Down By The Water

by Elle Connel

Genres: Women's Fiction; Thrillers; Suspense

Synopsis

One photo. Seven friends. And a strange face, none of them recognise.

"I loved it - a classy and clever subversion of a country house mystery" Harriet Tyce

**A Sunday Times crime book of the month**

'The end, when it comes, is as unexpected and smart as it gets' ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ READER REVIEW
'I was kept up all night' ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ READER REVIEW
'I loved this book, and read the whole thing in two sittings' ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ READER REVIEW

A group of old friends gather at a remote Scottish castle, one last weekend before Georgie's wedding. Down at the loch, they take a group photo - but what they see stops them cold.

Because there's a stranger behind them.

None of them saw him, and nobody knows where he went. They're miles from the nearest town. Where did he come from, and where did he go?

As the weekend unravels and terrible secrets come to light, it soon becomes clear that their perfect weekend is turning into a perfect nightmare. They're desperate to leave - but someone won't let them.


A page-turning thriller perfect for fans of Catherine Cooper's THE CHALET and Lucy Foley's THE HUNTING PARTY.

Praise for Down By The Water:

"Down By The Water takes the reader on a weekend trip from hell... I loved the classy writing and ever-growing sense of unease in this clever subversion of a classic country house mystery" - Harriet Tyce
"A chilling drama" Sunday Times
"Sinister and atmospheric" - Chris Brookmyre
"Tense, mesmerising and heartbreaking, I was truly gripped" - Susi Holliday
"A gripping mystery." - Nathan Ripley

Release date: June 3, 2021

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 400

Sample

PROLOGUE

26 September 2007

The water is rough but the light is calm.

A cool haar blows inland from the open sea. It seems to hang in lavender rolls above the sea loch, not touching it. A moment ago the loch was grey, bled of colour, but now it has turned a dark violet, blacker in the middle. This is one of its tricks – to change in a second by the lurch of a wave or the passing of a cloud across the sun.

Late summer, early autumn. On a day this beautiful, anything could happen.

She has untied the boat already, and the rope chafes her palm as she drags it towards the water’s edge. A couple of hundred metres out, mussel ropes are marked by three white buoys. She watches them toss in the waves, the currents whipping their rope necks back and forth. Suddenly, she sees beneath the water: skeleton bodies flailing in despair against the undertow.

It is just the buoys, she tells herself. She kissed him goodbye this morning. She saw him sleep. He is still there, sleeping beneath his blankets. She turns her attention quickly to the boat.

As she launches it across the shoreline, she realises she is not wearing the right shoes. Ice water soaks through them, into her soles and up over her ankles. She climbs on board, making the old wood creak. The boat needs painting. She reaches for an oar and pushes off, blade scraping against shingle, the final chime of dry land echoing into the air.

She rows in the direction of the mountains on the other side of the loch. She has grown strong doing this so often and, though her arms still burn, the resistance feels good. Over there are forest-covered peaks where the trees grow so thick and wild that it’s impossible to see where you could moor and enter. She always wanted to go there when she was little – both of them did, but they were always told no. It was too dangerous.

She wonders now what that danger was. Witches? Axemen? Getting lost and contracting hypothermia? Could any of it be as bad as all that she’s seen since, in places she’d expected to feel safe? But she also understands now that desire to protect, to keep a child safe from anything, to never let them know – or even glimpse – danger.

Before she knows it, she is in the middle of the loch. The shore she came from, a sickle-shaped shingle beach backed by friendlier clusters of pine trees, looks strange and plain. She pushes towards the buoys, but despite throwing her body into each stroke, the currents keep heading her off. Her back is towards the horizon. Sea on one side, mountains on the other. Plain shoreline, ahead of her.

She keeps rowing, and rowing, pulling and sweating as the mauve haar continues to roll in.

The mussels will be fat now, after a summer left alone. As the boat comes alongside the three buoys, it twists, pulled by an undertow, but she has learned, and she uses the oar to hook herself into the right spot.

She leans over the ropes and comes face to face with her reflection in the shining dark surface of the sea loch. Her curls blend into the water’s black ripples. Behind her eyes is something she can’t describe.

1

Tessa woke with a start, as if she had heard something or felt a sudden jolt. But the train was still moving smoothly along.

Light bled through the fringes of the doorframe. Her nose was pressed to a crisp, laundered pillowcase. In the first few moments of coming to, she thought she was in the on-call wing of the hospital and that her bleep had just gone off. Then she felt the rocking motion, and rolled over to see the reflection of the sleeper car’s interior in the blank, black windowpane. She caught herself as she almost fell from the bunk. The blind was still up. They must have forgotten to lower it. Her eyes slowly focused and she made out the ­cabin’s straight lines and compact, square furniture, the snoring body of Georgie on the berth below her.

She began to roll the other way, away from the glare, in the hope of returning quickly back to sleep, when she saw a more solid form take shape in the window’s reflection. She tried to focus. The shape became columnal, tracing a path around a head and slim shoulders. And then her skin froze as she realised someone was in their cabin.

She tried to wake herself fully, to take in what she was looking at. Then from somewhere else, deep in memory, she recognised a scent. Agent Provocateur perfume. It was powdery sweet, a ghost of recognition, a scent she kept boxed in the past. But here it was in the cabin, now.

That was when she knew she must be dreaming. Charlie was not here in the sleeper cabin, standing over Georgie’s slumbering body. She wasn’t here on the hen party weekend; she hadn’t been there at King’s Cross station when they had all gathered, nor on the train earlier when they opened the first bottle of pink prosecco. When the shots were poured and when they had finally turned in – ‘Nightcaps, girls! We’re growing old, long weekend ahead!’ – Charlie hadn’t been there.

But now the shape was moving in the dark – and no, Tessa was not dreaming.

‘Georgie,’ she said sharply. And then again, summoning assertiveness to scare the intruder. ‘Georgie, are you in your bed? There’s someone in—’

‘Shhhhh.’

Tessa saw the figure reach forward and clutch hold of her bedsheet for support as the train lurched, and then she recognised the shape of the head, taking form, the tone of voice.

‘Harriet?’

‘Tessa? Are you awake?’

Harriet’s tall body stumbled into the berth with the motion of the train. Her bony hand gripped Tessa’s pillow.

Tessa wriggled onto her elbows, banging her head on the shallow ceiling. ‘Ouch!’

‘Shhhh. I don’t want to wake Georgie,’ Harriet said.

‘What are you doing in here?’ Tessa hissed.

She saw Harriet’s head, with its long sheet of blunt-cut hair, swing towards the cabin door. The door opened a crack, letting in a blade of light. Now a second, more petite figure – Melissa – crept forwards.

‘You need to come now, Tessa,’ Melissa whispered. ‘Please.’ There was a tight note in her voice.

‘What’s happened?’ Tessa picked up her phone to check the time: 2.46 a.m. She slid from her berth, landing hard on the side of her foot. She felt the nausea of getting up too quickly, and was aware her breath was rancid and her curls were on end.

‘Do you have your medical kit?’

She frowned. ‘Yes. No. I have a small first aid kit.’

‘I thought you’d have your doctor’s bag with you.’ Harriet’s voice was starting to creep up a notch.

‘No, I think – I assumed – there’d be a proper first aid kit up at the castle. What’s going on?’

Harriet put two fingers to Tessa’s lips. Tessa smelled herbal soap; underneath it, the sickliness of prosecco. ‘Don’t wake Georgie,’ Harriet whispered, nodding towards the lower bunk.

‘Bea’s in a K-hole,’ Melissa whispered. ‘You have to come and sort her out or we’ll be chucked off the train.’

‘Bea’s what?’ Tessa swerved, knocking against Georgie’s berth.

‘Bea is off her box on ketamine,’ Harriet whispered, slow and precise.

Tessa looked down at Georgie’s sleeping form, the wisps of curled auburn hair across her cheek. Her breathing was soft. The train swayed.

Tessa followed Harriet and Melissa into the corridor. Even though the main light had been dimmed, the acidic tone of the strip lights felt painful to her waking eyes. There was a guard idling at the end of the row of cabins, in the space where the toilet was, looking at his phone.

Melissa opened the next door down.

The cabin was fully lit – a mess of toiletries, prosecco bottles knocking back and forth, scattered clothes, jewellery. The air had the warm, specific scent of caramelised onion humous and nacho-cheese chips. Beside the bottom berth, cowering under a silk scarf, Bea crouched on her haunches, dry retching. She peeled away a corner of the scarf, looked up, clocked Tessa. Before the reunion at the station earlier that evening, they had seen each other only a handful of times since university. Bea had changed a lot, grown heavier, and she looked more tired around her eyes and mouth. She wore no make-up except for kohl and mascara that had smeared. But she had the same tenderness in her face that Tessa remembered. At the station, with her slouchy cardigan and gaping leather overnight bag, she had looked homely. Bea had been the meal-cooker back in student days, feeding people with almost crazed fervour. Now, something like that same intensity was in her eyes: she looked unhinged, like she was not used to psychedelics.

Her eyes widened at Tessa.

Harriet lunged down to her, quickly taking her wrists. ‘Don’t panic, Bea, we’re not here to hurt you. We’re your friends, all right?’

Tessa reached out. ‘Don’t agitate her. How much has she had?’ She tried not to let anger take over. She crouched close and looked into Bea’s enormous pupils; took her pulse, measured the intervals between her breaths. She stroked Bea’s lank brown hair and made the noises that they didn’t teach in medical school, but that she’d had to learn, nonetheless. ‘Who gave her the ketamine?’ Tessa asked, although she thought she already knew the answer.

Georgie had asked Tessa if she could nick some from the dispensary or write a prescription. She’d said no, and so without a doubt, Georgie must have gone to Melissa and asked her instead. Melissa had easier access, as a vet, and she wouldn’t have dared say no to Georgie. Melissa never refused Georgie anything; and anyway, she was baked herself most of the time these days. Why Bea had taken the ketamine now instead of waiting until they got to the castle – they hadn’t even crossed into Scotland yet – was a different question.

No one had seen Bea for nearly four years, before they had all gathered, together once again, at King’s Cross at half past six that evening. It hadn’t been as strange as perhaps it ought to have been. Maybe it had been more than four years, more than five even? Had she been at Freddie and Harriet’s wedding? Tessa couldn’t remember, but she didn’t think so. Harriet, Melissa and Georgie had stayed in touch and met up regularly. Harriet would organise gatherings over WhatsApp, inviting everyone with short, brisk messages – no punctuation, no kisses – that made them sound like a summons. Though Tessa rarely came along, she lurked on the threads and had observed that Melissa always obediently attended, driving the hundred or so miles from her Suffolk village to London, maybe because she missed them all, maybe because it felt mellower to party with old friends, or maybe just because she was loyal. Melissa had always been petite and bright and loyal, mellow more than meek, where Harriet was cool and demanding. The gatherings would take place at Georgie’s, because she was a fabulous host. Not only did she have no children at all, she had lots of Le Creuset kitchen­ware and lived above a wine shop in West Hampstead, whose owner she had befriended and who sometimes came upstairs with a few free bottles of wine and hung around afterwards. Sometimes the trio posted pictures on Facebook, with the wine-shop owner, an old Frenchman, grinning in the background like he had won a prize. Bea sometimes sent an excuse on the thread. Alice rarely replied at all.

Tessa had never minded missing out. These days she was too tired. Her shifts were too long, and it felt as if she had drifted from her friends. She hadn’t seen Mel in over a year now, and Harriet – about the same? Alice hadn’t invited any of them to her wedding, which might have just been because it was small and low-key. To be honest, Tessa hadn’t even registered that Alice was married, until she’d brought it up in the WhatsApp group for this weekend.

But out of the blue, Georgie had asked them all to be her bridesmaids – not just Harriet and Mel, but the whole old university gang. She had chosen them, and only them: not any of her London friends, not any of the folks she had met travelling, not her sisters-in-law or the small children of distant relatives. She had chosen them, and there must have been something in that, some pull, some old stubborn thread between them that had made them all unanimously say yes.

And then it seemed like the time they had spent apart just melted away as they’d met on the station concourse and climbed single file onto the train, dragging bags of clinking bottles and food for the weekend. The snacks had been opened; bunks chosen. Melissa had brought along a ukulele – Some Like it Hot! She couldn’t play it. Alice had a go. It was just like the old days.

Bea and Harriet each had two children now. As soon as the prosecco was popped, Harriet had been excited to swap sleeping complaints and share tantrum notes. ‘Are you back at work?’ she had asked, blinking at Bea.

‘Part-time. I work in the university library, so Mo and I get lunch dates.’

Since Bea had lain low for the past few years, it seemed their children had never actually met. ‘We must get them together!’ Harriet insisted.

Harriet had been pregnant at her own wedding, five years ago. Bea had four-year-old identical twin girls. When Tessa had first heard about the twins, she had sent two baby grows in the post, via Bea’s husband’s university lab, but she had never received a thank-you card.

‘Enough about kiddies,’ Melissa had interrupted, before regaling them with stories of her adopted menagerie. ‘Two bearded dragons, a rescue chicken, a goat from the RSPCA,’ and a geriatric collie who spent more time with her elderly neighbour.

But Harriet was not interested in animals. ‘I’m a mumpreneur now,’ she confided to Bea. She had a blog and an Instagram, Mama in the City. ‘If you ever want to know anything,’ she said, placing a hand on Bea’s arm, ‘Anything at all about how to manage two children in London, just ask – because it’s an absolute nightmare, you know. Whoever designed the buses should be shot.’

Bea had smiled politely and said something about twins being their own kind of fish. Tessa had learned to read those sorts of smiles, usually on patients who were being gracious, but weren’t taken in.

 

‘Sips. Very small ones.’ Tessa held a bottle of water to Bea’s lips, barely trusting her not to gulp. She looked up at the others, who were watching. ‘Did you take some, too?’

Melissa shook her head. ‘We only knew she had when I heard her scrabbling around outside the door. I honestly don’t know where she found it. Maybe – Alice?’

Tessa shook her head. Alice had gone to bed early with Rachael. There had been something of an awkward moment early in the planning stage when Alice sent a WhatsApp message checking if it would be OK to bring her wife Rachael along. After half a day’s pause, Harriet had started a new Alice-free WhatsApp thread and asked, ‘What do you think? I mean it seems to me that, if that’s the case, I could invite Freddie and Bea could bring Mohammed?’

They had all assumed – or hoped – that this issue wouldn’t surface, because Rachael, who worked for UCL and London Zoo, was usually off in South America studying pumas. But it seemed she had taken time off specially.

‘Why don’t we invite Jack along, make it a communal kind of gathering?’ Melissa had replied, and it wasn’t clear if she was being sarcastic or dippy.

‘It will make us seven. Seven is a lucky number,’ Bea had texted.

‘Just so long as I don’t hear them fucking,’ Harriet replied, and the thread had gone silent.

But then there had been a collective guilt in the air when Rachael and Alice had arrived at King’s Cross, their arms laden down with a Fortnum and Mason hamper for the train journey and a case of Pol Roger, and they had produced from a stiff boutique bag a cashmere snood, monogrammed ‘Mrs Jack’, and given it to Georgie ‘Because Scotland is fucking cold, even in April, don’t you know?’ And then Alice had made a joke about the scarf being better than a ridiculous hen-night hoodie, and they’d all tried to laugh it off as Harriet had distributed the hen-night hoodies with their university nicknames on the back – BB, Locky, George, Hats, Ally, Mel D – which, by then, they all realised they had discussed getting printed on the Alice-free WhatsApp thread. There was not a hoodie for Rachael. She’d said she didn’t mind.

‘Is that real Fortnum’s?’ Harriet had stared at the wicker, eyes roving for the crest.

‘Mmm hmm.’ Alice nodded.

‘Not TK Maxx?’

‘Nope.’

After that, Georgie had seemed quite tame about Alice’s new haircut, leaning over and stroking a palm up one of the shaved sides. The fringe was dyed pink and purple in pale streaks; the sides showed off Alice’s piercings, which ran up the cartilage of one ear. ‘When did you get this done? It’s gorgeous.’

‘A few weeks ago.’

They all knew then that she had cut her hair after the email guidelines for the wedding had come through: Long hair, natural colours, all tattoos covered up, piercings taken out on the day, please. These guidelines were implicitly for Alice only, since none of the rest of them had tattoos or multiple piercings, and they didn’t colour their hair other than highlighting it.

But perhaps Georgie really meant it; perhaps she did think it was gorgeous, and perhaps she had mellowed now the wedding day was drawing closer and they were all there together again, and the anxiety of all of the little things that could go wrong were melting into perspective. Now they were all on the train, and the hen party was underway. Everyone had shown up. Everyone had shown that they cared. That was all that mattered. They were together. There was a whole weekend ahead to reconnect. It didn’t matter that they hadn’t all been in the same room for years, that the humous was warm, and the pitta bread chewy, or that they started off their drinking with prosecco straight from the supermarket shelf in glittery plastic cups. ‘We should save the champagne for when we arrive,’ Georgie had said. They were on a train heading to Scotland, where they’d all met. They were heading back to the past, to the parties and the booze and the feet on each other’s laps and splintery jokes and late-night confessions, and the casual comfort of being with people they had all seen in that vulnerable half-adult state as they crossed from school to university, and learned how to wash up properly and how to manage heartbreak. They would merge again, in Scotland again, before they all dispersed like pieces of meteorite, back into their own lives.

After their picnic tea, Alice and Rachael had turned in first, about eleven. They had been up since six, they said, for their final 10k run before the weekend. Besides, Alice hadn’t been much for partying, even back in the day. She was more into staying up late behind a computer screen, cruising weird parts of the internet.

After that, it was a nip of whisky each for the five remaining – drunk from the bottle, the taste of one another’s lipsticks and lip balms all melding into one on the rim – and then they had all gone off to their cabins.

‘Just think, ladies. When we wake up, look out that window, there might be a stag,’ Georgie said.

‘Yes, and he’ll be called Jack and he’ll be wearing a sapphire merkin and be tied to an Edinburgh lamppost,’ said Bea.

They all laughed, even Georgie, though she did not like jokes about Jack in general.

 

That had been four hours ago. Now, Bea was groaning, trying to get words out.

‘You have to call an ambulance,’ Melissa was saying, her voice rising.

‘Do you think that’s wise?’ Harriet said. ‘If she has to be evacuated, wouldn’t we have to reschedule?’ She softened her tone. ‘Georgie would be devastated. You know she would. Tessa, is she that bad?’

Tessa tuned them out and pulled Bea into the centre of the cabin floor.

‘Georgina,’ Bea moaned.

‘It was Georgie who asked for the K on the WhatsApp group.’ Melissa sounded defensive.

‘How did she take it?’

‘I didn’t see,’ Melissa said.

Tessa lay Bea on her side and stroked her back. The balls on her spine protruded, her lungs swelling with each moan. Tessa felt a memory of panic, suddenly thinking of a time when she had stroked Charlie’s back in the same way, the feeling of the skin and blood underneath her fingers, pulsing erratically upwards. But back then there had been no drugs, and now she was a doctor and she knew what to do.

She stroked Bea’s back until the vomit came, tapping, patting, checking she wasn’t choking, pulling her hair out of the firing line. She put her hand on Bea’s chest, counted her breaths again, watched the pulse in her throat rippling like a purple snake. It was all regular.

Tessa took her phone out of her pyjama pocket and switched on the screen. It was approaching three. ‘You’ll have to take shifts staying up with her, just in case. If she vomits again, the biggest risk—’

‘I know.’ Melissa cut her off.

Tessa had the words in her mouth – No, you don’t. She’s not a fucking sheep – but she swallowed them back down. It was Georgie’s weekend, not hers. They didn’t need arguments.

‘What if she starts screaming?’ Harriet asked. Her glance flicked towards the door. ‘The guard?’

‘Tell him she’s having nightmares.’

‘But if she does it again and again?’

‘I don’t know, Harriet. Make it up. You’re a novelist, after all.’

In the glare of the full electric light, Tessa saw her words pierce. She hadn’t intended them to: she was just not very good at controlling her tongue when she was tired. Harriet had been a novelist, it was true. Before the mama blog, she’d had one of those freak six-figure book deals straight out of university, for a coming-of-age story about a girl in nineteenth-century Ireland. And then, for eight years, she had been working on the follow-up, until eventually marriage, the children, and the blog had taken over.

Tessa did not make eye contact with any of them as she slipped, business-like, out of their cabin and back to her own, emergency over. The guard was still bent over his phone.

She crept in and climbed up to her bed, only then becoming aware that the sickness she had felt earlier had turned to a deeper anxiety. Or was it just the bubbles churning, prosecco residue? She had not eaten enough, again.

As she lay between the stiff sheets, she became more and more aware of Georgie’s snoring. Gradually, it overtook the rumble of the train. There was, it seemed to Tessa in the dark, an arrogance to the snoring, and as she lay awake, her mind spiralling in the adrenaline come-down of jumping in and out of work mode, she began to resent Georgie for what had happened. She would stake her life on it that Georgie had given Bea the drugs. Something to loosen her up. It was Georgie who had corralled them all together after all, she who had demanded a whole weekend from them, not just a night out. That was on top of her wedding, which was in Tuscany, of course, the invite arriving on thick paper with a note on one half requesting contributions towards a five-star honeymoon, the opposite leaf stating with eloquent bluntness that children would not be welcome.

Perhaps, Tessa thought uncharitably, it would have served Georgie right if they had been caught, if the police had been called, if they had been thrown off the train. And had Melissa or Harriet felt the same way? Had they all, somehow – maybe in a way they didn’t even realise – been trying to sabotage the weekend before it had even begun?

Tessa tried to still her mind, using all the tricks she’d learned. Clenching her toes and releasing, imagining herself walking down a staircase into oblivion, step by careful step. She almost got there, but just as she was drifting back into sleep, she caught that scent again – the Agent Provocateur from her dreams. There it was, close by once more. With a jolt of sudden, cold awareness, she realised it was on her own skin.

2

The train had halted somewhere outside Edinburgh to wait for sunrise. The sky had begun to grow light, but they still weren’t moving when Tessa heard laughter spill out of the cabin next door. She smelled coffee. A knock came at their door and she leaned down from her bunk to see Georgie – hair already straightened and tied back; her perfumed neck set off by a huge chunky jade necklace. Georgie paused in fixing flicks of eyeliner on her upper lids, and winked at the guard as she accepted the red tray of packaged croissants and little butter slabs. Two paper cups of black coffee wobbled, steaming.

‘You have both croissants,’ she said to Tessa, balancing the tray on the messed-up sheets of the lower bunk. ‘I can’t eat before ten any more.’

When they eventually rolled onto the platform, it was about half past six. It was lighter than it would have been in London at that time, but the light seemed foggier, or perhaps softer, hanging a depressing gauze over the air. Tessa had never liked this time of day, and coming into Scotland always held mixed memories. She had been to school near the border, and they had all met at university, near here in St Andrews. The London train passed through Edinburgh to get there. Anxiety and anticipation; relief. Maybe exams or a new term, a new flat; hangovers, dissertations. Now there was a castle and a relaxing weekend waiting for them, an hour or so away. But Tessa still felt anxious. It had fallen on her to find the accommodation for the weekend, and she had chosen to go to this castle, she had arranged the booking. What was there to be afraid of? They were here to relax, to enjoy themselves, to rediscover each other among old memories. Surely that wasn’t such a herculean task?

She wondered how Bea was.

 

On the platform, they passed around the croissants and coffee and made noises about the hour.

‘I can’t even,’ said Melissa.

‘Don’t you get up at this time to birth cows?’ Harriet asked.

‘Not on holiday.’

‘No such thing as a holiday when you’re a mum,’ Harriet muttered.

From beneath hooded bloodshot eyes, Bea fired Harriet a warning look. Tessa saw it. Bea looked grim, and was alternating between coffee and water, laughing forcedly at jokes while looking like she wanted to vomit. She would be fine.

The castle was a taxi ride away. They wouldn’t all fit into one, so split themselves into a three and a four, heaving their bags onto the spare seats: Bea’s battered leather holdall, Tessa’s neat wheelie case and Melissa’s sports bag. Georgie had three suitcases in mismatching vintage designer logos; Alice and Rachael had brought backpacks with a multitude of compartments. And there were the bags for life, too, overspilling with food.

The cabs rumbled off down Princes Street, and they gazed through smeared windows at the grey stone streets and Georgian houses, until the trees lining the pavements grew thicker and then gave way to hedges, private gardens, shrubs, sheds and garages. Then industrial buildings fanned out around flyovers and, before they knew it, they were on the motorway.

Tessa was in a car with Rachael, Georgie and Bea. She kept a wary eye on Bea, who had her head on Georgie’s shoulder, dozing. But if Georgie had noticed Bea’s drug hangover, she wasn’t saying anything. She curled her fingers absent-mindedly in the tendrils of Bea’s hair. Rachael made chit-chat with the taxi driver about Scotland. She was the only one out of them who h. . .