HALF-COVERED IN A DRIFT OF sleep, Lily wakes as the bolt is drawn back. The door opens with a scrape.
‘Here you are!’ Tom says. His cheeks are red, his long hair out of place. He’s sweating as if he’s been running. ‘I’ve been looking all over for you.’
Lily steps out of the ice house, away from its tomblike womb. Outside, the air feels sun-warmed despite the snow. The smell of woodsmoke drifts from the house, making it seem almost welcoming. Almost.
‘You’re shaking,’ Tom says, taking off his coat and placing it around her. His worry for her warms her from the inside out, giving a Ready Brek glow to her middle. She wonders if Bean can feel it, too.
‘How did you find me?’ Lily asks as they trudge back through the snow to the house.
‘It helped that you were hitting the door like you were an aggressive member of the timpani section,’ Tom says, laughing. ‘I went up to your room to check on you, but you weren’t there. I then went through the house, worried that Mrs Castle might catch me and think I was looking for tomorrow’s clue!’
‘Someone locked me in.’
‘Of course,’ Tom says, stopping suddenly. ‘The bolt was across. But they couldn’t have meant to, surely?’ His eyes are wide and as blue as the sky behind him. It’s amazing that something so clear could yield snow.
Lily shrugs. ‘I was asking them to let me out. Can’t see how they couldn’t have heard me.’
‘True. I heard you as soon as I got outside.’ Tom is silent for a moment. ‘Are you going to ask the others who did it?’
Lily shivers again. She does not want to have to talk to her cousins about this.
Tom inspects her with one of his understanding looks and it makes her want to turn away from him, and cry, and not in that order.
‘I should, I know,’ Lily says.
‘Tell you what,’ Tom says. ‘I’ll say I was in there.’
‘You can’t keep rescuing me,’ Lily says. ‘I’m no princess.’
‘Could’ve fooled me, sweetheart,’ Tom says, putting on his best – and by that she means really bad – Humphrey Bogart twisted grin. He looks more like Colombo. But then that’s who’s needed in any crisis. She should be more Colombo. Or Bowie. Whenever Aunt Liliana gave advice, it always came down to: ‘WWBD, darling. What Would Bowie Do?’ But David Bowie, as luminous as he was and always will be, was not known for solving crime. Or maybe he was. Maybe he’s the best undercover detective of them all. Maybe his role in Twin Peaks was reality played out on the celluloid stage.
‘Ground control to Lily,’ Tom says. He’s standing in front of her now, waving.
‘What is it?’ Lily says.
‘I’ve been talking to you for whole minutes – really good, fascinating stuff, I can assure you – and you’re just staring into space and smiling!’
‘Sorry, got lost for a minute.’
‘Could you stop doing that?’ Tom asks. ‘I’ve got enough to worry about here without you wandering off in your head.’ He’s rubbing his forehead, now crosshatched like a crossword puzzle.
She puts her hand up to his brow. It uncrinkles like paper being smoothed. ‘You don’t have to worry about me,’ she says. ‘I can take care of myself.’ She really can’t, but he doesn’t need to know that.
Tom nods. ‘I know. It’s my fault. I get too involved. Always been my problem. I manage it with my clients just fine, it’s my family that gets me every time.’
‘What are you worried about at Endgame?’ Lily asks. An instinct tells her that there’s something she should know, something that ties in.
Tom shakes his head. ‘Nothing in particular.’
So much for her detective instinct. Colombo would never have got that wrong.
‘Sara is being horrible,’ Tom continues. ‘Gray needs help, but I’m too close so I can’t give it to him. Ronnie needs to stand up for himself, Rachel is the happiest I’ve ever seen her and I don’t want that to change, and—’
‘And me? You’re worried about me?’ Lily says. She doesn’t know if she wants him to say yes or no.
‘Oh, only always,’ Tom replies, smiling.
‘Are you going to tell me why?’
‘Because you keep everything locked up in an ice house,’ he says. ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d say you shut yourself in there so you didn’t have to talk with any of us. But you couldn’t have, could you?’
‘Don’t think even I’m capable of that.’
‘Quite. It’s being here, surrounded by ghosts and people who are crying out for help and screaming at me to stay away. It’s nothing and everything at once. I worry. But nobody needs or asks for my interference. So, I’ll say this once, is there anything you’d like to tell me?’
‘Like what?’ Lily says, hoping he can’t see her face. What does he know, if anything?
‘Kinda defeats the question if I have to say.’ Tom’s laugh is crystallised by sadness. ‘I just want you to let me in.’
‘I will,’ she says. ‘When I can.’
They walk on in silence until they reach the bottom of the terrace. Leaves have fallen onto the snow like punctuation marks. They’ve held on for so long, but winter gets to us all in the end.
As they climb the steps, the living room and library come into view. Several of the guests are standing in the living room window, mugs raised. There is laughing, mouths open, heads thrown back. From here the silence makes it macabre.
‘Ghosts,’ Lily says. ‘You said you were surrounded by ghosts.’ She thinks of the voice she heard in the wall last night.
‘Aren’t we always?’ Tom says. His forehead is creased again. ‘I can just hear them better here.’
‘Your mum and dad?’ Lily says.
Tom nods. ‘I went into their room,’ he says, ‘the one they had after you left. Everything had changed. It had been made into one of the swanky suites in the hotel. I hadn’t realised, I hadn’t wanted to visit since.’
‘At least you were able to go in,’ she says, remembering that feeling as she stood in the entrance to Mum’s room. The pull to go inside, and the forcefield of her own making that kept her out.
‘Wait till you hear what happened,’ Tom says. ‘I was sure I heard Dad’s voice.’
‘Uncle Edward?’ Lily asks. Images of Edward come into her head. Of him smiling and winking as he handed out presents. Of him running to find chocolate eggs in the garden, the strings of his handmade Easter bonnet flying behind him. She had loved him, and he had died not long after her mum. Not being close to Sara, Gray or Rachel, Lily had been left with only Liliana, Ronnie and Tom. She didn’t even see Isabelle.
‘And then I heard Mum,’ Tom says, his voice breaking, nut brittle snapping. ‘And ran right out, crying.’
Lily nods, although she was never as fond of Aunt Veronica. She had rarely smiled, and was so cold. The last memory Lily has of Veronica before her death was at Mum’s funeral. Veronica had rearranged a petite pair of earrings as she said, ‘I’m sorry for your loss, Lily.’ Words that anyone could say and ones she clearly hadn’t meant.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Lily says. And does mean it. She knows better than most what it’s like to lose your parents. And she never knew her dad, or even who he was. Her hand goes to her stomach. She wonders if little Bean will ever know, too.
They go in together, and a cheer comes from the other side of the living room. ‘Where have you two been?’ Ronnie asks. He’s standing in front of the fire, then comes over to them and puts a hand on both of their shoulders. The look of relief on his face makes Lily feel warm again.
‘I found Lily in the ice house,’ Tom says. ‘Then someone locked us both in.’
Lily looks at him, turning her head sharply. He said he’d tell them he was locked in. Not that it matters.
‘What were you doing in there?’ Sara asks Lily. Her eyes are canal-narrowed and just as murky. Lily can’t see what’s at the bottom of them. Probably silt and several lost shopping trolleys’ worth of bitterness. ‘Tom hasn’t got you looking for other clues for him to solve, has he? That’s against the rules.’
‘Because we all know how much you like tradition and playing by the rules,’ Rachel says.
‘I think the better question is who locked us in?’ Tom says, successfully diverting attention from Lily.
‘I hope you don’t think I did it,’ Sara says. She’s puffing her chest out like an indignant French hen.
‘I’ve no idea,’ Tom says, opening his hands out in a display of openness Lily recognises from her own therapist. ‘Otherwise, I wouldn’t be asking.’
‘I’ve been in here with Rachel, Holly and Ronnie the whole time,’ Philippa says.
They all turn back to look towards Sara.
‘It was me,’ Gray says, quietly from his seat next to the fire. He stands and holds up a pair of earphones. The leads dangle from his hand. He walks over to Lily. ‘I went for a walk and was listening to music. I saw the door was open and closed it. I should have looked inside, I’m really sorry.’ He looks straight at Lily. His eyes shine like the ten-pence pieces that Grandma Violet used to give out to her grandkids as pocket money. She would bathe them in vinegar – the coins, not her grandchildren, although her tongue could be acetic at times – and buff them till the Queen looked five years younger.
‘No harm done,’ Tom says. ‘And now we know that the ice house still works. Lily was freezing when she came out.’
‘But you weren’t?’ Sara says. ‘Even though you gave her your coat?’ Her gaze is not as shiny as her brother’s. It’s tarnished by time and meanness. Lily makes a mental note to slip away before Christmas dinner to change. She’s not sure how she’ll explain her mum’s bloodstained coat to her cousins.
‘You know me,’ Tom says, grinning, ‘hot whatever the weather.’ He waggles his eyebrows in a clownish come hither.
Sara humphs. She turns to her brother. ‘You’d better be listening on your old iPod,’ she says. ‘And not something you should’ve handed in to Isabelle.’
Gray holds up an early model iPod shuffle. Lily used to have one just like it. Liliana had given one to all of her children, which she included Lily as one of, something that Sara has never really got over.
‘Good,’ Sara says. ‘Because you’re useless to me if you have to go home.’
Gray’s head lowers. Lily goes over to him and places a hand on his back. He leans into her like a greyhound putting its weight on someone visiting a dogs’ home. ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispers.
‘You didn’t mean it,’ Lily says quietly back.
‘No, not for the ice house,’ Gray says, so much under his breath it’s practically vapour.
‘What then?’
Sara comes over and Gray is left with his mouth open like a fish on a hook. ‘How did you get out, then?’ she asks. ‘If Gray locked you both in?’
Lily feels Tom freeze next to her, as if he’s been left in the ice house overnight. ‘I managed to force the door,’ he says, eventually.
‘You’re a terrible liar, Tom,’ Sara says.
Mrs Castle comes in, holding a tray of canapes. ‘Christmas dinner will be served in an hour,’ she says. She plonks the tray down on a table. ‘I’ve stuffed some vol-au-vents. You can get your own drinks.’ She looks at them all as if she wishes they would disappear up the chimney and not come back, then turns quickly and leaves, boots stomping across the tiles.
Silence is held for a moment, then Tom says, ‘Well, isn’t this a Christmas party to remember?’