Back in her room, Roxanne flopped onto her bed, folded the pillow and shoved it under her head, her mind spinning. Where the hell was she supposed to begin?
Why hadn’t Isla turned to someone? Surely after all their years of friendship, she should have known Roxanne would have been there for her. Why hadn’t Isla said something? Given someone a clue to her state of mind. Or had she, and Roxanne had missed it?
There were ways back from the edge. Choices. Someone would have helped her – listened. Even if Isla didn’t want to mention Andy to Roxanne or Jack, there were suicide helplines – The Samaritans – a doctor. Why hadn’t she cried for help? Why, Isla?
Edgy, Roxanne pulled herself to a sitting position and leant against the wall. Twirling a curl of her hair around her finger, she bit down on her sadness, refusing to let it drop deeper, determined not to let her friend down. She had to do something – anything. Surely the fact there had been no news was hope enough that Isla could still be alive.
Propelled by that hope, she leapt from the bed and headed to reception. She would question the guests. Ask if anyone had seen Isla.
The dogs were sprawled on the floor in reception, and a blond lad of about fourteen, wearing a thick-knit sweater and a woolly hat, was tapping away at the computer.
A young couple had followed Roxanne through the side door, and the woman smiled. ‘Beautiful here, isn’t it?’ she said, with an American accent.
‘Yes, yes it is,’ Roxanne said. And keen to begin her questioning, she pulled out her phone and found a picture of her and Isla – a photo of them attempting to ice-skate last Christmas, holding each other up, cheeks pink with the cold. They’d been useless on the ice, but the day had been fun. They’d had doughnuts and Prosecco for lunch, pizza and Prosecco for dinner, and they’d laughed until they hurt.
She showed the couple the picture. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve seen my friend.’
They leant in as one, to glance at the photo. ‘Yes, I saw her a couple of times,’ the woman said. ‘Once on the minibus after we’d been on a husky ride, and another time here in reception.’
Roxanne pulled the photograph of Isla with Andy from her pocket. ‘Did you see her with this man?’
They shook their heads, glancing at each other. ‘Sorry,’ the woman said.
‘Well thanks anyway,’ Roxanne said, doubting how useful she was being.
As the couple walked away, she dropped down on the sofa next a man in his sixties reading a newspaper. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve seen this woman?’ she began again, as someone wearing a bright blue snow jacket with a mountain scene on the back, got up and disappeared into the night.
‘I think I may have seen her in the restaurant,’ the man said, studying the picture. ‘But young blonde women all look the same, don’t they?’ He paused. ‘Are you a policewoman? Has she been murdered?’
Roxanne shifted away from him, the thought turning her stomach. ‘No, no, of course not.’
‘Well, who is she then?’
Roxanne rose without responding, noticing the teenage boy was no longer at the computer. She turned, spotting him through the window, where he scooped up a handful of snow and lobbed it at the glass, before racing away, and disappearing into the darkness.
Roxanne headed for the screen, and rested her fingers on the keyboard. After a few moments’ thought, she signed into Facebook, and got up Isla’s profile. Her last update was the one she’d put on just before leaving England.
At Stansted Airport waiting for my flight. Camp Arctic, Abisko, here I come – WHOOP!
Roxanne had commented, telling her to have a great time, but she hadn’t replied, or even liked her words. She’d had several likes, but she couldn’t see any comments from anyone called Andy.
She clicked on Isla’s friend list. There was only one Andy. Andy Fisher. His profile picture was a maple leaf, and his cover photo a picture of Niagara Falls. Could this be him? The man who Isla fell in love with? There was nothing else to see. No updates to view. And although he’d changed his profile picture a few times over the last couple of years, they were all generic photos of places and animals. His friends list wasn’t visible either. And there was no way of sending him a private message. She couldn’t contact him. The most she could do was attempt to add him as a friend. Although she didn’t hold out much hope that he would accept. He wouldn’t know who she was, so why would he?
She would tell Sally about him, and hope the police could get hold of him.
She sat for some moments, struggling to believe Isla would lose her sanity so quickly over a broken relationship. But maybe it was possible. After all, Andy had seemed to be the only person who could stop Isla’s fear of Carl Jeffery. Roxanne dragged her fingers through her hair. Or had something snapped in Isla’s mind? If she could find out what, maybe it would help her find her.
A memory drifted in of a schizophrenic man she’d once worked with, who tragically threw himself under a train. She keyed in ‘schizophrenia’ and ‘symptoms’ and millions of websites flashed up. She clicked on a few. It usually begins in early adulthood. Hallucinations. Schizophrenics have a higher than normal chance of committing suicide. Roxanne pushed her hair flat with the palms of her hands, as she stared at the screen. Was Isla suffering with schizophrenia?
She was about to key in Dissociative Identity Disorder, but her fingers froze on the keyboard. What the hell was she doing? How was this helping? She wasn’t a psychologist, and even if she was, how would any of this find Isla? She stifled a desperate cry, tears blurring her vision.
Her pulse throbbed in her temples, as she closed down the row of website tabs she’d opened, at speed – ashamed she’d even gone there. A pain settled deep in her chest. Be alive, Isla. I’ll be there for you, always. Just be alive. She rubbed her eyes, her head solid – heavy with confusion. She’d been so close with Isla over the years, but now she wondered if she’d known her friend at all. She clenched her fist against her forehead, her mind flashing back to university. Isla happy and carefree – a little shy at first, perhaps, but she’d grabbed life and run with it. She’d been kind too. In fact, the only person she’d ever hurt was Trevor Cooper, and she’d felt awful about that.
Roxanne impulsively keyed ‘Trevor Cooper’ into the search engine. Rolling her eyes at her own stupidity when thousands of websites appeared. She tried ‘Trevor Cooper Chemistry’, knowing he’d studied the subject, but Cooper was a far too common name. She signed into Facebook, and ploughed through hundreds of pictures of strangers, unable to find anyone who even vaguely resembled the Trevor Cooper she remembered.
Suddenly she felt uneasy, as though she was being watched. She swung round, but nobody in the reception area seemed to be paying her any attention. She turned back to the screen, and on impulse searched Facebook for Sara Pembroke. She scrolled through several profiles before she came to one that seemed to bounce off the screen. Her stomach flipped. There was no doubting she’d found the correct Sara Pembroke. Her profile picture was the one of her and Isla, taken in Cambridge.
Roxanne took a deep breath, battling down a surge of – what was that? Envy? She was being silly. Sara had every right to have a picture of her and Isla as her profile picture. Maybe Isla had become friendlier with Sara than Roxanne had realised. She may even know something about Andy.
She wasted no time in sending her a friend request, a spark of hope rising. The most important thing was finding Isla, not her petty jealousies.
She flung her head back. Oh God, was she clutching at nothing?
Again on impulse she keyed in Darleen Jeffery, and quickly found her Twitter account. She had over five thousand followers, a photograph of her book as her cover photo, and her profile was a picture of two children Roxanne assumed were her and Carl.
‘Good God,’ she whispered, as she read tweet after tweet around the time of the appeal. Darleen had been so outspoken, calling Isla a liar. But the last tweet was on 1 October. It was as though the appeal being rejected had finally silenced her.
‘Hi!’
Roxanne turned to see the lad from earlier by her side, his chubby, freckled cheeks pink with the cold.
‘I heard you say you’re looking for someone,’ he said in broken English.
‘Yeah, that’s right,’ Roxanne said, grabbing her phone, and bringing up the picture of Isla. ‘Have you seen her?’
He stared at the screen for some moments, before saying, ‘Yes, last night, they were coming through the back door, when I was returning to my room.’
‘They?’
‘She was with a man.’
Roxanne’s pulse throbbed in her neck. ‘Do you remember what he looked like?’
‘He had red hair. They were kissing.’ His cheeks reddened further.
Roxanne took the photo from her pocket. ‘Is this him?’ she said.
‘Yes, that’s him.’
‘Did you see her after that?’ Roxanne asked, trying to control her emotions.
‘No. Just the one time,’ he said, and he turned and took off through the side door.
Roxanne’s hopes quickly petered away. What did that prove, other than what she knew already?
She turned back to the computer, and stared at the screen, her mind drifting to all the strange things that had happened to Isla before she came to Sweden. It started with the reunion. Why had Trevor Cooper bottled at the last minute? I hope you’ve made the right decision, he’d written on Isla’s engagement update.
But then none of this was helpful, or even relevant. Her mind was jumping like a grasshopper without a leaf to land on. Jack was right. He wasn’t Sherlock, and she certainly wasn’t Doctor Watson. But then what else had she got to grab on to?
Later, in her room, she drifted into a fitful, nightmare-fuelled sleep. Through solid darkness, Isla was running towards her, screaming, slipping and sliding on icy ground. ‘Help! She’s going to kill me.’
‘I’m here, Isla,’ Roxanne called back, holding out her arms, but she was wedged knee-deep in snow. It clung to her legs like cement. She stretched forward and Isla grabbed her, exhausted, her face streaming with tears.
‘Thank you,’ Isla said, falling into Roxanne’s arms like a rag doll.
Microseconds later, a knife was plunged deep into Isla’s back.
‘Noooooooooo,’ Roxanne cried, as her friend fell to the floor, just as she had that day in the car park at Millie’s party, her blood spreading in the whiteness like red wine into a carpet. Roxanne dropped to her knees and cradled her friend in her arms.
‘I had to get rid of her.’ The voice was some distance away. Roxanne looked up to see another Isla, eyes ice-cold, face bleached white. ‘She wasn’t really me.’
Roxanne’s eyes shot open. Gasping for breath, she scrambled to a sitting position and cradled her knees. Her body was hot and sweaty, despite the cold, her sheets twisted beneath her.
The curtains at her window were half-open, revealing the night sky. It was snowing again, and she longed for home, or just a familiar face to appear behind the glass – although, at times, home could be a lonely place too.
She sat for some moments, taking deep breaths, stilling herself and trying for calm. Finally, she got out of bed and pulled on her snowsuit, gloves, hat and boots. She had never understood Isla’s craving for space and air, always loving loud places and crowds, but she thought she understood now. The desire to dive outside into the quietness of the cold night, and not look back, and the need to piece together her thoughts where nobody could hear them, was overwhelming.
She made her way through reception, moving silently past the sleeping dogs, but the entrance was locked. It was gone ten o’clock. She turned back, and returned to the long corridor. She passed the rooms, and left through the back door, where the boy had said he’d seen Isla with Andy.
It had stopped snowing, but the freezing air made her cheeks tingle. She wrapped her scarf around her face, and walked away from the lodge, heading under a bridge and out into open countryside, her mind turning everything over.
Perhaps she should have stayed in the UK. It had been an impulsive, stupid decision to come, when emotions were running high. The kind she always made. But then she wanted to be there. She needed to be there.
She walked for a long time, using her phone torch to guide her way. Eventually her nose and fingertips became numb, and her toes, despite a layering of socks and her fur-lined boots, felt as though they might snap off. And now, the many footprints in the snow around Camp Arctic had dwindled to one set of prints stretching into the distance like chocolate buttons on royal icing. There were animal prints too – a moose or perhaps a bear.
She took a deep breath, and let it out, mist forming in front of her lips. She was about to turn back, when a sudden noise in the trees caught her attention. She sprang around and pointed her torch towards the sound.
‘Hello!’ She flicked the light across the leafless, snow-heavy trees. ‘Is anybody there?’
There was another rustle.
She spun around to see that the route she’d travelled was a tunnel of darkness. She’d definitely come too far. Had walked for almost an hour, trying to clear her head.
A snake of green whipped across the black sky. The Northern Lights.
Her heart raced, and she felt angry with herself. She didn’t do afraid. And yet here she was gripped by fear.
She began to head back, shoulders hunched to her ears as she stepped in her own footprints. In her haste, she stumbled, falling face down in the snow. She lifted her head to look back over her shoulder, her cheeks freezing, and shone her torch into the darkness. What if it’s a bear? Suddenly a hare darted from the trees where she’d focused her light a few moments ago. It bounded across the path, its back legs leaping as if on springs, and into the bushes on the other side.
She scrambled to her feet, and brushed the snow from her suit with gloved hands. ‘Bloody hare, you nearly gave me a heart attack,’ she muttered, close to tears as she hurried back to the lodge.
There was no doubting that it had been stunningly beautiful out there in the cold, dark night, far away from everything and everyone. But it was a place for those who absorbed the heavy silence and loneliness without fear. It might be something Isla craved, but Roxanne knew now, it wasn’t for her.
Sunday, 13 November
It was still dark when Roxanne woke at 6 a.m. She lay for a few moments before grabbing her phone from the bedside table, and staring at the screen blurry-eyed. The battery was dead from using the torch the night before. She got up and plugged it in to charge. After showering, she headed to reception and asked Alma for the key to Isla’s room.
‘Just to see if there’s something I missed, if that’s OK,’ she said, tilting her head apologetically. She needed to do something.
Alma led the way. ‘I need to give the room to someone else, soon,’ she said, opening the door, and folding her arms. ‘Your friend left a credit card number, but if she’s not coming back . . . ’
Roxanne growled inside at the woman’s lack of tact, but decided to shrug it off. ‘I guess so,’ she said. ‘In fact, stick her things in my room, if you like.’ She stepped through the door. Isla’s room was as it had been when she and Jack looked around the day before. She knew she was wasting her time. She left within moments, closing the door behind her. Alma locked it and headed back to reception, swinging the key by her side.
Roxanne leant against Isla’s door, noticing the door to the next room stood open. She peered inside to see a housekeeper singing as she puffed up pillows.
Roxanne stepped in. ‘Hello.’ The woman didn’t look round, so Roxanne moved closer. ‘Hello,’ she repeated, tapping her on the shoulder.
‘Skit!’ the woman said, dropping the pillow and pulling out her earphones.
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,’ Roxanne said. ‘Do you speak English?’
‘A little.’ The woman gestured a small amount with her thumb and forefinger. ‘Is this your room? I can come back later.’
Roxanne shook her head. ‘No, I just wondered if you remember the woman who was staying in the room next door?’ She pulled out the photograph of Isla with Andy and showed it to her.
She shook her head, ‘Sorry.’
‘What about the man?’
She screwed up her nose, as though thinking, before shaking her head again.
‘Did you clean her room on Saturday morning?’
The cleaner looked puzzled.
‘On Saturday.’ Roxanne grabbed her feather duster and wiggled it in the air. ‘Did you clean her room?’
The cleaner laughed. ‘Ja, ja.’
‘Did you see anything odd?’ Roxanne had no idea where she was going with her questions. She pointed at the photo again. ‘Did this man spend the night with her?’
She shook her head, brow furrowed. ‘I clean, and make bed. That is all.’ She shrugged. ‘Is everything OK?’
‘I don’t know . . . we think . . . ’ She stopped, frustrated for not knowing any Swedish. There was no point in carrying on. ‘Thank you,’ she said, leaving the room.
***
‘That’s right, we saw Isla on Friday at the sky station,’ Alex said as he tucked into his breakfast. He was a bit of a silver fox, the kind that might give Paul Hollywood a run for his money.
Alma had pointed the couple out to Roxanne, saying they’d been to the sky station on the night Isla was there, and she’d approached and shown them a photo of Isla. Alex had invited her to sit down, to the clear disapproval of his much younger, and very beautiful wife.
‘The Northern Lights were incredible, weren’t they, Maddie?’ he went on, turning to smile at her.
Maddie flicked her dark hair over her shoulders, and sipped her Buck’s Fizz, her eyes boring into Roxanne. She didn’t respond.
Roxanne snatched her eyes away from Maddie’s, and glanced around the restaurant. It was heaving. Waiters and waitresses buzzed to and fro with pots of tea and coffee, and the tables were crammed with visitors. She returned her attention to Alex. ‘So did she seem OK?’
He nodded. ‘Well, she was taking lots of photos, and seemed to like it up there in the darkness. She was still there when we left. Although I noticed her heading down as we climbed into the minibus.’
‘Did you see her talk to anyone? A man with red hair?’
Maddie leant forward. ‘What’s this about, exactly?’ She was Scottish, and there was a hint of aggression in her voice.
‘I just expected my friend to be here,’ Roxanne said, not wanting to talk about the email. ‘I’m worried about her, that’s all. I don’t suppose she mentioned where she might be heading.’
‘Well, I didn’t speak to her.’ Maddie looked at her husband, and folded her arms across her slim body. ‘I just wanted to get back to the hotel that night. It was fucking freezing up there. But Alex just had to say hello.’
‘I thought she looked lonely, needed a friend.’
‘Yeah, well, you’re meant to be with me, remember? It’s our honeymoon, for Christ’s sake.’
Roxanne sensed Alex was a bit of a ladies’ man, and Maddie didn’t fully trust him. Whatever it was, their marriage looked destined to fail.
‘She said she might go to Narvik – take in the Fjords,’ Alex said, ignoring his wife. ‘There’s a direct train.’
Maddie unfolded her arms, pulled her phone from her bag and began thumping the screen. She glanced up and met Roxanne’s eye. ‘What?’ she said. ‘Do you want to be in my Facebook update too?’
‘Well, thanks for your help,’ Roxanne said, rising, knowing it was time to leave.
‘I hope you find her soon,’ Alex said.
‘Me too,’ she called back over her shoulder as she left the restaurant.
Back in her room, she found her phone was fully charged, and that she’d missed several calls from Sally. She pressed her number.
‘Sally. Hi, it’s Roxanne,’ she said, when she picked up, keen to tell her about Isla’s planned trip to Norway, and about the Andy she’d found on Facebook.
‘Oh thank goodness, Roxanne,’ Sally said, before she could get the words out. Her voice was anxious and jerky, not helped by the poor signal. ‘I’ve been trying to get hold of you.’
‘Is everything OK? Is there news about Isla?’
‘Yes, yes there is.’ She was close to tears. ‘A woman was struck by a car in Narvik in the early hours of this morning. They think it’s Isla.’