Page 76 of Dead to Me

I wanted to ask himwhohe was angry with.Whether it was all of them, or just one of them.But I couldn’t.

Kit looked away from me, towards the river again, so I asked, ‘The article said she’d taken something?’

It took him a moment to shake his head.‘I don’t even know how or why she would.She was such a square.’He gave a sad, unsteady laugh, and I realised that there was a gleam of tears in his eyes.

And before you ask, I wasn’t being a total credulous dumbass about it all.I was thinking and analysing; trying to weigh up whether he was telling the truth.

‘I’ve felt like… I let her down, you know?I should have been there.Not– not super into my new girlfriend, or trying to drink every single thing they had at the ball to get the full experience.’

‘But… Holly was… James’s girlfriend.She was with him, right?’

Kit stiffened, and for a nanosecond I worried that this hadbeen a step too far.Something that made my real interest too obvious.

But after a pause, Kit said, ‘No.Before the fireworks, I wanted a photograph in this classic car they had on the lawn.I hassled James to go and queue for the champagne bar so we had enough for the fireworks.’He grimaced.‘We were taking it in turns to get drinks.So it was sort of his turn.I didn’t see Holly go anywhere, but when James came back, she’d vanished, and he couldn’t find her.I did try to help.But then it was the fireworks… And I actually prioritised watching the fucking things.Seriously.While she was out there, dying…’

It’s strange, isn’t it?The urge to ease someone’s guilt, even when you don’t really know whether or not they’re guilty.I found myself taking his hand, and saying, ‘I can’t tell you not to feel bad.I’ve… I’ve spent years of my life wrapped up in guilt about the people I didn’t help.But you only knew what you knew.’

And maybe this is true for us, too, Reid.Maybe this is the truth about Tanya; that we both did the best we could.

I probably don’t need to tell you that he kissed me after that.I know you’ll be angry at me for letting him.But I hope it makes sense to tell you that it was Aria doing the kissing, not me.

It didn’t last long, anyway.Because there were hurrying steps on the bridge, and when we broke apart to see why, we were confronted by James Sedgewick, his beautiful face contorted with rage.

‘You fucking prick!’he said, shoving Kit hard enough that he banged into the railing of the bridge.I’d found it hard to believe before that James, all slim and actorly, had that kind of strength in him, but he was more than just angry now: he was raging.‘How can you stand here?Here?And do that?When she died below you?’

Kit looked totally shell-shocked.‘James, mate–’

‘It’s so easy being you, isn’t it?’James spat at him, taking a step back that looked like the preparation for a charge.‘You can just find yourself another girl.While I lost my– my– and it’syour fucking fault.’

Kit blinked at him for a second, his head moving slightly in denial.

‘I don’t…’

‘She trusted you!’James yelled.‘And you let her down!’

Kit was staring at him now, his mouth slightly slack, his hands out but unmoving.

‘James,’ he said with what sounded like profound hurt in his voice.‘James.I couldn’t find her.’

For a second, I wondered whether the shorter, slighter man was going to go for him.Whether he was going to try to tip him into the river.But instead, James looked towards me with a roiling, angry look, and then he turned and walked back the way he’d come, towards town.

I was left in the cooling night air with Kit, feeling suddenly very alone, and not sure Holly’s death hadn’t been his fault after all.

30.Reid

Reid didn’t want to admit to anyone, including himself, how much his head and jaw were hurting, or how hard he was finding it to concentrate.He kept finding himself drifting off midway through conversations and then jumping back to himself in confusion.

He’d managed to read a little more of Anna’s email in the cab, but increasing nausea had eventually stopped him.He’d fallen asleep for a while despite the way the bumps in the road were sending lancing pain through his head, and had woken groggily when he’d arrived at Finsbury Park.

He’d now forwarded the email to the DCI, anyway.It had been shared with Dom Davies and his team.It was brutally embarrassing to have his colleagues read it, but it was also something that needed to happen, especially while his faculties weren’t working properly.They all needed to read it, and to take it seriously.

He’d thought about trying to edit out some of Anna’s more humiliating observations, and more urgently about deleting everything that might cause her professional issues later– the segments about Kit in particular.But in the end his unfocused vision and the huge difficulty of editing anything on a phone had made him realise he just had to send it as was and deal with the consequences later.

Dom was now in charge of finding Anna.He hadn’t hesitated over taking it all on and had called them in for a briefing with his usual cheerful energy.Reid had watched his almost triangular form– stacked with muscle from years of MMAtraining– move around the briefing room and had felt both guilt and gratitude.He owed Dom a conversation, and probably an apology for the way he’d shut him out for the past two years.He needed to explain how hard he’d found it, accepting that he’d overlooked those WhatsApp messages from his colleagues.And maybe, just maybe, that he’d been too black-and-white about it.

But right now they had to work together because, as Anna’s ex-boyfriend, Reid was too closely involved to be senior investigating officer.

If Reid was honest, it was a relief to have someone else taking control.He knew he wasn’t with it enough to drive this thing forwards, but he had to be here.The alternative was to walk away from Anna all over again, and he wasn’t willing to do that.

---