Chapter 85 Elin

85

Elin

Parque Nacional, Portugal, October 2021

It's Bridie.

Elin's breath catches in her throat as she examines the image again. The photo is a little blurry, and her hair is different in it – longer, slightly curly, concealing some of her face – but there's no mistaking her features and expression.

This … it's something solid linking Kier to the camp, surely?

Gives her a plausible reason for coming out here?

Her thoughts lurch to what Clio said about Kier's obsession with Romy.

Did she come out here to watch her? Confront her? Ask her if anything was still going on with Zeph?

Clicking out of the photos, Elin goes back to the main search, looking for more information.

A few results down, she finds a brief biography. It details Romy's backstory: she was a dancer. A childhood prodigy, Romy had briefly pursued a career in law before returning to her first love: ballet. She ended up going to ballet school but dropped out, her star only soaring after appearing in an advert that went viral, in which she played the role of a woman dancing off a building.

After that, it says she worked intensively. Dance, and philanthropic work.

Elin scans some of the charities she's involved with, but it's the advert that most intrigues her.

Opening another window, she searches for the video.

As it starts to play, Elin stares, mesmerised.

She can't pretend to be an expert on the technicalities of dance, but the performance is breathtaking. Not just Romy's sheer physical prowess, but the emotions the dance evoked.

Power , she thinks. That's what she feels from watching her. Someone totally in control. Owning the space.

She keeps watching, studying the shapes Romy's body is making.

Her thoughts start to cycle faster, others now entering her head: Bridie's elegant, loose-limbed walk. The patches on the clearing, worn away to soil. The flush that had crept onto her cheeks when she'd mentioned the clearing, a flush Elin had assumed was to do solely with the fire.

Her nerves tingle, a bolt of electrical charge.

It was Bridie who'd made the patterns on the grass at the clearing.

The marks are from her dancing.

Elin thinks about Kier's map, how she'd painted the clearing. The beautiful light, transcendence, joy.

It fits.

But as quickly as the idea takes hold, her thoughts flip-flop.

None of this works with the idea that Kier had some kind of obsession with Romy. How Kier painted it implied that she'd been there when Romy danced. Enjoyed it.

You wouldn't do that, surely, if you had some kind of malign obsession?

Still chewing it over, Elin realises she's missed something key in her thought process: Romy's journey to this point. How she went from a flourishing career in New York to being out here, with the camp.

Moving her finger over the touchpad, she starts scrolling again .

A few pages down, she finds an article about Romy going off-grid. Rumours that she's in a retreat, rehab.

Perhaps it's as simple as Romy wanting an escape. Burnout? That kind of sudden fame, it probably took it out of people.

But as she thinks it over, Elin's left with a lingering sense of unease at the idea of both Kier and Romy wanting to stick it out somewhere like this. Especially Romy, after that kind of success. She'd have left a whole career behind.

What are the chances of them both coming out here, taking themselves off-grid?

She walks through different scenarios – Kier arriving at the park, tracking Romy down. Perhaps somehow, they became friends, and then along the way, Zeph appeared found the camp too, possibly looking for Kier. It's plausible, from what Clio told her.

Elin's mind worries at it, a knot she can't loosen.

While the story makes sense on one level, on another, it seems a stretch – exes cosying up, then the partner they had in common coming out to join them?

Then what?

Pulling her notebook from her bag, she picks up her pen, ready to brainstorm, when Isaac walks towards her from the van. He looks flushed, breathless.

‘I've just found something.' Hand shaking, he passes her a piece of paper. ‘I took another look at Zeph's passport and this fell out.'