Lily gave her friend a crooked smile. ‘You dare me?’
‘Ask her for her secret.’
She pushed back her chair. ‘All right. Watch this.’
Gail watched in something close to awe as Lily bounced through the crowd at the bar, apologized to the man Sophie was talking to and brazenly introduced herself. She was one of those people in whom complete strangers took delight. She was gone for twenty minutes, during which time Gail could only sit fiddling with her phone, trying to look like she hadn’t been dumped. When Lily finally came back Gail found herself craning forward, desperate for answers.
‘So what did she say?’
‘Oh—I promised her I won’t tell anyone else,’ Lily said.
‘But you’ll tell me, right?’
‘Not where she can see. Later.’
But Gail forgot to ask and Lily did not offer to tell her.
* * *
—
The first time they were insulted, or at least conscious of someone being rude about them, Lily and Gail were having a few glasses of cava in celebration of Lily’s promotion. They were on their second bottle in a Notting Hill wine bar when Lily accidentally dropped her door keys down the side of the very high bench seat from which they were dangling their legs. It was dark in the corner of the pub, so she got to her feet and tried to move the bench aside.
‘They’ve gone behind the panel.’ She pointed to the hardboard sheet that lined the bottom of the wall. ‘I can’t reach them. You’ll have to stand up and give me a hand.’ She bent back the panel and held her phone torch over the gap. ‘I can see them. They’ve gone behind some wiring. Hold this end.’
Gail held on to the corner of the panel and Lily reached behind, but the panel came away in Gail’s hands and Lily pulled up a dusty cluster of cables instead of her keys and the music went off and the lights went out, and the barman shouted, ‘Ladies, don’t touch anything, let me do it,’ and came over and did something that got the lights and the music working again, and handed Lily back the keys. Under his breath he said something about housewives not being able to hold their alcohol.
‘What did you just say?’ Lily angrily snapped back.
The barman was Australian, about twenty-one, lean and attractive. He studied her with amusement and said, ‘You pulled the bloody wiring out of the junction box.’
‘We’re not housewives,’ Lily said. ‘We could drink you under the table.’
‘You’ve already had two bottles, love.’ He nodded knowingly at his mate behind the bar. ‘Maybe you should eat something.’
‘Really? Eat this.’ Lily reached down and pulled the cables clean out of the wall, killing everything. Power, lights, all off. And then she was off out of the door, heading down the street with Gail following in horrified admonishment.
* * *
—
The next time they met up Lily sat opposite her in Balthazar shredding a napkin into teardrop-sized pieces, and Gail knew there were going to be problems aired before either of them could settle down.
‘I’ve broken up with Bruno,’ said Lily. ‘He’s supposed to be finishing his documentary but he just sits around playing video games and smoking dope. Anyway, who’s going to watch another angry diatribe about factory farming? I caught him stealing from me. I noticed my purse magically emptying out whenever it was left in his flat and confronted him. End result, he decided I was too old for him.’
‘He was very cute,’ Gail said, desperately searching for something positive to say.
‘So is my shower curtain, and that has a practical function. I should have listened to you. I want to be equal partners with a grown-up, not mother to a man-child.’
‘Me, too,’ Gail agreed. ‘At least you had someone. I’ve given up looking.’
‘Oh, did I tell you? My boss just announced that he’s looking for a new team member to head the European store rollout.’ She always did this when she was stressed, skipping subjects or picking up on something they had been talking about when they were last together.
Gail thought it over. ‘He’ll have to offer you the job first, won’t he?’
‘He doesn’t have to do anything. He’ll bring someone in on a trial basis, and then decide who gets the role. I speak business French and Italian so I should land it, but…’ She let the thought trail away. ‘So I bought a bikini to make myself feel better, but I know I look ridiculous in it because there’s this fold-thing above my navel.’
As Gail listened to her friend’s disjointed chatter she got the strangest feeling, as if she should be fearful for her, as if something terrible could happen and there wouldn’t be anything she could do to stop it.
‘What’s really going on?’ she asked. ‘You’re holding something back. You’re usually the most indiscreet person I know.’ It was true; they would go for a drink and Lily would gather acolytes simply by being open with them. When they were in their twenties Gail and Lily would go out on a Saturday night and Lily would end up dragging around a South American musician, a pair of gay Egyptian comedy performers, a Spanish graffiti artist, or some tortured writer with a chip on his shoulder. She collected exotics because she was smart and bored.
Lily remained silent for a long time, and finally mumbled something that Gail didn’t catch.
‘Say again?’
‘I said I cannot keep this up.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘All this—running around. I’m not young anymore.’
‘Are you going to overreact to every birthday you have? Because it won’t get easier. You’re not even forty yet.’
Lily studied herself in her phone screen. ‘You know the biggest lie they tell you? That you can have it all. Nobody can have it all. Something always has to be sacrificed.’
‘What are you prepared to sacrifice?’ asked Gail.
‘I want to have children. I want to keep my job. I want a cigarette.’
‘You gave up smoking five years ago.’ Gail awkwardly changed the subject. ‘How’s your mother doing?’
After Lily’s mother retired from being a GP she grew difficult, and their relationship had become ever more strained. Three years earlier she had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.
‘When I think back, it’s obvious now that she’d been suffering memory loss,’ Lily said, ‘but we both pretended it wasn’t happening. Now I’m the only one who can help her, but she’ll barely let me near her. She’s going to die telling the nurses I ruined her life.’
‘That’s not going to happen to you.’ Gail tried to sound reassuring.
Lily was hiding behind even more makeup than usual, as if frightened of letting anyone see who she really was. ‘I think there comes a point when you start to see the shape of your life,’ she said. ‘I have to stop pretending to myself. Bruno’s gone, I’ll take care of my mother until she no longer knows who I am, I’ll try to get a better job and fail. I won’t be the girl by the water lilies anymore, I’ll be the woman at the window, the one who takes her time at the shops, the one who thinks of her television as a friend.’
‘I can’t take all this melodrama tonight,’ Gail warned impatiently. ‘You don’t believe any of this, either. Stop feeling so sorry for yourself.’
‘I may have ovarian cancer. I had a pain in my stomach; I felt full up all the time. They found two lumps, one small, one larger. I’ll know in a day or so.’ Lily blurted it out, and Gail was astonished that she would share anything else, everything else, before this far more important piece of news.
She did not know what to say, and fell back on meaningless consolations.
Lily brightened a little later, and even ended the evening by coercing the waiter to be in their laughing photographs.
* * *
—
When Lily’s phone went straight
to voicemail, Gail realized that she had been taken in for the operation. The urgency of the treatment presaged what was to come; although the surgery was successful, she would never be able to have children. Gail stayed with her through the healing process. Lily’s useless boyfriend returned and surprised everyone by briefly pulling his weight, but as soon as she felt better he found something more pressing to do that involved smoking industrial quantities of weed and blowing up soldiers on another planet. A few days later he disappeared to a music festival with a Scandinavian waitress.
Gail moved to four and a half rooms situated on the ground floor of a large terraced house in Dalston that had been subdivided into too many apartments. When she discovered that the previous owner had gone mad and died in the place she decided to have the interior ripped out and repainted, with pale wood floors and white walls. Just before the work began she invited Lily over, knowing that she would be full of ideas for the kitchen.
‘You’ve got enough room to put in a central counter with a hob and a breakfast bar.’
‘You really think there’s space for that?’
‘I’ve seen smaller, trust me. A white Corian sink over there, fridge-freezer in the corner. I can run a CAD and have you fixed up in no time.’
‘And how much is all that going to cost?’ Gail wondered.
‘I can get you a great discount. I’ll put you down as a family member.’
‘Won’t you get into trouble?’
‘No. I mean you’re practically family and everyone does it. Let’s take a look at the living room.’
Gail had some savings and the place was a good investment, plus she had a friend who was ready to help. Lily took the notes back to her office, and a few days later Gail got a call from her designers.
Lily saved her a small fortune. Gail was thrilled with the end result. She handled some of the painting herself and even got a rescue cat called Roger, then settled down for her first week living in isolated splendour. It was a week of spring rains and rolling thunderstorms. On Wednesday evening Lily arrived unannounced, soaked through.
‘Well, he did it,’ she said, accepting a towel from Gail and drying her hair. ‘David appointed a twenty-two-year-old girl to handle the European openings without even bothering to give her a trial. I’ve been handed the Midlands, which I’ve been looking after for the past year anyway. My career is pretty much finished in that company.’
Gail immediately headed for the fridge to open a bottle of white wine. ‘You’ve had the same boss for eight years, haven’t you? I thought you got on well. Can’t you fight it?’
‘It’s a done deal. The new girl is smart, posh and pretty, she’s got more followers than me, and our big buyers are nearly all male. So much for all that stuff about female empowerment and anti-ageism the company spouts at corporate events.’
‘Like you didn’t know that already,’ Gail said, filling her glass. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘Remember that TV presenter? She told me what she did.’ Lily made sure her jeans were dry before tucking herself on to Gail’s new cream sofa.
‘You mean the one who changed her appearance?’
‘It’s an entire holistic makeover. Not a single treatment, a whole new way of looking at your life. Not everyone is suitable. It’s very exclusive and very expensive, but worth every penny.’
‘So it’s a health farm?’
‘No, no.’ Lily laughed and shook her head. ‘You go away for a month to a clinic just outside Vienna, and come back a whole new person.’
‘Oh.’
‘ “Oh”? What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Oh, plastic surgery.’
‘You saw her, did she look like she’d been under the knife?’
‘No, but the lights were quite low.’
‘I had a good look, believe me. There wasn’t a mark or a stitch anywhere. Obviously there’s some surgery involved, but that’s only part of the process. They physically and mentally change you.’
‘How exactly?’ Gail found it impossible to hide her scepticism. ‘I don’t like the idea of being “changed” by people who don’t even know you. Do they have a website?’
Lily leaned forward excitedly. ‘Introduction is strictly through others who have undergone the process. You have to write a letter to them. I mean, who writes letters anymore?’
‘Don’t tell me you’re thinking of doing it.’
‘I’ve already received a reply.’ She opened her bag and handed over a blue vellum envelope. ‘Read that.’
Gail put on her glasses. ‘ “You are invited to attend an introductory session at Younger Woman.” Younger Woman? Sounds a bit on the nose.’
Lily took back the page. ‘I have to sign all this stuff before I even get to the stuff I have to sign.’
‘You mean they’re going to check out your bank balance before they shove you full of fillers and chemical cocktails, then come up with a list of incredibly expensive aftercare services for you. Lily, this is crazy. You don’t need this. So you got passed over for your promotion, big deal.’
‘And I’ll keep getting passed over. I have to start looking for a new job. I don’t have a partner. I’m not going to have children. I have money in the bank. Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t do it.’
‘At least ask some more detailed questions.’
‘I put it out to my Twitter followers and they all think it’s a great idea. I like these cushions.’
Gail sat back with a sigh. ‘You’re a flibbertigibbet, you know that?’ She picked up one of the cushions and waved it before Lily. ‘This can be fixed if it loses a few threads. You can’t.’
‘I don’t understand you,’ said Lily. ‘You put yourself in the hands of a gynaecologist or a dentist or an optician without thinking twice because they’re skilled experts—’
‘Exactly. You don’t know if these people are experts.’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll check them out thoroughly before I commit to anything. It could give me back my confidence.’
‘Nothing I say is going to make any difference, is it?’
‘Gail, I always listen to you but you’re a pessimist. I’m going to attend the interview. It’s in a place called Zwentendorf. I’ll be a new me.’
‘You’ll still be the same crabby old you inside.’
Lily threw one cushion at Gail, then all of them.
Seven weeks later, a coffin-shaped cage of shiny grey material was removed from beneath a train at London Bridge Station by two members of an ambulance team. Inside it were the smashed remains of Lily Marshall.
The CCTV showed Gail Barker deliberately pushing her in front of the 9:50 P.M. to Luton. In her first interview at the Peculiar Crimes Unit, she turned to Janice Longbright and said, ‘On my life, I swear to God I did not kill her. She was my best friend.’
II. What Happened After
‘I know Gail Barker,’ said Janice Longbright. ‘I should be the one who interviews her.’
‘How well do you know her?’ asked John May, looking through the wired window of the interview room. The woman on the red plastic chair inside was pale, blond and overweight. As she silently cried into her hands, her shoulders shook. ‘She looks in a bad way.’
‘She went to my school.’
‘Some time after you, I imagine,’ said May. Longbright told herself he didn’t mean it that way.
‘We met through a mutual friend and had a few drinks together. John, you know how you get an instinct for these things. She’s kindhearted.’
May shrugged. ‘She pushed her best friend under a train. Whatever she admits in mitigation won’t make any difference against the technical evidence. We have the footage from four different cameras. There was no one else around. She ran at the other woman with a look of hatred on her face.’
‘At least let me find out why,’ said Longbright. ‘There could be circumstances we don’t know about. I’ll record the whole thing.’
‘OK,’ May said, ‘but I can’t imagine there’s anything she can tell you that will make the slightest bit of difference to her case. It’s right there on film.’
Janice gathered her notes and went into the interview room.
‘You can take as long as you want,’ she told Gail. ‘I’ll be jumping in with questions, but don’t let me put you off. If it gets too much and you want to stop, that’s fine, but remember anything you say may be used in evidence against you.’ She set a mug of tea before Gail and sat calmly waiting.
Gail wiped her face with the tatters of a tissue and collected her thoughts. ‘It began with Patricia,’ she said.
‘Who is Patricia?’
‘Lily’s mother. I got a letter from her. She doesn’t use computers. She has Alzheimer’s. She’d never written to me before. She said she was being held prisoner in her own home.’
‘By whom?’
‘By Lily. I have it here.’ She pulled the letter from her bag and handed it to Longbright.
‘Tell me a bit about Lily.’
‘She was ambitious. She was funny and fearless. She’d been my best friend since we met as teenagers. Her life suddenly changed. You know, when I got off the train on my way to see her mother, I saw this group of girls who all looked and sounded alike. Same teeth and noses, figures, blond hair and designer clothes. They made me think of Lily. The new Lily, I mean.’
‘Can you explain?’ Longbright looked at what she had written down. ‘No, tell it your own way, in the order you want.’
‘Patricia lives in a mansion block in Highgate. When I arrived she was sitting in shadow with the lights out. The first thing she said was, “I’m afraid of her.” ’
‘Afraid of who? Her daughter?’
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