PROLOGUE

The policeman, with his slicked-back hair, stands at the bottom of my hospital bed, staring at me intently.

“So, can you confirm you knew the deceased?” he says, in heavily accented English.

I nod, but even that hurts.

His eyes narrow as he studies me. “Do you remember what led up to this unfortunate incident? Were there any altercations between the guests? Was anything said?”

I almost laugh. Where would I start?

Should I be honest and say everybody was at each other’s throats? That it was only a matter of time before something like this happened? That I wish it wasn’t me who caused it?

The officer is staring intently, waiting for an answer, and I want to scream “Yes” to all his questions. But instead I shake my head in bewilderment and say, “No, everything was absolutely fine.”

1

“I can’t find it,” says Ali, with a slightly hysterical lilt to her voice as she rummages through her bag for the third time.

Rachel feels a hot flush begin to envelop her as she wavers between wanting to believe that Ali’s passport is really in there somewhere, and fast-forwarding to what the game plan is going to be if it isn’t.

She snatches a look at Jack as he stands at the airport check-in desk, patiently waiting for the growing sense of panic that Ali’s creating to be over. They all know that these are the scrapes that Ali normally gets herself into—drama appears to be her friend’s middle name—but right now, Rachel’s sure they could all do without the anxiety that it’s causing.

“When I asked you in the car if you had everything, you said yes,” says Rachel, careful to keep her tone light. “You checked off everything, including your passport.”

“I know, I know,” says Ali, upending her bag onto the polished tiles and dropping to the floor on her knees. She frantically fans through the pages of her current book, empties her makeup bag, and takes her iPad out of its case, leaving no stone unturned in her search for the maroon game-changer.

“I’m sure it was here,” she says, as tears of frustration pool in her eyes. “I’m sure I saw it—I just don’t understand.”

Rachel looks at Jack imploringly, but her husband just shrugs his shoulders as if to say, “This is her problem.”

“Might it still be at home?” Rachel asks gently. “What about if we retrace our steps back to the parking lot, just to check that you’ve not dropped it anywhere.” She looks at her watch and is grateful that Jack insisted on leaving home earlier than she had wanted to.

“If the traffic’s bad, I don’t want to be stressing that we’ve not left enough time,” he’d said last night. “And don’t forget we’ve got to pick Ali up on the way.”

Rachel had felt a sense of irritation creeping in as he’d fussed around her while she deliberated whether to pack the blue or the yellow dress this morning. She’d bristled at his never-ending need to be somewhere before he’d even left, but now she’s grateful for his eagerness, because if they need to go back to Ali’s place to look for her passport, they may have just enough time to do it.

“If I don’t get on that plane, Will’s going to lose his shit…” says Ali, her eyes desperately searching Rachel’s and Jack’s for an answer they can’t give.

“Let’s retrace our steps,” says Rachel, as she helps Ali scoop up her belongings from the floor.

“Think, just think,” says Ali to herself, closing her eyes, forcing herself to focus.

“What time does check-in close?” Rachel asks the bemused British Airways clerk.

“Forty minutes before the departure time.”

“And I don’t suppose…” starts Rachel, not entirely sure where she’s going with it.

The woman smiles apologetically with her brightly painted lips. “I can’t check in the luggage without everyone’s passports.”

“Okay,” says Rachel, looking around at the five cases that are standing between the three of them. Only one of them is hers and Jack’s; they’d managed to negotiate their way into sharing a single case, on the strict understanding that it was 75/25 in her favor.

“You can’t expect me to get everything I need for a four-day trip into one half of a case,” she’d moaned as Jack had objected to paying the airline an additional thirty-five pounds just for the privilege of actually taking their belongings on vacation with them.

“Everything you own is tiny. How much room can you possibly need?”

“But I need to take more things than you do,” she’d replied, without much conviction because she knew she was going to get her own way. “You only need to take one suit and that’s going in a separate carrier, so that means there’s more space for me.”

He’d smiled and rolled his eyes as he rationed the T-shirts and shorts that were in the pile on their bed. “Why you need to take enough for a month when you’re only going for a few days is beyond me.”

Looking at Ali’s four cases now, Rachel wonders if it’s a year she’s going for. “Okay, so here’s what we’re going to do,” she says authoritatively. “Jack, why don’t you and Ali head back to the car…?”

“But…” he protests.

“I’ll stay here with the cases and wait for Noah and Paige.”

“Why don’t I do that?” asks Jack.

“Because if you don’t find the passport, you’ve got just enough time to shoot back to Ali’s. You’ll be quicker than I will and besides, you’ve already got six points on your license, so what’s the harm in three more?” She winks at him, trying to inject some much-needed humor into the situation, but his jawline is set and his eyes are fixed on the departures board.

“I’ll hold the fort and explain the situation to the others when they get here.”

“And what happens if we don’t get back in time?” asks Ali breathlessly.

“Then we’ll have to get the next available flight,” says Rachel, smiling, although the thought of sitting at Gatwick airport for any longer than is absolutely necessary fills her with a sense of dread. “It’s only Will we’ve got to worry about—none of your other guests are arriving until late tomorrow, so we’ve got plenty of time.”

“But he’ll be there on his own if we don’t make it out by tonight,” says Ali tearfully.

“I’m sure he’s spent worse nights on his expeditions around Asia,” says Rachel. “I don’t think a villa in Portugal is going to faze him.”

“Jack, would you mind?” says Ali, turning to face him with her best little-girl-lost look. “I wouldn’t know how to get back to the parking lot if you paid me.”

He looks at Rachel as if to say, “Are you really going to make me do this?”

Rachel doesn’t know why Ali seems to rub him up the wrong way so much. They used to get on really well—at least until they stopped working together. It was Jack who introduced her to his brother Will in the first place, so he only has himself to blame for bringing her into the family. But ever since Will and Ali announced their engagement, it’s as if everything she says and does irritates him.

Even last night, when Ali texted Rachel that she couldn’t sleep because she was sure she heard a noise downstairs, he was unsympathetic.

“Tell her to handle it herself,” he snapped.

“That’s not fair,” said Rachel. “She’s in the house on her own, unused to being without Will, and she’s spooked.”

“Tell her to ring him then—she’s his problem now.”

The way he said it struck alarm bells for Rachel, because Jack was usually the first to volunteer to fit a CCTV camera for his parents or a security bolt for Mrs. Wickes next door. She was sure he’d even popped in to check on Ali in the early days when Will was still gallivanting and she was feeling vulnerable. So what had changed?

“She thinks she’s heard some glass breaking,” said Rachel.

Jack had stopped doing his push-ups on the bedroom floor and turned to look at her with an exasperated expression.

“She lives twenty minutes away,” he said. “Do you honestly want me to go all the way over there because she’s said she heard a noise?”

“I just know what it feels like when you’re on your own late at night,” Rachel said, without answering the question.

“Yes, but thankfully, you don’t make a mountain out of every molehill, like she does.”

“She doesn’t mean any harm by it,” said Rachel.

“Well, let’s just hope that this is the only mountain she’s going to be creating over the next few days.”

As Jack and Ali walk back in the direction they came from, with her half-skipping to keep up, Rachel can tell, just by Jack’s gait, that he’s seriously pissed off. The ice-cold pint of lager that he’d no doubt imagined having with Noah on the other side of security looks highly unlikely. At this rate, the best he can hope for is a lukewarm can on the plane, if they make it back in time.

“Hey,” says Paige as she dashes across the departures concourse toward Rachel, with her husband Noah following. “Where is everyone?”

Rachel throws an arm around Paige’s back as she pulls her friend in for a brief hug. “You wouldn’t believe it if I told you.”

Paige furrows her brow. “Is everything all right? Where’s Jack? And weren’t you picking Ali up?”

“No; likely to be halfway around the M25; and yes, we did.”

Noah looks perplexed as he kisses Rachel’s cheek. “So, what’s going on?”

“Ali seems to have mislaid her passport,” says Rachel. “They’ve gone back to find it.”

Paige rolls her eyes. “Oh God, has it started already?”

Rachel smiles and nods. “It’s a bit early in the proceedings, even for Ali.”

“What did I tell you?” says Paige, turning to Noah. “I said to him on the way down here that something would happen … that there was bound to be one crisis or another.”

Rachel looks to Noah, who rolls his eyes theatrically.

“But you know what men are like,” Paige goes on, as Noah’s mimicking her behind her back. “They’re completely oblivious to it all.”

Rachel nods in agreement, knowing that when her friend is on one of her rants, it’s best to let her get on with it.

Copyright © 2021 by Sandra Sargent