A Girl to Die For: A Thriller

by Lucy Wild

  So when she went off to the bathroom and returned to the lounge to find Fiona holding her phone, she did not feel good. Fiona was smiling in that devious way that said she was up to something. “What are you doing?” she asked, already suspecting the answer.

  “I might have signed you up to Match Up.”

  She at least had the decency to look guilty, Holly thought. “And why might you have done that?”

  “Because I know for a fact Lizzie’s wedding is coming up. I also know that if you’re going to have a date for it, you’re going to need to practise. What better way than with this hunk of beefcake who is…two hundred miles away. And gay. Never mind, we’ll keep looking.”

  It was hard to be angry with her. It was because of Fiona that she’d been able to put up with Caroline at college. It was because of Fiona that she learned how to get around I.D checks when buying alcohol (the trick being to show enough cleavage to keep their focus on your chest, not your age). It was because of Fiona that she didn’t drop out in the first year of university when she failed her first assignment and saw no point in continuing, ready to resign herself to a life as a checkout girl.

  Fiona had held her hair when she threw up after her first experiment in buying alcohol at seventeen, two bottles of wine that stayed down for an hour but came back up in under a minute. Fiona had been a good friend on the weighing scales of life.

  Holly had been a good friend too. She’d held Fiona’s hair out of the toilet far more often, both at home and at the nightclubs that she pretended to hate visiting. She’d comforted her through each and every one of her break ups, often with the cliché of ice cream and cheesy music. But they were clichés because they worked. And their friendship worked.

  Which was why when Holly found out that an account had been created for her at Match Up, she couldn’t stay cross for long. Maybe she really would find her perfect match on there, like the advert said. We match you up so you spark together. The slogan alongside the logo, a flaming match in silhouette, filled her screen as she took the phone from her friend and sank onto the sofa. “So, what do I do now?” she asked.

  “Now,” Fiona replied, tapping her on the knee. “We find a guy who’ll ravish you, a man with the looks of Heathcliff, the manners of Darcy, and the huge cock of Christian Grey.”

  Holly blushed, giggling as she did so. “That easy, huh?”

  “By this time next week, I guarantee you’ll not only have your first date, it will be perfect.”

  She was half right. Holly did have a date lined up within a week. But it was a very long way from perfect.

  TWO

  SHE’D LEFT HER PHONE in the living room because it was charging. The only free plug was next to Fiona’s chair but that didn’t matter because she was only going to be gone for a minute. The battery was so low because she’d spent the last hour watching online videos, the perfect lesson in procrastination.

  She had one essay left to complete, only two hundred words to go. But it had felt like every assignment had throughout her degree. She began each piece of work like a mountain climber, slowly and steadily edging her way up the lower slopes. But there was this invisible elastic band tied to her waist as she climbed. It was slack at first, making the going all too easy. But the longer she worked, the higher she climbed, the tighter it got until by the time she could see the peak, she was at a complete standstill, every word a struggle, every paragraph requiring longer and longer breaks to catch her breath before she could try again, the band threatening to wrench her backwards the entire time.

  The only thing that kept her from throwing the laptop out of the window was knowing that once this essay was done, she’d never have to write another one ever again. Sure this was a dissertation, not just an essay, not just an assignment. That was another tightening of the band around her waist, tugging her back. Knowing it was twenty percent of her final grade was another tightening. Then there was the fact that if she failed this, all the hard work of the last three years would be for nought, her chance of a first would vanish like Fiona did whenever the washing up needed doing.

  Her laptop sat on the side of the sofa, open, blinking vertical line ready for her to start typing, to get the thing finished, to tidy up the formatting, submit it, get it done.

  She still had a fortnight to go until the final deadline. It should have been easy. Two hundred words in fourteen days. She had done the maths. That was fourteen words a day. But she didn’t see it as easy. It was like looking at the sun, it was too bright to stare at, she had to glance at it from side angles with her eyes half closed. Because whenever she tried to look directly at it, she got the horrible feeling that the whole thing needed rewriting. And she did not have time for that. Because 20,000 words redone in a fortnight from scratch was a hell of a lot more than fourteen words a day.

  She headed to the bathroom without looking at the laptop. The lounge didn’t connect directly to the bathroom. First she had to pass through the kitchen, wincing at the cold of the tiles on her feet. No matter how hot the house got, and it got far too hot in the heat of July, the chipped kitchen floor remained barely above freezing. Unlike the fridge which never got anywhere near freezing, the motor at the back groaning as she passed it, struggling in the heat as much as she did. She knew for a fact her wine would be warming up in there. The chicken should probably be thrown too. In fact, maybe it was time to defrost the thing, see if that helped.

  Later, she told herself. There’s a thousand things that she had managed to ignore all year that suddenly seemed more urgent than finishing the essay. The blinds needed the flecks of mould cleaning off them, the sink needed regrouting, she could do that. The dripping tap. She could look up an online video and learn how to do it. The ukulele Fiona got her for Christmas. When had she last tried to learn a tune on it?

  She paused by the fridge, ignoring the noise of it, looking closely at one of the photos, the one stuck on with two magnets. The magnets were memories in themselves, one of Cornwall, the last holiday she took with Fiona, back during the Easter break. It showed the chimney of Botallock Tin Mine next to a few strokes of blue meant to represent the sea. Someone in China had sat and painted hundreds of those a day without ever seeing the place in person. It was a strange thought.

  The other magnet was a pineapple, another present from Fiona, this one to congratulate her on passing her first year, a pointed reference to their friendship and to her knowledge of Holly’s love of Spongebob Squarepants, a love that extended to the pyjamas she was wearing, the pyjamas she’d practically lived in for the last three days while she’d been trying to force herself to get the essay done.

  No going out, not even for food. Just concentrate on the work. Get it finished. Don’t think about needing to rewrite the whole thing. Go to the bathroom and then get back to it.

  The other photos were of nights out at uni, groups of laughing drunken faces, the time she’d danced on that podium, refusing to believe it until the evidence was in front of her on 6 by 4 matt paper, printed out for the world to see.

  She looked at the photo attached by the magnets. Her family, her at the back scowling. She knew when it was taken without reading the writing on the reverse side. 1995. She was nine, unhappy at being photographed, wanting to get on with playing in the river behind her. She was halfway through building an enclosed pool to try and hold in the tadpoles that were being swept away by the current. She could still remember the photo being taken. Her father putting the timer on the camera, pre digital, not wanting to waste film, yelling at her to come quickly. Counting down the seconds.

  There was her dad, more hair than he had now, fewer wrinkles, the smile the same, the eyes looking tired. It was the last day of the trip and when they got back, he’d tell them he was moving. Maybe that was why her mum looked strained in her joy, her eyes narrowed, though she always said it was because of the sun shining in her face when the photo was taken.

  Looking at the photo was like looking at her laptop with the essay waiting to be finis
hed. It was too bright to look at it for long. Do that and she felt a sense of unrealistic nostalgia, a yearning for a past that never really existed, a past where her biggest responsibility was in choosing which cereal to have for breakfast. Be like her mum and have muesli or be like her dad and have whatever sugary chocotastic box he’d brought home that week.

  Was she more like her mum or her dad? She had her mother’s eyes. Above them was her father’s unmanageable hair, fine and prone to falling out if she brushed it too hard. Stop it, she told herself, walking away from the fridge with conviction. She could do all the thinking she wanted in a fortnight. Get the essay done first.

  When she was finished in the bathroom, she washed her hands, the smell of lavender rising from the bottle on the edge of the sink, still lingering on her fingertips when she returned to the lounge.

  “You’re so easily distracted,” Fiona had said to her more than once. “You’re like a little kid.”

  She blew a raspberry every time, one more private joke amongst all the others that the two of them had, the shared secrets of a friendship that she worried might not last beyond graduation. Fiona had already said she would have to go back to Berwick, where her family lived. Sure, it was reachable in a day trip but could that compare to living across the landing from each other? A single knock away from a conversation at any time of night or day? She couldn’t do that with Fiona in Berwick and her in York.

  Holly shook her head as she walked into the lounge. It was just like her to get distracted by thinking about how easily she was distracted. She saw Fiona holding her phone, looking guilty.

  Why does she have my phone? Holly thought.

  A minute later she had her phone back, the laptop still open, easy to ignore as she listened to Fiona explaining how Match Up worked.

  “So you can change the settings but it’s linked to your online stuff.”

  “Where did you get these photos of me?”

  “Off my Facebook profile, you tagged me in them, remember?”

  Holly looked down at the first image of herself. She did look kind of pretty in that one, her hair hidden by the straw hat she was wearing. She flicked to the next. Rowing on the river. “Lucky you didn’t use the one where I fell in.”

  “I thought about it but we might find some drowning fetishist and you know what that would mean?”

  Holly shrugged. “No, but I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”

  “You’d sink into his arms.”

  “Ouch.”

  “You love me really.”

  “Despite the quality of your jokes.”

  “It’s because of them, be honest.”

  Holly had already forgotten about the essay. She’d moved down to her profile, reading things about herself that she would never have written.

  “I’m up for trying anything once? I love doing new things? I’m a vixen in the sack? Tell me people haven’t been seeing all this. Oh my God, Fi. I like being tied down. You didn’t.”

  Fiona nodded. “Trust me, this is how to do it.”

  “But all we’ll get are perverts who are only after one thing.”

  “How many have you got?”

  “You know what I mean. I don’t just want some guy who wants to make me a notch on his bedpost.”

  “That’s the beauty of the internet. We weed out the ones who are clearly mental, or still live with their mothers.”

  “Didn’t your last one live with his mum?”

  “That’s not the point. The point is you write that to get interest, then you narrow them down until you pick one to meet. Or more than one if you’re so inclined.”

  “I’ve never been kissed, Fi. I don’t think I’m quite ready for a threesome just yet.”

  “I didn’t mean that. I meant you could see a few people at the same time, see who you like the most. Look, pass it here.”

  She moved from her chair to sit next to Holly on the sofa, curling her legs under her, taking the phone and holding it so they could both see the screen.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’ve already picked a few possibles for you. See, if you press here, it brings up the ones you’ve said yes to.”

  “What does saying yes mean?”

  “It means they can send you messages. Richie, aged twenty-five. “Hi, want to see my cock? Okay, so we can delete him.”

  “Are you sure? He sounds like perfect marriage material. Tell me that little paperclip doesn’t mean he’s sent a picture.”

  Fiona nodded. “You’ll get that from some of them. Just delete them.”

  “Well, hold on. There’s no harm in having a little look, is there?”

  “You dark horse!” Fiona giggled as she pressed open and the screen filled with an image that made them both wince.

  “That’s not pleasant,” Holly said. “I take it back, delete him, block him, send him to the seventh circle of internet hell.”

  “It’s done, it’s done,” Fiona said, swiping at the screen. “He’s gone.”

  “It bent in the middle, did you notice it bent in the middle?”

  “I was too busy worrying about the colour. Who takes a photo of their genitalia and then diligently chooses which filter to apply?”

  “Richie does, apparently.”

  The next man was more polite. He’d asked how she was. “What do I put?” Holly asked but Fiona had already deleted him. “What did you do that for?”

  “A few rules to live by, Hols. If they can’t think of a good opening line, they’re not worth your time. You’ll get a million of them saying hey, how are you? How are you is the dull person’s mantra. You want someone with a bit of life to them, a bit of spark. Like this guy” A notification popped onto the screen, the app vanishing as MUM appeared in its place in big green letters, taking the place of the image Holly had just seen, the image of a guy who looked pretty good. Under his photo the message symbol had been flashing. She would have hit it to open and read but that would have to wait.

  “I better take it,” Holly said, grabbing the phone and hitting answer. “Hi, Mum, how are you?”

  THREE

  HOLLY’S MOTHER RANG HER once a week like clockwork. She had ever since her daughter left home. Sometimes Holly didn’t answer but those were the rare times. She would only have to handle a panicking parent when she finally got back to her, Anne Simpson being one of those people who assume if a phone isn’t answered, it’s because the person at the other end is in the middle of a coronary episode, rather than a TV show episode. Holly had quickly learned that no matter how busy she was, it was best to answer when her mother rang. She couldn’t handle the tears otherwise. “I thought you were dead,” Anne would cry out when she finally got through. “I was about to call the police.”

  “I was in a lecture, Mum. You know I can’t answer in a lecture.”

  “You could step out to speak to your mother, they wouldn’t stop you doing that, would they?”

  By the Christmas holiday in her second year at university, Holly had been forced to impose rules. She gave her mother a timetable during her festive visit home, showing when she would be busy. “Ring during those free times and I’ll answer,” she said, pointing at the light blue blocks she’d coloured in on the timetable. “Okay?”

  It worked, for the most part. Anne only picked up the phone during the blue periods as she took to calling them, though whenever Holly answered, she would have to spend the first couple of minutes reminding her mother that, yes, of course she still loved her despite not being able to answer the every any minute of the day. Yes she was safe. Yes she was eating well.

  It was a small price to pay to ensure the rest of her study time was left uninterrupted.

  “How are you?” Anne parroted back to Holly. “You want to know how I am? Your father is still in the garage. Does that answer your question? I swear he loves that ship more than me. He didn’t even bother coming in for lunch today.”

  “How’s he getting on with the rigging?”

  “How sh
ould I know? I just know I’ll be glad when the thing’s done.”

  It had been like that for as long as Holly could remember. Anne would be furious while her husband worked on his latest model, a ship, a blimp, a working version of Stephenson’s Rocket. But then he’d be back in the house and she’d complain he was under her feet and end up buying him another model to send him back out to the garage.

  She loved him. Holly could tell. The anger in her voice wasn’t real. Holly had only heard her being truly angry a couple of times in her life, once when Holly, aged four, had found a bottle of bleach under the sink with the lid loose and decided to take a swig to see what it tasted like. It tasted like a trip to hospital that she could still remember seventeen years later. Her mother hadn’t been cross with her but with her father for not tightening the bottle lid properly, ignoring the fact that she was the only one in the house that used the bleach.

  The other time was when Holly had slipped out of her armbands in the pool and begun to slowly sink to the bottom, her mouth filling with water. She could remember that clearly too, sitting on the side of the pool and coughing up a lungful of foaming chlorinated water while her mother sat beside her, furious once again with Martin. “He should have blown them up so they couldn’t come off.” Her father had not come to the swimming pool with them, him being at work. Anne Simpson had blown up the armbands.

  She deflected her own guilt at her husband but it bounced off with negligible effect. All he cared about was making her feel good and if she had to berate him to do it, so be it. Their dynamic might not have been the healthiest but Holly had to admit it worked. They’d been together twenty-five years and showed no signs of going their separate ways. Love was a funny thing, Holly reasoned. She could only hope she’d find someone to spend twenty-five years with, twenty-five minutes would be a start.

  “Do you think he’ll have it finished by the time you move?” she asked when her mother finally paused for breath. They were relocating yet again over the summer. The house already had a buyer, they just needed to sort out the paperwork.