bottle of water and went to sit on a log near the fire. And then he sat there, staring at a single point of sunlight on the ground while he waited for the painkillers to kick in.
He remembered Topaz and Brett all of a sudden, and felt a rush of dread low down in his guts. They would probably still be asleep together, with Coralie. The three of them wrapped round each other.
Sickness and anger drove him to his feet. He was leaving. He didn’t want to be anywhere near any of them.
Part of the way to the car park, he saw Benners sprawled on his back on a patch of dry-looking grass. His sleeping bag was half over him, his mouth gaping open.
Connor was almost to the bikes when he remembered his sleeping bag, which was still next to Jojo. He thought about going back for it, but it seemed too difficult. Everything except treading onward was too hard. He focused on the ground and kept moving.
And then the memory of that other sleeping bag came to him and he paused.
Aurora’s. It must have been Aurora’s. Benners had his own, and Jojo’s was still in its bag next to her stuff. He didn’t know what Topaz and Brett and Coralie had got to cover them, but they wouldn’t have left a single sleeping bag at the far side of the camp.
He went on uncertainly, thinking that she might have got cold and gone to sleep in the car. He made it to the car park and peered in through the slightly dusty windows. There was nobody there.
It seemed like a very long way back to the camp, and farther still to