‘And I know you have an inheritance, after your mum died. Kids who lose parents always do.’
Too much, Cora. Too far.
It’s like somebody has taken the wrong brick out in a game of Jenga and I am falling, toppling, away from normal boundaries.
I have weathered a lot, these years, these months, these last hours.
I have tried to be respectable.
Not any more.
Where did respectable get me?
In my house, threatened.
In Cora’s house, shivering and sodden.
Online, shamed.
Cora’s arm, which seemed so strong a few minutes ago, has been shoved from my neck and she is on the floor, me on top of her.
Why did I think that she controlled me?
I’m bigger than her, fitter. And I have been building up to something. Pounding the pavements wasn’t enough. I need an outlet and here it is in its cashmere pyjamas, glasses on.
‘Emma at least had some emotional reason for wanting to take me down,’ I hiss. ‘But you! Money. Just money. Money that you spent on dresses and your eyebrows and so much fucking white paint. And now you want more, so you think the best way is to blackmail your own friend.’
I am panting now, I’ve become the predator I had frozen for earlier.
I pause, arm across her mouth so she couldn’t answer me even if there was anything for her to say.
I am too angry to hear excuses that involve private schools and designer coffee tables.
The shaking that was from a chill earlier is with rage now, pure rage.
And I need to get it out.
‘I ask again actually – was Asha in on it too? Or just two of the people I spent most of my days with?’
An image pops in of seeing Asha that day, with Mitch. Was this a whole team thing, only me on the outside? Did they come for me, target me as a group?
But Cora shakes her head, her newly dyed hair – sure, you’re skint – splayed across her cream carpet like roadkill.
‘Well that’s one thing,’ I say, sarcastic. ‘Though I guess my odds of finding three utter bitches was low. Even two’s quite impressive.’
I hold on to her throat then, and I think about her body, warm in bed next to me when I slept over like we were fourteen, crashed out after too many melted Mars Bars.
The friendships I’ve made since I’ve had Poppy have been similar to those teenage ones: intense, emotional. Fast.
Cora tries to wrestle away but I’m stronger and I hold her down, down, down, until it becomes like a meditation, the pressing, the holding, against a body that is moving hard and desperate against me.
How long can you stay in the moment for, Scarlett, how long, how long, how long?
Cora struggles.
But I’ve entered a state of mindfulness.
Far superior to the apps.
Far better than anything I get loading the motherfucking endlessly whirring time-sucking dishwasher.
I could do this forever, I think.
After living in the past so much, after spending so much time thinking of how the future looks, I have never been more in the now.
My inheritance did exist. It went on a deposit for a flat rental in Chorlton. It went on buying my way out of an old life, into a new one. It came at the right time, me turning twenty-five, as I moved out of my dad’s after I went travelling and he saw that I was serious about being a grown-up. It set up my life. It went, the rest of it, into an ISA that I think now might let me get away again, from here. And she thinks I’m giving that up?
‘Does the money matter now, Cora?’ I ask as her eyes start to droop. ‘Does it matter this second?’
44
Scarlett
28 July
Then suddenly, I come out of my trance.
I picture Penelope, first, upstairs snoring lightly, tiny feet, soft pyjamas.
I see Cora’s face when she scoops her from the floor to go home after a playdate, loving her so much she could consume her.
I see my friend with a glass of champagne in her hand, laughing with me and laughing at herself as she is self-deprecating about her fanciness and her expensive tastes and I think that some of it was real, surely.
I see her with her head on her pillow, a little mascara smudged around those eyes that are now so scared.
How she had looked fifteen suddenly that morning under her duvet without her bright lipstick and her over-ironed hair and without her mouth set in its usual position, one that says defend before you’re attacked.
I look at her face below me.
She is a person.
She’s that person, and she’s this person. The different versions again.
And I am a person.
I am this person who is holding my arm across her neck, and I am that person who slept with her beneath her silk sheets.
And as I look at Cora’s face, which has started to lose some of the fight, my grip lessens.
When I let her go, she falls to one side, sobbing, scrabbling to get away from me. I don’t look back at her as I walk to the door and she opens the gate to let me out, locking the door with scrabbling fingers and those awful nails the second she can behind me.
It still pours down and I walk home, pick up the car, drive, taking wrong turns, still too drunk really, not stopping to cry, not stopping to focus. Until I remember: Ed’s brother and his family have moved and I have no idea where I’m heading to. Ed goes alone. Fuck. On the off chance, I check the sat nav history and it’s in there. Ed used this car when he went to see him last week. Ten minutes later I pull up outside Liam and Jaclyn’s new house.
I try to wipe some of the rainwater off me before I knock but it’s pointless.
I can’t clean myself even if I want to.
Now the shock has worn off I realise I am freezing and I shake uncontrollably
