Nine Liars (Truly Devious, #5)(54)

“Sorry we’re late,” he said. “Terrible read-through for the show. We’re going to be absolutely bricking it by the time we film tomorrow unless we suddenly get much funnier.”

“I don’t hold out a lot of hope for that,” his companion said. Peter Elmore had a tousle of reddish-blond hair, which appeared even redder against the rust-colored pullover he wore. Everything about Peter had an air of intentional slouch, a comic casualness. Yash was the high energy, and Peter was the slower, lower note.

Izzy commenced with the introductions, explaining Stevie’s presence.

“We want to find out what she’s been doing recently,” Izzy said. “We’re just trying to get information in general.”

“Of course,” Sooz said. “Anything.”

“When did you last see my aunt?” Izzy asked.

“Last week,” Peter replied. “She was at a party I had at my house. We were all there.”

“Pete and I got an award for our show, so we were having a celebration,” Yash said.

“It wasn’t a tough competition,” Peter added. “We were only up against one other show, which wasn’t very good.”

“I wrote that other show,” Yash shot back. “That’s why he’s saying that. He’s been smug about it.”

“I gave you the idea for that show.”

“You wish.”

“You two,” Sooz said. “Shut it.”

“And how was she?” Izzy asked. “Did she do or say anything out of the ordinary?”

The three looked at each other.

“No,” Sooz said. “She was in good spirits. She’s working on that new program about Henry the Eighth. She was telling us about that. She’s always happiest when she’s working on a project. She was in a wonderful mood. We all had a bit to drink.”

“Maybe too much,” Yash said. “It was a proper, old-school party. I think she ended up sleeping on your sofa, didn’t she, Pete?”

“I gave her the bedroom,” Peter said. “I slept on the sofa.”

“She brought me a lip balm,” Sooz said. “I’d given her one a week or so before when we were out and her lips were chapped. It was a nice one—Penhaligon’s Orange Blossom. Nothing beyond the pale, but they cost maybe eleven quid. It’s my favorite. When she got to the party she had a replacement, the same exact one. That’s Ange. If she borrows something, she always replaces it. Always pays you back. She never wants anyone to worry or be put out. She wouldn’t go off and leave everyone worrying.”

“Would you mind talking a bit about what happened in 1995?” Izzy said. “Stevie really is an absolute genius. She has a way of working things out. I know it’s not an easy subject, but my aunt was talking about it with us that night, and maybe it was on her mind. Maybe if we knew more about it we could figure out if it played a role in where she went. . . .”

The soft wind of Izzy’s conversation blew across the room, lulling them into a state of compliance. The excessive praise and discussion of her methods made Stevie start to sweat under her vinyl coat. She stripped it off, revealing the hoodie underneath, the traces of salad dressing still down the front.

“All right,” Sooz said. “If you think it would help. We all met as freshers at Cambridge. We came from different colleges. We met at auditions, and drinks after auditions, things like that.”

The three of them engaged in a little back and forth for a moment about who met who at which pub or party or school event and who introduced who to whom and where, and then, sensing that they had strayed from the discussion at hand, Sooz waved her hand in a graceful gesture that suggested the words “or something like that, it doesn’t matter.”

“We sort of just—well, came together right away. We were best friends. And we decided to make our own theatrical group, write and perform our own comedy sketches. That’s a common thing students do.”

“We all did a bit of everything,” Peter went on, “but we had some loose roles within the group. Yash and I wrote together, like we do now. That’s where we started. We were the main writers.”

“Angela wrote a lot as well,” Yash said. “And Rosie did some writing.”

“Theo directed,” Sooz said, and the others nodded. “She also did a lot of producing—getting us spaces to perform.”

“Sooz, Julian, Sebastian, and Noel were our primary performers,” Peter went on.

“Noel was our special character,” Sooz said. “He was good at playing authority figures. He had a hilarious way of being onstage. He just made you laugh without doing much of anything at all.”

Peter and Yash nodded at this.

“We weren’t bad. And we lived together. It was the end of university. It was time to pack up our house. It was like the world was ending and starting again. That’s how it felt, before . . . we had no idea. None.”

Sooz rubbed her mouth with the back of her fist to prepare herself.

“We went to Merryweather,” she said. “That’s the name of the house . . . you’ve probably heard that. It belonged to Sebastian’s family. It’s his now, along with the title of viscount. We’d go there every once in a while, on breaks, when the family was away. Incredible place. I grew up in a little house outside of Southampton. I’d never seen anything like it. It was magical. We drove down in two cars. It was hot that day—there was a heat wave that summer. We were blasting Parklife the whole way—that’s an album by Blur. Blur is a band. You’ve probably never heard of them, but they were the biggest thing. Remember?”