Page 150 of Deep Blue Sea

She was just about to throw down her phone when it buzzed in her hand. She looked down: an email. It was from Simon Michaels in New York.

She read it carefully. It had been sent to both Diana and Adam, saying that Michaels had asked around the appropriate departments but no one had heard of Billy or Maddison Kopek. Something struck her as odd about it, so she read it again. When she scrolled down to the bottom of the message, she saw that Simon was replying to an email that Adam had sent him asking about Maddison Kopek. She remembered asking him to send that email. They had been standing on the sidewalk in New York before their night of passion.

She read it again. Maddison Kopek. That was what was strange. Maddison spelt with two Ds, which was very unusual. Everything from Madison Avenue to the American girl’s name was usually spelt with one.

It jogged something in her memory. Rome. That was it. Julian’s report on Rheladrex that had taken them to see Dr Adriana Russi. She had a copy of the report in her case, she was sure of it. Rachel had given it to her to read before they had flown out there.

The case was in the storage room on the top floor. She went upstairs, noticing the bags of Julian’s clothes she had stuffed in here in a fit of anger, and retrieved the report, leaning against the wall as she read it. There it was. Maddison Kopek, with a phone number written next to it. The flowery, girly writing suggested it had been written by the young woman herself.

Her mind was a swirl of thoughts. Adam had referred to Madison as Maddison in his email. Was it a slip of the hand, an incorrect spelling, or had he seen a copy of this report?

Bile rose in her throat.

Adam, say you’re not involved in any of this.

Her next thought was Rachel. She was in the car with him. Who knew where they were going? She felt a sudden shiver of fear for her sister and knew she had to contact her. Why? To warn her? She didn’t care if Rachel thought she was checking up on her, she just had to tell her what she knew. She had a horrible sinking feeling about it.

Her phone was still in the Peacock Suite. She ran to the stairs, taking them two at a time.

Almost as if she was moving in slow motion, Diana saw her toe miss the edge of the step, her ankle turning over, her arms pinwheeling. She knew what was about to happen, but was powerless to stop it, as her weight pitched her forward, her body momentarily seeming to pause in the air. And then she was falling, down, down, and the hard wooden floor was rushing up to meet her.

55

Rachel arched her back and let her hair fly back in the breeze. She had changed into a cotton dress, but she hadn’t had time to dry her hair. This was much nicer anyway, letting the warm air do its work. She loved convertible cars, she decided, watching the countryside go by in shades of green, the long shadows of late afternoon stretching across the fields, cutting across the roads. She reflected how almost everywhere looked good in the summertime, but that the rolling hills of Oxfordshire looked better than most places she had ever been – even the paradise islands of the South China Sea.

‘Why are we going to Oxford?’ she asked, shouting over the noise of the engine.

Adam tapped the side of his nose. ‘Ask me no questions . . .’ he said with an enigmatic smile.

‘Come on, I hate surprises!’ said Rachel, but Adam just shook his head.

They parked on the far side of the Cherwell, crossing the old stone bridge with the wooden punts gathered beneath. As the dreaming sandstone spires of Magdalen College rose up next to them, Rachel couldn’t believe she had once dismissed these ancient, student strongholds as stuffy and old-fashioned.

‘It’s amazing here,’ she said. ‘Like a medieval town. No wonder it still has such magic.’

‘Actually, I used to hate Oxford,’ said Adam. ‘I mean, hate it with a passion.’

‘Really? But it’s beautiful here, how could you hate it?’

He waved a hand along the high street. ‘Take your pick. All the students with their look-at-me scarves weaving about on their stupid bikes, all the crumbly old buildings, the crowds of Japanese tourists wanting to snap every inch of the place. I wanted to bulldoze the lot.’

Rachel laughed. ‘What’s your problem with it?’

‘Oh, it’s embarrassingly shallow,’ said Adam. ‘Because Julian and Elizabeth were offered places here. It was clear from a pretty early age that that was never going to be my educational trajectory. “Good at sport”, that was the euphemism they used to describe thickies like me at school.’

Rachel wondered for a moment if Diana had ever felt the same way about her. She had always been the one to do well at exams – it had actually rather irritated her that so little was expected of Diana, but perhaps she had felt stupid by comparison.

‘It’s funny, you don’t strike me as the sort of person who would be affected by your siblings’ success. You always come across as confident in your own skin.’

He glanced at her. ‘We all have our crosses to bear, don’t we? Now you, I bet you went to Cambridge.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Well, you obviously don’t know this town, but you still have that Oxbridge thing, that inner confidence they all seem to come out glowing with.’

‘I can see you haven’t quite lost your dislike of the place,’ laughed Rachel. ‘Anyway, I didn’t go to Cambridge. I was offered a place actually, but I turned it down.’

Adam laughed. ‘I never believe people who say they turned down Oxbridge. It’s a bit like “I could have been the lead singer in U2, but I left the band to concentrate on gardening.”’