‘I don’t appreciate lies,’ he said in a low voice, stepping towards her and looking her straight in the face. ‘Though you know that perfectly well, don’t you, Maren?’ This time I saw her flinch, as though expecting to be struck. ‘Don’t let it happen again. Understood?’

‘Understood,’ Maren said in a hoarse voice.

Tom turned his back to her. A few seconds later she slid out of the room, and everyone breathed again.

‘Perhaps you’ll join us for breakfast in the morning, Sophie?’ Derry said. ‘I’m making a full English.’

I glanced at Tom, who rolled his eyes. Derry gave a wry smirk.

‘Tom knows perfectly well we’re both carnivores,’ Derry said with an eye roll. ‘Perhaps I can tempt you?’

‘A full English sounds great,’ I said, stupidly, causing Tom to raise his eyebrows in surprise. I couldn’t think fast enough to counter this statement so I mumbled ‘G’night,’ and headed to my room.

   13   

WOULD YOU RETURN?

Now

I climbed into bed and pulled the covers over my head. I was disappointed that both Gaia and Coco were all tuckered out in their rooms. There was no chance of me sleeping, and I was still very queasy. Hideous thoughts stampeded around my brain like wildebeest. Maybe I was actually going out of my mind.

I cowered beneath the covers for a long time, until the voices along the corridor died down and the noises in the woods began to stir. When the floorboards outside my room creaked I whispered, ‘Come in, Gaia. It’s all right.’

‘Not Gaia,’ a voice answered back. I looked up and saw Maren standing in the doorway, still in her slippers and inside-out cardi, holding a glass of something. She raised it.

‘You want to join me?’ she asked meaningfully.

I eyed her nervously, unsure I’d heard her correctly. ‘Join you … for a drink?’

‘You don’t drink?’

Maren mysteriously turned to walk away, glancing behind in a manner that suggested I was to follow. My stomach dropped into my socks, then from there to the core of the earth. She was on to me.

I tried not to be sick with fear as I followed Maren upstairs to her room, which was lit by a table lamp and a cobwebbed chandelier, its light dimmed low as candles. A small TV monitor played a Norwegian game show. A large sleigh bed occupied the middle of the room, and by the bay window an armchair was turned to a small table, upon which sat a chess board, a crystal bottle of something alcoholic, and an ashtray unspooling a thread of smoke from a cigarette.

‘Have a seat,’ she said, gesturing at the chair on the other side of the table on which a pile of laundry had been abandoned.