An Unwanted Guest(51)

‘It’s true,’ Ian says, nodding beside her.

Then, surprisingly, Riley turns to Gwen and says, ‘If it’s true confession time, why don’t you tell everyone your deep dark secret?’

Startled, Lauren watches Gwen give Riley a hard look. But Riley has drunk down her glass of wine very quickly and seems to be shedding her inhibitions and possibly her good sense. She’s a sloppy drunk, Lauren’s noticed. She’s suddenly very curious about what’s going to happen next. She wonders what Riley has on Gwen. She’d like to know.

‘Piss off, Riley,’ Gwen says.

Her heart is fluttering anxiously. She doesn’t want to be put on the spot. Gwen doesn’t want to share her past with anyone. She doesn’t want to spill it all in front of this group of strangers. Not in front of David. Definitely not like this.

But she wonders how it would feel to unburden herself, to confess to someone other than Riley. Perhaps it would be liberating, perhaps she would be able to forgive herself then. Riley would no longer have this hold over her. Maybe they would no longer be friends.

She looks across at David, his handsome face inscrutable. She wants to tell him; she wants to see how he’ll react. She looks at him and doesn’t even know what kind of man she’s looking at. He could be a man who killed his wife – with sufficient presence of mind to successfully cover his tracks. Henry suggested that he might have killed Candice. She doesn’t know. She wishes they had never come here to this horrible, godforsaken place, wishes she had never met David, who has her in turmoil, or any of these other people, either.

‘Are you okay?’ David asks her.

His concern is so tempting, but she must guard against it. She feels herself go suddenly cold, emotionless. ‘I’m fine.’

She knows her voice sounds harsh, as if she’s pushing him away. She wants to push all of these horrible people away – especially Matthew, playing incessantly with his gun. But, she tells herself, it must be very disorienting to suddenly, violently, lose someone who knows you better than anyone else, someone you’ve counted on to anchor your world.





Sunday, 1:10 AM


David slumps back against his seat, exhausted, stinging from Gwen’s rebuke. Matthew’s fidgeting is putting everyone on edge.

David says abruptly, ‘Matthew, put the gun down, it’s making everybody nervous.’

Matthew’s hands go still, but he doesn’t put the gun down. Instead he says, ‘You can all sit here and wait. I’m going to go after this sonofabitch.’ He gets up suddenly from his chair. ‘Where’s that torch?’

‘You can’t,’ David tells him sternly. ‘You can’t go anywhere on your own, even with the gun. It’s too dangerous.’

‘What do I care?’ Matthew looks with contempt at the rest of them. ‘Are you going to give me the torch or not?’

‘It’s almost dead,’ David reminds him, as Matthew snatches it up.

‘Don’t do this,’ David says. This is what he feared, the group splitting up. He thinks they should stick together. He doesn’t want Matthew going off on his own – nobody wants a jumpy, overwrought man running around with a gun in his hand. His little flock is coming apart. There might be someone out there, waiting for one of them to break ranks and run into the dark to be his next victim. Or the killer might be right here within arm’s reach.

Should he just let Matthew go?

Maybe he will be killed out there, and then they will know it isn’t one of them. He’s tempted to use Matthew as bait, David realizes with a sickening feeling.

‘Does anyone want to come with me?’ Matthew asks.

David wrestles with himself – should he go, too, leaving the rest? He glances at the others, watching Matthew nervously. No one else answers, either.

‘Fine, I’ll go myself.’

‘But,’ Gwen says, ‘how do you think you’ll find him? We’ve been all over this hotel. Stay here, with us. In the morning, we’ll all go together out to the road.’ She pauses and adds, ‘Please.’

He gives her a last, dismissive look, turns away towards the staircase, and is slowly swallowed up by the darkness.

Beverly watches anxiously as the group remaining falls into a fraught silence. There are nine of them left sitting around the fireplace: Gwen and David sitting across from one another; Lauren and Ian on one of the sofas; she and Henry sitting in armchairs across from each other; Riley, who has left the sofa where she’d been sitting with Gwen and moved to the hearth; and James and Bradley sitting together close by.

Beverly wonders if Matthew has just gone to his death.

Suddenly David gets up, mutters an expletive, and follows Matthew into the inky blackness.

Riley says, ‘What an idiot.’

Beverly wishes fervently that David would come back. She wants to get out of here alive. She wants to survive the night. She can’t bear that he has deserted them.

For Matthew, the loss of Dana has been completely destabilizing.

He walks quickly up the dark staircase and arrives on the second floor of the old hotel, holding the fading torch, which casts a faint light on the floral carpet.

He pauses in the corridor. How cold and dark it is up here, he thinks. It’s as cold as a morgue. He hears a sound below him. He looks back over his shoulder towards the staircase behind him, fading to black. He switches off the feeble torch and immediately can’t see a thing. He stands perfectly still and listens carefully, tilting his head. Then he hears David, calling his name. It sounds like he’s on the first floor, below him.