Page 25 of A Murder is Going Down

‘He was inside the house with Elena the whole time, though.’

‘So he says. If he and Elena really did have a thing they’d cover for each other, right?’ Patrick says this with the confidence of someone who has watched too many police procedurals.

‘Someone would have seen something.’

‘Maybe they covered for Adam and Elena too?’

‘Do you think we—’ I stop when I see Patrick looking over my shoulder with an expression that suggests Elena’s whipped off her top and started to pole dance. I turn around just as he says, ‘Don’t turn around,’ and see Ben and Lilia walking into the living room. People turn to look at Lilia, the way they always do, and she does that annoyingly charming thing of being completely oblivious.

Torn between staying and fleeing, I panic and do theworst possible thing, which is to grab a piece of sushi off a nearby platter and cram it into my mouth. All this means is that my mouth is full of half-chewed rice, seaweed and avocado when Ben and Lilia arrive in front of me and I have to say hello.

Well, nothello, exactly.

‘What are you doing here?’ I ask, ignoring the rice that pings out of my mouth to land on the floor between us.

Lilia looks nervously at Ben, then back to me and finally at the rice. ‘Your aunt invited us,’ she says. ‘Didn’t you get my text?’

I don’t tell her I blocked her number after the funeral. I should probably unblock her to avoid exactly this scenario from happening again, but will I? (Spoiler: yes, but I’ll regret it.)

‘Heids, did you not know?’ Ben asks me. ‘I thought Aunty Sam would have checked with you first.’

I look around for Aunty Sam, who quite possibly shut herself in the pantry the moment she saw Ben and Lilia come in. ‘She didn’t.’

‘Oh,’ Lilia says.

‘I think she thought you could do with some friends around you,’ Ben says, reaching out so quickly I don’t have time to avoid his hand before it lands on my shoulder. My shoulder! He’s touched my boobs and now we’re on shoulder-patting terms. I want to upturn the sushi platterand disappear in a cloud of rice. Instead, I go for my default: being a bitch.

‘And instead she invitedyou?’ I say. The glorious thing about being unequivocally wronged is that you can get away with saying anything. (You can, right?)

‘Heidi, we’re so sorry,’ Lilia says.

‘You must be devastated.’

‘If we could talk about it, maybe I could explain?’

‘I’m really not sure what you could explain,’ I say, cold as the ice bath Lilia and I once climbed in together after a sauna. At the time, she’d joked about how I was the only person she’d get in an ice bath for.

‘Guys, this really isn’t the place,’ Patrick says impatiently. I’m grateful for the interruption, even if Patrick’s motivation is more about wanting to discuss whether anyone at this party murdered my brother than defending me. He glowers at Ben. ‘Cheating on Heidi was bad enough, but coming here might have been your second most stupid idea ever,’ he adds, which is bitchy and thrilling.

Ben takes a step back. ‘Sorry, who are you?’

‘This is Elena’s brother, Patrick,’ I say.

‘We’re here for Heidi,’ Ben says condescendingly to Patrick. ‘We’re her oldest friends.’

‘I think Heidi would really prefer if you weretherefor her,’ Patrick says. ‘As in: fuck off out ofhere. We’re in the middle of something.’

‘No offence,’ Ben says, in a way that means some offence, ‘but we don’t even know you.’

‘We want to try and make this right,’ Lilia says to me.

‘Then please leave,’ I say, emboldened by Patrick being an even bigger bitch than I am.

Lilia takes Ben’s arm to turn him around and Patrick winks at me.

‘Now where were we?’ Patrick says. Then, before I can say anything, he gets an idea and I’m the poor sucker who can see the car crash coming but is too late to stop it. ‘Wait,’ he says, and the hostility drains out of him like he’s had control of it the whole time. ‘Ben.’ He points at Ben. ‘Your dad was Felix’s doctor, right?’

‘Uh, right.’ Ben looks as surprised by this non sequitur as he should be.