Chapter 10 Kate

10 KATE

SEVEN MONTHS AGO

She took a seat near the window of the cafe. It was February, and heavy rain had transformed London, disorienting her.

She wished she’d asked them to come to her cottage.

“Ready to order?” The waitress’s question gave Kate a start. She realized she’d been staring at the menu for about five minutes without actually seeing a word.

“I’m waiting on a couple of people,” she said.

The waitress nodded and left to serve another table. Kate picked at her nails, glancing at the entrance. Camilla and Darcy were both nice people, she reminded herself. Camilla was a famous Pilates instructor with a hundred thousand followers on Instagram. Darcy was married to a tech millionaire and lived in a mansion in Richmond. Neither of them was her usual sort of person.

A woman stood in the doorway of the cafe, looking around. She had chestnut-brown hair cropped just above her jaw and tucked behind her ears, and she wore a practical puffer jacket and trainers. It was Darcy. Kate waved at her, and Darcy headed over.

“Kate,” she said, smiling, and there followed an awkward moment when they weren’t sure whether to hug or shake hands. Eventually Darcy leaned in for an air-kiss, then stood back to survey Kate.

“People always look different in the flesh, don’t they?” she said.

Kate touched her hair self-consciously. “Yes, they do.”

“It’s the environment,” Darcy said, signaling the cafe. “I’m used to seeing you on-screen with the sketch of Skara Brae in the background.”

“Ah, you recognized it,” Kate said, brightening. “Not a lot of people know what it is, much less what Skara Brae is.”

“We’ve been to it, actually,” Darcy said. “Jacob’s ancestors are from Orkney, so we made a family trip up there a few summers ago.”

Another woman approached, shaking her coat off.

“Ladies,” she said, opening her arms for a hug. This was Camilla—tall, slim, raven-haired, an expensive silk shirt open to her cleavage, black leather trousers, a handful of gold necklaces gleaming on golden skin.

She embraced Darcy, then Kate, who suddenly felt wildly underdressed, Camilla’s expensive perfume sending her olfactory nerve haywire. Camilla’s presence had electrified the cafe, and Kate caught other customers glancing over at their table. They’re wondering , she thought, what on earth someone like Camilla is doing sitting at a table with someone like me. And Darcy—she looked like she’d just come straight from a charity cake sale to raise funds for the school play. The three of them made an odd group.

“Well,” Darcy said with a warm smile. “Here we are.”

“Here we are,” Kate agreed, her heart racing.

SHE HAD WHATSAPPED AND ZOOMED Camilla and Darcy before, but meeting for the very first time in the flesh, here in this unfamiliar cafe… it was surprisingly emotional. She looked at Camilla and saw she was wringing her hands. Clearly, she wasn’t the only one who was nervous.

“This feels very strange,” Kate offered, allowing herself to say it aloud. Then, seeing Darcy’s face fall: “Lovely, but strange.”

“It is lovely,” Darcy said, tension running through her voice and buried in her smile. “I know you said you wanted to meet to discuss something, Camilla, but really I’m just glad to meet you both in person.”

“I don’t know about you,” Camilla said, finally hiding her hands under the table, “but I’m bloody starving. Have we ordered?”

“Not yet,” Kate said. “I wanted to wait until you both got here.”

Camilla made a show of glancing over at the waitress, leaning forward to catch her eye. The waitress saw and returned.

“I’ll have the chia pudding and an oat latte, please,” Camilla said.

“I’ll have the same,” Kate said, curious about what a chia pudding was.

“The avocado toast,” Darcy said. “Please.”

The waitress vanished into the kitchen, and the conversation moved to their respective journeys to the cafe, the way this part of London had changed, the weather. Darcy was the first to break into laughter, then Camilla, though she quickly reached for the napkin on the table to dab her eyes. Kate realized she was suddenly overcome with emotion.

“Oh, darling,” Darcy soothed, rubbing Camilla’s back.

“I’m fine,” she said. “Sorry. It’s just…” She blew her nose, silenced by fresh tears. “This is all just so… I thought I’d be over it by now. But…”

“It’s not every day you meet two other people who have been through the same thing you have,” Kate offered.

THEY HAD, AFTER ALL, BEEN affected by the killings at the Spinnaker Guesthouse just as much as she had, with Darcy losing a boyfriend and Camilla losing a brother to the man who’d let Kate live. The massacre she had survived as a postgraduate student was one of the most heinous events in twenty-first-century Britain that no one had heard of, on account of its proximity to 9/11. The day after she woke to find she had slept in a building full of bloodied corpses, the Twin Towers collapsed, and the world was forever changed. Every camera and microphone turned to New York, diminishing what media coverage might have been given to the guesthouse massacre.

She kept her eyes on the table in front of her, steadying herself. She felt close to Camilla and Darcy, much closer than if their friendship had been forged in ordinary circumstances. They had a trauma bond—the uniquely intimate connection that tethers you to other people who have experienced trauma like yours.

KATE’S BIRTH NAME WAS brIONY Conley; during the trial, she had changed it to Kate Miller. A common name, shared with thousands of women around the world. A first step into obscurity.

But some people had remembered who she once was.

In 2021, Camilla had set up a private Facebook group for the victims’ families. Darcy’s first love, Elijah, had also been a victim, and she was an admin of the group. Though they had not spoken at the trial, they had remembered her, and when Darcy’s message pinged into her inbox, Kate had felt a torrent of emotions. Gradually, through a series of faltering messages, she had felt as though she was finding her way out of the desert.

“I’ll be honest,” Camilla said, turning her phone to silent, “I’m really glad to meet you both today, really I am. But I didn’t sleep at all last night.”

Darcy nodded sympathetically. “Nerves?”

“I kept hearing my brother’s last words to me,” Camilla explained. “I spent a decade in therapy to stop hearing that phone call.”

“What phone call?” Kate asked, cocking her head.

Camilla glanced from her to Darcy. “You don’t remember? From the trial?”

Darcy and Kate shook their heads.

Camilla blew out her cheeks. “Cameron rang me that night. Right before he was killed…”

“What did he say?” Kate asked, her heart beginning to thud.

“He said he’d heard a shout in the room next to him. When he went out into the hallway and saw the door was open, he leaned in to check and he found that the man had been stabbed. Blood all over the bedsheets.” Camilla paused, righting herself.

“It was Elijah he found,” Darcy said quietly. “Wasn’t it?”

Camilla nodded and squeezed Darcy’s hand. “It was. He was gone by that point. Cam ran back into his room and, well, we’ll never know why, but instead of calling the police, he called me.”

Camilla explained in strained tones that Cameron had recently turned his life around, taken a job at a builder’s firm in Dover. He had been staying at the guesthouse for a week, just a few feet away from Kate.

“He said he didn’t know what to do,” Camilla continued, a tremor in her voice. “He said it was dark and he couldn’t find his way out. I’d no idea he was even in the country. I asked him for the address but there was a crash, as though he’d dropped the phone. And then… the sound of him crying out. And I felt it, too, a strange sharp pain in my ribs.” She twisted and pointed at her lower back, showing them the spot. “When it passed, I knew he was gone. I knew it.”

KATE FELT AS THOUGH SHE wanted to be sick. This had all happened right before she checked into the guesthouse, and Camilla’s report of it took her straight back to the days of the trial, when she had sat, rigid with fear and astonishment and nameless emotions, learning of the lives that had ended so violently, corpses lying in the rooms next to her while she slept. Years of insomnia had followed. Years of feeling guilty for surviving when six strangers did not.

“The investigation was a disgrace,” Kate heard herself say then. Darcy and Camilla nodded in bitter agreement. “You know, I heard on the radio recently about a study that was carried out on survivors and their well-being. Guess what the most important route to recovery is?”

Darcy shrugged. “Having supportive friends and family?”

Kate shook her head. “Justice. Not family, not an apology, not financial compensation. When the victim of a crime feels that justice has been served, that the scales have been properly balanced, they can begin to heal.”

Camilla took a deep breath. “Well, that must explain why I’m still so fucked up after Cameron’s murder, then.”

Darcy nodded in sad agreement. “My marriage is over.”

“Oh God,” Kate said. “Darcy, I’m so sorry.”

She shrugged. “He was unfaithful. But they say it takes two, and maybe they’re right. Maybe I messed it up. I never got over Elijah. My first love. Still, I tried to make it work with Jacob. I suppose I thought time would fix it. For the kids, you know.”

“Time fixes nothing,” Camilla said bitterly. “The only thing that works is action . It’s why I set up that Facebook group for the families of the victims. I wanted to see if anyone else felt like the investigation was a shitshow.”

The day after the massacre, a bloodstained Hugh Fraser had walked into a police station and confessed to the murders. Even so, a senseless tangential inquiry had been opened to explore whether the slain owner of the guesthouse, Mike Rotzien, had had anything to do with the killings, due to his criminal record.

September 11 had affected the media coverage. What attention the guesthouse killings did receive was wildly confused, a chaotic investigation spilling out onto broadsheets in the form of misinformation. A radio station reported that the killings happened in Dorset instead of Dover. A news report speculated that the murders were related to drugs, obviously on the back of the protracted inquiry into Rotzien’s criminal past. And according to more than one newspaper, Briony Conley had not even survived, but was listed among the victims.

Reading about her own death had prompted Kate to start writing, burying herself in stories, as though to retell her own.

“I always, always go by my gut instinct,” Camilla said, punctuating her words with her nails on the table. “And my gut has always told me that there was more to that night than Hugh Fraser going on a rampage.”

Kate froze then, as she always did when she heard or read the name of the Spinnaker murderer. Fraser, a fifty-eight-year-old pedophile with a hideous past. The man who had checked her in that night, the creepy vibe he had emitted from the reception desk. In court, he had looked pathetic—hunched over and thin, his skin yellowing, coughing into a hanky. He had shown no remorse for his crimes. His motive, according to the judge, was a diagnosis of terminal cancer. She recalled the way he had smiled at her that night in the darkness.

“I don’t believe Fraser was the only killer,” Camilla said.

Darcy’s mouth fell open. She turned to Kate, then back to Camilla. “What?”

“A couple of years ago, I remembered something really bloody important,” Camilla continued. “Something I forgot when the police interviewed me back in 2001.”

“What was it?” Kate asked, her stomach twisting sharply.

“When Cam rang me,” Camilla said, “I looked at the clock by my bed. It was one of the first things I said to him. ‘Jesus Christ, Cam, it’s midnight; some of us have work in the morning….’ It was one of those digital clocks. It said it was three minutes after midnight.”

Kate thought back to the trial. Fraser had gone to a corner shop a quarter of a mile from the Spinnaker Guesthouse. He was gone between five minutes to midnight and sixteen minutes past.

“Cameron died at six minutes past twelve,” Camilla said, pronouncing the numbers crisply. “Which means that Fraser wasn’t the one who killed him.”

Kate and Darcy stared at her, taking this in.

“Can you be sure?” Kate said. “I mean, it’s so close, isn’t it, the timing? Difficult to get it exact…”

“I am sure ,” Camilla said, her dark eyes blazing. “I even went to the police about it.”

“And what happened?” Darcy asked.

A muscle moved in Camilla’s face. “Well, they told me to fuck off, didn’t they? Not literally. They humored me for a bit, took a few notes. I even got my hopes up.” She scoffed. “But then they told me there was no reopening the case. Fraser confessed, forensic evidence backed it up, and the case was closed. And I had no proof, did I? I couldn’t get the phone records twenty years after the fact.” She paused, then, swallowing back a bitter memory. “The police asked why I didn’t mention it at the time. I told them that I was too busy grieving. I hate myself for not remembering it sooner.”

“You shouldn’t hate yourself,” Darcy said quietly.

“Why not?” Camilla said archly. “Maybe the trial would have gone differently if I’d remembered earlier.” She turned to Kate. “And this is where your study is all wrong. Justice doesn’t matter to me. It doesn’t matter to me that Fraser got handed six life sentences. The fact was that I was on the phone to Cam at the moment of his death, exactly six minutes after midnight, and there was a guy who said he’d sold a pasta salad and two cans of Coke to Fraser at exactly that time. Why buy two Coke cans at the shop?”

“Because he was thirsty?” Kate asked.

“Why not a large bottle?” Camilla added.

“Well, did the shopkeeper have any proof? Or was it just his word?”

“It was his word. He remembered. And it suggests that Hugh wasn’t alone, doesn’t it?” Camilla said. “And anyway, this guy was dying of cancer. We all saw him at the trial. He could barely lift an arm above his head. How did he have the physical capacity to kill six people?”

“He killed them when they were asleep,” Kate said, her mind racing.

“Not Cam,” Camilla said. “He was on the phone to me, remember? My brother was working as a builder, could run six miles without breaking a sweat, and you’re telling me that Fraser tackled him?” She shook her head.

“I’ve been getting roses from a mystery sender,” Kate said then. She drew a nervous breath, cautious. “I’ve never told anyone this, except for the police. But… every year, on the anniversary, someone’s been sending me six red roses. One for each victim.”

“Oh God,” Camilla said.

“Did the police not find out who it was?” Darcy asked.

Kate shook her head and took another breath. “No. They won’t investigate unless it contains a threat.”

“And you’ve been getting them every year?” Camilla asked. “Like, still?”

Kate nodded, feeling sick at the thought of it.

“Jesus Christ,” Darcy said.

“Lot of nutjobs out there,” Camilla said darkly.

“It probably is someone with a morbid interest in the case,” Kate said, wrenching herself together, “but at the back of my mind, I’ve sometimes wondered—or feared—if maybe it’s someone with more than an interest. Someone who was involved.”

The group fell silent, contemplating that.

“I’ve been contacted by a journalist, Motsi Sibanda,” Camilla said then. “She ran a story on the killings a couple of months ago, just a small piece.”

“She contacted me, too,” Kate said. Then, guardedly: “I pulled out of the interview.”

“How come?” Camilla said, and Kate lowered her eyes.

“It was just after Christmas. I was going through a hard time.”

Camilla either didn’t care that Kate’s voice was laced with emotion or didn’t hear it. “Did she contact you, Darcy?”

Darcy shook her head. “Maybe she was only interested in talking to relatives. I’m sure she spoke to Elijah’s parents.”

“Well, his parents died years ago, didn’t they?” Camilla said.

“Of course,” Darcy said, tutting at her mistake. “I was thinking of the families of the girls who died, too…”

“Bao and Chan-Juan,” Kate added.

“Bao and Chan-Juan’s families are still in China and don’t speak English,” Camilla said. “Then there’s Mike Rotzien’s family, but they’re not interested, and the professor didn’t have any family….”

“Professor Berry,” Kate supplied.

“Right. So really, it’s just us three who are the most invested in reopening the case.”

“That’s quite a responsibility,” Darcy said with a sigh.

“Motsi got the go-ahead for another piece,” Camilla said, leaning forward. “A full-page report this time. So much more page space, more detail. She said she wants to take her time with it, make sure she speaks to the relatives of the victims to get a sense of both the aftermath of the trial and the months before the massacre.” She looked over at Kate and Darcy, noticing the color rising to their cheeks. “And get this—she wants to look deeper into Fraser’s past. Talk to people who knew him. Talk to his victims, his family.”

“Why would she want to do that?” Darcy said, recoiling.

“I told her things I remembered,” she said. “From the phone call.”

“What did she say?” Darcy said. “I mean, is there even a chance it could all be reinvestigated?”

“Well, we all know the guesthouse has been knocked down,” Kate said. “So they couldn’t conduct another forensic investigation….”

“There’s this newfangled technology now,” Camilla said. “Motsi wants an independent inquiry into how the case was handled. But I want to go a step further.” She held them both in a meaningful look. “I want the case reopened. No more bullshit. No more wondering and gaslighting and telling myself, No, no, no, they put the killer behind bars…. ”

“I understand,” Kate said. “But… are you sure you’re not just frustrated by the lack of media attention? I know I was. I mean, I didn’t want photographers in my face, and I certainly didn’t want to speak to the press about it. But I always felt sorry for the victims’ loved ones. For you …”

Darcy nodded in agreement. “It was appalling, really. Just… nothing. Barely anything on the news. As if it never happened.”

Camilla shook her head, dismissing the idea that her feelings were driven by frustration. “I know it’s a risk. I know I might push for this and find that Fraser did act alone that night. But my gut says… he didn’t. Motsi says forensic technology is light-years away now from what it was in 2001. If we push hard enough, we can get them to reexamine the evidence.”

THERE WAS A LONG, PREGNANT silence as the women took in the possibility that Camilla’s hunch might be correct. It was one thing to meet, nearly twenty-two years after the horrifying event that had upended their lives and marked them in myriad ways. But to bring together the lingering despair that the handling of the killings by the police and by the media had bestowed on them… It felt like they had created a phoenix that was about to burst from the ashes. Back then, they had been young women, tender saplings quivering in the winds of unthinkable tragedy. Darcy had been the youngest of them, just nineteen. Camilla had been twenty-seven, Kate twenty-four. But now they were in their prime, fierce, wise, and bloodied. Menopausal, wholly themselves, done with all the bullshit. In other words, they were ready for war.

“There is something that has never sat right with me,” Kate heard herself say. “And until now, I’ve never spoken it aloud.”

“Go on,” Darcy said encouragingly.

“It was the day before Fraser died. You’ll probably recall that he mentioned the massacre.”

Camilla nodded. She remembered.

“He’d not spoken about it the whole time he was in prison,” Kate continued, “but this day, he did. It was one of the last things he said. He told one of the guards, ‘I saved her, you know. There could have been seven of them.’?”

Darcy nodded. “He meant you, didn’t he?”

“He did. But he said, ‘I saved her,’ and that always struck me.”

“Didn’t he mean that he let you live?” Camilla said, glancing from Darcy to Kate. “That’s what he told the police when they arrested him, right?”

“Yes,” Kate said. “But all the way through the trial, Fraser said that he spared me. This time, he said he saved me. The wording is different.”

“I think you’re right,” Camilla said, after a moment’s consideration. “There is a difference in those two statements. I mean, you’re the writer here. You pay attention to these sorts of things.”

Kate felt so relieved she wanted to slide off her chair and under the table. Oh, how she had wrestled with her own doubts! The trial had been brief, with the facts lined up very neatly: Hugh Fraser had slaughtered everyone in the building but her. The next morning, he’d walked to the police station and confessed. No motive, other than what he called “a moment of madness.”

But Fraser’s story kept changing. Details about how he’d killed the victims and in what order. He claimed to have blacked out, blamed his shifting memories on the cancer that killed him just a month into his prison sentence.

“I think we should hire a private detective,” Darcy said quietly. “If the police won’t take our concerns seriously, we should just do it ourselves. Action , like you said, Camilla. Get the facts.”

Camilla threw her hands up. “Exactly.”

Kate began to cry then, relief and terror and guilt and all the years of looking over her shoulder crashing down on her. For a moment, she wanted to tell Darcy and Camilla to leave it alone, to let the past be. Leave her to her stories and her cats and her identity as Kate Miller.

Let Briony Conley stay in the past, with her beloved professor.

But then Darcy reached out and squeezed her hand, her eyes filled with determination. “You leave it with me. We’ll find someone really good, and they’ll get our answers. I promise.”

“Justice,” Kate said, turning to Darcy. “That’s what I want. Not just answers.”

Camilla nodded. “Me too.”