Bring Me Back (B.A. Paris)(63)

I continue rifling through my mind. What about the Russian doll I’d found on Pharos Hill, how had that one got there? Ellen had been at home when I’d left that morning. But I’d gone to the cottage in St Mary’s first, so she would have had time to get to Pharos Hill before I finally worked out that that was where I was meant to be. Had she been laughing when I’d hurried off for my secret meeting with Layla, knowing that I’d automatically assume she was referring to St Mary’s when she said that I had the address?

The odds that Ellen could be behind these nightmarish few weeks are stacking up against her. A wave of fury hits.

‘I’m going to check her computer,’ I say roughly. ‘See if the emails came from her.’

‘Do you know her email password?’ Ruby asks.

‘No, but I’m going to have a damn good try working it out.’ I get to my feet. ‘But if she’s as devious as she appears to have been, I doubt we’ll find anything.’

They follow me into Ellen’s study. I plug in her computer, sit down at her desk, start it up and log on using the Rudolph Hill address.

‘I can’t mess up the password or I’ll be locked out,’ I say, realising. ‘Any ideas?’

‘I don’t think she’d choose something abstract, I think it’s more likely to be something connected with everything,’ Ruby says.

‘Pharos Hill, maybe?’ Harry suggests. ‘Where you had the ceremony?’

‘Yes, but Pharos Hill what? A date?’

‘Try Pharos Hill and the date of the ceremony.’

‘OK.’ I type in PharosHill140413. It doesn’t work.

‘How about Pharos Hill and Ellen’s date of birth? Or Layla’s?’

‘We’re sticking with Pharos Hill, then.’

‘It’s probably our best bet,’ Harry says.

I type PharosHill in again. ‘Which date of birth?’

‘Layla’s,’ Ruby says. ‘It was her memorial.’

I add 260486. It doesn’t work.

I try to get myself into Ellen’s mindset. What other date could be linked to Pharos Hill? Other than the date of the ceremony, I can’t think of a single one.

‘Last go,’ I say. I type PharosHill. ‘Any suggestions for what comes next?’

‘Try the year of the ceremony, just the year,’ Tony suggests. ‘2013. People tend to use years, not actual dates.’

I tag 2013 onto PharosHill.

‘Oh my God,’ breathes Ruby. ‘It’s worked!’

‘It’s almost as if she wanted you to be able to access her emails,’ Harry remarks. He lapses into silence and stares at the screen. Because the inbox contains only messages from me.

My heart thumps dully in my chest. I don’t want to open the sent messages but I know that I have to. I click on the box, praying it will be empty. But there they are, in all their glory, each and every one of Layla’s messages to me.

The silence in the room is absolute.

I run a hand through my hair. ‘Fuck.’

‘I’m sorry, Finn,’ Ruby says quietly.

I look at the screen again. ‘No. This isn’t the Ellen I know. She’s one of the sanest people I’ve ever come across.’ I twist in the chair, search out Harry. ‘You know her, Harry. Do you think she could do something like this?’

‘Not really, no,’ he admits. ‘But how well did we actually know her? She had a troubled past, losing her mother, then Layla, then her father. Who knows how that affected her?’

‘We already worked out that whoever was behind the dolls and the emails was unbalanced,’ Ruby reminds me.

‘Yes, but to do something like this? I mean, why?’

‘I don’t know – revenge for Layla’s disappearance?’

‘Could be,’ Tony says. ‘In a warped kind of way. As in – you were responsible for her losing her sister.’

‘But I paid the price!’ I say, furious. ‘I already paid the price! Why make me go through it all again?’

‘To test you?’ Ruby says.

‘We’ll be in the kitchen.’ Harry puts a hand on my shoulder. They leave and I sit there in the office of a woman who in the space of a few minutes has become a complete stranger.

It’s a struggle to put aside my emotions but I don’t want them to cloud my judgement. I look at the emails again, thinking about what Harry said, about Ellen choosing a password that was easy to crack, as if she wanted me to find them. Because otherwise, she would have deleted them before she left. It’s why she unplugged her computer, to get me to look. So if she wanted me to find them, why? Because she was proud of what she’d done and wanted me to know how clever she’d been? Or out of kindness, so that I wouldn’t be left hanging? Was that why she left the doll on the landing upstairs, which led to me discovering the dolls in the chest? It seems she wanted me to know it was her all along.

Hopelessness hits me in the gut like a physical force. It’s hard enough to accept not only that the relative happiness I’d found with Ellen has gone, but that it was based on a lie. If Ellen had wanted to hurt me, there’s no better way she could have chosen. And that’s hard too, because it doesn’t equate with the Ellen I knew. We had lived and loved together for a little over a year, just as I had lived with and loved Layla for a little over a year. Is it significant that I was with each sister for approximately the same amount of time? Was that the real timing issue? We – Tony, Harry, Ruby and I – presumed that it was the wedding announcement that had triggered the beginning of the ‘Layla is alive’ campaign. Maybe the two were linked – once Ellen had got me to propose to her, it was time to wind up our relationship. Even though she had in a way manipulated it, had she seen my marriage proposal as a betrayal of her sister? It would mean that our whole relationship had been some kind of test, and one I’d failed miserably. But to be that loyal to a sister, to go to such lengths, seems extraordinary.