Chapter Fourteen

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Glasgow

May 2024

CLEM

Clem and Quinn take off their yellow gowns and discard them in the small bin by the door of Erin’s room before closing it.

“Everything okay?” Bee asks, approaching them from another room along the ward.

“Not really,” Quinn says, nodding at Constable Byers by the water fountain. “Erin says she doesn’t know who we are. And that her name is no longer ‘Erin.’ She wants to be called ‘Nick.’?”

“Nyx,” Clem corrects under her breath.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Bee says, her face falling. “I thought…I really thought she seemed okay.”

“Definitely not okay,” Quinn says.

“You know, disorientation after sedation is very common,” Bee says.

“Really?” Quinn asks. “You’ve had other patients wake up with new names?”

“I’ve had all sorts,” Bee says, which brings Clem a small amount of comfort.

“I suppose it is early days,” Quinn says, running a hand across his face. “I just had my hopes up. She seemed to remember about the fire, but then she got more and more…confused.”

His wording is careful, Clem can tell.

The reasons for her shock come clear now. She can handle Erin not recognizing her, though it’s a blunt kind of pain. It’s more than that: Erin’s wounds lie deep beneath the surface, and whatever she experienced on that island was so horrifying, so beyond language, that she has disconnected from it.

···

The next day, Stephanie and DC Sanger arrive just after nine in the morning. Stephanie’s wearing a gray COS trouser suit with black loafers, no makeup or jewelry, clean blonde hair streaked with gray and flat-ironed to her shoulders. DC Sanger is in a sharp navy suit. He looks friendly, but won’t take any shit.

They ask Bee for a different room in the hospital where they can talk, somewhere other than the family room.

“We heard you had some visitors,” DC Sanger tells Quinn and Clem.

“God, yes,” Quinn says, rubbing his face. “What a nightmare.”

“It’s understandable, of course,” Clem says. “I mean, they’re frantic. I can’t imagine what Jim and Tracy are going through. And Elizabeth.”

“We’ve gone through the WhatsApp messages on your mobile phone,” DC Sanger tells Clem. “And we’ve had a look at the messages sent from Arlo, Senna, and Erin. There seemed to be some friction in the group on the day that the fire happened.”

Clem and Quinn share a look.

“What do you mean by ‘friction’?” Quinn asks.

“Senna wasn’t happy about going to Fynhallow,” Stephanie says. “She messaged her mother and some other friends, claiming that Erin was forcing her.” She takes a breath, letting the words hang in the air. “Look, I know that trips like this can be fraught at the best of times, and I know that teenagers fall out left, right, and center. I want to reassure you that I’m not meaning to insinuate anything…”

“It sounds very much like insinuation,” Quinn says, and Clem finds she’s glad that he’s here. A strange turn of events, to say the very least.

Stephanie bites her lip, visibly contemplating her words. “I just want to know if you heard anything that might help us understand the dynamic between the group before the fire happened…”

“I didn’t hear at all from Erin on Tuesday or Wednesday,” Clem says, her throat tightening at the suspicion that Stephanie is pointing blame at Erin. “I had a message on Monday and it seemed things were going fine.”

“And we’re only getting one side of the story,” Quinn points out. “We need to see what Erin says about it before we start painting her as…”

He doesn’t finish his sentence. Clem lowers her eyes, her stomach turning as she thinks of what she found in Erin’s notebook.

“What about when Erin called you?” DC Sanger asks. “Was there anything in her voice that suggested that the group were at odds with each other?”

Clem thinks back, though her mind feels too clouded by grief and confusion to pull details to the surface. Erin messaged on Monday, but the last time she actually spoke to Erin was on Saturday. They were in Papa Westray, and they’d just spotted dolphins off the coast. “When she called me, she said they were hiking,” she explains. “It was sunny and she sent a few photographs.”

“What about Fynhallow? Did she mention why they were heading there?”

Clem shakes her head. “They were exploring. I imagine there was no reason to it at all. Just another island to visit.”

“One of Arlo’s friends said that he FaceTimed Arlo on Wednesday at four o’clock in the afternoon. Arlo told this boy that he couldn’t find something. He seemed quite upset about it. We think this is why they went to Fynhallow, to find whatever it was.”

“The kid didn’t say what Arlo couldn’t find?”

“Sadly not. Did Erin mention something like this to you?”

“Couldn’t find something?” Clem repeats, frowning. “No. Nothing like that.”

“Arlo’s friend said he made a big deal of it, particularly because the phone signal was bad and he was elated that he could make a call at all.”

“That makes sense,” Clem says. “Erin hadn’t been able to call or message for most of the trip.”

“Arlo’s friend is under the impression that this was the reason they went to Orkney in the first place. That there was something that he and Erin had to find. And they specifically had to go to Fynhallow to do so.”

Quinn looks to Clem for confirmation of this. “I think she would have told me if that was the case,” she says.

Stephanie looks skeptical. “You’re sure?”

“Am I sure of what?”

“Well, you indicated that it’s been a rough few years with Erin. That she’s been withdrawn, ditching school and university. Having a baby with someone who isn’t still in Freya’s life.”

The words land like a punch to Clem’s gut. They are true, but Clem had prided herself in getting Erin through her teenage years as a single mother. A single mother working two jobs and struggling with a heart condition and no family nearby. Her own parents are dead and, like Erin, she’s an only child. She thought she had done her best, given the circumstances.

But now she feels like an abject failure.

“Erin has been better this past year,” she says. “So this seems an odd time for her go off the rails.”

“I’m not saying she went off the rails,” Stephanie says gently. “I’m saying that, sometimes, people have secrets. Especially our children.”

Especially our children. Clem’s mind turns to the piece of paper she tore out of her notebook, to Stephanie’s words about his phone call just before he died.

Arlo’s hands need to be bound.

Arlo told this boy that he couldn’t find something.

What was it Arlo couldn’t find?