to. Glad to finally get a little peace and quiet…”
“You gobshite!” Jojo exclaimed. “You talk enough for four people!”
It suddenly felt like it used to feel, despite Topaz’s silence. They were bantering together again, and Benners was sitting back with a grin and watching them all, presumably biding his time before launching into some diatribe about economics.
“Come and sit,” Anna said, and drew Coralie to the smaller sofa with her. “Oh, coffee.”
She sprang up again, and started handing out cups. She’d made Coralie a cappuccino, remembering her preference. She started passing cookies around, though only Jojo and Connor actually took one.
“Look,” Topaz said suddenly, over the general chatter of serving. “I know we turned up unannounced, and maybe you don’t all want to talk, but…I’m going mad with all this and I…I want to know what’s happening.”
There was a brief silence, and then Daniel said gently, “You mean what the police are doing?”
“Yes,” Topaz said. “They’ve brought Mr. Mackenzie in for questioning. Her English teacher. I told them to look at him thirty years ago. I hope that means it isn’t too late, and they’ve got something….So what have they asked all of you? And what did you say?”
“Oh. I’m not sure…that they want us doing that,” Brett said apologetically. “I was specifically told—”
“Screw that,” Jojo said, and put her mug down onto the table with a sharp bang. “The thing that’s become really obvious is that we’ve all been hiding small things from each other. For three bloody decades. We’ve been keeping tiny things and…and that has to stop. It’s too important now. I feel like we’ve managed to hide a murderer in all the bollocks, whether it’s a teacher or not, and it’s time to stop it.”
“We didn’t know,” Daniel said quietly.
“No, we didn’t,” Jojo countered, “but we were thinking of ourselves. Me as much as anyone. In the end, who gave a shit if we got in trouble for drugs? We would have found Aurora, and she might even have been alive.”
They were very quiet. And then Connor said, “Are you sure you can remember everything clearly? Because I’m not. There are things I’ve gone over so many times I’ve probably changed them out of all recognition.”
“That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t say them,” Jojo said. “It’ll all come out in the wash somehow.”
“I want to hear all of it,” Topaz said shortly. She fixed her husband with an unflinching gaze. “I don’t care if it’s half-remembered. I want to know what happened, and how he—how someone ended up raping and killing my sister when we were all right there.”
Coralie felt a strange twist in her stomach. It was impossible not to feel for Topaz.
She saw Daniel lean forward out of the armchair as if to get up, and then stop in the act. She wondered if he’d been going to comfort Topaz, or if it was something else.
“Are you sure? That she was…” Brett said, into the silence.
“The police are sure,” Topaz answered flatly.
Brett gave a long sigh, his eyes somewhere in the distance. Coralie felt as though she were waiting for him to think this out, and solve it all somehow. But it was Daniel who spoke next.
“I feel like most of their questions to me have been all about us,” he said. “They haven’t been pressing me about other people who might have been interested in Aurora, or who might have known we’d be there.”
“It’s because of where she was found,” Jojo said, sounding weary. “Who else knew about the stash in order to dump her body there? I can’t think of anyone. And they did ask me.”
“There’s a chance we were being watched,” Brett said. “By Mackenzie, or by someone else entirely.”
“Did you see anyone?” Topaz asked swiftly.
Brett shook his head, with a slightly wry smile. “I wish I had. I don’t want to believe it was Mr. Mackenzie, who I barely knew. Never mind one of us.”
“Of course it wasn’t one of us,” Connor said. His voice was irritable. “We know it wasn’t. None of us is a bloody rapist.”
“None of you had fucking better be,” Topaz said, low and intensely.
Coralie could see Connor opening his mouth to say something angry, but Brett cut in quickly.
“It’s clearly bloody awful for you, Topaz. Worse for you than for anyone by a long way. She was your sister and you loved her. But we need to be on one side. We almost got torn apart thirty years ago, and I’m buggered if