‘Talk to my mum again. And my dad. See what they have to say.’

Milly looked at her friend. ‘More bullshit?’

‘Probably.’ Belle’s eyes drifted over to Harlan, standing there chatting, laughing. Charlie and Nula were dead, and he looked like he was at a Christmas party, having fun. It was obscene.

‘You know,’ said Milly quietly, ‘my mum was a little bit crazy, but I tell you Belle, this is where crazy really starts. When they let Harlan into their lives? They let a demon in. A fucking monster.’

Milly surged to her feet and was gone, out into the hall, shoving past the mourners, running off up the stairs.

‘She OK?’ asked Nipper, coming over to Belle.

Belle stared at him with dislike. Harlan’s toy poodle. ‘No. Not at all.’

He sat down on the couch. Oh fuck off, thought Belle. But he didn’t.

‘How do you think it happened? The accident?’ she asked Nipper.

He shrugged. ‘Helicopters are dangerous things,’ he said. ‘The servicing has to be top-notch. You hear of accidents. All the time.’

‘Harlan told me it takes months for the Air Accident people to sift through it all. To find out what really happened.’

‘Yeah. He’s right. The AAIB are bloody thorough. But dead’s dead, ain’t that so? It won’t bring either one of them back, no matter what they find.’

‘I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget that day,’ said Belle.

It was so vivid in her mind, even now, over a month after the event. The panic, the shouting, the wail of the fire engines and the police cars, the ambulances to take the bodies away to the morgue – and then in the days after that, the Air Accident crew came in with heavy lifting gear, disassembling the wreckage that remained and taking it off to their headquarters in Farnborough.

Belle stared at Nipper, sitting there. He was watching Harlan, just like she was. ‘You really think this was an accident?’ she said.

Nipper’s eyes swivelled to her face. ‘What are you saying?’

Harlan’s attitude was so relaxed, so in charge. He looked her way and half-smiled, and she felt a shiver go right through her.

‘It suits him,’ she said. ‘Them being gone. Out of the way.’

‘Don’t let him hear you say that,’ Nipper said, giving her a steely-eyed look.

‘I’m not scared of him,’ said Belle. She nodded toward Ludo, who was lounging against the wall beside the door. ‘Or any of you pet apes he likes to hang around with.’

Then she thought of Harlan chasing her down the road in his Porsche, and his parting words to her, and suddenly she wasn’t so sure.

‘Well,’ said Nipper, standing up, ‘you fucking well ought to be.’

95

Milly sat on the bed up in her room, listening to the roar of conversation from the guests downstairs and glad to be up here, away from it. Away from the necessity to be polite, to play hostess. Because she guessed she was the hostess now.