The Guilty Party: A new gripping thriller from the 2018 bestselling author Mel McGrath. Mel McGrath
it fell open. Funny that Gav loses a wad of cash from his hallway and a wad of cash turns up in your bag.’
‘I didn’t take Gav’s money.’
‘Well, then, maybe all the more reason for not drawing the attention of the cops,’ says Anna, and, hugging her chest, in a breezy tone adds, ‘It’s suddenly got awfully cold. Shall we go in?’
While we’ve been gone, Bo has filled our glasses, Dex has brought out a plate of wonderful cheeses and a box of silky, expensive chocolates and with night staring in from the French windows and the flickering shadows of candles on the thick, enveloping walls of Fossil Cottage it is almost possible to believe, even now, that everything is normal. But our world is anything but normal. Even the word will not hold, as it runs along tracks made wet with wine, heading towards an as yet unnamed catastrophe. The not-normalness. I know then that by going back to what I’d seen, to what we all witnessed, will be to risk not only being cast out but something more, some permanent injury which will be impossible ever to put right. If I could I would stop the train and head off the crash but I do not know how. A family like ours, tied not by blood or birth but by love and secrets, is so much more delicately but also more complicatedly bound, the contract between kin willingly entered into and habitually renewed, but at the same time so exquisitely fragile, so will-o’-the-wispish, that it might at any moment crack and splinter like dropped glass. It’s hard to lose your blood family. I know that to be the case. Something of them remains inside you. But your family of choice can be taken from you in a blink. If that happened to me, what – after the years of emotional investment, of love and shared history – would be left? A going nowhere job and a dingy room in a rented flat overlooking a bus station.
Dex brings out the Scrabble board and for the next hour or two we make our way through another bottle or two of wine and attempt to fill the board with words, too drunk by now to play with any skill.
Game finished, cheese and chocolates polished off, Bo says, ‘So, who’s for a nightcap? There’s some ridiculously pricey cognac somewhere,’ and without waiting for an answer pulls back his chair and makes his way unsteadily towards the kitchen. Then just as suddenly he stops in his tracks and turning to face us with a grin, he says, ‘That bloody word, it’s finally come to me!’ He’d stumbled during our earlier game and lost points. ‘Revenant!’
‘Is that a word?’ Anna says.
‘Don’t you remember, there was a film out a while ago, Leonardo di Caprio doing battle with a man in a bear costume,’ Bo says.
‘I missed that one. What a shame.’
‘Anyway, it means a dead soul who comes back into the world of the living bringing a message. Damn, if only I’d remembered! It would have been millions of points. More than enough to win.’
‘But mate, you didn’t. Remember or win,’ says Dex.
Anna lets out an extravagant yawn. ‘It’s time for my bed.’ And with a flirtatious little wave, she gets up and wafts towards the staircase.
I bump into her a few minutes later in the upstairs hallway. I’m coming out of the loo, and she’s waiting to go in.
‘Goodnight, darling,’ she says, kissing me on the cheek. Everything else goes unsaid. Now I know Anna knows my secret. And I, in turn, know hers. If one of us spills, we both go down. That makes us quits.
A little while later, when one of the candles gutters on the kitchen table, and Dex licks his thumb and stubs out the flame, I read it as a sign to remain in the dark. Stay in the shadows. Don’t try to find out what you don’t want to know.
But still, the feeling of shock and betrayal doesn’t go away. All night in the Urchin room, turning in the bed, the owls outside the window hooting, You did nothing. You did nothing.
At some point, when it’s still dark outside, I get up and take a shower, soothed by the warm water, the steamy atmosphere inside the cubicle through which I can neither see out nor be seen. I’ve become such an expert at cover-up and pretence I’m no longer sure what’s me and what’s a version of me. Am I Cassie 1.0 or Cassie 2.3? Who is left to ask? I am the sole child of dead parents. My only friends in real life are the other members of the Group. I don’t really speak to my flatmates and the only relationship I’ve ever had was with Dex. I sometimes wonder if I have made myself up from fragments of other people’s online avatars. I only ever feel like a proper person when I’m with the Group as we were a few hours ago now, sitting round the table, drinking Bo’s posh wine. It’s then that I’m able to persuade myself that I could really be someone, an actual person and not just a collection of borrowed algorithms and virtual characteristics. Perhaps that makes me sound more complicated than I really am. What I really am is pretty simple, like Anna said. I am unsure. I am both the keeper of secrets and secretly a lost soul.
If the world knew what I had seen, I wondered as the water poured down, what would it ask of me? What would Marika Lapska ask? Would she come out of the world of the dead to speak to me? Would she say that, because I saw what was happening and did not intervene, I owe her? Would she consider me responsible? Do I owe her? If so, what and how much? Enough to risk my career, my friendships, even my liberty?
I am unsure of all of this. The only thing I am sure of now is that for the next four days I am going to be the Cassie who has friends who are real and funny and who give every sign of wanting to be with me. I am going to be the Cassie who belongs.
Bo
1.25 a.m., Sunday 14 August, Wapping
As Bo walks by the burger bar he spots Dex standing at a three-quarter turn away from him, in the patch of ground between the food trucks and the chill-out tent.
Ah, so that’s where the old tosser went. Bo lifts an arm to wave then stills himself, aware, suddenly, that his friend is staring intently at something, or someone. He can’t get a clear view of what Dex is glaring at, but his stance seems wired, almost predatory. Could Dex be on the pull? Oh, now, this is interesting. An opportunity to see his friend in the wild.
Naturally, Bo’s had gay men making the moves on him for years, the way he looks, but Dex has never once tried it on. Mind you, though, Bo isn’t really Dex’s type. He already knows from Dex’s entries in the Big Black Book that he likes tough-looking guys with shaven heads and aggression rippling not far under the surface. The polar-opposite of Gav, in fact. Poor bastard, trapped by domesticity. Though at least he gets to play away, so he has it easier than Anna. Though women like that domestic shit, don’t they? Funny, it all seems to have happened while his eye was off the ball, his friends settling down, becoming that tiny bit more boring. He doesn’t envy any of it. Why would he? Look what life has laid at his door. A fabulous river-view apartment, a great set of wheels, friends who love him, stimulating, highly paid work, all the booze and drugs he could ever want, the best bloody pizzas in London courtesy of the Big Fat Pizza company (hats off to Dex for that recommendation), and access to a city full of women at the swipe of a screen. Wey-Aye, Man. Literally living the dream.
He’s jolted out of his reverie by movement. Dex is heading towards something or someone. Actually it’s more like a pounce. Like a cat, almost. Bloody hell, he hasn’t seen Dex move like that since they were both teenagers trying out for varsity football.
What’s this? A girl is standing by the chill-out tent with her back to them and Dex is tapping her on the shoulder. Thin girl, petite, dark hair, red dress. Hot, so far as you can tell from looking at the back. Hot, if you like that sort of thing. Which, as it happens, Bo does. But Dex? What possible business could Dex have with her? Plus she seems shaky on her pegs.
She’s turning round now. Dex has moved to one side and turned somewhat too, so his face is now partially visible. Whoa, Bo thinks, finally getting a purchase on that facial expression, stay well clear. It takes a lot to make Dex angry but that’s exactly how he looks at this moment with his eyes flaring and his mouth opening into a shout.