Chapter 56 Camilla

56 CAMILLA

NOW

A moment later, Camilla bursts into the hot night, almost colliding with Kate, who still stands guard.

“Run!” she yells, as Darcy emerges, too, dragging Jade behind her.

Techno music from the disco pumps through the air, black waves reflecting the neon lights as colorful ribbons.

Behind her, Camilla can hear Kate’s feet pounding the sand, Darcy and Jade following. She runs along the beach, letting the tide wash away the blood from her footsteps. And just then, it starts to rain, a thunderous downpour, the sky a livid shade of purple.

At the door of Kate’s villa, there’s a moment when the three of them have to wait for Kate to find her key card. It’s as bizarre as it is frightening, the mundanity of the wait in the rain to be let inside following on so swiftly from the execution of their prime suspect, naked, and only recently erect.

None of them speak until they’re inside, and Kate has locked the door behind them.

“What the fuck was that?” Camilla shrieks at Darcy. They’re standing in the living room, the air crackling with energy. Kate and Jade watch on, deeply panicked.

“Is he dead?” Jade asks in a terrified voice.

“He must be,” Camilla says, trembling. “There was so much blood, so much blood….”

“What are you saying?” Kate asks. “What happened?” She notices Camilla’s bloodstained face and, for a moment, it looks as though her knees might give way from the shock of it. She reaches out to the wall to steady herself.

“He… He called out f-for me,” Jade stammers, her body starting to shake from head to toe. “He asked if I was all right!”

“I left the knife behind,” Darcy says, panting.

“The gym door’s locked,” Camilla says, glancing at Kate. “Isn’t it?”

“I–I’m sorry, I panicked,” Kate says fearfully. “You told me to run and I just bolted….”

“For fuck’s sake, Kate!” Darcy shouts. “You only had to guard the door!”

“Oh God!” Jade wails, prompting Darcy to shush her sharply.

“You want the whole island to hear?” Darcy hisses.

Jade wilts to the floor, clutching her knees to her chest. “You killed him,” she says. “You killed him!”

“You weren’t supposed to stab him,” Camilla shouts at Darcy. “The police are right here on the island. Oh God, why did you stab him?”

“He was about to hurt you,” Darcy says. “I had to!”

“Have you lost your fucking mind?” Camilla screams at Darcy.

“What happened ?” Kate asks, looking from Darcy to Camilla, who has started to pace, her hands clutching at her hair.

“He didn’t have a clue what we were on about,” Camilla tells Kate, trembling. “He was just worried about Jade….”

Darcy shakes her head. “He’s a liar. He’d have said he was bloody Maggie Thatcher if it meant getting his chance to wring your neck.”

“He. Didn’t. Do it,” Camilla says, punctuating the words with hand gestures, her voice shrill. She fixes Darcy with a wild stare. “We have no way to prove to anyone that we acted in self-defense.”

“Throttling a man in a gym isn’t self-defense,” Darcy says. “He got what was coming to him.”

“Throttling?” Camilla howls. “You stabbed him, Darcy!”

But Darcy sounds disbelieving now. “You were the one who said you wanted to kill Rob for murdering your brother.” She turns to Jade. “And he nearly killed you, didn’t he?”

Jade is still sobbing hysterically. “What have I done?” she whispers. “What have I done?”

“Just words , Darcy…,” Camilla says.

“Pretty bloody serious words,” Darcy snaps back. “This is not the time for gaslighting, Camilla.”

“Gaslighting?” Camilla says, eyes blazing. “I had him by the throat! He was answering my fucking questions, Darcy!”

Kate helps Jade up from the floor and coaxes her into an armchair, covering her with a blanket.

“We need to go back,” Darcy says, strong on her feet. “We need to get rid of the body.”

“Where the fuck do we put a body?” Camilla cries.

“Be quiet,” Darcy hisses. “We’ll have to…” She looks over at Kate and Camilla.

“What?” Camilla asks. “We’ll have to what?”

Darcy pulls her and Kate into a huddle, making sure Jade can’t hear. “You know,” she whispers. “Cut him up.”

“Did you just say we’ll have to cut him up?” Kate asks.

Darcy sighs. “Tell me you’ve got a better idea.”

“I don’t have a better idea,” Kate says. “When I woke up this morning I had no idea I’d end the day deciding how best to hide a body.”

“Oh, fuck off, Kate,” Darcy snaps, taking a step back from the huddle. “You knew the risk.”

The room falls silent. Kate looks at Camilla, and Camilla can read her face. Disbelief. Sheer disbelief. This isn’t the Darcy they know.

A bleep on Camilla’s phone makes her jump. She glances at it. A text from Jacob, the first line flashing beneath her screen notification. She reads it once, then again, trying to make sense of it.

Camilla, Adrian Clifton is Darcy. Same person.

She looks up, stunned. Time seems to slow. She sees Jade in a ball in an armchair. Kate standing opposite, staring at her with anticipation. And Darcy, her white kimono soaked with a man’s blood. A moment passes, a terrible fear settling upon her.

“Who is Adrian?” she asks Darcy.

Darcy looks puzzled. “What?”

“Jacob says you are Adrian,” Camilla says, her voice filled with uncertainty. “He’s… saying Adrian isn’t real, I think….”

“Adrian isn’t real?” Kate says. “What?”

Darcy turns her eyes to Camilla. “I told you Jacob will say anything to take the boys from me. Anything!”

Camilla sees something pass across Darcy’s face—the same expression she saw in the gym, right after Darcy killed Rob. It was a look that Camilla had never seen on her until then. So fleeting an expression of blind rage that she might have questioned whether she saw it or not, until she sees it again now, disorienting in its callousness.

Camilla raises her hand to her face. Rob’s blood is still warm on her body. Did he kill Antoni? She feels dizzy with uncertainty.

“Jacob knows you’ve been using his software,” Camilla presses, glancing quickly at the rest of the message. “He says you created Adrian Clifton. That’s why Jacob’s been asking about someone using his software….”

Kate gasps for breath. “What do you mean, Darcy created him?”

“Rob Marlowe got exactly what was coming to him,” Darcy snaps.

“To answer your question, Katie baby,” Camilla says, panting slightly. “It seems Adrian isn’t a real person. That was Darcy, hiding behind some kind of AI witchcraft.”

Kate reaches out to the doorframe to steady herself.

“Wait,” Jade interjects from the armchair. “Are you saying Rob didn’t kill those people?”

“What about Elijah?” Camilla hears herself ask Darcy, the room spinning a little. “Was he really your boyfriend?”

Darcy flicks her eyes at her, folded like shepherd’s crooks with amusement. Camilla wants to scream. He wasn’t? She has watched Darcy cry about Elijah, her first love. The boy she’d wanted to marry. She’s listened to Darcy talk about the nightmares she’d had for years afterward. Sometimes she’d even felt bad for talking to Darcy about losing Cameron, because she and Cameron hadn’t been on the best of terms, whereas Darcy adored Elijah as much as he adored her.

Except, Darcy had never loved Elijah Morrison, the chemical engineering student in room four.

It was a lie. Every last bit of it.

Cameron’s voice drifts into her head, begging, pleading. A flash of the way she imagined him that night, a desperate young man clutching his phone. A killer approaching.

Darcy.

“You killed them all,” Camilla says. “Didn’t you?”