Deep Water by Mark Ayre (best big ereader TXT) 📕

At first, in what might have been an unnerving twist, the sound reminded Abbie of a wailing ghost. Or what she imagined such a creature would sound like if such a creature existed.

Leaving Alice's room, Abbie moved to Aurora's and pressed her ear to the door. Not believing in ghosts, she waited for the sound to reoccur with the intention of developing an alternative hypothesis for its source.

After a few seconds, there it was.

Wailing was close but not quite right. Sobbing was better, and ghosts didn't sob. The living did.

Abbie needed to enter but worried if she knocked and asked the weeper for permission to come in, the answer would be a resounding, No. However, it would be impolite to open the door and just walk in. Much as Abbie had hated her mother, the old bat had at least drilled into her children good manners. Abbie couldn't do it.

Settling for a half measure, Abbie knocked on the door, announced herself, and walked in.

Like Jacob, Aurora had been a teenager. Therefore, Abbie was unsurprised to see the lilac walls and flower-patterned sheets, boyband posters and a corkboard stuffed with pictures of friends and family; a laptop, also flower-patterned, and an assortment of makeup products on a desk.

The room was tidy, bordering on immaculate (if you didn't count the rows of lipstick lined up on the desk like regimental soldiers and the sniffly boy sobbing on the bed). Still, Abbie didn't suppose Aurora had lived in such neatness. Following the teenager's death, someone, probably Alice, had tidied. Not because she couldn't stand to leave her dead daughter's room a mess, but because cleaning that mess would make her feel closer to the child she had lost. Abbie had done something similar after losing her sister.

The boy in the bed was curled into a ball, facing the wall. Abbie at once knew who he was. Though she had knocked and called out before entering, and though he must have heard her come in, Abbie cleared her throat to announce her presence.

"Ollie, it's Abbie."

The boy remained in the foetal position, his arm over his head. He released a sob, then managed to quiet himself.

"We met yesterday afternoon," Abbie continued. "We didn't get off to the best start, but don't worry, you're not the first guy to try mount me after barely an introduction. Although, you succeeded where most fail."

Still, the boy remained silent but for his sobbing. Angel might have taught Ollie to ignore annoying people because they would eventually get bored and go away. Except that didn't sound like something Angel would say. More likely, Angel's advice would have been to shoot the annoying person and spit on their corpse.

Maybe Ollie didn't have a gun and didn't feel capable of taking on Abbie. On the latter point, he was undoubtedly correct.

"I want you to know," said Abbie, circling the room, taking it all in, "I bear you no ill will. I know you attacked me, but I understand. I threatened your mother; that's not cool. You're on edge because of everything that's happened."

She paused. Had the teenager just scrunched himself up even tighter? Maybe. Either way, he was holding his silence.

"I didn't know you were here," said Abbie. "I'm guessing you have a key, so you might have arrived before we got back yesterday. After that, I was awake until about two am. Did you sneak in early this morning? Does your mum know you're here?"

By this point, Abbie wasn't expecting a response. From the centre of the carpet, she moved to the foot of the bed. Here was the corkboard, A2 size, hanging on string from a hook. There seemed to be a thousand pictures all told, everything overlapping everything else, some photos entirely buried beneath the mosh.

There were school friends up here, or what Abbie assumed were school friends, but most were family pictures. One at the back caught Abbie's eye. With a thumb, she nudged aside an overlapping photo to examine it more closely.

"The whole family," she whispered.

It had to be nearly a decade and a half old and featured the entire Alice clan. The woman herself stood in the photo's centre. Morris and Adam, Alice’s third husband and eldest child, stood immediately to her left and right, respectively. Morris had probably always been handsome but was made more so by his beaming smile. In his wife's arms was his baby daughter, Aurora, and in front of him was an eight-year-old Ariana. This younger Ariana held a familiar fire and determination in her eyes but looked happy. Her father's hands were on her shoulders, and there was love in the daughter's eyes. Maybe Alice was right. Perhaps Ariana hadn't been destined to travel the path of darkness she eventually chose. Her father's death, her mother's arrest, they might have changed everything. Was Aurora’s murder the final nail in her soul’s coffin?

On Adam's other side was a woman that could only be his wife. In front of them were their two children, who appeared to be twins. Adam's wife had taken the kids and moved away when Adam was jailed. From what Abbie knew of Alice, she was sure the birthday girl missed them terribly.

Angel stood to Morris' left; late twenties and as graceful and beautiful back then as she was today. Ollie was wriggling in her arms. She was smiling, but the smile didn’t ring as true as those around her.

Next to Angel were the teenagers. Sixteen-year-old Alex and fourteen-year-old Anthony. Like her step-father, Alex was beaming. She was dressed in tiny shorts and a top designed to show off what cleavage she had. Tony looked a lot like his older half-brother, but his smile was shy rather than confident. He was the only photo participant who looked uncomfortable. Looking at him, Abbie felt a pang of sympathy and affection in her heart.

"You were a cute baby," she told Ollie, touching the photo to stop the light distorting it, looking at the bundle in