Page 134 of Good Girls Lie

This momentary reprieve allows me to gather my thoughts, decide where to start the story.

The sheriff comes in, blustery and furious, his niece fast on his heels.

“What the hell is going on?”

“We’re making a cup of tea,” the dean says, sounding almost calm. But when she turns to hand me the cup, she looks terrified, and the sheriff is staring at me like I have an ax in my hand.

“Talk,” he says.

I talk.

JULY

Oxford, England

80

THE PLOT

From the front window of the shop, I see Ashlyn coming down the street, swinging her bag, her Dr. Martens covered in mud. She’s hiked across their fields to town again.

Oxford is busy today, packed with tourists come to see the colleges, to wander in the footsteps of C.S. Lewis, walk in the spots featured in the Harry Potter movies and theDiscovery of Witchesshow, and otherwise soak up the cultural and architectural goodness the city has to offer. And they all want a proper British tea; the shop’s been hopping since breakfast.

Ashlyn looks haunted today, hollowed out, as if she’s been getting high and forgetting to eat again. I recognize the look: my mum, Gertie, spends all her downtime on the couch in our flat above the shop, smoking, snorting, popping, and otherwise ingesting any escape from the drudgery of our life she can steal or trick. The two of them probably have the same dealer—a right arsehole named Kevin, red hair sprouting from his chin but bald as an egg otherwise, who hangs around the tea shop passing out glassine packs to the area addicts.

I can’t help the sigh. Ashlyn has been more and more erratic lately, bursting with grandiose plans and hidden conspiracies. Does her father pound on her a bit, absolutely. Do I feel sorry for her? Maybe, sometimes. Mum’s drug-addled but loves me, though I don’t know what it would be like to live in anything but perpetual squalor.

Ashlyn has everything, the whole world at her feet. Money. Beauty. Intelligence—when she’s not high, that is. Parents who stay out of her way. If she would just shut up and put up with it, go to school, stop getting in her father’s face all the time, provoking him, she could have the world. Twenty-five is the magical age for Ashlyn. She’ll come into her substantial inheritance and can bugger off and never look back. Why she doesn’t keep her head down is beyond me. If I were in her place, I’d do everything they asked. I’d love to go to school, to get a real education, not be stuck in this fucking chip shop with an addict mother and absent father.

Instead, Ashlyn sticks it to Damien every chance she gets. Which is why she needs me.

It’s a good thing I have a knack for computers. The money’s all right, I’ve been able to hide some from Mum and start thinking about what I want to do in the inevitable time to come—as much as I hate to admit it, Mum will overdo it one day, no doubt. I’ll be stuck with the flat, scraping to make the rent with my shifts in the shop and wallowing in the irony that I stand outside the walls of the colleges, watching the students term in and term out, and I will never have a chance to attend. Oxford is bloody expensive, too expensive for my blood.

But without the money Ashlyn gives me to make Damien Carr’s life a living hell, and a real influx of cash, I’m stuck. Forever stuck.

Ashlyn takes the table by the window. I bring her a pot of tea and a scone, clotted cream and jam on the side. Ashlyn smiles charmingly, showing the empty spot on the back left where she lost a molar a couple of weeks back, courtesy of her father’s incredible temper.

“Sit down. Take a load off.”

“I don’t have time today, Ash. Mum’s not feeling well, I’m running the shift alone.”

“Don’t worry, I don’t want you to do anything. I need to talk to you.”

Her eyes are wild, bloodshot, but happy. There’s such an edge of insanity in this girl. I’ve seen it in her from the start, from the first day I was aware of her. Little Johnny’s funeral will always be imprinted on my mind; it was the day my mother told me the whole story, the truth about our lives.

You can’t ever speak a word of this. But if something ever happens to me, Alexandria, you go to them. Tell them to test your blood. They will take care of you.

I hadn’t fully understood, not then. Not until I was much older, and my mother had lost herself in drugs and memories of the life she could have had if only she’d been born to the right sort of people.

The resemblance between us is remarkable, considering. How Ashlyn’s never seen it as more than a fluke of nature, I will never know. But why would she? I am the daughter of a junkie. I work in a tea and chip shop. She is the daughter of wealth and privilege.

Never the twain shall meet, unless the former is serving the latter.

I remember, at the funeral, watching Ashlyn edging around the somber people, staring at the grave, laughing at the wrong times, putting her little hand into open pockets, working the crowd. Even then, inappropriate actions were her mandate.

Now, after extensive research, I know Ashlyn probably has a serious untreated borderline personality disorder. But unpredictable as she is, Ashlyn is the closest thing to a friend I have. And when she’s being pleasant, watch out. She can charm the larks from the sky.

“Where’s your mum?”