Harm's Reach

62

A week later, Ren, Janine and Robbie managed to have the same evening off. They sat in Woody’s having pizza.

‘Can anyone call this a celebration?’ said Ren.

‘Definitely not,’ said Janine. ‘This is called simply: sustenance.’

Bare sustenance for you, my beautiful, delicate friend.

‘Do you want to hear something beyond fucked-up?’ said Ren.

‘Coming from you?’ said Janine.

‘It’s about Walter Prince,’ said Ren. ‘I realized how he stalked two of those little Orchard Girls — it was the letters the Irish immigrants dictated to him. They weren’t just telling their families back home what was going on with their children — they were giving him information he could use to find them or gain their trust. Like “Little Mary is eleven now, getting so big, walks home every day by the creek...” Walter Prince didn’t mail those letters, not out of spite, but because they could have been used as evidence against him... What a sick fuck.’

‘That just gives me shivers,’ said Janine.

‘People will visit the Prince mansion for the Christmas Eve ball or pay for the guided tour...’ said Ren. ‘When really, I think it should only be open for Hallowe’en.’

‘I think we should go,’ said Janine.

‘Sign me up,’ said Ren. She turned to Robbie. ‘Do you have your iPad?’

‘Yup,’ said Robbie.

‘Can I take a look?’ she said. Please tell me you’ve cleared your History.

‘Sure, go ahead,’ said Robbie, handing it to her.

‘I just want to see if the grand event’s still going ahead after the entire Prince family shitstorm,’ she said.

‘I doubt it,’ said Janine.

She Googled the Princes, put in the timeframe of the previous week. ‘Ooh,’ she said. ‘Stalker shots.’

There was a picture of Ingrid Prince, taken on the beach in the Hamptons the previous weekend. She was dressed in a blue floaty cover-up and a floppy hat.

‘That woman is so stunning,’ said Ren. She showed the others.

Janine pointed to the caption: After some time away from the spotlight following the tragic death of her friend, Laura Flynn, ex-model Ingrid Prince, five months pregnant, debuts her baby bump on the beach at her Hamptons’ hideaway.

‘Debuts her Moonbump,’ said Ren. ‘But, yikes. She hasn’t announced the fake miscarriage yet.’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘The longer the delay, the greater the empathetic outpourings, I guess.’

‘Celebrity is so weird,’ said Janine.

Ren scrolled down to the next photo of Ingrid Prince in a beautiful mismatched bikini: red bottoms, blue-and-white stripes on top. And sandwiched in between, a very clear, very real baby bump.

Janine, Ren and Robbie all stared at each other.

Oh. My. God.

‘Looks like Conor Gorman’s obsession with Ingrid wasn’t a one-way street,’ said Ren.