We Were Just Kids

Chapter Originals

Chapters

34

Read time

2 hrs

Heat

Steamy

Status

Finished

Emil Zawadzki left school at seventeen with a mouth that needed rebuilding and a mother in the ground, and the five people who put him there went to university, got on, and agreed among themselves that it had all been a long time ago. Eleven years later he is somebody worth knowing — the accent sanded off, the name shortened, the money loud enough to be forgiven with — and when he offers them his lodge in the Cairngorms for a long weekend in February, every one of them says yes, because saying yes is easier than remembering why they might not. The road up is closed behind them by four o'clock. The landline goes with the snow, as it does every year, which is why he asked them for February. The first death looks like an accident. So does the second. By the time they understand that it is neither, there are three of them left and eleven miles of white between the door and anybody who could help, and Emil has been waiting eleven years and is in no hurry at all.