In the corner of the room, Craig nodded to her. Time to try out the lights, see which ones shone and which compromised the rest. Get one of them to blink.

  “I’ve received information about some of you and was wondering if I could ask you all some questions.”

  Looks were shared. Guilty ones. Roz kept tally of them all, as if she were trainspotting.

  “What is the source of your information?” Sally said. “Is it reputable?”

  The idea of Laz being reputable was laughable. “Impeccable. May I remind you that I was in the Met and therefore have access to an unparalleled network of informants and information.”

  That seemed to shut Sally up.

  “There is one institution that links almost everyone here together,” Roz continued.

  “What is it?” Craig asked.

  “The University of London.”

  “Oh, come on,” Ayana said. “It’s massive. You might as well say we were connected by London.”

  “That’s a fair enough reply on the surface,” Roz said, “but it’s one of the bigger member institutions I’m thinking of: King’s College, London. Our Quizlings are there. Mary did her PhD there, studying Edith Morley—”

  “Edith Morley was the first female professor in England,” Sam said eagerly.

  “Thank you, I know,” Mary replied drily.

  “Sorry, I couldn’t stop myself. At least I’m not mansplaining.”

  “My Phil worked at Goldsmiths not King’s,” Sally said. “So, he doesn’t count, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “He’s also filled in for a tutor at King’s College this term.”

  “You remember, darling,” Phil said. “I picked up some extra cash on the Tuesday course.”

  “I still don’t see how it fits together,” Blake said with frustration. “A lot of people study there.”

  “And a lot of people work there too,” Roz replied. “Including Ember.”

  Ember nodded. “Yup. I work in IT. But I’ve never seen anyone else here around campus.” She looked around the room. Her foot was tapping up and down.

  “It’s true—it’s so big, I got lost several times,” Phil said. Buddy gurgled, and Phil said in a babytalk voice, “Yes, I did, didn’t I?”

  “How do Meg and Grant fit into this?” Sally asked.

  “I’m not sure about Meg,” Roz said. “But according to my source, Grant had been accused of various assaults. A police investigation went nowhere, and he threatened to sue when two journalists found more victims. One of these accusations came from an anonymous student or member of staff at King’s College, London. My source hasn’t yet been able to find out who, but they will.”

  “I mean, that’s all pretty sus, Dad,” Aidan said. “Meg fancied you, so we had to move, and then her fiancé finds out, gets jealous and insults you. Maybe you attacked him.”

  “Aidan!” Liv said. “That’s Dad you’re talking about.”

  “There’s no evidence linking me to anything,” Phil said. But he was sweating despite the cold. Beads formed on his forehead. “Anyway, Tony’s also on staff.”

  “Hardly. I’m on the board. What about the students? Grant seemed to like them young.”

  “Why do you say that?” Craig asked.

  “I heard he was kissing one of our number here,” Tony said, trying not to look at Ayana. “And he was toying with Beck and Liv.”

  “A few people saw you with Grant, Ayana,” Roz said. “Was it consensual?”

  “Absolutely,” Ayana said. “He made me feel good. It was clear to anyone here that their relationship wasn’t good, and he told me he was going to split up with her after Christmas. Said it would be cruel beforehand, which I thought was really kind. We were going to go on a date in the new year.”

  “What about you, Liv?” Roz asked. “Tony said Grant was toying with you.”

  “I heard him tease her, that’s all,” Tony said. “Told her she needed to grow up.”

  Liv shrunk into her brother’s side. “Yeah, he said I should be having more fun.”

  Roz remembered Grant trying to get Liv to sing with him, and her pulling away.

  Ember groaned and shook her head. “Good job he died. You both had a lucky escape. Take it from me.”

  Roz slowly went over to Ember and crouched next to her. She held her hands. “You know why I want to talk to you now, don’t you?”

  Ember nodded.

  “I should have seen it much earlier than I did, and I’m sorry for that. Maybe everything could have worked out better. Perhaps we should talk in private.”

  “Were you the one from King’s who accused him of assault?” Sally asked, marching over to Ember and pointing at her. “Because you need to say so to put my Phil in the clear of any suspicion. It’s not fair to have him under scrutiny.”

  “It’s not fair to Ember to ask her that, Mum,” Liv said quietly. “If she’s been assaulted, she shouldn’t have to talk about it in front of us.”

  Liv was right. Roz wouldn’t be able to talk about her rape in front of these strangers. She hadn’t even been able talk openly with her own mother, let alone her daughter, colleagues, or friends.

  “You’re right. That’s just forcing her in another way.” Sadness weighed her down so much she could hardly dredge up the words. The unfairness of it all. “Could you come with me, Ember?”

  Ember followed Roz out into the hallway. They had been here together the night before, talking about how they didn’t know how Meg put up with Grant. And now it looked like Ember hadn’t put up with him at all.

  “Do you have any evidence?” Ember asked softly. “That I killed him.”

  “Nothing concrete until we searched your room and found a pestle and mortar complete with peanut crumbs that, I suspect, a lab would determine to originate from a packet of nuts. And, of course, Grant was allergic to nuts.”

  Ember nodded, then turned quickly and pressed the button to open the door.

  “Don’t run, Ember,” Roz called as the cold air entered the railcar. “It won’t help you.”

  Ember jumped out of the train into the snow.

  Roz thought for a moment of letting Ember go. Of watching her run off into the snow and hoping to providence, nature, Santa, God, and every other intangible going, to protect her. Failing those, let Beinn Dòrain take her to itself. But that wasn’t right or fair. Justice needed to be done, otherwise Roz would not be able to live with herself.

  She jumped down into the snow. It was even higher now, up to her knees. The snow was coming directly at her, making movement and vision difficult. Ahead, though, Ember was a thin red target.

  “Ember!” Roz called out. “There’s nowhere to go!”

  Ember sped up. Roz did the same, trying not to think about how neither of them knew what terrain was underfoot, what lay deep beneath the snow. What holes, obstacles, and secrets it kept hidden. Instead, Roz focused on the red coat, repeating a mantra to herself, a train-rhythm prayer of “She will be saved, she must be saved, she will be saved, she must be saved,” but not knowing who she was really referring to: Ember, Meg, Heather, her granddaughter, or herself.

  Roz’s lungs burned. Every ragged intake became harder, as if the cold was taking some of her breath to warm itself. She was fit, but hadn’t trained for conditions like this. London could not prepare you for the Highlands. What they gave, what they took. She knew she should feel like she was in her element, that this was the land of her mother and her grandmother before that, a line of wonky-nosed women who railed at the world and tried to make it their own.

  She was getting closer. The red splash of coat was nearer. Perhaps Ember was tiring.

  Roz forced herself to move faster, to ignore the cold that tore at her skin. “Ember, please! I can help!”

  But Ember wasn’t listening. Outcrops of rocks were visible now. They were nearing the base of Beinn Dòrain. As Roz stepped to one side to avoid a large rock, her foot caught on another. She fell, crying out. This time her shout echoed around the mountains, as if it were amplifying her pain.

  Roz was facedown in snow that filled her mouth and eyes. She pushed herself up, but her arm lit up in a blaze of pain. She’d banged her elbow on a rock. Her head too. Blood crimsoned the snow.

  Keep going.

  She gently rose onto her scuffed knees and, wincing, eased herself up to standing.

  The red coat was only a few meters ahead of her. And it wasn’t moving. Perhaps Ember had given up. Perhaps she’d stopped to see if Roz was all right.

  Gasping, hearing voices behind that could be the wind or people coming to help or her ancestors’ ghosts propelling her on, Roz limped over to Ember.

  Only Ember wasn’t there. The empty red coat lay huddled on the ground, its arms wrapped around itself. The woman who never took off her coat had shed her second skin and gone it alone.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Ember wasn’t feeling the cold anymore. She was running up that mountain, flying like a train that would never come to the end of its line. Something must be helping her: an avenging goddess, or just her finding her own strength at last. She didn’t know what she was going to do when she got to the top. Maybe throw herself down, give herself up to Beinn Dòrain.

  No. That sounded too much like a man’s name, as if he were the king of the mountain. She would give herself up to a Munro, but no man. Gamble her life on its kindness.

  She could hear Roz calling to her and wished she could tell her everything. Why she did what she did.

  But there were no words, and there was no time. She wouldn’t burden Roz with the true story. Because that’s what it was, if you told someone your story—some of the words stuck to them. It was inevitable. And all those words accrued, one after another, snowflake words that turned into a blizzard of abuse.

  Only in darkened rooms, in the smallest hours, in the littlest voices did those who had been treated like pissed-on snow, men’s names written all over them, speak.

  If she had spoken out when it happened, gone through with reporting Grant to the police, then maybe none of this would have taken place. Maybe Meg would never have met him. He wouldn’t have to be dead.

  But Ember knew what would have happened. Every day it happened in courts, victims’ words curdled by barristers. The twisting of her life and events and herself into a knot that couldn’t be unraveled She would have been left more frayed and flayed than before, and she had protected herself. But no one else. And more would have fallen if he had not died.

  Perhaps now he was dead, she could speak.

  Perhaps now she could sing.

  Perhaps now she could roar.

  This was her deal with God. Arms outstretched to the mountain, Ember ran.

  She tried out her voice and it was small at first, weak as winter solstice sun. She tried again and it strengthened, gaining in resonance. Then she tried one more time.

  “He raped me!” she cried. Her voice seemed to circle the mountain, as if an eagle had caught her words and flew them like a banner. “He raped me!”

  Even hearing herself say it made more tears come, but these ones were different to those that she had cried before. These were full of salt, as if she were crying out to Lot’s wife. They were from another layer of her, deep down, the strata she had buried deep. And it was flowing like lava out of her on a mountain.

  “Grant McVey raped me!”

  “I know!” a voice was shouting back. Beinn Dòrain, perhaps. The snow itself, because, of course, snow knows.

  Behind her, footsteps came.

  Ember turned.

  It was Roz, coming toward her, holding Ember’s coat, her other arm outstretched. “I know,” she said again.

  Ember looked back into the swirling snow. It would be so easy to keep running and maybe fall or hide, letting the mountain decide her fate. She was already feeling warm, so she knew that hypothermia was on its way. It was a gentle death, she’d heard, if such a thing could be. Falling into the cold embrace of mother earth.

  So. Give herself up to the mountain, to death, or to Roz. At least now she had a choice.

  Ember walked toward Roz, then ran.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Roz stood mountain-solid as Ember stumbled into her arms. Ember was trembling, her lips blue, her face a gray Roz never wanted to see again. “You’re okay,” Roz whispered. “It’s going to be okay.” She didn’t know how it would be though. But she would do everything she could.

  Roz fed Ember’s frozen arm into a sleeve of her red coat, then the other one, triggering strong memories of helping Heather on with her coat when she was small. Of the too-big mittens that had hung off the sleeves. Roz had sewn them on the night after her sergeant’s exam. She’d forgotten that. In her mind, she’d done nothing for Heather. But maybe there were a few things. Small acts of caring.

  Like doing up Ember’s zipper and popping up her hood. Of pulling the toggles gently so that the circle of the hood closed in, protecting her face.

  Like taking Ember’s hand and breathing on the lilac tips of her fingers to warm them up.

  Like saying, “We’re going to go down to the bottom now. Slowly.”

  Below them, the river whispered in the ravine. The Grampians would have stories to tell of this night.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Ember sat on her bed, a mug of hot chocolate in her hands. Her fingernails no longer had blue half-moons, and she could wriggle her toes again. She knew that Beefy was standing outside as a security measure, to make sure she didn’t run off again, but she felt safer with him there. Especially as the mountain was behind her. It had her back.

  As did Roz. She had told everyone that Ember had been attacked by Grant in the past and that she needed time and space to recover from her ordeal on the mountain, somewhere she wouldn’t also have to tell her story to a huge crowd. Roz had then come to Ember alone and explained that she was going to record their conversation, and Ember had given her permission. Roz explained everything so well, and so gently. Ember wished she had followed her instinct and told Roz about Grant the previous night, as soon as she had learned Roz was an ex–police officer.

  “Let’s get started. What do you want to know?” Ember asked.

  “Anything that you feel okay telling me,” Roz replied. Her voice was as soft as the fleece throw that Bella had placed over Ember’s legs. Her Mirror Cube was on her lap, reflecting snow glare from the window. “If anything is painful or uncomfortable in any way, then just stop. You don’t have to explain why. I’ll also only tell the police what you want me to,” she added. “This is not my story to tell, it’s yours.”

  Ember remembered Roz’s voice on the mountainside saying, I know.

  “How did you know though, what he had done to me?” Ember asked.

  “As I said earlier, there were signs, but I should have recognized them. And done something about it.”

  “Signs?”

  “You not wanting to go to bed; that you stayed in the club car to look after Liv and Meg. And I saw you check on Beck and Ayana. You knew what he was like and felt you had to be vigilant.”

  “I did have to be vigilant.”

  “It shouldn’t have been down to you. He’s the one who should have controlled himself.”

  “Of course that’s how it should have been,” Ember replied.

  “There were other signs too. You were crying and anxious, wearing your coat all the time, all things that don’t necessarily mean anything—you could be allergic to carol singers, or get cold easily—but put together with some of the things you’d said about speaking up not getting you anywhere… I should have paid more attention to Meg saying Grant was paying attention to you, but I dismissed it as part of her confusion and hallucination.”

  Ember rocked backwards and forward. “I should’ve been braver. Taken her to her room and then told her what really happened, what Grant said. At least then I could’ve tried to resuscitate her or called for help, when she was hallucinating. Anything. Maybe then she wouldn’t have died.”

  “I think the postmortem will find that there was nothing you could’ve done. If she was delusional and hallucinating, she may even have thought it was you attacking her. You could both have died.”

  “But we can’t know.”

  “No, we can’t.” Roz paused, thinking, then continued: “You said just now that you would’ve told Meg, ‘What really happened, what Grant said.’ Can you tell me?”

  “I can see how from where Meg was standing that it could look like Grant was kissing my neck.” Ember rushed a hand to her mouth as if she was going to be sick. She swallowed. “Sorry. The very thought of that…”

  “Take your time.”

  “He was holding my waist, hard. And whispering to me, bending down so his face was near my ear.” Ember shuddered. Her rocking became more frenetic. “He said, ‘I remember you. You’re not worth fucking again.’”

  Ember watched as Roz took that in. She nodded slowly, but didn’t say anything.

  “You really don’t have to tell me, if it’s too much.”

  “It was five years ago, before he was really famous. I wanted to buy a car, and he managed to sell me an old Nissan and himself. I bought into him completely. He said all the right things. Was sweet. Seemed to be caring, properly charming too, where men make you feel special. He said he loved older women as they taught him things.”

  Ember swallowed. She was shaking again and Roz held her until she stopped. “We went to an antiques fair the first date and then spent the day wandering around Spitalfields market the next, trying on hats and coats from the stalls, sharing things about ourselves. Bands and TV shows we liked, our first time, that kind of thing. He told me he was allergic to nuts, I told him I hated my boobs.

  “Then there was the third date. He picked me up in a convertible, cliché that he was—but it works. That’s what I hate: it works for these bastards. And it was a sunny day. Picnic in the back and we were driving south into the Kent countryside. I felt like Bridget Jones on a mini-break.” She closed her eyes, but it didn’t stop the images re-forming in her mind or shame flooding through her.

 

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