Launch Code

FORTY-SIX

Alice set to work on the kitchen. With so many people in the house, it needed cleaning. And rearranging.

Megan was helping. Megan rarely helped, which irritated Alice minorly, but it turned out that it was much worse when Megan helped properly. She wasn’t great at the cleaning, but that didn’t matter too much – Tara from the village would go over everything again when she came for her regular visit.

The real problem was that Megan didn’t understand how important it was that everything be put back in exactly its proper place. Seven years on, and the kitchen, Mom’s kitchen, was still exactly as she had left it. Soon after her mother’s death Alice had noticed how her father, who previously couldn’t care where anything was kept, now quietly ensured everything was where it should be. They had never discussed it, but Alice had been happy to go along with it, and in a ridiculous way she was proud that between the two of them they had managed to preserve her mother’s order for so many years.

Of course Megan knew nothing of this, and Alice wasn’t about to tell her. Megan’s view on cupboards was: if it fits, shove it in.

‘So who do you think killed Sam?’ said Megan as she pushed the flour jar back on the wrong side of the toaster. She tried to make it sound casual, but Alice recognized the tension in her sister’s voice.

‘I have no idea,’ said Alice, as she sorted the spice jars.

‘Do you think it’s connected to Lars’s death?’

‘I said, I have no idea.’

‘But you must have been thinking about it,’ Megan protested. ‘In jail.’

Alice wanted to scream at her sister. But she didn’t. She turned to face her. ‘Megan. Can you leave the rest to me? Please.’

Alice was ready for a barbed comment, or even a hurled insult. But Megan just looked hurt.

‘OK,’ she said, and she was gone.

As Alice rearranged the flour jar and the toaster, she felt guilty. She knew she was being unfair: for once, Megan was genuinely trying to help her. She was pulling her weight, and Alice knew she should appreciate it.

But it worried her. Megan was smart. The brain that had been able to untangle fiendishly complicated math problems may well be capable of figuring out what was happening at Barnholt.

Toby was smart too, and, unlike Megan, he understood people. He understood her. The two of them made a dangerous combination.

Alice stood by the sink staring out at the naked pear tree and the brown and orange saltmarsh beyond. She could feel the pressure building up on her shoulders to the point where it was almost more than she could bear.

She buckled. She lowered her head and sobbed, tears dropping into the kitchen sink.

But then she straightened up. Wiped her eyes. Sniffed. Tried and succeeded to pull herself together.

With her slippery solicitor’s help she had handled the police. She had handled her father. She had done her best, her very best, to hold her family together.

And now her sister and her husband were threatening to undermine it all.

Maybe she should trust them. She could sense the change in Megan, habitually her most untrustworthy sister. And Toby?

She had always relied on Toby. She had begged him not to ask her questions and, by and large, he had obliged. But she knew he was asking other people.

Toby was trustworthy. He was absolutely honest. He could always be relied on to do the right thing.

But could he be relied on to do the wrong thing?