Oscar squatted next to the couch where Felicity lay, her skin pale, eyes rolled back. His sleeping beauty. ‘Will she be okay?’ he asked.
‘Will she be okay?’ Isla sounded incredulous. ‘Dom is dead!’
It was the first time any of them had said it out loud. Cole was still on the deck doing CPR, but presumably even he knew it was hopeless. You couldn’t treat brain damage with chest compressions.
Clementine was still crouched like Gollum in front of the fire. Her voice was quiet: ‘I heard a story about a woman who shot herself in the head and survived. She wandered off before she collapsed—’
‘He’s definitely dead,’ Oscar said. ‘We can’t help him. But Felicity might be going into shock.’
Isla said, ‘Now that we’ve got her horizontal, she’ll be fine.’
Oscar had long fantasised about getting Felicity horizontal, but this wasn’t what he’d had in mind. He grabbed one side of the couch. ‘Help me move her closer to the fire.’
Isla gripped the other side, and they dragged the couch across the room, into the pool of warmth around the flames.
Oscar examined Felicity’s cheeks, waiting for the colour to return. Even her freckles had disappeared. ‘I’ve never seen her freak out like that,’ he said.
Isla glared at him. ‘Her husband just died.’
A fair point, but it troubled Oscar. If Felicity loved him, then why was she so upset? She should be grateful to have her husband out of the picture.
He started to wonder if he’d made a terrible mistake.
Clementine spoke without looking away from the fire: ‘What do you think happened?’
‘He obviously tried to jump into the tub again, and this time he hit his head on the side,’ Oscar said.
‘Why would he jump in wearing a suit?’
‘Because he’s Dom,’ Oscar said.
‘He was Dom,’ Isla said.
They all let that sink in.
The sliding door opened, and Cole entered, puffing. ‘I’m sorry. He’s gone. I tried my best, but …’ His voice broke, and he didn’t meet anyone’s eye.
Isla hugged him. ‘Oh, Cole. I’m so sorry.’
It struck Oscar that it should have been Cole’s wife comforting him, not Isla. But Clementine didn’t even look at him. Oscar had never been good at reading a room, but this one was particularly inscrutable. He supposed it was natural for everyone else to be acting strangely. They’d all known Dom longer than he had.
Cole released Isla and wiped his eyes. ‘Have you tried all the phones? Emergency calls sometimes go through. Different providers share phone towers when you dial triple zero—’
‘I tried them all,’ Isla said. ‘Upstairs, downstairs, inside, outside. I tried the landline, but it doesn’t work.’
‘Well, we need to get an ambulance here somehow.’
‘Two ambulances,’ Clementine said softly.
‘Dom is way past that point,’ Isla told her.
‘I know, but we have to get rid of the body.’
Everyone looked at Clementine, aghast.
‘I meant, get it to the morgue,’ she said. ‘Obviously.’
Oscar noticed how rapidly, for her, Dom had become it.
‘We’ll have to drive down the hill,’ Cole said.
‘What, just go to town with a corpse strapped into one of the seats?’ Isla sounded a bit hysterical.
A good husband would have put his arm around her. As usual, Oscar thought of it too late. If he did it now, it would seem staged. He looked out the window. Dom’s body was still on the deck, surrounded by a puddle. It was starting to rain.
‘No, no,’ Cole was saying, ‘one of us just needs to drive far enough to get reception and call triple zero.’
Clementine asked, ‘How did Dom get out there without any of us seeing him?’
‘The east downstairs bedroom has a door onto the deck,’ Oscar said. ‘He must have gone through that way. Or he could have climbed out the window of the other downstairs bedroom. Maybe even the upstairs window, if he was feeling especially …’
‘Dommish,’ Clementine put in. ‘I guess the police will figure it out.’
A palpable fear settled over the room. Isla put their thoughts into words: ‘Do we tell them about the …?’ She gestured to the bedrooms but stopped short of miming the sex.
‘I think we have to,’ Oscar said, though the thought made him feel ill.
Cole looked more embarrassed than Oscar had ever seen him. ‘It’s not like the … like it had anything to do with what happened to Dom.’
‘We don’t know that,’ Clementine said. ‘Maybe he had a stroke from all the excitement. That might explain why he got in the tub with his clothes on.’
‘That is pretty much how he would have wanted to go,’ Oscar said. He felt Isla staring at him and realised he was stroking Felicity’s hair. He quickly moved his hand to his pocket—then realised he had no pockets and found himself simply patting the side of his own leg.
Cole cringed. ‘You want to tell the police that no one knows what happened to Dom because we were all … busy?’
‘Do you really want to try to hide that from them?’ Isla asked.
‘But someone will tell the media,’ Cole said. ‘Someone always does. All of our reputations will be ruined.’
‘Not as ruined as they’ll be if we lie to the police,’ Isla insisted. ‘That will make the investigation a thousand times more complex—’
‘Dom is dead, Cole,’ Clementine said, ‘and you’re worried about our reputations?’
Her husband rubbed his face with his palm. ‘You’re right. I’m sorry. I’ll drive down the mountain until my phone starts working, then I’ll make the call.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ Isla offered. ‘So you don’t have to drive and keep an eye on your phone screen at the same time.’
Oscar glanced over at Clementine, who didn’t volunteer to ride with her husband.
Cole said, ‘Sure, but at least one person needs to stay with Felicity.’
‘I can do that,’ Oscar said.
Isla shot him a suspicious look. He returned it.
‘Okay,’ she said finally. ‘Give me a minute to get dressed.’ She disappeared into the hall.
Cole went into the entryway, then came back a second later. ‘Who’s got the key for the Tarago?’
‘You,’ Oscar said.
Cole pointed towards the front door. ‘I left it just there, on the hook. Who picked it up?’
Clementine and Oscar looked at each other.
‘You drove to town yesterday—’ Clementine began.
‘Yeah, and I put the key on the hook.’
‘Is the car still there?’ Oscar asked. It had been in the driveway when they were searching for Dom.
Cole vanished towards the front door. There was a click, a creak, a pause, another creak, and another click. He returned. ‘It’s right where I parked it.’
Isla returned from the bedroom, pulling her coat over a loose top and holding her walking shoes in one hand. ‘Maybe Felicity has it?’ she suggested.
‘I’ll check.’ Clementine finally stood, apparently planning to go through the pockets of Felicity’s pyjamas.
‘We can ask her once she’s awake,’ Oscar objected.
‘Sweetheart,’ Isla said coldly, ‘Dom is dead. There’s no reception up here. Right now we can’t call an ambulance, or the police, or anyone at all. Warrigal is more than a hundred kilometres away. We’re trapped here without that key—’
‘What key?’ Felicity said.
‘The one for the—’ Isla broke off. ‘You’re awake!’
‘Yeah. I must have …’ She sat up on the couch, then collapsed again. ‘What happened?’
‘You fainted,’ Clementine said.
Felicity gasped. ‘Dom! Is he …?’
Oscar nodded, perhaps too eagerly.
‘Are you sure?’ Desperation was written across Felicity’s face. ‘Maybe he’s just concussed, or—’
‘We’re sure,’ Cole said.
Her eyes filled with tears. ‘I thought maybe it was a nightmare.’
‘It is,’ said Clementine, as she sat back down next to the fire.
‘Do you have the car key?’ Cole asked. ‘We need to get to somewhere with reception, so we can call the police.’
‘I thought you had it,’ Felicity said. She nevertheless turned out her pockets. Empty. ‘Did you try the landline?’
‘It doesn’t work,’ Oscar said.
Clementine spoke up. ‘Dom might have the car key.’
Everyone looked out the window to where Dom’s body lay sprawled alone on the deck. Then they looked at each other.
‘I’ll check,’ Cole said.
‘No.’ Felicity stood up. ‘I’ll do it.’
Oscar hovered beside her. ‘Are you sure?’
She opened the back door and stepped out into the drizzle. Oscar watched as she crouched over Dom and went through his suit pockets. She pulled out a pen, then a sleeve of business cards. No key.
‘We could check his bags?’ Cole murmured.
‘We should let Felicity do that,’ Clementine said.
‘You don’t have a spare key?’ Isla asked them.
‘It went into the washing machine a couple of weeks ago,’ Cole said.
On the deck, Felicity had finished searching Dom’s clothes and was gently cupping his cheeks in her hands. Tears poured down her face and dripped onto his forehead.
She whispered something to her dead husband. Then she lowered her face to his, and kissed him.
Oscar finally looked away, anger coming to a boil in his gut.