What You Did by Claire McGowan

Author:Claire McGowan [McGowan, Claire]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781542007269
Google: BBHfvgEACAAJ
Goodreads: 43078409
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Published: 2019-07-22T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty

The girl in the pictures was skinny, anxious, her make-up badly applied, her clothes a poor approximation of what had been trendy in the nineties. The girl was me, though I felt like an entirely different person now.

I’d come back late from Callum and Jodi’s, the train dotted with weary, late-night commuters. The same train Mike used to get back. I’d spent the next day going through the bills again, looking for answers, and cleaning the house, even though I knew it was futile, trying to feel like it was mine again. I still hadn’t been into the garage, and wasn’t sure I ever would. Now it was Thursday evening, and I was on the floor of the living room, which no longer gave me joy, only reminding me of that meeting with Karen. Of being interviewed by DC Devine. Of Callum, passed out on the sofa. My lower back was complaining at the odd angle, and I was surrounded by old albums from our university days, as well as the photos I’d taken from Jodi and Callum’s. The slip covers of the albums had come loose and the pictures spilled out, curled at the edges. Our young faces, me and Mike. Karen. What I was doing was looking for clues. Scanning these old, shiny pictures, some of which still bore the marks of tape and BluTack from when they’d been stuck on my college walls. Looking for Martha. We hadn’t been friends, but it was a small college. There she was in the corner of that shot of me and Karen in our subfusc, arms tight around each other, finishing Finals. Another shot of her at a bop, dressed as a witch, but looking beautiful instead of sweaty and drunk, like I did in this picture of me and Mike. Somewhere in the background was Karen, snogging a boy in the year above. I groped for his name. Connor? I wondered how it had worked between Mike and Karen. Did he mind when she got off with so many other guys? Was it to make him jealous? How, when I’d been with one or both of them so much of the time, had they even managed it? I was thinking of nights I’d spent in the library, terrified I’d fail my exams, dreading the phone calls home, when Dad would bark questions at me. How much work had I done. Was I spending his money on drink. Was I sure I’d pass, because I’d better make damn sure I did. The way Mike withdrew in our last term. Always studying, or so he said. Karen, failing her degree.

‘What are you doing?’ Cassie was haunting the doorway. I noticed how pale she was, the line of her collarbone jutting over the collar of her pyjamas. In the folds of flannel, she looked like the child she still was. I felt guilt roil in my stomach. In my head, the interminable to-do list was out of control. Find some money. Get Mike’s case thrown out.

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