Today's Reading
NOW
I didn't think it would end like this.
The dense, black woods smother me as I run through them.
The pelting rain drowns out all sound except the pounding inside my chest.
A bramble twists itself around my ankle, its thorns digging into my flesh. I yank myself free.
There is no time to waste. I run.
A crack of lightning pierces through the darkness and my eyes flick up to the winding path in front of me, to the faint outline of the house, its silhouette bleeding into the tree-choked horizon.
Where the rest of the family are asleep, safe from the storm, blissfully unaware of what's happened.
I take a sharp, quick breath and force myself up the path, my trainers pushing into the damp earth, leaving behind a trail of mud- sucking footprints.
Another crack of thunder as lightning rips through the sky.
I slow down as the house comes into view, illuminated only by the moonlight filtering out through the clouds. Disconnected images flash past my eyes. The celebration, the announcement, the hike.
The dead body.
I stop. I need to focus. I can't afford to make any more mistakes.
' wonder how long it takes for a body to go cold. For the limbs to go stiff. The lips to turn blue.
I force myself up the final few feet and ease the door open. I'm trying to decide what to do next but the choice is snatched from me.
I freeze as the lights come on and two sets of eyes take me in, flicking past the scratches on my face, skimming across the ripped jeans and the trainers that are no longer white, before coming to rest on the stains that not even the relentless Scottish rain has been able to wash off.
Blood.
But not mine.
I look around the room. How did this happen? The decorations that had felt festive last night look menacing in the pre-dawn light. The family photos we had laughed over just hours ago now seem saturated with foreboding.
The words are barely a whisper but they ricochet around the space, bouncing off the walls, filling my ears. An echo from the past.
What have you done?
In this family, there's only one cardinal rule. Family first. Always.
I grit my teeth. I know what comes next. I don't have a choice anymore.
Perhaps I never did.
THREE DAYS AGO
CHAPTER ONE
ZOE
I twist onto my side and burrow deeper under the duvet, trying to drown out the sound of Aseem's voice. He's been on the phone with his sister Aisha for at least twenty minutes, his words punctuated by the short sighs and long silences that I have come to associate with my husband.
Aisha's been swanning around in LA for the past three months. The last time we spoke, she told me she was extending her stay, which is why I'd been surprised when my mother-in-law told me that Aisha would be joining us on this week-long trip. Aisha detests family holidays—understandably so—and I find it hard to believe that she would willingly swap her Malibu villa for a week on a Scottish island, irrespective of how important this week really is. But I've long since given up trying to untangle the knot that is the Agarwal family, so when my mother-in-law, Shalini, told me that Aisha would join us in London, I kept my disbelief to myself. Aisha was supposed to meet us at Euston station an hour before the overnight train to Fort William.
As expected, she didn't show.
...
