Chapter 11
Cassie
2.30 a.m., Sunday 14 August, Wapping
I’m going to take you back to the summer’s evening near the end of my friendship with Anna, Bo and Dex.
Until that day, the eve of my thirty-second birthday, we had been indivisible; our bond the kind that lasts a lifetime. Afterwards, when everything began to fall apart, I came to understand that the ties between us had always carried the seeds of rottenness and destruction, and that the life we shared was anything but normal. Somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind I think I had probably known this for years, but it took what happened late that night in August for me to begin to be able to put the pieces together. Why had I failed to acknowledge the truth for so long? Was it loneliness, or was I in love with an idea of friendship that I could not bear to let go? Perhaps I was simply a coward? One day, it might become clearer to me. Perhaps it will become clear to you, once I have taken you back there, to that time and that place. And when I am done with the story, when everything has been explained and the secrets are finally out, I will ask you what you would have done. Because that’s what I really want to know.
What would you have done?
Picture this scene: a Sunday morning in the early hours at a music festival in Wapping, East London. Most of the ticket holders have already left, and the organisers are clearing up now – stewards checking the mobile toilets, litter pickers working their grab hooks in the floodlights. Anna, Bo, Dex and I are lying side-by-side on the grass near the main stage, our limbs stiffening from all the dancing, staring at the marble eye of a supermoon and drinking in this late hour of our youth. None of us speaks but we don’t have to. We are wondering how many more hazy early mornings we will spend alone together. How much more dancing will there be? And how soon will it be before nights like these are gone forever?
At last, Bo says, ‘Maybe we should go on to a club or back to yours, Dex. You’re nearest.’
Dex says this won’t work; Gav is back tonight and he’ll kick off about the noise.
We’re all sitting up now, dusting the night from our clothes. In the distance I spot a security guard heading our way. ‘I vote we go to Bo’s. What is it, ten minutes in an Uber?’
Anna has spotted the guard too and jumps onto her feet, rubbing the goosebumps from her arms.
‘I’ve got literally zero booze,’ Bo says. ‘Plus the cleaner didn’t come this week so there’s, like, a bazillion pizza boxes everywhere.’
With one eye on the guard, Anna says, ‘How’s about we all just go home then?’
And that’s exactly what we should have done.
Home. A long night-tube ride to Tottenham and the shitty flat I share with four semi-strangers. The place with the peeling veneer flooring, the mouldy fridge cheese and the toothbrushes lined up on a bathroom shelf rimmed with limescale.
‘Will you guys see out
