The Girls Who Disappeared(8)

‘Fuck! We’re staying here!’ she exclaimed. She often spoke in exclamation marks. Even Stace, feeling hot and sick as she was, couldn’t help but be impressed with the sight that greeted them.

Before them stood three identical sparkling white villas, detached and evenly spaced, grand with their wedding-cake-esque pillars. Stace had never seen anywhere so beautiful and in that moment excitement flared in her belly. Maybe it wouldn’t be that bad after all. ‘Wow,’ said Martin again, his mouth hanging open. ‘I can’t believe we’re staying here.’

‘How can his friend afford a place like this?’ whispered Maggie, her dark hair piled on top of her head in a messy but stylish bun. Maggie had always been the glamorous one of the group. It had been a source of shock to all of them when she’d fallen for pale, lanky Martin.

‘I bet he’s a criminal,’ said Griff, under his breath. Always the joker but as he said it Stace experienced a flash of panic. They knew nothing about this Derreck. John-Paul had been vague, said he’d met him travelling and they’d kept in touch and that he was a bit of a ‘caballerete’, whatever that meant. But she’d hardly heard John-Paul mention his name until the invite.

The front door of the middle villa suddenly opened and they all stopped in their tracks, falling silent. A tall, lean guy with golden blond hair stood there, a cream fedora perched on his head, like he thought he was Robert Redford in The Great Gatsby. Behind him was a vast hallway of polished wood. He was wearing an open-necked shirt with the sleeves pushed up to the elbow, revealing tanned and muscular arms. There was a collective hush as they took in this Adonis figure and Stace noticed how Martin grabbed Maggie’s hand firmly in his own freckled one.

‘Welcome to Chao Phraya Riverside Villas,’ he said, with a sweep of his arm, like he was a Shakespearean actor in a play. And framed as he was between the white Roman-style pillars in front of the wedding-cake villa he could have been. ‘I’m Derreck.’





Day Two





6



Jenna


Voice Memo: Tuesday, 27 November 2018


I hardly slept last night after seeing someone lurking around outside. Maybe I’ve spent too long reading about all the weird things that have happened here and imagined the whole thing. This place is definitely eerie: the way the light falls between the trees, the remoteness of the cabins, the unnerving night-time silence only punctuated last night by some screaming, which I think must have been foxes. My rational mind says it’s all down to nature, but another part is wondering if there might be some truth to these legends after all. I read that in 2012 two men spent all day searching for a baby they heard crying in the field of standing stones, but despite looking everywhere for it they never found the source, and there have been numerous reports of sightings of a hooded figure along the Devil’s Corridor. It’s hard to know what has become folklore and what is reality. But don’t all myths stem from some semblance of fact?

I’m awake at 6 a.m. but my relief at making it through the night with no more interruptions is short-lived when I realize it’s still dark. I get up anyway and sit at the kitchen table with a brew. I’ve got a few hours before I’m due at Brenda’s. My eyes were so tired last night that I could barely focus on the information I gathered before arriving here. I pick up an old press cutting with a photo of the four girls: Katie, Olivia, Sally and Tamzin are sitting around a table in a pub garden on what looks like a summer evening at dusk, young in their 1990s fashion.

Olivia is pretty with a streaky blonde Rachel haircut and Sally is wearing a velvet choker and a crop top. Sally is a beauty, there’s no getting away from it, hair so dark and sleek as to be almost black, with huge almond eyes and poreless skin. Tamzin is pretty in that bleached-blonde way, and Katie cute with a light brown bob and freckles. I put the photo down, then pick up another with the headline ‘LOCAL ODDBALL ARRESTED’. I blanch at its insensitivity, pleased that at least some things have changed. There is a grainy photo of a dishevelled, bearded man on the front with his head down. The name Ralph Middleton pops out at me. There’s something familiar about him and then I realize with a jolt he looks very much like the guy who spoke to me on the Devil’s Corridor yesterday. According to the article, he was the one who found Olivia trapped in her car on the night of the accident and called the police. The piece doesn’t really say much more than that he lived alone with a menagerie of animals and was considered ‘odd’ by the locals. I’ll need to interview him for the podcast but I can’t help feeling a rising anxiety at the thought of being alone with him.

At 7.30 a.m. I FaceTime Finn. I know Gavin probably thinks I’m being a control freak and has told me on more than one occasion that he can cope with Finn by himself, thank you very much. The ‘I am more than capable: after all I do run a multi-national finance company’ lecture I often get. But it’s not just so I can make sure Finn remembers to take his packed lunch and brush his teeth: I miss him and want him to go to school knowing I’m thinking of him.

Finn answers with a yawn. His lovely sandy brown hair is tousled, the cowlick (so like Gavin’s) is sticking up and he’s still in his favourite Minecraft pyjamas. I ache to wrap my arms around him and bury my nose in his familiar biscuity smell.

‘Good morning, handsome,’ I say, while he groans and pulls a face at me, even though his green eyes twinkle. ‘Did you sleep well?’