Page 87 of Rich Little Liars

‘So,’ Richard says, a hint of his old warmth creeping back into his voice. ‘When they let us both out of here, what do you say to dinner? A proper one this time. No interrupted evenings. No stalkers. No collapsing buildings.’

‘That sounds… nice.’

‘Nice?’ He pretends to be offended. ‘I was hoping for something more enthusiastic. “Amazing”, perhaps. “Best offer I’ve had all year.”’

‘Best offer I’ve had all year,’ I repeat obediently, and he laughs – a proper laugh, the kind that crinkles his whole face and makes everything else fade away.

And sitting there in the hospital room, with sunlight streaming through the windows and Richard’s hand still wrapped around mine, I let myself believe it – that maybe, somehow, this broken thing I am can still have something good. That the darkness I carry doesn’t have to define every moment that comes after.

I got away with it.

The thought should horrify me. Should fill me with guilt and shame and the desperate urge to confess everything, to lay my sins bare and accept whatever judgement follows.

Instead, I just feel tired.

Tired, and grateful, and ready to start building something new.

The past is buried in the ashes of a house that no longer exists.

The future is sitting in front of me, holding my hand, offering love I haven’t earned and grace I don’t deserve.

And Kelly Reynolds is going to take it.

I smile again, and this time there’s no holding it back.

32

ROXANNE

Let me tell you the real truth.

My name is Roxanne, and I arrived on a Tuesday. That part was true. I knocked on the door of a whitewashed house in the countryside with a suitcase I’d packed three days earlier and a story about bad luck I’d been rehearsing for weeks. Broken-down car. Dead phone. Just need to make a call. The kind of helpless-woman routine that worked on a certain type of mark.

Kelly Reynolds was exactly that type.

I watched her face when she opened the door – watched the hesitation flicker and die, replaced by that compulsive need to help that some women carried like a disease. She was soft in all the ways that mattered. Soft voice, soft heart, soft boundaries that practically begged to be crossed. I knew within thirty seconds that this was going to be easier than I’d hoped.

The thing about people like Kelly was, they wanted to believe. Wanted to see the best in everyone – to trust that the world was fundamentally kind. They wanted to open their doors to strangers because their mothers taught them that’s what good people did. It made them easy.

It made them blind.

Whereas I had very good eyes.

I’d been watching the Reynolds family for months before I knocked on that door. Not closely, but enough to know that Daniel Reynolds had money. Old, family money that sat in accounts and accumulated interest while its owners pretended they’d earned it through hard work. Enough to know his marriage was crumbling, that Kelly was lonely and Daniel was dissatisfied and there was a gap between them wide enough to drive a truck through.

Wide enough to slip into.

That’s what I did, you see. What I’d always done, ever since I was old enough to understand that some people had things and other people took them. I found the cracks. I widened them. And then I stepped through into what was waiting on the other side.

The Reynolds’ marriage was full of cracks.

I made myself essential. That was the trick. You didn’t force your way in, you made them want you there. I was helpful without being pushy. Friendly without being desperate. I listened when Kelly talked about her work, her loneliness, her growing sense that something was wrong with her life. I nodded sympathetically when she mentioned Daniel’s long hours, his distraction, the distance that had crept between them like frost on a window.

And I watched.

God, did I watch.

I watched the way Daniel’s eyes followed me when he thought no one was looking. Watched the hunger there – not for me specifically, but for something new and exciting. Something that wasn’t the quiet disappointment of a marriage gone stale. I recognised that hunger because I’d seen it a hundred times. It was the easiest thing in the world to exploit.