The Woman in Cabin 10(74)

No. My best chance was simple—I had to get Anne on my side.

But how? What did I actually know about her?

I tried to think about what I knew about Anne Bullmer—her fantastic wealth, her lonely upbringing, trailing around the boarding schools of Europe. It was no wonder it had taken me so long to make the connection. The rake-thin, sad-eyed woman in her gray silk wraps and designer headscarves—yes, somehow that fit with what I’d been told. But I could not make one word of what Ben had said connect with the girl in the Pink Floyd T-shirt, with her mocking dark eyes and cheap mascara. It was like there were two Annes. Same height, same weight, but that was where the similarity ended.

And then . . . something clicked.

Two Annes.

Two women.

The gray silk robe that matched her eyes . . .

I opened my eyes and swung my legs over the side of the bunk, groaning with my own stupidity. Of course—of course. If I hadn’t been half-dead with fear and panic and the pain in my head, I would have seen it. How could I not have thought of it?

Of course there were two Annes.

Anne Bullmer was dead—had been since the night we left England.

The girl in the Pink Floyd T-shirt was very much alive, and had been impersonating her ever since.

Same height, same weight, same broad cheekbones—it was only the eyes that didn’t match, and they had taken a calculated risk that no one would remember the features of a woman they’d barely met. No one on board knew Anne before the trip. Richard had even told Cole not to take any photographs of her, for Christ’s sake! Now I understood why. It wasn’t to protect a woman self-conscious about her appearance. It was so there would be no compromising photographs for his wife’s friends and family to puzzle over afterwards.

I shut my eyes, my fingers gripping my hair so hard that it hurt, tugging painfully on my scalp, trying to work out what must have happened.

Richard Bullmer—it must have been him—had smuggled the woman in cabin 10 on board somehow. She was in that cabin before the rest of us ever came on the ship.

The day we set sail she had been waiting for the word, for instruction from Richard, to clear her cabin and get ready. I thought back to what I’d seen over her shoulder—a silk robe strewn across the bed, makeup, Veet in the bathroom—waxing strips. Christ—how could I have been so stupid? She had been shaving and ripping off her body hair, ready to impersonate a woman with cancer. But instead of Richard with his prearranged knock, I had come along, inadvertently given the signal, and she’d seen me instead.

What the hell must she have thought? I replayed again the fright and irritation in her face as she’d tried to shut the door and I’d stopped her. She’d been desperate to get rid of me but trying to act as unsuspiciously as possible. Far better that I just remembered a strange woman lending a mascara than started telling tales of a fellow guest slamming the door in my face.

And it had nearly worked. It had so nearly worked.

Did she tell Richard when he came? I couldn’t be sure, but I thought not. He had seemed so normal at that first night’s dinner—the perfect host. And besides, it was her blunder, and he didn’t look like the kind of man you’d want to confess a mistake to. More likely she just crossed her fingers and hoped to get away with it.

Then she had packed her things, cleared the room, and waited.

After drinks that first night, Anne, somehow, had been taken to cabin 10. Was she alive, lured there by some cock-and-bull story? Or was she already dead?

Either way, it didn’t really matter, because the end result was the same. While Richard was back in Lars’s cabin, establishing his alibi with an uninterrupted poker game, the woman in cabin 10 had bundled the real Anne overboard and hoped that the body would never be found.

And they would have got away with it, if I—frightened and traumatized from the burglary—hadn’t heard the splash and jumped to a conclusion that was so wrong, it was almost completely right.

So who was she? Who was this girl who had hit me, and fed me, and locked me up here like an animal?

I had no idea. But I knew one thing—she was my best hope of getting out of here alive.





- CHAPTER 27 -

All that night I lay awake, trying to work out what I should do. Judah and my parents would not be expecting me home until Friday and would have no reason to suspect anything was wrong until then. But the other passengers must know that I hadn’t returned to the ship. Would they have raised the alarm? Or had Bullmer given them some story to explain my disappearance—unavoidably detained in Trondheim, perhaps? Decided to return home unexpectedly?

I wasn’t sure. I tried to think who might be concerned enough to ask questions. I had little hope of Cole, Chloe, or most of the others making a fuss. They didn’t know me. They had no contact details for any of my family. They would very likely accept whatever Bullmer told them.

Ben, then? He knew me well, enough to know that an early-morning flit to Trondheim without a word wasn’t in character. But I wasn’t sure. Under normal circumstances I was fairly certain he’d have contacted Judah or my parents with his concerns, but the way I had left things with him wasn’t exactly normal circumstances. I had all but accused him of being complicit in a murder, and aside from his justifiable anger, he probably wouldn’t be surprised at my disappearing off the ship without a word of good-bye.