Page 43 of Dead to Me

‘So maybe school?’Cordelia suggested.

‘But why inappropriate?’I asked.‘Surely she went tothebest school.’

‘She went to Cheltenham Ladies’ College,’ Cordelia said.‘Girls only.So anyone she met wouldn’t have been a school-friend.And she’s definitely straight.’

‘She said “him”,’ I agreed.I’d listened back to the recording to make sure.

‘Teacher’s kid?’she offered.‘Local boy?’

‘Could be,’ I agreed.‘I’d be really interested to know, though.I’m guessing he wasn’t at the ball…’

‘I’m pretty sure not,’ Cordelia said, ‘but then, I don’t know his name.’She gave a shrug.‘Sounds like we need to find out more about him.’

‘I hard agree with that,’ I said.‘OK, I’ll see if I can get her to tell me.’I took another swallow of cocktail.‘There’s something I wanted you to try and remember, too,’ I told her.‘Something from eighteen months ago, so it’s a reach, but…’

I could see Cordelia sitting up, her face alive with interest.‘I can try,’ she said.‘About Holly?’

‘Yeah.’I mean, itwasabout Holly.Even if it was about Tanya, too.I wasn’t being deceptive, Reid.‘There was a thing that happened.The death of another student, which was… well, it was, like,crazysimilar to the way Holly died.An overdose that made no sense in someone who just wouldn’t have taken those drugs.The police not investigating enough.’

‘Who?A Cambridge student?’

‘Yeah,’ I said.‘She was called Tanya Murray, and she died nineteen months ago.And the reason I’m asking is, I just found out Kit and Ryan were at a formal exchange with her the night before.Nobody’s clear on what happened that night, but I think Holly might have seen something.’

There was a beat.A pause.And then something in Cordelia’s mouth twisted.

‘Sorry, but she didn’t see anything,’ she said.‘She didn’t say a word to me about witnessing a crime, and she would have done.’

‘She might not have shared the details,’ I pushed.‘These were her friends.She thought they were good people.If she witnessed something and really, honestly thought it was just an accident, she would have wanted to hide it.To protect them.’

‘No, she wouldn’t,’ Cordelia said, flatly.‘She would have told them to go to the police.She was a sympathetic person, but she was also an intensely moral one.’

‘Well, what if it wasn’t something that evenmeantanything at the time?’I tried, realising that I’d gone about this the wrong way.Of course Cordelia didn’t want to hear Holly criticised.Of course she didn’t.Holly was so much on a pedestal to her that this was too much.

I could see that she was watching me with a totally different expression now.The kind of expression reserved for an animal you don’t trust.

‘Maybe something happened that just looked like one of the boys being full on and then getting rejected by Tanya,’ I said, slowly.‘And then they said something incriminating that made her realise they’d tried to go after her.Maybe Kit, I don’t know… said he’d walk her home and then… then said the wrong thing later about what had happened.Maybe that’s why she was killed.’

Cordelia was shaking her head at me, her jaw set.‘You don’t know what she was like,’ she said, quietly.‘She wouldn’t have let them follow some girl home.’

I wanted, so badly, to argue with her just then.To say that there wassomethingwrong with Ryan when he drank, and that Kit was pulling all their strings.And that Holly had been happy to overlook that.She would forgive a lot in her friends.

It occurred to me, suddenly, that there was a whole part of Holly’s behaviour that had never quite made sense if I believed Cordelia’s account.Holly had always said she’d hated the overprivileged, wasteful side of the way these people lived.

And yet what had she done with her parents’ inheritance?She’d used it to pay for the most exclusive of schools.Had that been her guardians’ idea, or hers?Because she surely must have gone along with it if that money had been left in trust.

Then, later, she’d gone to Cambridge and, instead of distancing herself from the rich crowd, she’d sought them out.That rich crowd had enabled her to live a glamorous, expensive lifestyle that was beyond her means.The lifestyle she’d always claimed to hate but which she hadn’t really, had she?

What would she have been willing to overlook, to keep living like that?I wondered.

I looked back at Cordelia, at the defiant expression, and I knew I could never say all this to her.She’d doubled down on this absolute devotion to her lost friend, despite being shaken by those actions, too.

You can’t go up against her faith in Holly,I thought.But maybe, instead, you can appeal to her sense of what’s right.

‘Look,’ I said, calmly.‘Holly deserves justice.She deserves it so much.But so does Tanya.She didn’t deserve to die, either.And if you can help me with this, even if itisn’tabout Holly, then maybe we can solve the murder of another brilliant young woman.’

Cordelia blinked, and I could see that she was thinking this over.I thought maybe, just maybe, I’d reached her.

But then, as she spoke, I realised that I’d really, really underestimated Cordelia Wynn.

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