They Did Bad Things Read online

  “No, you’re fine.”

  “Sorry? Were you headed to the bathroom? You can go first.” He cradled the camera as if protecting an injured bird and waited for her to pass.

  “It’s fine. I was headed down for breakfast. Actually, I’m glad I caught you. You know that paintball thing you were telling me about? Friday, right?”

  “Yeah, but I’m not sure I’ll go. I asked Maeve and she didn’t seem keen, so . . .” He fiddled with a button on the camera.

  “Well, I was going to say, if you wanted, I’ll do it with you.”

  “But you said you had no interest in getting shot at by total strangers who only wanted to see women humiliated in the field of sport.”

  “I was having a bad day.”

  Callum raised his eyebrows.

  “Or month. But it would be fun to get out some aggression.”

  “Really? Okay! Sign-ups are in the student union. I was going by there today. I could put us down as a team or—”

  “Yeah. That’d be great.” Lorna winced at her own cheerfulness, but Callum’s face brightened.

  “Brilliant! I’ll see you downstairs. I’ve got to, uhm . . .” He pointed at the bathroom.

  “Right. Have at it.”

  I did that, she thought, making her way downstairs. I did something that made someone happy.

  When she reached the kitchen, her pride at her newly discovered propensity for cheer caused her to call out Maeve’s name so loudly, it struck the girl like a bullet. Maeve’s head snapped around in a panic.

  “Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you. Breakfast?”

  “If someone didn’t eat my Frosties again.” Maeve kept her distance, like a skittish child afraid of the dog that once bit her.

  Lorna’s chipper mood withered, but she pressed on, determined to coax it back to life. “Did you hear about the paintball? Callum and I are signing up.”

  “Yeah, he asked. Paintball’s stupid, though. I don’t want to go. And I have to study anyway. This maths course is killing me.” Maeve chewed on the cuff of her jumper and resumed looking out the window.

  “It would be good exercise.”

  Maeve winced, and Lorna realized she’d screwed up once again. She’d meant exercise for herself. She used to take Alfie on walks every day but now barely left her room. If she could explain that to Maeve, she could smooth things over, but the words jammed in her throat along-side all the other apologies she felt she needed to make today. She really tried to make those apologies that week, she said, but she could never seem to find the right time.

  That particular morning, it was Callum who interrupted.

  “Did someone eat your Frosties again?”

  Callum sounded genuinely concerned, but his voice reached Maeve as if through a filter. She couldn’t feel the impact of his words as all her attention was fixed outside where she watched Oliver and Ellie play-fighting in the back garden. Oliver held something in his hands that he hugged to keep from Ellie, who kept tugging at his arms and leaping on his back.

  “There’s a surprise.” Lorna rolled her eyes, but Maeve coughed and belatedly answered Callum’s question.

  “Nope. There they are.”

  Callum leaned against the counter and continued trying to talk to her as she got her breakfast, but whatever he said, she was oblivious to it. All she could hear were Ellie’s giggles and Oliver’s laugh.

  Maeve knew her schoolgirl crush was stupid. That didn’t stop the fantasies that helped her sleep at night, the dreams of Oliver sneaking up to her bedroom when everyone else was asleep and knocking on her door. They didn’t even do anything but snuggle and talk through the night. She imagined Oliver telling her his opinions on which of the Brontë sisters was the best writer and her contradicting him and him saying, “That’s a good point, actually,” even though she had no idea if he’d ever read anything by the Brontës and this part of the fantasy was a carryover of the nightmares she used to have about her English A-levels.

  “Maeve?”

  This time she heard Callum.

  She had dumped cereal all over the counter. As she brushed the extra flakes into her hand, Oliver and Ellie stumbled through the door. Ellie laughed and poked Oliver in the shoulder with a cassette tape.

  “And don’t make fun of my music again!”

  “I wasn’t making fun. I swear. Morning, ladies. Gent.”

  Lorna grunted. Callum waved a cheerful hello. Maeve’s reply caught in her throat and came out as a cough.

  “All right there, love?” Oliver asked.

  “Yep,” she managed. “Fine. Morning.”

  She avoided eye contact, which prevented her from seeing what he was doing. As she reached into the fridge for the milk, he reached for the juice. Their arms touched.

  “Sorry.” She pulled back. “You go ahead.”

  He took his orange juice first, then pressed the carton of milk into her hand with a wink. The warmth of his arm on hers lingered long after he’d pulled away. She ran her fingers over the spot, hidden by her sleeve, pretending his hand was still there. Callum handed her a spoon and she took it with two pinched fingers, not wanting to make contact.

  Oliver never recalled bumping Maeve at all, and he wouldn’t have cared either way if he did. That morning, he bounced from foot to foot as he unscrewed the cap on the juice carton, waiting to share his news. “I’m glad you’re all here. You’ll never guess what I found out.”

  Lorna peeled an orange with the same disregard with which she spoke. “You found out why Hollis was expelled from his last uni.”

  Oliver choked on his juice.

  “So I was right, then?” She flicked a piece of orange peel out from under her fingernail.

  “What do you do all day in your room, lesbo? Spy on us?”

  “Hey,” Callum jumped in. “There’s no need for that. Someone’s sexuality is none of your business, and it should never be used as an insult.”

  Oliver saw Lorna blushing and wanted to dig the knife in further, but Callum remained firm, and no one else was contradicting his defense. Oliver held up his hands.

  “Sorry, Lorna. I apologize.” He overemphasized each word, then plopped himself down in the seat next to Ellie.

  “Go on, then,” Ellie said. “Tell us what you found.”

  “One of my mates from back home has a mate who has a brother who goes to Exeter.”

  “Wow, a reliable source, then,” Lorna said. This time he ignored her.

  “He did some asking around and you know what he found out?”

  “We would if you’d just tell us.”

  “Jesus, Lorna! Fucking eat your bloody orange somewhere else if you don’t care.”

  “Language, please,” Ellie whispered.

  “Sorry, princess. Anyway, turns out Hollis is a total nutter. A bona fide psychopath!”

  “He sleeps in the room next to me,” Ellie gasped.

  Callum laughed. “Hollis? Our Hollis? The Hollis that helps every little old lady cross the street?”

  “It was one lady, and she wasn’t even that old! Look, Charlie says this comes from multiple sources.” He stared at Lorna. If he could convince her, he could convince them all. “Story goes Hollis took this tame fox one of the biology lecturers kept as a pet, right? And he tortured it. Then when he was done having his fun, he strung it up from a tree by its neck and let it hang there till it died. Rumor is he got off on it, but I’ll admit no one knows for sure what his motive was. The facts, though, were printed in the school paper.”

  “Where’s this paper?” Callum asked, not as sure as before.

  “Charlie’s getting me a copy. But it makes sense, doesn’t it? Why he kept holding his hand over the candle flame at the last party . . .”

  “You were all doing it,” Callum said. “You were off your heads.”

  “That time we were leaving the Byeways and he threw a rock at the fox rummaging through the bins.”

  “It was the paper from his kebab,” Lorna said.

  “Whate
ver. Come to your own conclusions. But word is you go to Exeter University and say ‘Hollis Drummond,’ the first thing they’ll say is ‘the fox fucker.’ I’m telling you, the bloke is mental.”

  “Mental, eh?”

  Despite the sun streaming through the windows, Hollis cast a shadow over them as he leaned in the kitchen doorway. Lorna stopped fiddling with her orange. Maeve shoved a spoonful of cereal into her mouth. Callum stared at his feet. But Oliver looked at him dead on. Hollis only ever pretended to be intimidating. He was no more than a custard cream donut. A softy. No spine in the middle. All it took was for one person to stand up to him, and Hollis would give in. Crumble.

  Gossip generally turned Ellie’s stomach. Over the years, she would become more impervious to it, but that morning, still so young, she felt absolutely awful getting caught out like that. However, if Hollis had done something terrible, didn’t they have a right to know? As an adult, she could’ve posed the question, but back then she didn’t want to get involved, and the long silence stretched between them all. She knew Hollis wanted them to say something, but she had no idea what would remedy this and so waited for someone else to fix it.

  “Hollis, mate—” said Oliver.

  “I’m your mate now, am I? Thought I was mental.”

  Oliver laughed like he’d been caught cheating on an exam. Hollis waited.

  “If you didn’t want us to be so curious, maybe you should’ve just told us.”

  “Maybe I didn’t tell you because it’s none of your fucking business. Ever consider that?”

  Oliver stood, the legs of his chair scraping against the linoleum floor.

  “I think we all have a right to know if we’re living with a fucking psycho, yeah.”

  Ellie whimpered but no one held any concern for her feelings when a match hovered this close to a fuse.

  In their minds, they took bets on who would do more damage. Oliver because he was taller or Hollis who had more muscle? Hidden deeper was their desire to watch the violence happen without a care for why or who would get hurt.

  “Hey guys? How about that photo?”

  And so Callum reentered the conversation, deescalating the tension.

  “Remember? We agreed last night? The group shot. You said this morning would be a great time to take it since we’d all be here . . .” He left the sentence trailing, hoping someone would pick up the thread, but the tension that had inched them toward violence receded into an embarrassment that crippled them. “I guess if it’s not a good time, we could scrap it? I have to go see Yanni anyway about sending someone to fix my door before new job orientation at the uni admin office, so . . .”

  Oliver held his hands up. “Sorry, Tripod. We did agree. And if that’s important to you, we’ll do it right now.”

  “I mean, it’s not like it’s that important.” Callum shrugged.

  “No,” said Lorna. “It is. You’ve been talking about it for ages. And isn’t the light perfect right now?”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “I should go study,” Maeve said. “But a picture would be fun.”

  Ellie hopped up from the table. “Tell me where to pose! I love taking pictures. Daddy always says how photogenic I am.”

  “Come on,” Oliver said. “Out in the front room. That’ll make for a nice shot.”

  Once the shutter clicked, their smiles faded along with the glare of the flash. Crammed into the confines of the dirty pink sofa, sharp elbows and knees jabbing soft stomachs and thighs, they couldn’t wait for this ordeal to be over only to hear . . .

  “Wait. If I could just get one more.”

  This was what they would remember of Callum all those years later. They couldn’t recall his surname, but the nickname, Tripod, was ingrained in their memory. Along with how he could turn their eye-rolling and exasperation into laughs and friendly ribbing. They posed for shot after shot, making up stories about what had happened on this sofa prior to their moving in, having no idea what they would do to Callum in six months’ time.

  Because in six months, in that very room, the phone would be knocked from Callum’s hand, and he would be held down on that same sofa while a hand was pressed over his nose and mouth. He was tall, yes, but so skinny. No muscle on him at all. And he was very, very drunk. Too drunk to put up much of a fight.

  If you could travel back in time and warn them about what they would do, about how they would lie about what they had seen, they wouldn’t believe you because it would mean acknowledging a part of themselves that they could not accept existed. The part that emerged when Hollis and Callum almost came to blows. They would never believe you because they thought themselves good people, more or less.

  And, more or less, they were.

  Once.

  Good, decent people who thought they remembered everything about Caldwell Street but never remembered the front door opening as they sat on the couch, waiting for the final click of the shutter, never remembering the person who entered as the timer went . . .

  SATURDAY

  4

  Lorna

  Cocooned in an old knit jumper, Lorna stopped halfway down the main staircase to double-check her watch. Half past nine, but the house looked as dark as it had when she went to bed. She listened to the rain all around her, watched it through the large windows above the front door. She hugged the jumper tighter and continued down. Though she couldn’t say she had slept well, surviving the night had given her a fresh perspective on the morning. Callum’s memory remained but had retreated to the darker corners of her mind, no longer suffocating her with its presence. The calm silence of the morning made her believe she could be the cool, measured Lorna Torrington they remembered.

  Down in the foyer, fresh blocks of peat burned in the fireplace, but all she could feel was the draft.

  “Hello? Good morning?”

  She checked the study—empty—then the conservatory where rain sounded like gunshots against the tall glass walls.

  Clouds obscured most of the mountains and fog further limited visibility, making Wolfheather House feel even more isolated from the rest of the world. Lorna thought of a snow globe her grandparents used to have, thick with glass that protected a wintry scene. She used to imagine a family lived in the house inside. Had even given them names. When she shook the snow globe, she pictured furniture flying, their bodies toppling over one another. She imagined, once she stopped, how they worked together to rebuild their rooms. And then she would shake it again.

  A door slammed.

  “Hello?” she called.

  Back in the foyer, Lorna saw nothing. No sign of who had come or gone. The dining room door remained open, as it had been last night. A little farther down the same wall was another half-open door, revealing a junk room. Across from it a closet built beneath the main staircase. She made her way through the narrow hallway that ran between these walls to the very back of the house, where large sash windows gave her the same foggy glimpses of the Highlands as the conservatory. Cans of paint flecked red and white were stacked beneath the windows, along with a plastic drop sheet, rollers, and stirrers, all caked with paint. A spider had woven a web from the handle of the paint roller to the windowsill and now dangled in the corner, waiting for a meal.

  All was silent.

  She closed the junk room door as she returned to the dining room, checking over her shoulder, just in case.

  In the kitchen, there was no food or drink to be found. No sound of anyone.

  “All by yourself now, aren’t you?” she whispered to herself.

  Then she turned. And screamed.

  Ellie had appeared like a phantom. Face pale. Hair and clothes soaked in rain. Mud up to her ankles.

  “Jesus! Why are you sneaking up on people like that?” Lorna asked.

  Ellie said nothing.

  “Are you all right? Ellie?”

  Ellie looked down at her clothes as if having forgotten she was wearing any. Then words poured out of her mouth like a running tap. “I went for a walk
. There’s no gym. I needed some exercise. Is there tea? I hope there’s tea. I really need tea. A great deal of tea because we can’t go to the shop because there is no shop and there’s no way to get to a shop, even if there was a shop, or even a neighbor, because all of our cars have been vandalized and if I don’t get some tea and I’m going to lose my mind!”

  Ellie

  The suitcase spilled open as she closed the bedroom door. Ellie fell to her hands and knees, scrambling to collect her fallen bras, socks, shirts, toiletries. She couldn’t leave any sign she had been here. Not a trace. Her suitcase left tracks in the carpet as she wheeled it down the hall. She was tempted to go back and rub out those marks, but there wasn’t time. If she wanted to leave, she had to go now. Before the others woke. She cupped her keys in her hand to prevent them from clinking and descended the stairs to the second floor. No sight or sound of Oliver, or anyone else. Just the cracklings of the warm fire. She adjusted her grip on the suitcase and continued down the main stairs. Like crossing a swimming pool in a single breath, Ellie rushed through the foyer and out into the rainy morning.

  Keeping her head down, she pressed the buttons on the key fob with every step, causing the Land Rover’s lights to flash. She climbed into the driver’s seat, tossing the suitcase beside her. Only once the door closed did she let out a breath.

  Once on Skye, she would ring David. No. Text. She’d text him, say she wasn’t feeling well, say she missed the children, say the guesthouse wasn’t up to her standards. She’d say something. Or maybe she’d call Gordon. Gordon always did as she asked. Although wasn’t Gordon partially responsible for this mess to begin with?

  Through the rearview mirror, she watched the house watching her with its long, dark windows. This would be another day Callum’s favors went unpaid. She turned the key in the ignition.

  A wheezing sounded from underneath the bonnet. She tried again, pressing the pedals, but the engine sputtered. Ellie knew nothing about cars, but she did know a two-year-old Land Rover shouldn’t break down like this. She looked out at the loch then, in the mirrors, at the house. No one had come rushing out. Maybe no one had heard. They could all be asleep yet. They were always fond of a lie-in, except Lorna. And if Ellie could find where they’d left their keys . . .