I slept fitfully – the noise of the party kept waking me up throughout the night. Then, as dawn approached, there was the banging of doors and the giggling of guests as they returned to the villa and fell into their beds. By the time the house was finally quiet, the sun was pouring through the thin curtains of my bedroom. I turned over crossly but couldn’t get back to sleep.
Graham must have had the same problem, because soon afterwards there was a soft tapping on my door.
“I was just seeing if you were awake,” he said as he stepped into the room. He was wearing his swimsuit and had a towel in one hand.
“Awake?” I said grouchily “Of course I’m not. I’m sleeping like a log, me.”
Graham ignored the sarcasm. “Fancy a swim?”
Let me explain here and now that Graham is not what you might call a natural athlete. The fact that he’d woken me for an early-morning swim was so out of character that I realized he had Things on His Mind that He Wished to Discuss. As we couldn’t talk freely in the villa, the beach was our only option.
“Give me five minutes,” I said, throwing back the covers and heading for the bathroom.
As it turned out, I didn’t get to hear whatever it was that Graham wanted to say. When we got down to the cove we discovered that we weren’t the only ones to have woken up early. Bill was sitting on a rock, gazing out to sea, looking exhausted by the events of the past two days. We stopped dead, not wanting to disturb him, but he smiled when he saw us – that kind, friendly grin that warmed you right through.
“All right, then?” he said. “Some night, eh? Enjoy the party?”
“Erm…” I wasn’t quite sure what to say and didn’t want to lie.
Bill laughed. “Guess it was a bit boring for kids.” He changed the subject. “Hey, I meant to say – I really appreciated you helping out like that. Them cupid costumes? They was Josie’s idea. And I felt like a right freak in that frock! But you’ve got to laugh, haven’t you? What can I do? I’m putty in her hands. She’s my one and only.”
Neither of us could think of a reply, so Graham and I just stared silently at our feet. It wasn’t long before Bill spoke again.
“Funny old day, wasn’t it? Poor mum!” A tear rolled down his cheek and he looked so sad and helpless, I wanted to wipe it away for him. “Why’d she forget them pills? She’s never done that before.”
“She probably had a lot on her mind,” said Graham, trying to sound neutral. “That’s what the doctor said, isn’t it?”
I wasn’t so cautious. This was the first opportunity we’d had to talk to Bill alone and I wasn’t going to waste it. “We wondered if someone had taken them from her bag,” I blurted out.
Bill looked at me blankly. “You mean, like, deliberately? But that would kill her!” His eyes widened as he took in my meaning. “Blimey!”
Graham said carefully, “Angelica wanted your mother to persuade you to call off the wedding.”
Bill nodded. “Yeah, Mum said. But she knew how I feel about Josie. Ain’t no escaping love. It hit me like a ten-tonne truck.”
His words sounded like they could have come from one of his songs, and for some reason I found it slightly unnerving.
“Do you think Angelica might have been angry with your mum?” I asked him. “I mean, angry enough to want to hurt her?”
“Angelica?” Bill winced as if even the mention of her name made him feel deeply uncomfortable. “Well, she’s always been a bit… I don’t know … unstable, I suppose you’d call it. Bit of a control freak. She doesn’t like it when people don’t do what she wants. You don’t reckon she…?” His eyes narrowed as he looked from me to Graham and back again. “Crikey! You do. What about Sizal? You reckon that was no accident either?”
Graham and I just stared at him and Bill’s mind started turning things over. We could practically hear the cogs grinding. “Angelica could have put that wasp in the room, couldn’t she? She was right there with him on that sofa … and if she killed the two of them … Josie! Oh my God! She’s alone!”
With that he spun round and sprinted across the sand and up the steps. We were soon hot on his heels and the three of us raced back to the villa so fast, we could have won Olympic gold.
It wasn’t fast enough.
By the time we reached Bill’s room, Josie was lying dead on the bed. She’d been stabbed through the neck with one of her own killer heels. And there was Angelica, sitting beside the corpse, the blood-stained shoe in her hand, telling Josie over and over again, “I warned you. I did. I told you what would happen. Why didn’t you listen?”
Bill let out a low, despairing moan and staggered towards the bed, barely in control of his limbs.
Angelica looked at him. “You shouldn’t have married her,” she said. “Why did you do it? Why?” She examined the shoe as if she’d never seen it before. “No… I know why.” Then she suddenly threw herself at her ex-husband and demanded, “You’ll visit me in prison, won’t you? You’ll come every day. I know you will.” She stared at Bill with dark, dead eyes. And strangely, for a moment, she looked as though it was the very last thing she wanted.