When Austin and Yinka come around the corner, laughing, Mr. Humphries steps back until he’s swallowed by the shadows.

Walking the hallway, I expect to bump into people but I don’t. Everyone has found a solitary somewhere. Everyone is dealing with this in their own way.

I need to talk to someone, but Emily would be annoyed if I joined her in the tree, so instead I go to Bernie’s room. Maybe, hopefully, I can make things right.

I listen at her door and hear rustling inside. I knock and no one answers, but there’s murmuring, so I go in, and Bernie is lying on the bed, her limbs crooked like a doll thrown from a stroller. There’s an empty vodka bottle on the bedside table.

I shake her and shout her name, but she doesn’t respond. A pool of vomit is lying crusty on the bed, and thin yellow strands hang from her mouth.

“Bernie!” I shout. “Bernie! Wake up!” But she doesn’t.

I go into the hall and scream, and when no one comes, I run to the living room to tell Andrea what’s happened. Then she’s leaning over Bernie, wiping the vomit from her mouth, and someone touches me—Mr. Humphries—and he pulls me into the hall and whispers how everything will be okay.

Over his shoulder, I see Reg, moving so fast, and the tears stinging my face make him shimmer.

“Move!” he says.

The hallway is filling with people, everyone asking what happened.

I say things, make noises at least, and then I’m fighting my way back into the room.

Reg is leaning over her. He’s breathing into her mouth, then pushing hard on her chest. He does it over and over again until the screams have turned to whimpers, until our hopes have turned to fears, until we know she must be dead.

Chapter 70

Reg doesn’t stop until the paramedics arrive.

They order us into the hallway, and Mr. Humphries tells us to go to our rooms, but we don’t. Instead, we wait silently in the living room while an ambulance rushes Bernie to the hospital.

We sit in the same place where we acted like kangaroos, where we laughed and danced, and some of us cry while others wonder if we should.

This is not how we want to remember Mayfield Lodge, but you don’t get to pick your defining memories.

When Mr. Humphries comes in, Eloise runs to him and says, “Is she awake?”

“They’re doing all they can,” he replies, and the whole room shivers.

“I can’t believe she’d do that,” Harrison says.

Eloise shouts, “She didn’t! She wouldn’t!” But her voice cracks, because it happened. No one saw it, but Bernie must have taken the bottle back to her room and drunk every last drop.