Mystery in Paradise

4. Fallout

It was none of my business. Probably someone had had too much to drink and something had tipped them over the edge. Maybe they'd got into an argument with Amber or had a fight with their best friend or broken up with their significant other or something like that, and they were just getting it out of their system, so they'd gone into the dunes where nobody else would be to do that in private. I'd only heard because I was walking past. It was nothing to do with me. I couldn't even be sure that it was crying that I'd heard. It could just as easily have been the wind in the not-too-distant trees.

To satisfy myself that it was indeed the wind, I stopped walking for a moment.

A low sob rose over the dunes, stifled but audible, followed by a voice too soft for me to make out what it was saying. It sounded like a voice trying to be reasonable. A drunk friend and a sober one. Nothing to do with me. I could just walk on.

Or...

A few steps towards the dunes, I stopped. Wasn't this exactly what Brooke had just been talking about? Going looking for drama?

My mind swam, hazy with alcohol. Fuck that. Brooke had her opinions, I had mine. And anyway, I wasn't going to be nosy. I was going to help. One reasonable voice was all very well, but two would be better.

Getting to a place where I could see what was going on before I stormed in was difficult in my inebriated state and with the sand slipping under my feet, but I made it up the dune eventually. Then I stopped, surprised.

Cassie, tear-stained, her hair hanging disorganised around her shoulders, was sitting hunched over below me. She was still in her gold spangled extravaganza. Alex sat opposite her, muttering soothingly. I froze, in case they'd seen me, but they just carried on.

"...must have just been a mistake..."

Cassie sniffed. "She's horrible! Tom should never have let her here at all, I'm going to go and see Wilbur tomorrow and ask him to send a message on." She sagged even lower. "But...but...you heard what she said!"

"People say stupid things when they're drunk."

"The things they're too scared to say when they're sober, and if she was thinking it...they're probably all laughing and agreeing she was right, you know. They'll be saying so many things..."

"You don't know that."

Not for the first time, I admired Alex's demeanour. Cassie's voice was getting higher and higher, clearly approaching tears again, and they just sat there and spoke calmly and confidently. It was calming me down by proxy.

"They will though, they will. And I've been trying so hard to make things good for everybody and make sure everybody's busy and happy and then there was Joseph and Marcus - everybody loves Marcus, they'll have been listening to him, he'll be saying all sorts..."

She let out a wail and dropped her head into her lap.

Alex put a hand on her shoulder. "Cass, we've talked about this before. Not everybody is going to like you."

"They won't now!" she sobbed. "They'll all hate me, and I've tried so hard..."

"I know."

"I don't know why Tom even let her here, he said he wanted this to be a happy community place!"

"I know."

"She's awful!"

"I know." Alex paused, waiting for another outburst that didn't come, then made a futile attempt to put one of her plaits back into place. When they failed, they tried to get her back to her feet. "Come on. It's time we went home. This'll all look different in the morning- Oh!"