Page 64 of Dead to Me

‘We can chat properly later,’ Cordelia said, tersely.‘First of all, I have photos to show you of the night Tanya died.It turns out I persuaded Holly to come into London to see me.She wasn’t in Cambridge at all.’

This gave me a little dip of disappointment.If Holly hadn’t seen something incriminating that night, it was maybe less likely that she’d been killed to keep her quiet.

But there was still the fact that she’d come to whatever revelation she’d come to six months later.So it might actually have been something she had been told, or overheard.

‘OK,’ I said.‘Thank you.That’s helpful.’

Cordelia’s expression told me she could seeexactlywhat Iwas thinking.But she didn’t argue.She just said, ‘And now you need to hear what Anthony has to say.’

She turned to Anthony, so I did as well.He was involved in drinking half the gin in one go, and he put it down shakily.I noticed, inconsequentially, that his nails were painted a really nice shade of sparkly green.For some reason it felt better to focus on that than the twisting fear of what was coming.

‘Right.Soz.’He sniffed, and then said, ‘Cordelia approached me because I– I was the one who gave Tanya the… the Ritalin and the modafinil that she took.’

I felt… I don’t know, Reid.Cold.Detached.Not quite right.

‘Sorry?’

‘I’m ADHD and I have a brother with narcolepsy,’ he said, his voice shaking.He looked miserable.Guilt-ridden.‘Tanya was… your sister-in-law?’

I glanced at Cordelia, thinking that ‘sister-in-law’ wasn’t quite the right way of saying it, and yet… in some ways maybe it was true.Cordelia just held my gaze, so I nodded.And then I cleared my throat and said, ‘Yes.’

‘So she– Tanya got put in touch with me by someone else I– I supply things to.Sometimes.’His lips were moving in a way I recognised.He looked like he was on the verge of tears.‘I never…’ He took a very deep breath.‘The friend of mine said she was behind on a few essays and needed some help.That she’d had a shit break-up and the training schedule was too much and she needed me.I thought… I thought I was helping.’

I was looking for the lies, Reid.I was looking for all the tells I knew.And I was hating him, too.Hating him and disbelieving and wanting him to get the fuck out of my house.

‘You… talked to her?’I asked.‘In person?’

Anthony nodded.‘We met up on the– on the day beforeshe was found.’He shook his head.‘I’m so sorry.I know it was my fault.’

‘Tell me,’ I said, sharply.‘Tell me what she said.What you said.Where did you meet?’

‘She came to my room,’ he said.‘She– she looked really together.Not like someone who was going to… take too many.’

I turned my head away from him.‘And?’

‘She said I was saving her life,’ he said with a bitter laugh.‘She said she was about to get kicked out and it was going to be the end of everything.I… I actually asked her if she’d, you know, talked to her tutor.Anything like that.But she said she couldn’t afford to.She’d already had a lot of warnings, and if they told her she had to stop playing hockey…’

I couldn’t help looking at him again, then.He was pale.Sick-looking.Haunted.God, I hated him.And also.Also.I felt… so sad for him, Reid.I felt so, so sad for him.

‘It… she reassured me that she knew what she was doing,’ he added.‘She said she’d been taking both of them off and on for over a year, when needed.Never too much.She just needed a batch for the week.’

I felt my heart squeeze, thinking of what you’d told me: that the coroner believed she’d made a habit of it.I wanted to protest again, but I couldn’t this time.

‘So what did you give her?’I asked him, my voice barely working.

‘She said she needed a solid week of work and two late nights,’ he said.‘So I gave her three modafinil tablets and seven capsules of the ADHD medication I take.It’s– it’s called Medikinet XL.It’s a continuous eight-hour release that’s like Ritalin, only more sustained.It’s half my dosage.I really only need thirty on most days, and take a few days off, you know.That’s why I can sell the rest…’

‘How?How do you sell it?’

I knew I’d asked the question aggressively, but this mattered.It mattered because I wanted so badly to catch him out in a lie.

‘Oh, yeah,’ he said.‘I have migraine tablets, too.I empty them out because you can take them sprinkled on food.I empty them and then I use the empty capsules.Then they just look like migraine pills, so… Yeah.’

I had to get up then and move away from him.Because I knew something that wasn’t on the coroner’s report.I knew from that police officer I’d flirted with that the Ritalin pills left over had been in empty topiramate capsules.It’s an epilepsy drug sometimes used for migraines.

He wasn’t lying.

I left the two of them there in the sitting room, opened the front door and went out on to the expanse of Jesus Green alone.Still a tiny part of me was fighting.Wondering whether Cordelia could have paid him off, somehow.Whether she could have set this all up to stop me looking.

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