Page 37

It’s taken me a while to come back to this. It… wasn’t the most comfortable thing, telling you about Kit Frankland, and I felt like I wanted to stop right after I started.

To be honest, it’s not the most comfortable thing to think about, either. The whole situation makes me feel like I’m almost what you thought I was.

I’d seduced him. By accident, sure. But when I realised what had happened, I didn’t back away. I felt weirdly triumphant, because now maybe he’d tell me things that he really shouldn’t.

You’d do anything, wouldn’t you? Charm anyone, sleep with anyone, betray anyone…

I remember your face when you said that. I don’t know if you remember. It was in a whole slew of stuff you slung at me before you left.

But honestly, Reid, I don’t think anyone else has ever managed to hurt me that badly. Not the high-school boyfriend who casually told me he was sleeping with someone else; not the probable narcissist I met on a job who love-bombed me and then ghosted me.

I didn’t understand how you could be saying any of those words. When what I was telling you was that I was going to keep fighting for you, and for Tanya. When I was being absolutely honest with you, and always had been.

And I want to tell the truth about this, too. Or at least write it down.

What’s happened with Kit has felt like the only thing I could do. Because as much as you’ll have trouble believing this, it isn’t the story that I want: it’s justice. For Holly and Tanya’s killer to be jailed, and for no other girls like them to die.

OK. I guess if you’re still reading, then that’s something.

Though maybe you’ll stop kind of soon. Because the next part might actually be… worse.

In the three days since Kit rescued me, I haven’t had to see Ryan once, which has been a relief.

The day after it happened, Kit drove me, as promised, to London.

I’d worked hard to make sure I knew exactly where he should take me to meet up with the other Olympic rowing hopefuls, and that I had exactly the right equipment with me to look like someone who was injured but was hopeful I might still be able to train.

I left him at the entrance to the boathouse and walked in as if I belonged there, promising I’d call if I needed picking up.

I then brazened it out, heading up the staircase and in, and sat on my phone for a good twenty minutes amid an increasing number of rowers going in and out for a weights session until somebody asked me if I was OK.

I grinned at her and said I was there for physio, and nobody seemed to pay me any attention after that.

Forty-five minutes later, I messaged Kit to tell him that I was on light duties but cleared to at least train and asked if he wanted to hang on for an hour or head home.

He immediately replied that he was happy to wait and so I dumped my bag in the gym and went for a hobbling, uncomfortable run down the bank until I’d built up enough of a sweat to look like someone who’d been erg training for an hour and then hung around outside until he came to pick me up.

Aside from a couple of athletes commenting on my bruised, swollen leg in a curious and sympathetic way, now that it was extremely obvious under my rowing Lycra, nobody accosted me, and I was able to get back into his ridiculous silver Bugatti and tell him a load of fabricated nonsense about the physio session on the way home.

It made me feel weirdly guilty to do all this when he was putting himself out for me, squeezing the trip in before his own training when he really ought to have been studying.

But any time I started to feel bad I’d remind myself about Holly and Tanya, and then about the reason my leg was swollen and bruised, and then about the photographs someone had taken of me.

I’m not the one with the biggest secrets , I told myself more than once. And if lying to Kit helps me work out who killed them, I’m willing to do it.

Since then, Kit has arranged to meet me alone several times, or with Esther and James.

He has also avoided the topic of Ryan entirely in each and every formation.

Which has been welcome, but has also made me start to suspect that he hasn’t actually done anything, despite promising to.

I’m beginning to think he’s just avoiding an argument until everything blows over, as if Ryan and I had just had a falling-out instead of him committing a major sexual assault.

Esther’s response has been, in contrast, both kind and touching. I didn’t see her until she’d finished her final exam on Friday, the day after the attack, but she still took the time to message me the morning after it happened.

Kit told me what Ryan did. I’m really, really sorry, darling. I don’t give a shit that he’s my friend, that’s so not ok. I’m here for you if you need me. Xx

It was a lot less diplomatic than I would have expected, and when I saw her in person she had every reason to be full of post-exam distraction, but she still hugged me fiercely and asked, ‘Are you doing OK?’

‘I’m OK,’ I told her, and gave her a squeeze back. ‘Thank you.’

When she let me go it was to look searchingly at me for a long moment. Then she said, ‘They get away with so much, don’t they?’

It was a strange, startling thing to say.

I wanted to ask her what she meant– ask her if she meant Ryan and Kit and James, or someone else.

But Kit arrived at that point, fresh from his training for the summer’s big rugby tour to Japan, and Esther assembled her face into a flawless smile as she caught sight of him.

I realised that I needed to talk to her properly. After what happened with Ryan, I’d lost sight of Esther, and of the secret boyfriend I’d guessed she had. Of her own secrets beyond that.

It occurred to me, suddenly, that of all of them, Esther was the one I’d most easily believe would leave photographs like that, and a note. She was the patient, watchful, sometimes unnoticed one.

I felt myself drawing back from her at the thought.

‘Hey, you,’ Kit said, coming to hug me, too. Despite the fact that he’d only seen me three hours before when he’d dropped me home from London, it was a long, lingering hug that ended on a held gaze.

‘Hey,’ I said, feeling blood rush to my face in a not-that-professional manner.

I realised that Esther was watching us with that same polished smile but that one of her hands was rhythmically clenching and relaxing.

Kit turned to her at that point and slung his arm round her. ‘How was it?’

Esther stopped squeezing her hand closed and tucked her hair behind her ear. ‘Honestly, I’m not sure. For now, I’m just glad it’s done. I’ll have all of tonight to relive everything I did wrong.’

‘I stan that,’ Kit said. ‘Picnic at the Mill Pond?’

‘Perfect,’ Esther said.

It turned into a strange evening, where I felt like I was the central point in some bizarre triangle.

Kit was so clearly hyper-aware of me and finding every excuse possible to be near me or touch me or make me laugh.

It was an electric, zinging kind of flirtation that made me feel I had to be on my toes.

What was stranger, though, was the way Esther seemed to want my attention and touch, too, in a softer, more comfort-craving way. She would sit with my arm drawn round her or her shoulder leaning into mine. At times she even lay with her head on my legs, looking tired and kind of sad.

Although there were two of us there and Kit was her long-term friend and flatmate, she often seemed like she was talking exclusively to me. It felt that way when she asked, ‘Were you nervous the whole way through your finals? Just terrified?’

I laughed. ‘Hell, yes. And I had more reason to be. I’d screwed up on the work side. Too much rowing… and I didn’t cope very well with all the crap that went with rowing.’ I squeezed her arm. ‘You’ve got this so much more under control.’

‘I don’t think I have,’ Esther said, and there was no trace of the cool, together young woman I’d first met at that party. She sounded vulnerable. Lost. ‘I’m not clever enough for this stuff and I… I find my brain just sliding off it.’

‘You’re plenty clever enough,’ Kit said, firmly. ‘It’s just not what you wanted to do. This is what happens when you force someone into a subject that doesn’t suit them.’

I looked at Esther. ‘What did you want to do?’

‘Biology,’ she said, quietly. ‘Nat Sci. It’s… I’ve never been good at essays. But I love lab time, and even programming and modelling’s OK.’

It’s weird how, in that moment, I felt really sorry for her, Reid. That rich, beautiful young woman who seemed to have it all.

‘Could you do a postgrad?’

Esther grimaced. ‘Mummy would… Honestly, there’s no way. I need to find a job, as soon as possible.’

‘Oh,’ Kit said. ‘I… so the one you were looking at…?’

‘I didn’t get through the last round,’ Esther said, tightly.

‘Well, they’re idiots,’ Kit said, then added, squeezing up close on Esther’s other side and putting an arm round her, ‘Sorry, E. You’ll get something amazing. And you know, someday soon, you’re going to be free of that woman, and you’re going to fly.’

‘Thanks, Kit,’ Esther said. But she had the dull expression of someone who didn’t believe it.

‘Have another gin,’ he said after that, and got to his feet.

We’d brought food and a few cans with us from the central Marks and Spencer, but had then been taking it in turns to go to the Mill pub and bring drinks out.

It was only once Kit had crossed the grass and gone out of earshot that Esther suddenly said to me, ‘I really don’t want Ryan to ruin anything.

It’s the best having you here. Things have been so shit. ’

She started studying the grass, as though embarrassed to say this to my face, but she still kept one hand twined through mine.

‘You mean since Holly?’ I tried.

Esther nodded, and then said, ‘I’ve had literally nobody to talk to.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I told her. ‘Tell me stuff. I’m here.’

‘I…’ She looked away from me. ‘It’s hard to…’