Page 31 of Rich Little Liars

‘Call me if you need me,’ he says. ‘Any time. Promise?’

‘Promise.’

He kisses me before leaving. Softly. Like I’m something fragile that might shatter.

Maybe I am.

I lock the door behind him and stand in the hallway listening to his footsteps fade away. The house feels emptier now than it did before he arrived. His presence had filled spaces I didn’t know were hollow. Now they’re exposed again. Echoing.

Now he has evidence of my secrets moving further from my control. I tell myself it doesn’t matter. That he believes my lie about pranks and stress. That he won’t dig deeper.

But I can’t quite convince myself.

Because Richard is kind, but he’s not stupid. And the more time he spends around me, the more he’ll notice the gaps in my story. The places where trauma doesn’t quite explain the level of fear.

The moments when grief looks more like guilt.

11

THEN

Roxanne started arriving earlier and earlier. By the sixth week of our friendship – though friendship felt like the wrong word by then, something too voluntary for what this had become – she was at my door by nine in the morning, before I’d properly woken up or had time to prepare myself for pretending to be pleased to see her.

‘I brought pastries,’ she said, holding up a paper bag from the bakery in town. ‘Thought we could have breakfast together.’

I should have told her I had work to do, deadlines looming, couldn’t spend the morning chatting over coffee and almond croissants. But she was already moving past me into the hallway, already heading for the kitchen like it was hers, and saying no felt impossible by then. Like we’d moved beyond the point where boundaries were allowed.

So I followed her. Made coffee while she arranged the pastries on a plate – one of my good plates, the ones Daniel and I got as a wedding gift. She knew where everything was by then. Didn’t need to ask.

We sat, and she talked about nothing much. A TV show she’d watched last night. Something funny she’d seen on her walk over. The weather turning colder, winter approaching. Normal conversation that should have felt comfortable but instead made me tense. Because I was waiting. Waiting for the moment she’d pivot, the way she always did, towards something more personal. More probing.

It came after the second croissant.

‘Can I ask you something?’ she said, brushing crumbs from her fingers. ‘And you can tell me if I’m overstepping. I know I probably am.’

My stomach tightened. ‘What is it?’

‘It’s about Daniel.’

Of course it was. Everything came back to Daniel lately. The way she mentioned him in conversation, casual but frequent. The way her eyes followed him when he was in the room. The way she remembered details about his life that I’d somehow forgotten – or maybe never knew in the first place.

‘What about him?’ I kept my voice neutral. Light.

She hesitated, doing that thing where she made herself smaller. More vulnerable. It was an act I was starting to recognise. The way she acted like the nervous friend, unsure whether to speak, worried about causing offence. It was designed to make you reassure her. To tell her it was fine, she could say anything.

I didn’t reassure her.

I just waited.

‘I’ve noticed something,’ she said finally. ‘And maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m reading too much into it. But… has Daniel always been quite so friendly with other women?’

The question landed like a rock. For a moment I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t process what she’d just suggested.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I just mean…’ She stopped, bit her lip. ‘When we’re out. Or when people visit. He’s very attentive. To women. Very charming. And I’m not saying he’s doing anything wrong. Not at all. It’s probably just his personality. But I wondered if you’d noticed.’

I had noticed. Daniel had always been charming. It was one of the things that drew me to him at the start – that easy warmth, that ability to make people feel seen and valued. But lately it had felt different. More pronounced. Or maybe I was just more aware of it now that Roxanne had pointed it out.