Page 5

I stand in our foyer with no memory of driving home. Nervous energy pings across my chest.

Today was meant to be a me day. I was going to have a long bath. No one is home. No need to pretend I’m working at the gallery.

But Georgia Smith is back.

I should call Tristan.

But no. It can wait till tonight. The universe has given me a day home alone and I’d say now I deserve it more than ever.

Dan has left a coffee cup on the sideboard and I return it to Tristan’s kitchen, then sneak upstairs to borrow some of Mina’s bubble bath.

Who knew Chanel made bubble bath? And while I’m here, maybe I’ll borrow this anti-aging cream. I’m sure Mina won’t miss it – I’ve never heard of Helena Rubinstein anyway.

Sitting by the bath is one of Tristan’s old toy battleships. It must not have been played with in half a decade. I brush cobwebs from the portholes, remembering when Mother used to bathe us in here together, our voices echoing against the tiles, and then the next generation: Ash and Ava sharing this same little ship with Jenna, losing it in the bubbles, committing stealth attacks on unsuspecting legs.

It was only when Tristan’s political career stepped up about eight years ago that we all disentangled ourselves from the main house. He started having to entertain a lot. The people Mother and Father got to convert the barn revamped the lodge too. Dan and I are saving to redo the extension.

At the thought of Dan my stomach clenches and I push him out of my head. I scurry back to our side of the house, set up Netflix on my laptop at the end of the bath as water thunders in. The tub’s enamel is chipped and stained with rust but soon it’s covered in sumptuous bubbles and I breathe in the cloud of orange, rose and musk.

I’ve been doing so well, but as I sit still, the skin on my neck begins to itch and my mind wanders…

Georgia Smith. That makes sense, doesn’t it? The stolen card, the mysterious firing, the scratched car… even Dan and his affair.

If anyone were going to try to destroy me, it would be Georgia Smith.

The woman in the photo wasn’t Georgia though. I don’t think so anyway – she had skinny arms and blonde hair. I didn’t spend long looking at it; just quickly stuffed it in the bin under the desk – but somehow she’s behind all of it. She must be.

Stop it, Frances. No need to torture yourself. Focus on the now.

I dip my hand in the water: almost hot enough to take off the top layer of skin. I strip and climb in. All the blood rushes to my head and for a moment I think I might pass out. I sink right under.

Focus. Toes, ankles, calves…I check in with every part of me.

It’s no use though. I can’t keep her out of my head.

Georgia Smith.

We were best friends once. I remember laughing with her over hot chocolates on blustery days, climbing onto the roof in the summer and talking till the sun came up, waiting by the phone after dinner then hiding in the laundry, the phone’s curly wire stretched straight, all the way down the corridor.

Our families became entwined. In the summer we would follow the coast and take picnics. In the winter we would trudge along hedgerows. I loved those long walks. Only Georgia’s father Patrick could motivate my father into wellies and out across the fields, along the cliffs, scrambling over rocks, past signs that demanded no trespassing.

Wednesdays and weekends meant dinner at theirs or ours. The rooms would fill with laughter, and Tristan, Georgia and I would raise our eyebrows at each other as too much wine was drunk and then someone would make some excuse for Patrick to play something – a piano concerto, a violin sonata, or something modern on his guitar with his hair falling in his eyes as he sang.

Sometimes, Georgia would join him, and I would feel something like pride swelling – that was my friend making that angelic sound.

And then… and then everything fractured.

My stomach clenches. That woman is teaching at my sweet baby girl’s school.

The bath has gone cold. I let out some water and run the hot tap again. I’m not sure how many episodes of Friends have played but there’s a message asking if I want to go on watching. I close the laptop.

I remember, after that terrible day, how the fear ran down my throat and sat eating my stomach every time I saw Georgia’s dark hair in class. I remember her face, twisted with hate, the last time I saw her.

But that was thirty years ago. Maybe she’s no longer a threat. Maybe I’m being ridiculous and all of these little things are just coincidences.

Breathe, Frances. You can’t alter the past. You can’t control the future. People change, and she wasn’t always your enemy.

I remember further back, holding hands with Georgia, teetering across a branch over a stream. We were like sisters. I think in some way she held a kind of power over me, and it was only after that summer that I realised she wasn’t good for me, that there was something very wrong with Georgia Smith and her family.