Greenwich Park

The privileged backgrounds of the accused. The vulnerability of the victim. The beauty of the backdrop. The ugliness of the detail.

she somehow seems to collect female friendships, effortlessly, like the bangles she wears on both wrists.

How do some women amass such huge collections of people who love them, yet I can’t even go to a prenatal class and make one nice, normal friend?

I can’t understand sometimes how things like that are still the same. Things that she touched, things that she wore, that were once warm against her skin, mirrors that held her reflection. They are all still here, in the world, with me. But she is gone, and never coming back.

I know it is a small thing, but when your life has shrunk as much as mine has, small things take up more space than they should.

And I learn, for the first time, what power there is in justice, in being believed.

It can be hard not to stare at happy people. They are mesmerizing somehow.

Whoever we are, whatever we’ve done. We all have our reasons, if anyone can be bothered to listen.

But then, no one really thinks they are bad, do they? Whoever we are, whatever we've done. We all have our reasons, if anyone can be bothered to listen.

I had to remember not to stare. It can be hard not to stare at happy people. They are mesmerizing somehow.

Things just went from bad to worse that night in the club, when Rachel came on the scene. We didn’t know her name, then. We just knew it was the girl from the boathouse floor. Daniel and I were only there because Rory had dragged us there to charm some sleazy client. It was the worst luck in the world.

anyone would be. You were not crazy.’ This is her latest theme – that I’m a victim, just like Rachel. Except Rachel is the one who was raped, robbed of justice, and who ended up dead. Not me. ‘I’m just saying. If you saw those things, you saw them.

Not you. But them. Them and my fucking brother. You know after everything, he still expects me to bring him stuff, to his parties. It’s the only reason the two of them want me around. Fucking hypocrites.

Don’t patronise me, Charlie. Don’t you fucking dare. And anyway, I obviously did have to. I obviously can’t rely on you to tell me the truth.

The thing about Serena is that she somehow seems to collect female friendships, effortlessly, like the bangles she wears on both wrists. I think of that awful hen weekend in Cornwall again. There were friends from Serena’s primary school, secondary school, university, work, ‘hockey’ – I had lost count. How is it that some women amass such huge collections of people who love them, yet I can’t even go to an antenatal class and make one nice, normal friend?

sit on the ball again and rock back and forth, trying to massage the pain out of my hips. I feel like screaming. None of what he is saying makes sense. Why didn’t she tell her dad she was pregnant? Why was she always here if she lived miles away? What was she doing in Greenwich all those times? And if she lied about that – what else had she lied about?

think how lucky I am to own my tiny one-bed in Dartmouth Park, to have dodged the rental trap so many graduates like me have fallen into. Paying hundreds of pounds a month just to live somewhere like this. Somewhere where the windows only open up an inch.

After Grenfell we’d done a big investigation into these blocks, tried to find out how many more were death traps, coated in dangerous cladding, at risk of infernos. I’d been haunted by thoughts of fire for a long time after covering Grenfell. I couldn’t stop thinking about all those people, trapped like animals on the upper floors.

Sometimes, for a few hours, he convinces me. I allow myself to decide it’s not my fault, not my problem. I mean, we’re not responsible for her, are we? We were just gullible enough to take her in for a couple of weeks.

don’t get it, Katie,’ he says. ‘You met this girl what – once, twice? Why are you interrogating me about it?’ He leans closer. ‘What are you asking? Are you saying you think I’ve got something to do with her going missing?’ ‘Of course not. Don’t be stupid!

Oh, come on. You were together, by the bookcase. Just the two of you, for ages. You were standing really close to her. Why did you have so much to talk about when you’d only just met her?

him was this? Hospitals, nightmares, bleeding, misery, dead babies. He was chained to it, to my useless body: bloated, bleeding, bearing the ugly scars of pregnancy and birth, but with no life, no child to show for it. I started to feel I was dead already.

I look at the discarded cans and cigarette butts that litter the beautiful garden, the rotting fruit from Anna’s beloved pear tree. I wonder what Helen’s parents would think of their children now.

When I traced it back, I couldn’t quite work out how I’d even got to this point. Had I ever even liked this girl, really? Had I encouraged her friendship? I didn’t think I had. Yet somehow, she had become my problem. A problem I wasn’t sure how I was going to solve.

They did their best, of course. But it is, in the end, not an easy thing to hide. The unmistakable stench of desperation. The cringing eagerness of the salesmen of damaged goods, for whom they’d finally found an interested buyer.

think he just didn’t know what to make of it, of their exuberance, the decadence of it all, the platter of riches he was being offered. A few times, I noticed him glancing over, as if pleading for help.

Eighteen thousand people,’ Rachel announces triumphantly. ‘And you’re knocking down a load of council houses for a few fancy apartments with a gym.’ She rolls her eyes, grinning, as if this is all hilariously funny, instead of hideously uncomfortable. ‘I bet most of it is foreigners, isn’t it? Buying from abroad? I bet half of them won’t even live there.’ Lisa’s expression hardens from lukewarm to glacial.

He’d stormed upstairs. I knew he was going to have a cigarette on our balcony. He likes to think I don’t know about the cigarettes. Or the coke. He likes to think I don’t know a lot of things. I’d picked up the magazine, thrown it in the recycling. On the cover, his face looked like somebody I didn’t recognise.