Page 52

After that, Reid, everything went to shit. And I think it might have been my fault.

Two days after we’d all dined at Restaurant Twenty-Two, with exactly one week left on the clock, James turned up at my door.

I’d been hoping to see him in private but was struggling to find any excuse to be away from Kit.

So the fact that James came by a few minutes after I was back from a rowing session (you have to keep up your cover in this job, Reid, even when your body is crying out for a rest) seemed like a godsend.

I quickly realised that he’d timed it on purpose, possibly even by hanging around near my house until I returned. There was something big that he needed to talk about, and it was coming off him in waves.

The downside to his timing was that I was both tired and sticky, and I didn’t want to sit inside with him and worry that I reeked of sweat.

‘Let’s sit on the green,’ I said instead. ‘While it’s not raining.’

It was a humid, cloudy day, and a lot warmer than the last few. June has been pretty hit and miss in Cambridge this year. I guess it’s probably the same in London. I haven’t kept track so much.

‘Look, I don’t want to put you in a difficult position,’ James said, once we’d sat on the grass.

His voice was tight. ‘I’m not asking you to– well, you know.

Betray Kit or… or any of the others. I don’t think Kit’s a bad person, even if he did what I think he might have done.

Or even if he covered for someone else…

It’s just… the not knowing is really… it’s the worst.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s the worst.’

‘You want me to find out if he gave Holly drugs?’ I asked him, bluntly. ‘Or if he knows who did.’

James winced. ‘I know it’s… maybe it’s ridiculous.’

I watched him for a minute. The clear sadness. The awkwardness. ‘Have you tried asking the others?’

‘They literally don’t want to hear it,’ James told me, a clear vein of anger running through his voice.

‘They tell me they loved her, and I think… maybe they did. But Kit is so… I don’t know.

Central to their lives, I suppose.’ He shrugged.

‘They don’t want to confront the reality of who he might be. The bad as well as the good.’

I nodded, slowly, and watched a couple of guys throwing a Frisbee around for a moment.

‘I did… talk to Kit,’ I said. ‘I really wanted to know, too. And I don’t think he gave her anything.

’ I looked back at James. ‘He says she came to pick up a bolero, but then asked for advice as well. It seemed like random advice, about a friend. She wanted to know what he’d do if he found out something bad about someone.

Holly said, if she knew something that might ruin people, was it her duty to make it known? ’

James looked at me blankly. ‘Ruin people?’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘She was talking about someone close to her.’ I gave him a moment, and then I asked, ‘Do you think she witnessed something? Something that made someone want to hurt her?’

His head jerked back and then he looked away. I could see this working its way through his thoughts. There was clearly a lot to process.

‘You think she saw… some kind of crime, or… or what? A betrayal?’ he asked, eventually.

‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘If somebody knew she was thinking of going to the police, like Kit suggested, maybe they decided to kill her before it could go any further.’

‘Fuck,’ James said, very quietly. ‘Fuck.’ And then, with real emotion: ‘I knew it. I knew she wouldn’t have taken those bloody drugs. It didn’t matter what everyone kept saying. Oh my god.’ He put a hand up to his head, looking sick.

‘What could she have seen, though?’ I asked him, knowing full well that he needed to think of the next steps himself. Or think he had. ‘I mean, this must have been someone really close to her if they knew she was going to the police. Can you remember anything happening?’

I could see him trying to gather his thoughts. ‘I don’t… I need to work this all out.’ He stood, shakily, and then said, ‘Thank you. I… needed to know this.’

And as much as this was exactly what I’d been angling for, to have someone else looking into this, I felt a rush of worry. Because James– who wasn’t a big, rugby-playing type and who also wasn’t the calculating kind who’d be on the lookout– might now be in as much danger as Holly had been.

‘Please be careful,’ I told him. ‘If she was… you know…’ I gave him as meaningful a look as I could. ‘You’re messing with someone who reacts badly to threat.’

James didn’t really focus on me. He was sickly white with the shock of it all. But he nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘OK. OK.’

I failed him, Reid, didn’t I? I should have tried harder. That’s what I think now. That the first of the things that went wrong was totally my fault.

Two days later, on the horribly named Suicide Sunday, James Sedgewick was found unresponsive in one of the college shower rooms. He was extremely lucky he’d collapsed when there was another student waiting to use the bathroom.

The student used a spoon to open the lock when he’d had no response after twenty minutes.

The porters called an ambulance, and when they checked his room to try to work out what had happened they found a glass of Diet Coke and next to it a bottle of phenobarbital with the prescription label scrubbed off.

Ground-up remains of multiple tablets were next to it on the desk, making it look to all intents and purposes as though James had decided to overdose.

James hadn’t ingested enough to kill himself, probably because he’d thrown up in the bathroom. With medical intervention, he regained consciousness after a few hours.

I don’t know if I need to tell you how fucking terrified I was during those hours of waiting.

How terrified, and how much I felt the weight of responsibility.

For this to happen shortly after I’d revealed that Holly was murdered– that couldn’t be a coincidence.

He must have asked the wrong questions, and it was obviously my fault that he’d started asking them.

A few hours after he woke up, James messaged me himself. It was a simple message:

Please come and see me. On your own. X

It was only then that I wondered whether he might have seen his killer, and I hoped beyond hope that he’d already told the police if he had. I didn’t want him lying there, the only witness, while I cycled my way through slow Sunday-evening traffic towards Addenbrooke’s Hospital.

I was still wearing the dress I’d put on late in the morning to go to Tribal Barbecue, the big event that kicked off May Week. It was the dress I’d laboriously picked out with Esther in London.

We’d none of us ended up going to Tribal, and Kit had never even come as far as picking me up. As soon as he’d heard about James he’d apparently run straight to St John’s to try to help, and then followed the ambulance to Addenbrooke’s.

By the time he’d called me he’d been heading back home to get food and supplies for James. That was good. It meant he wouldn’t be there when I talked to James. But there would still be James’s parents to face.

I felt an awful, crushing fear as I let myself into the three-bed ward in the treatment centre that James was now on. The only other patient in there was unconscious, which made me even more aware of how serious a brush with death this had been.

I’d already scared myself half out of my mind looking at the possible long-term effects of a barbiturate overdose, including respiratory issues, cardiac issues and cognitive ones, as well as possible long-term kidney damage.

Seeing James sitting up and talking to his family was a relief, but I still felt like a piece of absolute crap. Like the worst human being.

Philip Sedgewick was sitting close to the bed, telling James something clearly hilarious about a neighbour, while Marcie– laughing, too, but with a finger to her lips– attempted to get him to talk more quietly.

I realised with a note of surprise that Marcie was wearing a lanyard over her neat white shirt.

I’d never stopped to wonder what she did, but clearly it was a job in the hospital.

I guessed that must be one of the reasons the Sedgewicks lived in Great Shelford, which was just out of Cambridge on this side.

It was strange seeing James and Marcie together again. Both were so strikingly beautiful, and both somehow afraid of taking up space.

James saw me first, and gave me a rueful grin. ‘Hi, Aria.’

His dad stood, quickly, and greeted me warmly. Which probably meant James hadn’t told them I’d almost gotten him killed.

‘It’s lovely to see you,’ Philip said. ‘You’ve met Marcie, haven’t you?’

‘Yes, it’s so nice to see you again.’ I was given a brief but wonderful-smelling hug by James’s beautiful mother.

How could she be in the middle of working at an overheated, disinfectant-laden hospital and still look and smell amazing?

‘I didn’t realise– you’re a doctor here? ’ I added as she released me.

‘Ah, ish,’ she said. ‘Radiology consultant.’

‘OK. Scanning people, right?’

‘Exactly,’ she said with a smile. ‘But luckily not James.’

‘Yeah, wouldn’t want to see the mess I am underneath it all,’ James said with a trace of dark humour.

I saw the way his parents both reacted. It was as if the joke had cut through their cheerfulness and let a bleak, awful fear for their son ooze out.

‘Absolutely,’ Philip said. ‘Hey, we should go and find coffee. James must want a break from us.’

They were out of the room by the time James said, tiredly, ‘Their determined cheering me up is exhausting.’

I sat a little shakily in the chair next to the bed. ‘Do they… think you did it to yourself?’

James gave me a slightly sardonic laugh. ‘I honestly don’t know. Dad’s talking about bodyguards for the foreseeable, and I don’t know if that’s to save me from outside threats or…’

‘I’m so sorry,’ I said, reaching out to squeeze his hand. ‘This is all my fault.’

‘Of course it isn’t,’ James said.