Page 84 of The House Guest

‘We really are from Bakersfield. That’s true. And we moved to Los Angeles after Mary died. She was my wife. It wasn’t easy, bringing up a teenage girl on my own. We fought a lot. Eden acted out, got mixed up with the wrong people, got into drugs and drinking and skipping school. Maybe I was too strict.’

I was sure he wasn’t telling me the whole truth about his parenting style, but decided not to push it.

‘She left home when she was eighteen. Moved in with some guy, a dude in a band. I didn’t see her much after that. Every now and again she’d come round asking to borrow money, which I’d always give to her. Once, I came home and found her going through her mom’s old things, crying. That was a good night. We talked about her childhood, watched an old home movie. I cooked dinner and she stayed the night. I thought ... maybe she was going to come back to me. That it was all going to be okay. But when I woke up the next morning she was gone, along with all the money in the house and her mom’s old jewellery.’ I heard him swallow. ‘That was the last time I saw her.’

‘Until when?’

‘A few months ago, I got a call from an old friend. He’d seen Eden at a spirituality convention near Palm Springs. I wasn’t making that bit up. He said she was with a famous model.’

‘Jade Thomson?’

‘Yeah. Jade was launching her own range of crystals or some bullshit and my friend said he thought Eden was her assistant. After that, I tried to get in touch with Jade but it was impossible. At the same time, I tried to find out as much about her as I could. What I told you about Jade vanishing and coming back changed, like she had this new charisma, this inner glow that made the camera love her even more, that was true. And Eden was hanging out with her, or working with her.’

The van was idling now, apparently stuck in traffic.

‘That’s when I heard the rumours about Jade being part of a cult. There were these guys on 4Chan, these hackers. You know 4Chan?’ I’d heard of it but never used it. I knew it was essentially a message board where users posted anonymously. ‘One of these hackers said a friend of his got into Jade’s phone and found a load of nude pics. These creeps try to do it to all the female celebs. This guy then sent a blackmail demand to Jade.’

‘Let me guess. He ended up dead.’

‘Yep. There was all this speculation on 4Chan about what happened, but one poster swore that Jade was a member of a cult. Other users were telling him that was crap but it rang true, because of some weird stuff Eden had said the last time I saw her.’

The van started moving again.

‘After that, I went to all the conventions I could find where Jade’s crystal business was listed as an exhibitor. Jade was never there herself and neither was Eden. Until three weeks ago, at the convention in Brooklyn. Jade was making a personal appearance, launching a new range, and I went along.’

‘Eden was there?’

‘She was. I knew if I approached her on the spot, she’d freak out. And I wanted to find out if I was right about her being in a cult. So I followed her. You know the rest. So—’

‘Stop talking.’

I didn’t know if Callum was telling the truth now. It was clear from what Emilio had said that Eden hated her dad. He definitely wasn’t telling me the whole story.

I remembered how he’d been that night in the woods, with Krugman. Killing him had hardly seemed to bother Callum at all. And the way he’d stuck that twig into Krugman’s wound; the sadistic pleasure he’d appeared to take from it ... I thought I had a good idea of why Eden had really left home. Why she had run away to join a cult, especially one that gave its members protection. It wasn’t hard to see the appeal of that; how easy it would be for Gabriel to persuade vulnerable young people to join.

‘Where do you think they’re taking us?’ Callum said after a little while. ‘To their HQ, or back to the woods to dispose of us?’

‘I don’t know,’ I replied. ‘But I’m guessing you’ll get to be reunited with Eden, wherever we’re going. Eden with a gun in her hand.’

‘Yeah,’ he said quietly.

Chapter 37

‘I’m so disappointed in you.Sodisappointed.’

It was dark outside, and Ruth could see herself reflected in a mirror on the wall of the bedroom they had taken her to. This room was larger than the one in which she’d been staying, and was dominated by a king-sized bed. The mirror hung level with the bed to her left, and she knew, though she fought the knowledge, that it had been positioned there for one reason.

She was on her back, her arms stretched out behind her, wrists fastened to the bedposts. Before tying her to the bed, Marie and the other woman – an Amazonian with muscles like a shot-putter – had made her change into a pair of white cotton pyjamas. They had strip-searched her first – just in case, they said, she had hidden anything about herself, anything that could be used as a weapon. Then they had forced her to shower and scrub herself clean, the water so hot it had turned her flesh a vivid pink.

This was, she knew, the penthouse. Gabriel’s apartment. On the way through the main living space, which had floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out across Brooklyn and towards Manhattan, she had taken in the huge TV. Ruth’s own image had been frozen on it. The scene inThe Immaculatein which her character is told she is destined to save humanity. On the sixty-inch screen, a fake tear glistened on her cheek.

Now, Gabriel paced the strip of floorboard beside the bed.

‘So fucking disappointed, Ruth.’

He leaned over her, thumping the mattress beside her. His calm, superior demeanour was gone and his eyes were wild, his skin blotchy with fury. It was as if the picture he kept locked in the attic had come to life, and here it was, confronting her. Breathing all over her.

‘I thought you were the one,’ he said, his voice loud in her ear, like he couldn’t control the volume. ‘You know how long I’ve been looking?’

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