Did they find Bella’s body, or catch me on CCTV, or find some digital breadcrumb I failed to sweep up? Did someone from the party last night grow suspicious of me? Did someone at the train station recognise me? Has Mum discovered what I’ve done? Could Zac have guessed my plan? What about Dodgy Steve, or the Corolla Man himself? I want to blame someone, but the truth is, I have no one to blame except myself. My hands are sticky with sweat. I grab a carving knife from the block, then immediately realise how insane that looks and put it back, wiping the handle on a tea towel.
A part of me wants to laugh hysterically. The other part wants to sob, or run, or melt into the floor like one of those cartoon cats who survive only by defying the laws of physics.
The banging starts again – hammering, persistent, echoing through the flat so it sounds like it’s coming from everywhere, from inside the walls and under the floor. I dart into the living room, moving automatically, looking for escape, but there’s nothing – no back door, no fire escape, no window that a human being could squeeze through without plummeting three storeys to their death, or at least without inflicting serious injury. My eyes flick to the Juliet balcony in the bedroom, but the metal railing doesn’t offer an escape route, locked behind double glass. I’m caged.
I return to the living room, ignoring the hammering and the repeated requests for me to open up.
This isn’t the time for logic, but I try to reason with myself. Maybe it’s a mistake. Maybe it’s a routine check, a noise complaint, a neighbour dispute. Maybe they want to ask about someone else in the building.
Every fibre in my body wants to run, but there’s nowhere to run to. If I don’t answer, they’ll get in. If I do answer, it’s over. I force myself to recall every step of the original plan, every what-if, every backup and failsafe I told myself I had. Turns out, I had exactly zero.
I make myself walk to the front door and try to steady my breathing. My legs are shaking so badly it feels like my bones might slip out and clatter on to the floor.
They bang again, louder than before.
I jump.
Then I unlock the door and open it.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Jade
Five months later
I’ve always wondered about prisons. If the TV shows are right, and the walls sweat, and the food makes your teeth melt, and the guards are all monsters, and the inmates are all murderous. The only certainty, from the second the cell door breathes closed behind you, is that you’re not going anywhere but inwards, down through your own layers of fat and guilt and memories. I’ve had plenty of time to imagine my first moments behind bars, and still, I got everything wrong.
HMP Grangefield, a women’s prison in Hampshire, is neither old nor threatening. It has the ambience of an airport, with fluorescent lighting that makes everyone look like processed ham, and lino floors that squeak. There’s no clang as I walk in, just a succession of quietly operated security doors and the scent of industrial laundry detergent, sharp enough to sting my eyes. The first woman I meet – Andrea – turns out the contents of my bag and pocketswith the same indifference she might use for unstacking supermarket shelves.
It’s over before I know it. My belongings are documented, bagged, and zipped away. I’m left with a pair of joggers, my bra, and an ugly blue top that looks like a nurse’s uniform from the 1980s. I expected the strip search, but not the cold matter-of-factness of a woman who’s seen it all a thousand times over. Andrea is efficient, even gentle, her hands practised, her voice low as she explains each step with a patience I didn’t know government employees possessed. ‘Raise your arms. Turn around. Open your mouth. Thank you, love.’ There are no jokes, no tension, just the brisk detachment of someone who knows that, by the end of the week, I’ll be little more than another name scribbled on the whiteboard.
After the search, they send me to ‘Medical’, which is a short corridor with four doors and a poster about hepatitis. The doctor is a Nigerian woman with a gold cross at her neck and no time for pleasantries. She asks about my mental health, my periods, my history of self-harm. I lie to her as smoothly as I lied at the police station, but she takes my blood pressure twice and tells me my heart is ‘racing a little’.
‘That’s normal,’ she adds, scribbling a note I can’t read. The nurse – pink-haired, younger – offers me a cup of watery tea and half a bourbon biscuit. She watches me eat it, eyes narrowed, like she’s waiting for me to spit it out.
My stomach feels queasy, but they insist I have a sandwich and a cup of ‘juice’, which tastes of undiluted sugar and some synthetic fruit. I eat and drink with the same impulse that makes people shovel food inside them at funerals.
The nurse informs me that I’m allowed to speak to one of their peer workers fromListeners, a branch of the Samaritans. I take them up on the offer, not because I want to talk to anyone aboutanything, but because it’s delaying the stomach-churning moment when I’ll be taken to my cell.
The Listener is a heavyset woman in her mid-forties, tattoos lacing her arms. She explains that she’s done nearly two decades inside, mostly for ‘problems with men and money’ – whatever that means – and according to her, the Samaritans trained her to keep people like me from stringing themselves up in the first seventy-two hours.
I don’t know how to respond to that, so I don’t.
‘People assume it’s the violence that’s the worst,’ she continues. ‘Truth is, it’s the loneliness. Gets in your bones.’
I nod and try not to think about my bones, or about Bella’s bones – I don’t even know where they are.
When the police showed up at Bella’s apartment on New Year’s Day, I was sure they had come forme, forJade. I was convinced they were there to arrest me for my twin’s murder. But that wasn’t the case at all.
I’ve been convicted of tax fraud. Or rather, Bella has. So now I’m in bloody jail for something I didn’t do. Looks like my twin wasn’t the perfect angel I thought she was.
It’s landed me with a conundrum. I could simply admit that I’m not Bella and that I didn’t do what they’ve accused me of, but that would open up a whole new can of worms and could possibly incriminate me for her murder. And I obviously can’t risk that. So I’m having to suck it up and keep pretending to be her.
The Listener looks me up and down and sniffs. She advises me to keep to myself, at least at first. ‘Don’t borrow anything, don’t offer unsolicited advice, don’t talk about your case, and definitely do not tell anyone you’ve been done for fraud.’
I wonder what she’d think if she knew about my real crime. My heart pounds as she continues talking. I thought this meeting was supposed to make me feel better, not worse.
I discovered from my lawyer that, between March and October last year, Bella submitted a string of false invoices and fraudulently reclaimed over £200,000. I had to go to Crown Court, where I was sentenced to two years and three months for VAT fraud. Obviously, I knew nothing about any of it, so there wasn’t much I could say in my defence. To be honest, I barely understood much of what was going on, and my lawyer was shit. I thought Bella’s parents would have paid for someone top of the line, but they just left me to my own devices. Never even got in touch to see how I was doing. I guess they were disappointed in the mess their daughter had made of their once-thriving empire.