Page 7 of A Murder is Going Down

‘You look it.’

‘Sorry, did someone say, “Thanks for your support, Patrick?” It’s hard to tell over the panpipe music.’

‘This is whatsupportlooks like, is it?’

Something in me aches at their easy sibling banter. (Isbanterallowed at funerals?) I never had any of that with Felix.

‘There you are!’ Aunty Sam has found us. She exchanges cheek-kisses with Elena (they’ve always got along, despite the Felix of it all) and gives me a shoulder squeeze that I think is supposed to be comforting but actually hurts a bit (she’sstrong). She stops when she gets to Patrick. ‘Patrick,’ she says slowly.

‘I’m so sorry for your loss,’ he says. Clearly, Patrick can do polite when the moment requires it.

Aunty Sam is still staring at him; it’s not like her to be bothered by rumpled plane clothes or whatever is going on with Patrick’s hair. A beat passes and she remembers her smile. ‘Thank you.’ She turns to me. ‘Heidi, you remember Mrs Craven?’ At first, I have no idea who she’s even talking about, then Aunty Sam steps to the side so I can see the older woman standing behind her. Neither her silvering cropped hair nor her friendly smile look remotely familiar. But her (let’s be real, entirely awesome) last name helps me place her.

‘I used to babysit you after school,’ Mrs Craven says, confirming my memory is not completely cooked.

‘Right. Thanks for coming.’ I’m surprised to see her. It’s not like she got to know Felix particularly well; at eighteen,he didn’t need a babysitter and would only come over to Mrs Craven’s house to pick me up and scrounge some free snacks. (Aunty Sam never trusted him to look after me for long after the time he locked me in her ensuite.)

‘Felix was always such a spirited boy.’

‘Uh huh,’ I say, recalling, all in a flash, more than I’d care to about Mrs Craven’s house and what Felix liked to do to her pet cat when Mrs Craven was distracted fetching us muesli bars and tiny packets of Twisties. ‘We were total nightmares, from what I remember.’

‘Kids will be kids,’ she says, so I guess Mr Wuffles recovered. I’m not really paying attention anyway, because I’ve spotted Lilia and Ben over her shoulder.

It’s somy lifethat they’re five minutes too late to see me cracking up guests with my gags and just in time for the awkward small talk with my old babysitter, who smells like kitty litter.This fucking day, I think, then immediately realise I’ve said it out loud. ‘Sorry.’

‘Would you like a cup of tea, Frances?’ Aunty Sam asks loudly, steering Mrs Craven in the direction of the big silver urn.

‘What was she like as a babysitter?’ Elena asks politely, but there’s no time to answer, because, like a pair of cartoon villains, Lilia and Ben have somehow zoomed across the room at double speed and are standing at the edge of the group, awaiting acknowledgement of their presence.

Lilia’s always been beautiful, but today she’s practicallyglowing. (And if she’s somehow pregnant, I’m also going to climb into that coffin with Felix. Stealing my boyfriend is one thing, getting knocked up by him quite another.)

‘Heidi,’ Lilia says, looking nervous. She should.

‘Heids,’ Ben says. He’s the only person who calls me Heids. I smile at them both, closed-lipped, but say nothing. ‘We’re so sorry for your loss.’

Thewe’relands likes he’s spat it. I look at Lilia and can see her realisation that coming here was a mistake. We’ve been best friends since Year 4 when we bonded over being the only girls in our class who weren’t invited to Stella’s birthday party and convinced ourselves we were too cool for her anyway. (We were not too cool for anyone, then or now.)

‘We won’t intrude,’ Lilia says quickly, smooth as an anti-frizz serum. ‘I just wanted to see you.’

I notice theIeven if nobody else does.

Ben doesn’t know how to read Lilia, not the way I do, because he’s still talking. ‘It’s been too long,’ he says.

That’s your fault, I try to say with my eyes, because I know he’ll never say it.

‘That’s my fault,’ he adds, which is just rude.

‘I’ve been in Switzerland,’ I say, which is not imparting any new information to either of them. Lilia pulled outof the exchange after she and Ben finally got around to telling me they’d been hooking up behind my back over the summer holidays and, by the way, I was dumped. Times two. Presumably she’d felt there was a non-zero chance I might murder her in her sleep if we were trapped in the same bedroom together for several months. I don’t know what Lilia told the school or our host family to explain her absence, but I’m sure it wasn’t the truth. ‘This is Elena and Patrick,’ I say. And then: ‘This is Lilia and her, uh, Ben.’

‘I think we met at Christmas,’ Ben says to Elena, pleasantly.

Elena perks up a bit, like she’s just placed him, and I know what’s going to happen, but it’s too late to stop it. ‘Heidi’s boyfriend!’ She smiles. ‘Sorry, it took me a minute.’

How very like Aunty Sam to fail to fill Elena in on the most basic facts about my life. Patrick throws me a look and mouths,Boyfriend?

The silence is … not good.

‘Not anymore,’ I say when I can’t endure it. ‘He’s Lilia’s boyfriend now.’