Page 80 of Dead to Me

Just not sure what to do about some stuff that’s gone down and I don’t want to put anything down in writing until I’ve had some advice.Got someone in mind to talk to…

That was what Holly had messaged Cordelia.

It occurred to me, then, that it could have been Ryan that she was talking about.Ryan, who would get drunk and then assault women.If something had already happened to Holly and she’d seen him assault someone else she could easily have wanted to seek advice.

But she never told Cordelia about that, did she?I thought with a chill.She never told her best friend that Ryan tried to assault her.

I realised that my suspicions about Holly had probably been right: she was someone who didn’t want to rock the boat.If she’d told Cordelia about Ryan assaulting her, it would have given her friend more ammunition.It would have proved Cordelia right about her rich friends not being good for her.And Holly had wanted to hang on to her friends, and her lifestyle.

Unless Esther was right about Cordelia,I thought with a wince.And Cordelia was actually being controlling, so Holly was having to hide things.

I knew I had to allow for that possibility.Although it didn’t tie in with what I thought of Cordelia, or how I’d seen her behave, I did acknowledge that she had an obsessive side.

But whichever way I looked at it, I had to assume that Holly had learned to hide the bad stuff.That made me wonder how much else she’d been willing to hide for them.She’d known about Esther, hadn’t she?About this older boyfriend.But maybe she’d messaged Cordelia because she’d figured out who he was and there were legal ramifications to it.

She might have hidden other secrets, too.Even Kit’s secrets.Maybe she’d gone that day to confront him.

The big question was whether talking to Kit had got her killed.

With Gael’s voice ringing in my ears, I decided I was going to have to ask Kit about Holly’s visit.There was no time to be careful or wait for things to fall in my lap.

I still had to wait twenty-four hours, because he had his final exam the next day and needed to focus on it.But that left me free to focus my attention on Esther instead, who was free of exams now and eager for company.

Knowing that my spending on the company card was under fierce observation, I still asked Esther to come into London and help me find a dress for the upcoming Tribal Barbecue that marked the start of May Week.(It’s no longer actually called Tribal Barbecue, by the way, but Cambridge students seem to hold onto names for decades.) Wincing, I paid down some of the company credit card using my own bank account, and decided this was just going to have to be something I funded myself.Though with that in mind, I asked Cordelia to tell me exactly where to shop before I did it.

It was a great bonding experience for me and Esther, but it produced frustratingly little in the way of firm information about this boyfriend of hers.Esther opened up quite a lot about her mother and the way she had Esther’s whole life mapped out for her, and also about her fear of standing up to her.But on the subject of this lover’s identity, she was silent.

The only thing I learned wasn’t something she intentionally told me.Late in the afternoon, once we’d finished spending on clothes and switched to spending on alcohol at a French-styled bar off Oxford Street, I came back from the bathroom to witness Esther sending a message.

It’s a little gross, I know, but I hung back to watch from behind her.And it turned out she was editing and then sendingan image of herself she’d clearly taken in one of the fitting rooms.In it, she had a finger in her mouth and was posing in a sultry, incredibly un-Esther-like way.

Just underneath, I could see that she’d written the words:

Dress shopping in London today with A.xx

I got as close as I could to try and work out who the guy she was messaging was, but there was only the name Beau, and his photograph was of a dog.The name could be his actual name, or it could well just be a nickname for a boyfriend.Unhelpful.

I realised I couldn’t hover there until he replied without risking getting caught, so I took a few steps back and then pretended to arrive noisily.Esther quickly blanked the screen out and put her phone down on the table.

She had her defences up as she talked to me, and I heard the phone buzz a short while later.I looked at it when she did: a banner that said ‘Beau’ but no message content.

I was itching to see that response and realised the best way of doing it was probably to seem like I was distracted.So I found an excuse to google an eating place and then, while apparently engaged with my own phone, I covertly watched Esther pick hers up and open it.

She went straight to WhatsApp, and I could see it was the same chat.Luckily for me, she left his reply up for a few beats while she stared at it, giving me plenty of time to read:

You look beautiful, as always.But aren’t there any of the two of you together?x

I’d just finished reading when Esther clicked her phone screen off again and put it quickly away.Despite the smooth facade, I could tell that she was upset.More than upset.

I felt my heart squeezing for her.Whoever this guy was, he was a sleaze who didn’t care about hurting her feelings.Whatkind of an asshole gets a sexy picture of a woman and then asks to see their friend?It was even worse considering he was already in a relationship.

He’s someone who thinks he can have whatever he wants,I thought.

But that horrible interaction was all I was able to learn about this Beau of hers, and I couldn’t find any university lecturers or people connected with her named Beau when I googled later on.A frustrating lack of progress.

So, by Wednesday, I was seriously desperate to find something– anything– out.I promised to meet Kit late afternoon to catch a little Bumps racing (an insane set-up, by the way: hugely expensive rowing eights all lined up in a row down the river with the intention of crashing into each other.It’s just as chaotic as it sounds) and then to dinner with the whole gang to celebrate the end of everyone’s exams.

It was desperation that led me to suggest that Ryan should come to the dinner, too.I wantedso badlyto say the opposite: to tell Kit I wanted Ryan nowhere near me, but I had eight days left here at most, and I was facing total failure.If getting Ryan into a room was what it took, then I needed to do it.

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