Page 1 of Dead to Me

1.Anna

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

24/06/2025 22:32

Subject: Help

Hi Reid,

So if you’re reading this, it’s just possible you might be the only person who can save my life.

Sounds pretty extra, doesn’t it?It feels ridiculous to write it.But if I’m honest, I’m actually kind of scared.I think I might have screwed things up in a big way.

I’m well aware you may have deleted this without even reading it.I’m crossing my fingers that if you have, I was overreacting.That the email wasn’t necessary.

Obviously, things between us ended badly.Worse than badly.And you’re doubtless finding this as comfortable to receive as I’m finding it to write.

But you’re still the one I’ve found myself writing to.I think that’s because I still remember the whole of you, and not just the angry, grieving man who broke up with me.

I remember the man I trusted right from the start.Not because a colleague told me you were a good guy.It was because there was no ego when I asked for your help.No hesitation when you heard I wanted to blow open ahuman-trafficking ring.And more than that, because you had a total, dogged determination to help the victims.Even if you never got any credit for it.

I remember you, too, as the guy who bought a seriously expensive coffee machine for his team because they were all unhappy about the crap they were drinking.One you paid for yourself, even though you prefer Douwe Egberts granules and never used it.The guy who battled with the building management at his apartment block to get extra recycling bins for everyone so all the plastic didn’t end up in landfill.And I remember that you never took credit for either of these actions.

I also remember you as the boyfriend who never minded when I was late, or I forgot something, or I made a mess of your place and didn’t even notice.Even when I got totally distracted by a thing on my phone in the middle of a conversation.You were the one person I’ve dated who understood it wasn’t that I don’t care.That I do, in fact, care an awful lot.

You understood how I work, I think.At least for most of our relationship.

I used to love the way you’d quietly put things away, or offered to help on my terms.How you seemed to genuinely love watching me get suddenly hyper-focused on something, and would ask me about it when I was ready.And how you once gently but firmly defended my lateness to Dad when he made a sarcastic remark about it.Nobody else has ever done that.

So I’m hoping thatthisperson is still in there somewhere.The one I met.And that he hasn’t been totally consumed by the angry asshole who hurled abuse at me and then left.Because I’m only going to send this as a last resort.Like, if all is lost.

Let’s just hope I’m right about you, huh?

2.Seaton

The sun was blazing through the conservatory of Midsummer House, winking off the wine glasses and well-polished silverware.Despite many of the windows standing open, Seaton was sweating slightly underneath his tailored jacket and there was an uncomfortable moisture beneath his tightly trimmed beard.

He probably should have suggested somewhere else.Dining at Cambridge’s only double Michelin-starred restaurant meant sitting in the conservatory.Given that it was twenty-nine outside and climbing, that conservatory was beginning to feel like a furnace.

Anna would probably be hit even harder by the heat.She would inevitably be hungover after last night’s May Ball.

There was movement by the door.Seaton glanced up, only to look straight back down.It was an elegantly dressed couple.Not her.

Elegantly dressed is unlikely,was his next thought.

He couldn’t help a twitching smile at the memory of their last lunch here.Anna had been late, obviously.He’d never known her to arrive on time.But she’d also been dressed in rowing kit, fresh off a sculling outing on the river.The rowing had, of course, overrun.It was in Anna’s nature to make things overrun.Brief coffees would become accidental three-hour heart-to-hearts.Short walks across town would somehow end up encompassing half the city.Errands could last an entire day– or be forgotten entirely.

Lateness, he’d expected; wearing sports gear to Midsummer House, he had somehow– in spite of everything– not.Thetrouble was that Anna’s work as a journalist tended to spill over into the rest of her life.She would get wrapped up in it, and so had turned up to expensive restaurants dressed variously as an eco protestor, a wellness influencer and– memorably– as a high-class escort He wasstillgetting odd looks from the staff at Rules after that one.

And now, here in Cambridge, she was pretending to be an American-born postgraduate student.She didn’t answer to Anna, but to Aria.As far as anyone here knew, she was his god-daughter, who had used her dual nationality to give herself a second chance at rowing in the Olympics.

Anna had been playing the part of Aria for the last three and a half weeks, living it up as the young and athletic heiress to the Lauder dynasty.It had been a simple, quick way of becoming accepted by a small but significant group of wealthy students.Seaton had been uneasy at first.He’d worried, if being brutally honest, that she didn’t have the upbringing for it.

It was something he felt entirely to blame for.He should have anticipated what would happen if he told her American-born mother he didn’t love her.His ex-wife, Mona, had been bound to take Anna back to her family home in Coney Island.

Seaton knew, too– had always known– that he could have tried harder to see Anna even so.He’d always had the money to fly out there, and even in the later years of his career, he hadn’t been so very busy.

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