The Things We Do to Our Friends(92)

I’m sure I didn’t know at the time that smothering was hard to detect under autopsy. I was just lucky.

A final breath and then nothing.

Dina and Adrienne watched, and I could see they were both crying.

I said we needed to call someone. An adult needed to sort the whole thing out for us because there was nothing more we could do.

More crying, but it was confusion and exhaustion at this point. They asked me why I’d done it, although they could barely get the words out through their tears. My anger hadn’t gone away at this point. It was still there—hot and black, sticky like treacle, ready for me to inflict on them.

I told them both: “I did it for you.”

It was always for them, to punish them, to show them, to finish what we started.

“Tu es folle,” Adrienne said simply. You’re crazy.

They didn’t really understand. Said they were going to “tell on me.” How childish it sounds, to tell on someone. Those were the words they used. It was Adrienne who said it, and I grabbed her wrist and bent it back, not enough to break a bone, but enough so she screamed out in pain. She pulled away from me and I saw how scared she was.

I wanted to explain to them that they’d caused it all, that there was really nothing I could have done about it. Not once the wheels were in motion. The need to show them, to impress them, to stay part of their threesome, and finally to scare them. Everything had come together in a singularly perfect event. I wasn’t nervous, and I wasn’t out of it that night in France, not drunk or messy. At the time, I felt all the nerve endings, mind and body perfectly in tune.



* * *



—

“No. It was their fault,” I said to my mother.

She moved away from me to create more distance between us.

My mother in her cramped little room, with the damp seeping up the walls. That night she locked me away, and it was very dark and very cold. I had realized by then that my parents felt much safer when there was a locked door between us.

My final night before I moved to England.

I slept well.





For D





Acknowledgments


Firstly, thank you to my wonderful agent, Emily Glenister, for believing in this book right from the very start. I am also eternally thankful to my brilliant editors, Victoria Moynes and Jesse Shuman.

Thank you to the rest of the team: Lydia Fried, Harriet Bourton, Ellie Hudson, Hayley Cox, Olivia Mead, Amelia Evans, Monique Corless, Catherine Turner, Annie Underwood, Emma Brown, Charlotte Daniels, Meredith Benson, Sam Fanaken, Rachel Myers, Eleanor Rhodes Davies, Kyla Dean, Tineke Mollemans, Riannah Donald, Linda Viberg and Maddy Bennett, Karen Whitlock, Bela Cunha, and Anne Cook. In the U.S., thank you to Anne Speyer and Elana Seplow-Jolley for their sage editorial contributions. Also, thanks to Jennifer Hershey, Kim Hovey, Kara Welsh, Maya Franson, Kathleen Quinlan, and Corina Diez.

The following people helped enormously along the way. In Edinburgh, I am indebted to Louise, Sarah, Lucie, Natasha, Rose, Georgie. Also, Graham for the photographs, everyone at Mallzee, and in particular Mel, Cally, Catriona, and Rachelle. Thank you to Cathy and the Pyes for weekends spent at Rednock over the years, and thank you to early readers Richard Wilson and Barbara Wray. Thank you also to Alice Green, Graham Bartlett, Sarah Lansley, Richard Howell, and Raymond Wray.

I’ve met so many new friends who have always been around to generously answer questions and quell anxiety, like Niamh Hargan, as well as the CBC Creative gang and the incredible Debut ’22 and ’23 communities—too many deeply supportive people to name but you know who you are.

Finally, massive thanks to Liv, Sonia, Vicky, James, and Andy, who made my time in Edinburgh worth remembering.

Noelle Darwent, Melissa Darwent, Neil Darwent, for their ongoing support, love, and care.

And Daniel, who helped so much with plot and character and speaker systems. You built a house around me while I wrote this book from the sofa—I appreciate it and you.