Cruel Summer (11 page)

‘Nice try.’ Roxanne smiled. ‘You might think I’m an idiot, but I’ve planned this very carefully. I was going to wait until we were all back in Telscombe Cliffs, but
then Katie told me about this little holiday. It’s perfect! We’re away from everyone and I get you all to myself. Basically, travelling’s not cheap. I ran out of money about a
month ago, and working in bars is not my idea of fun. So here’s the deal – you pay up or I take everything I’ve got to the police and the press.’

Cue more screaming and shouting around the table. The words rattled inside Ryan’s skull. The rug had been yanked out from under him. This was a new low. Roxanne didn’t even care
about the
truth
or
justice
for Janey. She just wanted another year out. The girl really was Satan in an All Saints dress.

‘Stop!’ Katie cried, pleading with the table to calm down. ‘Just stop! Roxanne, we don’t have any money.’

‘Yeah, right. This one plays Championship football,’ Rox said, gesturing towards Greg. ‘And, don’t forget, I know your parents as well. None of you exactly
need
the student loans you took out, so you can start by sending them in my direction. Frankly, I think that’s pretty generous; I could have asked for a lot more. I just want enough to get
by.’

‘Lucky us,’ Alisha said.

‘She’s bluffing,’ Ben put in. ‘She hasn’t got anything on us.’

That produced an even more dazzling smile from Roxanne. ‘Oh, really, Benji, you know I have. With all the skeletons in the closet, I’m surprised any of you bitches has room for
clothes! The police will have to reopen the case. And think of the press! Janey was a very pretty girl. She looked great on those front pages. Won’t it sell even more papers if the beautiful
girl turns out to have been
murdered
instead of killing herself? And your names will be all over it.’

A grim, grave silence followed. No one looked up from their empty plates. Ryan and, he guessed, the others, knew Roxanne was right. The police wouldn’t be able to ignore new evidence and
the papers would
love
it. Tilda Honey’s prize-winning marrows had been getting too many column inches again.

‘Think about the person sitting next to you. Do you know where they were when Janey went over that cliff?’ Roxanne asked.

Ryan pondered that. They’d all told the police where they’d been that evening, but all of them had chunks of time where they’d been alone. Ryan remembered every detail of that
night – the most minute details – but he didn’t know what had happened to Janey. That was why his heart was now thundering in his ears – because he’d already lost
countless hours of sleep over every single word Roxanne was saying.

‘So that’s it,’ Roxanne concluded. ‘You guys all hate me anyway, so I might as well make a bit of money out of what I know. I figure you can’t hate me any
more
.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Alisha murmured. Her skin had turned a horrible shade of puce.

‘You can’t do this,’ said Katie. ‘It’s blackmail. It’s a crime.’

Roxanne properly laughed at that, her first unrehearsed action in a while. ‘Oh, I’m literally
begging
you to call the police. I can’t wait to hear what they’ll
have to say when I show them what I’ve got.’

Greg seemed defeated; his head fell into his hands. ‘I haven’t got bundles of cash upstairs in a metal briefcase, Rox.’ Ryan wondered whether, if he did, Greg would happily pay
right now to make the problem go away.

‘That’s OK,’ Rox said airily. ‘There’s a bank in Cádiz, I checked. I’ll wait until you empty your accounts and then I’ll go. You’ll never
see me again, and I’ll give you back all your dirty laundry. Some of it’s pretty juicy, actually.’

‘Greg, what is she talking about?’ Erin stroked his arm. ‘What did you do?’

‘Nothing! I didn’t do anything!’ he snapped, pulling his arm back. ‘You better pray I don’t see you again, Rox, or you are dead, I swear.’

‘All I want is the money, honey.’

‘You’re not getting any money!’ Ben shouted. He pushed away from the table and prowled the length of the terrace doors the way a tiger stalks his perimeter in a zoo.

‘Well, then, let’s see what happens when the shit hits the fan, Ben. Some of it’s gonna stick!’

The room devolved into bright red chaos. Erin started to cry as Greg continued to ignore her. Ben and Roxanne hurled insults at each other over the table, with Ryan giving Ben a helping hand.
Greg punched a fist into the wall, leaving a dent and bits of knuckle-flesh in the plaster. He cursed in pain, kissing his skinned hand.

Ryan couldn’t have predicted what would happen next.

Katie sprang to her feet. With a cry, she flung her arm back and hurled her empty wine glass about an inch over Roxanne’s head. The blonde screamed and ducked. The glass careered into the
far wall, where it shattered, exploding into shards no bigger than dust.

‘Everybody,
shut the ____ up
!’ Katie didn’t miss the word out, but Ryan knew it wouldn’t be allowed on TV. He looked on in stunned silence with his mouth hanging
open like a goldfish. Katie Grant so wasn’t the swearing, glass-throwing type. ‘Roxanne, I can’t believe you’ve done this. We were friends.’

‘Were we? You’re lovely, Katie, don’t get me wrong, but you were
assigned
to look after me on my first day. You only ever
tolerated
me.’

‘That’s not true. I defended you to people time and time again.’

‘In that case, I’m sorry. I’ve always been terrible at making friends,’ Rox told her. ‘For some reason, girls just don’t warm to me.’

Regret. Ryan saw it – there was a flicker of regret in Roxanne’s eyes. She’d done well in her role as villainous bitch, but it wasn’t real, it wasn’t truly her. How
could it be? Being one-dimensional is really hard because you have to shut off all the other parts of yourself. Ryan, at various times, had tried being cool, funny, sexy – and it never worked
for long because, eventually, you get angry or morose or camp and you can’t help it. As much as Roxanne wanted to be calculated and detached, she was still a human being and Ryan could only
imagine how hard this whole scene was to pull off.

It didn’t matter, though. She’d done it now.

Katie continued, ‘Roxanne, we are
not
paying you. I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous in my life.’

‘Then I’ll go to the police.’

‘Roxanne, please.’

‘Sorry, Katie. Come too far, haven’t I? Can’t back out now. It’s way too late for that.’ Roxanne swiped the last remaining bottle of wine from the centre of the
table. ‘I imagine you guys have a lot to discuss – namely, who’s gonna drive to the bank – so I’m gonna take a walk on the beach.’

Six faces looked at her in gormless disbelief.

‘I’ll see myself out.’ Roxanne sauntered through the double doors and onto the terrace.

No one said anything. There weren’t words in the English language to describe what Ryan was feeling, so he could only imagine what the others were thinking.

Greg fell back onto the sofa. Erin hugged her arms to her body. Alisha stared at her wine glass.

‘I suppose I should clear up the glass,’ Katie said eventually, looking exhausted.

‘I’ll do it,’ Erin offered and went to fetch the dustpan and brush.

Ryan looked at each of them in turn. The Jock. The Geek. The Good Girl. The Bad Girl. If Roxanne were to be believed, not only was one of them a killer, but now there was
proof
.

SCENE 14 – ALISHA

A
s Erin swept up the broken glass, a suffocating silence filled the room. It was unbearable – exactly like the four weeks during which Janey
had been lost. Back then, it had felt like no one was allowed to speak, because
anything
, even the faintest whiff of mirth, might sound disrespectful to their missing friend.

Alisha couldn’t stand it. She wanted to scream. She wanted to grab Katie by the shoulders, shake her and say, ‘TOLD YOU SO’ – she’d known right from the start that
Roxanne was psychotic and no one had listened.

Well, Roxanne Dent could go to hell.

It was Ryan who broke the silence. ‘So. One of us killed Janey. Bit of a shocker.’

Ben swore loudly. ‘None of us killed Janey! She’s making it up!’

Alisha flinched. She hated to see him so mad. It wasn’t like Ben at all. ‘How do you know? Were you there?’ she asked.

‘No!’ he said at once. ‘But . . . but . . .’

‘She said she has proof.’ Katie’s face was paler than ever – pure chalk-white like the cliffs back home. ‘One of us . . .’

‘No way!’ Greg barked. ‘As if.’

‘But what if it’s true?’ Ryan paced the lounge, hands on hips. ‘Oh, come on – don’t act like it hasn’t crossed your minds before. The Janey situation
was fishy long before she washed up in the marina.’

‘Ryan!’ Katie snapped. ‘Don’t. It’s not funny.’

Greg now rose from the sofa, trying to wrest control from Ryan. ‘Then who was it? We might as well get everything out in the open.’

Everyone started talking at once and Alisha covered her ears with her hands. She needed a drink the size of Belgium; she couldn’t handle this.

‘Well, of course you’re all going to deny it,’ Ryan said vehemently.

‘Why would any of us want to kill Janey?’ Katie protested.

It went on and on.

Alisha closed her eyes and imagined Roxanne right now, sitting on the beach sipping wine, laughing at the trail of road-kill she’d left in her wake. It didn’t seem fair.

Her brother cursed loudly and threw his hands in the air. ‘She’s not getting a penny outta me. I’m not paying for something I didn’t do.’ With that he stormed out
of the lounge, Erin hot on his heels.

‘Oh, I guess that’s the end of the discussion then.’ Ryan helped himself to another beer.

‘It is,’ Ben agreed. ‘No one’s going to give Roxanne the money. It’d be basically admitting they were guilty.’

Alisha peeked out from behind her curls. ‘Maybe . . . maybe in the morning we can talk her out of it.’

Ryan and Ben seemed to consider that.

‘Maybe,’ Ben muttered.

Katie was sitting hunched on the floor tiles, her back against the wall. ‘This is all too much to take in. It was just meant to be a holiday, you know? It’s turning into a total
nightmare.’ She pushed herself up. ‘I’m going to bed.’ Head hanging, Katie shuffled out of the lounge.

‘Will you make sure she’s OK?’ Ben asked Alisha, obviously worried about his ex or girlfriend or whatever she was these days.

‘Sure.’ Alisha followed Katie. That was her role – the supportive best friend – and she knew how to do her job well.

‘This is unbelievable.’ Alisha closed the door behind herself. Katie was already stretched out on the bed, her arm over her face. ‘I mean, this is seriously like something off
TV, right?’ She crawled onto the foot of the bed and sat alongside her friend. ‘Katie, are you OK?’

‘No, Lish, I’m so far away from OK, it’s not even in sight. Did that actually just happen?’

Katie looked in desperate need of cheering up. Alisha said, ‘I think so, but we
could
all be hallucinating. I mean, Greg’s fish was pretty rank.’

Katie sat up, now panda-eyed from smudged make-up. ‘Go ahead. Say it.’

‘Say what?’

‘
Told you so
– about Roxanne.’

‘The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind,’ Alisha lied. There was a knock at the door. ‘Who is it?’ Alisha called.

Ryan slipped in through the door. ‘Don’t think for a second that you two are leaving me out of the gossip. What’s going on?’

Katie reached out to him. ‘Can I have a Ryan-hug?’

‘You may.’ He obliged.

Alisha smiled. Ryan-hugs were the best: strong and muscular but without even a whiff of sexual chemistry.

‘Better?’ he asked.

‘A million times better,’ Katie said as Ryan joined them on the bed. ‘Where’s Ben?’

‘He’s doing the dishes. I don’t think he wants to talk about it.’

‘Well,’ said Alisha, ‘no prizes for guessing what we’re talking about.’

‘The crisis in Gaza? The political situation leading to the First World War?’

‘Almost . . .’ A half-smile crept back to Katie’s face.

‘Roxanne!’ Alisha exclaimed. ‘And the fact that she’s totally effing lost the plot.’

They said nothing for a moment. Alisha looked between her two friends, wondering whether Roxanne had really been telling the truth. But the thought of either of her two closest friends pushing
Janey Bradshaw off a cliff was plain stupid.

‘What do you think she knows?’ Ryan whispered.

Alisha sighed. ‘Oh, come on. You don’t buy what she said, do you?’

‘I don’t know.’ Katie hugged her legs to her chest.

‘I know there are things that . . . look
bad
,’ Ryan said. ‘Perhaps Janey didn’t jump . . .’

Alisha tutted. ‘For God’s sake! No one thinks that.’

‘Don’t they?’ Katie fiddled with a lock of hair, her fingers nervous. ‘There were rumours, Alisha.’

‘That was all just gossip. Katie, she jumped off a cliff! How many times are we going to have the same conversation? It was suicide. The police said so; the coroner said so; her parents
said so.’

Katie slipped out of her dress and pulled her dad’s old shirt over her head as pyjamas. ‘But Roxanne has a point. I mean, I know
I
wasn’t there, but what about
Ben?’

Ryan laughed. ‘Ben? Ben Murdoch? Are you crazy? He wouldn’t hurt a fly. In fact, if he saw two flies fighting, he’d break it up.’

‘Well, I know it wasn’t me, so that only leaves Greg,’ Alisha said. ‘And why would he kill Janey? I’m not sure he really knew she existed. You know what
Greg’s like – if it’s not playing football or having sex with him, he’s not interested!’ The others chuckled agreement. Alisha shifted position on the bed, unable to
get comfortable. She was tired, sticky, hot and bothered. The air vents were carrying voices all around the house and Erin’s high-pitched interrogation of Greg was particularly audible.

‘Roxanne’s right about one thing, though,’ Katie said. ‘I mean, you knew Janey, do you really think she’d have killed herself?’