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Chapters (59)
  1. Bad Friends
  2. Copyright
  3. Dedication
  4. Epigraph
  5. AFTER: DECEMBER
  6. BEFORE: JUNE
  7. Chapter One
  8. Chapter Two
  9. Chapter Three
  10. Chapter Four
  11. Chapter Five
  12. Chapter Six
  13. Chapter Seven
  14. Chapter Eight
  15. Chapter Nine
  16. Chapter Ten
  17. Chapter Eleven
  18. Chapter Twelve
  19. Chapter Thirteen
  20. Chapter Fourteen
  21. Chapter Fifteen
  22. Chapter Sixteen
  23. Chapter Seventeen
  24. Chapter Eighteen
  25. Chapter Nineteen
  26. Chapter Twenty
  27. Chapter Twenty-One
  28. Chapter Twenty-Two
  29. Chapter Twenty-Three
  30. Chapter Twenty-Four
  31. Chapter Twenty-Five
  32. Chapter Twenty-Six
  33. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  34. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  35. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  36. Chapter Thirty
  37. Chapter Thirty-One
  38. Chapter Thirty-Two
  39. Chapter Thirty-Three
  40. Chapter Thirty-Four
  41. Chapter Thirty-Five
  42. Chapter Thirty-Six
  43. Chapter Thirty-Seven
  44. Chapter Thirty-Eight
  45. Chapter Thirty-Nine
  46. Chapter Forty
  47. Chapter Forty-One
  48. Chapter Forty-Two
  49. Chapter Forty-Three
  50. Chapter Forty-Four
  51. Chapter Forty-Five
  52. Chapter Forty-Six
  53. Chapter Forty-Seven
  54. Chapter Forty-Eight
  55. A CONVERSATION WITH CLAIRE SEEBER
  56. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  57. About the Author
  58. By the same author:
  59. About the Publisher

A terrible metallic crack ends the voice. The coach is jerked by force into the fast lane. My head whips forward, then snaps back again. There’s a crunch as the first van hits us head on, and folds: then the next vehicle, then the next. A hot flash up my left leg. Finally there is silence – almost silence. Just a single horn blaring into the complete darkness, then, soon after, another: a petulant electronic chorus. Closer to me, a whimpering that spreads like wildfire. We have finally stopped moving and now there is nothing. Just darkness. Just the sob of my own breath as I clasp myself and wonder: Is this death?

Chapter One

Chapter One

‘Maggie Warren?’

I am not ready for this.

I was about to change my mind when the girl came to get me.

I smiled. Such a false smile, it nearly cracked my face.

She was a new girl; she must have started after the –

Since I’d been away. She was confident. Supremely so. More confident than I had ever been at her age. At her stage. She was young and blonde and she walked with a swish of paper-straight hair and an empty click of the long leather boots that promised – something, I wasn’t quite sure what. Exactly Charlie’s type.

‘I’m Daisy,’ she threw over an immaculate shoulder as I tried to keep up. I was already unsettled, and her swagger unnerved me more. Did she know something I didn’t? Painfully I followed her down corridors, trying to keep up, banging awkwardly through the doors, my crutches unwieldy beneath my arms. Waiting all the time for her to speak. She didn’t. I searched for something to say. I contemplated myself in her position, remembering all the inanities I’d spouted since I’d started, the yards and yards of crap I’d sparkled with. The punters have earned it, I always thought. In Daisy’s book, though, apparently, I hadn’t. But I was different, perhaps.

I needed to fill the silence – the silence aside from the click of her dominatrix boots. She awarded me a thin smile as she pulled open the next set of doors, as she waited for me, not quite tapping her toes, with a smile that said, ‘I am leading you like a lamb to your slaughter.’

I said, ‘Have you worked for Double-decker before?’

She shook her sleek head. ‘Came from the Beeb.’

I loathed people who said ‘the Beeb’.

‘Graduate trainee.’

Didn’t like them much either. The graduate trainee who invariably thought they knew it all. She was remarkably flat-chested for one of Charlie’s girls, I noted, as I squeezed past her.

‘Oxford, you know.’ Had she actually sniffed as she said it?

‘Ah, Oxford.’ I nodded sagely. That would explain it. Charlie had a penchant for posh.