The Likeness

“And they kept trying to trap us,” Justin said. He reached for the bottle; his hand shook, just a little. “I’d give a perfectly simple answer-we started playing around quarter past eleven, that kind of thing-and Mackey or O’Neill or whoever it was that day would get this worried look and say, ‘Are you sure about that? Because I think one of your friends said it was at quarter past ten,’ and start rummaging through notes, and I would just freeze. I mean, I didn’t know whether one of the others had made a mistake-it would have been easy to do, we were all such a mess we could barely think straight-and whether I should back them up, say, ‘Oh, that’s right, I must have got mixed up,’ or something. In the end I always stuck to the story, which turned out to be the right thing to do-nobody had made any mistakes, the cops were just bluffing-but that was sheer luck: I was too paralyzed with terror to do anything else. If it had gone on any longer, I think we would all have lost our minds.”

“And all for what?” Rafe demanded. He sat up suddenly, almost spilling the cards off his lap, and plucked his cigarette out of the ashtray. “Here’s the part that still amazes me: we took Daniel’s word for it. He has all the medical knowledge of a cheese soufflé, but he told us Lexie was dead and we just assumed he was right. Why do we always believe him?”

“Habit,” said Abby. “He usually is right.”

“You think so?” Rafe asked. He was lounging back against the arm of the sofa again, but there was an edge to his voice, something dangerous and spiraling. “He certainly wasn’t right this time. We could have simply phoned for an ambulance like normal people and everything would have been fine. Lexie would never press charges or whatever they call it, and if any of us had thought about it for a single second, we’d have known that. But no, we let Daniel call all the shots; we had to sit here having the Mad Hatter’s tea party-”

“He didn’t know everything would be fine,” Abby said sharply. “What do you think he should have done? He thought Lexie was dead, Rafe.”

Rafe shrugged, one-shouldered. “So he says.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’m just saying. Remember when that wanker showed up to tell us she was out of the coma? The three of us,” he told me, “we were so relieved we almost collapsed; I thought Justin was actually going to faint.”

“Thank you for that, Rafe,” Justin said, reaching for the bottle.

“But did Daniel look relieved to you? Like hell he did. He looked like someone had hit him in the gut with a bat. Even the cop noticed, for God’s sake. Remember?” Abby shrugged coldly and bent her head over the doll, fumbled for her needle.

“Hey,” I said, kicking the sofa to get Rafe’s attention. “I don’t remember. What happened?”

“It was that prat Mackey,” Rafe said. He took the vodka bottle from Justin and topped up his glass, not bothering with tonic. “Bright and early on the Monday morning, he’s at the door, telling us he’s got news and asking if he can come in. Personally I would have told him to fuck himself, I’d seen enough cops that weekend to last me a lifetime, but Daniel answered the door and he had this crackpot theory that we shouldn’t do anything that might antagonize the police-I mean, Mackey was already antagonized, he hated us all on sight, what was the point of cozying up to him?-so he let him in. I came out of my room to see what the story was, and Justin and Abby were coming out of the kitchen, and Mackey stood there in the hall looking round at us all and said, ‘Your friend’s going to make it. She’s awake and asking for breakfast.’ ”

“And we were all overjoyed,” Abby said. She had found the needle and was stabbing at the doll’s dress with short, angry stitches.

“Well,” Rafe said. “Some of us were. Justin was clutching onto the door handle grinning like an idiot and sagging as if his knees had gone out from under him, and Abby started laughing and jumped on him and gave him this huge hug, and I think I made some kind of weird whooping noise. But Daniel… he just stood there. He looked-”

“He looked young,” Justin said suddenly. “He looked really young and really scared.”

“You,” Abby told him sharply, “were in no state to notice anything.”

“I was. I was looking at him specifically. He was so white he looked sick.”

“Then he turned round and walked in here,” Rafe said, “and leaned on the window frame, looking out at the garden. Not a word. Mackey gave the rest of us the eyebrow and asked, ‘What’s up with your mate? Isn’t he pleased?’ ”

Frank had never mentioned any of this. I should have been annoyed-he was one to talk about playing dirty-but he seemed like some half-forgotten person from another world, a million miles away.

“Abby disentangled herself from Justin and said something about Daniel being all emotional-”

“Which he was,” Abby said, and bit off a thread with a snap.