Page 84 of A Murder is Going Down

Because I’m not ready to ask her what she means by that, I put my feet on the pedals and leave her standing on the footpath alone.

Now

‘This is getting old,’ Marianne says. ‘Get to the end of the story. Tell me why I’m here.’

If she’s going to insist.

Then

Lilia turns up five minutes before six, wearing her favourite jeans and holding a box of fancy chocolates – they’re supermarket fancy, but that’s still pretty fancy, because Lilia’s local supermarket is the kind with its own cheese counter. Her mum waves at me from the driver’s seat of her red hatchback and I wave back, because it wasn’t Lilia’s mum who stole my boyfriend. (That would be a whole other kind of weird, and likely permanently debilitating for my self-esteem.)

‘Hi,’ Lilia says, nervously. Sheshouldbe nervous.

Aunty Sam hugs Lilia like she’s a soldier back from the war and not a backstabbing friend who’s been rightfully banished. I feel betrayed until I remember that Aunty Sam doesn’t know I was railroaded into this. She probably thinksLilia and I have made up for real. She might even think I’m being mature (if only she knew).

I’m hoping to whisk Lilia straight into my room so I can listen to the recording and, ideally, return to the dinner table with an excuse to explain Lilia’s imminent departure. But there’s no opportunity for any of that: Aunty Sam drags us into the living room to ask Lilia what she’s been up to, pressing a glass of cold dry ginger ale into her hand and opening a bag of the fancy chips that only come out for guests or when Aunty Sam’s been drinking on an empty stomach.

Lilia manages to navigate the conversation without mentioning Ben, which is impressive really. She’s taken up roller derby, which is something the two of us talked about doing together, but I don’t react. At least, I try hard not to. Maybe my eye twitches a bit. Possibly my lip spasms. But these things are beyond my control. At any rate, I resist the temptation to leap to my feet, seize the dry ginger ale and throw it in her face. Progress!

In return, Lilia asks Aunty Sam what she’s been up to and I learn a few things I didn’t know because I never asked. Like the fact that Aunty Sam broke up with her boyfriend, Robert, while I was being miserable in Europe, because he admitted to voting conservative. I hadn’t even thought to ask what happened to him – I assumed he drifted away like most of them.

‘It was for the best,’ Aunty Sam says airily, waving her hand like she’s brushing Robert off the wind. ‘The age gap was becoming problematic.’ Robert was twenty-six to Aunty Sam’s forty-five, which would have made me dry-heave if their genders were reversed.

‘How so?’ Lilia cocks her head, and I can see her trying to catch my eye. Aunty Sam’s worryingly much-younger boyfriends have long been a source of amusement for us. I avoid her gaze and try not to feel guilty for being a self-obsessed arsehole who never bothers to ask Aunty Sam about her personal life.

‘He wanted kids,’ Aunty Sam says. ‘I’ve already got that.’ She looks up and smiles at me. Something turns over in my chest.

The front door bangs and Michael, Elena and Patrick come in, looking surprised to see that we have company, even though it was Elena who invited Lilia.

‘I’ll knock—’ Michael starts to say.

‘Great to see you again, Lilia,’ Elena interrupts him.

It’s crowded at the table with all of us squeezed around it, but that makes it easy not to speak.

Instead, I focus on my chickpea and kale stew, which is nicer than it sounds (wouldn’t it have to be?), as Elena talks about the latest terrible reality TV show on which she’s become hooked. The others all pretend to be too cool to have seen it, but their follow-up questions suggest otherwise.

‘I see your neighbours are selling,’ Lilia says politely to Aunty Sam, when the ethics of reality TV – and the wisdom of going bra-less on-screen – have been sufficiently chewed up as a topic.

‘Can’t be too sad about that,’ Aunty Sam says. ‘I know they were behind that noise complaint on my birthday.’

‘Michael saidyouwere thinking of selling too,’ I jump in, spying an opportunity.

‘No, no.’ Aunty Sam glares at Michael and then me. ‘I could never leave this house.’ Then she turns to Lilia, moving the conversation on. ‘It wasn’t even eleven o’clock and we got a knock on the door from the police, can you believe it?’

After dinner, Aunty Sam sends me to the kitchen with everyone’s dishes. I don’t realise Patrick’s followed me until I turn around and he’s right there. ‘Michael said you found my luggage tag,’ he says, just as I’m wondering if the small talk is going to be awkward.

‘Yeah.’

‘Why didn’t you just ask me about it?’ Patrick asks. He seems genuinely hurt.

I can’t sayin case you killed Felix, so I focus on loading dirty plates into the dishwasher. Patrick hesitates, then starts to help.

‘I should have told you,’ he says, ‘I’d been thinking about moving to Perth when I finished school.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Why do you look like I’ve ripped off my face to reveal another face that’s somehow more devilishly handsome?’ he asks.