Her Sweet Revenge

by Sarah Bonner

Genres: Women's Fiction; Domestic Thrillers

Synopsis

SECRETS AND LIES RUIN LIVES

'So many twists and thrills I was gripping the sides of the book all the way to the dynamite ending' DAN MALAKIN
'A high-paced and relentlessly twisty thriller' L.V. MATTHEWS
'An intricately plotted thriller full of deeply flawed yet believable characters. Utterly riveting and clever' CATHERINE COOPER
'Fiendishly clever and compulsive - this novel will leave you feeling breathless in the best way' SARAH LAWTON
'More twists and turns than a rollercoaster! Superbly plotted, compelling, pacy. Sarah is a tour de force' T ORR MUNRO

Two women receive an anonymous note.
For one it's a threat.
For the other it's an invitation for revenge.

Helena is beautiful, successful, and living in married bliss in Exeter. But she's hiding a secret that could tear her perfect life apart. When the notes begin to arrive, she realises someone else must know her secret. But what might her husband and his overbearing family do if they find out the truth?

Thea is reeling from her best friend Helena's death. But when she starts digging into the circumstances, she receives a threatening note warning her to stop. She knows her friend's death wasn't an accident. This was murder. And she is determined to get revenge . . .

PRAISE FOR SARAH BONNER'S DEBUT HER PERFECT TWIN:

'Brilliantly twisty' T. M. Logan

'Terrifyingly vivid' Janice Hallett

'Made my jaw drop' Samantha Downing

'A perfect storm of sly revenge and rivalry' L. V. Matthews

Release date: September 5, 2023

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 368

Sample

2018

HELENA

My mother-in-law is already holding court in the dining room when I arrive to meet her for lunch. Just like every other Monday, regardless of anything else I might have going on. God forbid if I were to ever miss the bi-weekly torture session Geraldine subjects me to.

“You’re late,” she calls as I walk in, voice booming across the space. I glance at my watch—it’s one minute past—and my heel catches in a gap between the flagstones causing me to stumble a little. “Drunk?” she asks, and her minions titter into their hands.

When I say I’m meeting her for lunch what I really mean is that I’m having lunch in her general vicinity. There are at least a dozen other women here, each an almost carbon copy of the others: perfectly coiffed hair, skin lined from far too many summers in the South of France, matching Brora cashmere cardigans. They are all wives of important people. Or at least people she considers to be important. The Grange is a very exclusive private members’ club, with a stringent set of rules around who can—and more importantly who cannot—sip a cocktail at the large mahogany bar, eat a steak in the damask flock-wallpapered dining room, or stay in one of the handful of bedrooms each equipped with its own claw-foot bath. My husband’s family have owned this club for decades.

“You have something on your dress,” Geraldine wrinkles her nose as she gestures to an almost microscopic piece of fluff on my ribcage.

I pluck it off as I go to sit down and place it carefully on the napkin at my side. “Probably from the lining of my coat.” I hate myself for explaining. I hate myself even more as I hold my breath to wait for her next criticism.

“You should be more careful if you’re going to wear black.” Her tone is clear: black is not appropriate for lunch. Black is for funerals and the weddings of women she loathes.

“I came straight from a meeting with a client.”

She takes a sip of her water before she replies. “Yes, well I suppose it is admirable to have a hobby.” Translation: she does not think it’s admirable. She is just making sure she gets in her usual dig about me having a career. Taylor wives do not have careers. They have charities they support, husbands they look after, and—most importantly—children they coddle. And you thought 1950 was a lifetime ago. “But next time, please ensure you are dressed appropriately for lunch. There are important people here and I do not wish for you to embarrass me fur—”

Her last sentence is cut short as she notices the waitress hovering next to her, the large glass of wine in her hand dangerously close to sloshing over the brim as she bobs and weaves to avoid Geraldine’s gesticulations.

“Just put the glass down you stupid girl,” Geraldine snaps. I catch the waitress’s eye and offer a small smile of encouragement. She looks terrified. I can’t say I blame her. My best friend calls Geraldine “Smaug”—not to her face though, obviously—because she thinks she’s a wealth-obsessed dragon. Geraldine is also a stuck-up class A bitch and she’s rather prone to firing any member of staff at The Grange she deems “not up to par,” despite the fact she’s meant to leave the day-to-day running of the place to the manager.

As lunch continues, I find myself desperately trying to ensure conversation around the table remains in a territory I’m at least vaguely comfortable with, such as the weather or the new coffee shop opening in the next village. Edward and I have been married for almost six years now, so I’m well practised at staying away from anything political to avoid an inevitable argument, but I’m also trying to steer clear of anything baby related that might trigger Geraldine to bring up the subject of her lack of grandchildren. At least the food is incredible, and I have to confess I love cracking the burnt sugar on top of the world’s smallest—and possibly most pretentious in a really quite fabulous way—crème brûlée.

After the dessert plates are cleared, I excuse myself and duck out of the side door of the dining room. Geraldine believes it is the height of rudeness to “check one’s telephone in polite company,” but I’m waiting on an important email from a potential investor. I pull my phone from my bag as soon as I’m outside and I’m ecstatic to find an invite for a lunch meeting next week to “discuss the finer details.” My dream might actually happen and I almost prance around the corner to ensure I’m fully out of Geraldine’s sight before I call to confirm. I nearly fall over a slim, blond haired young woman in the signature black skirt and bottle-green shirt of The Grange staff, sitting on the floor, smoking, who I realise is the same terrified waitress Geraldine was haranguing earlier.

“Shit! Sorry!” She leaps to her feet, grinding her cigarette butt with the block heel of the ridiculous shoes Geraldine insists the female staff wear with their uniform. “I… err… I was just…”

“Hey. It’s OK. I promise I won’t tell.” I give her a smile. “But get one of the barmen to show you the spot on the roof. It’s a much better place to hide from Smaug.” The name flies out my mouth before I really think.

“Smaug?” She mouths the name back at me, but her eyes are dancing as she suppresses a giggle. “Like the dragon in The Hobbit?”

“My mother-in-law,” I confirm with a raise of both eyebrows.

“Ouch.”

“Yeah. Complete cliché, I know, but in this case it’s true. The whole mother-in-law from hell thing. I’m Helena by the way.” I extend my hand to her.

“Ella,” she says. Then her face crumples, “I think she’s going to fire me.”

“That might be a blessing in disguise.”

“Except that I have to pay my rent and this is the only job I could find. Maybe once I’ve saved a bit and I can buy a nice suit for interviews…” she trails off. “Sorry. You don’t want to hear my problems.” She lets out a shuddering sigh that should be melodramatic but instead seems… well, she seems vulnerable, as if she’s balanced on a precipice and liable to fall at any moment.

“I could help you. I mean, we’re probably not that different in size. And I have a wardrobe full of ‘interview suits’ that would work with a few adjustments. I’m a stylist.” I say the last bit with pride, despite Geraldine’s insistence that “shopping for other people is rather beneath the Taylors—people shop for us.”

“Would you?” she stares at me, her whole face hopeful.

We are both five foot four, slim (well she’s probably a ten and I’m a fourteen, but close enough); so similar in appearance it’s like looking into a mirror back to 2005. Her long blond hair is glossy, falling in gentle waves down her back—although mine now requires over three hours in the salon every month to achieve the same look. Her skin has that effortlessly dewy appearance that requires no makeup and her teeth are white and perfectly straight (I’m a teeny bit jealous: no one tells you that your teeth move as you head towards forty and you find yourself googling how intrusive adult braces might be). “When you finish your shift, pop round, we only live down the road, on the corner, just before the Welcome to Ofcombe St. Mary sign. The Gatehouse, you can’t miss it.”

“Thank you!” She launches herself at me and wraps me into a tight hug as if we’ve been friends for years. “You’re a life saver.”

Back inside the dining room, Geraldine leans in to sniff my hair the second I slide onto my chair. “Fraternising with the staff, were we? Well, I guess you can take the girl out of Torquay but you can’t take Torquay out of the girl. But really, Helena, you need to be more careful around smokers.” Her expression hardens, her eyes piercing through me. “Especially if you’re going to start IVF soon.”

I stay silent, crossing my arms across my chest. It looks defensive but it hides the way I’m pinching the delicate skin on my inner arm, the bruising covered by the bolero I’m wearing. It’s the only way I can stop myself from hitting her.

“Oh, don’t give me that sourpuss look. You’re hardly the only person to ever do it. Moira’s niece did.” Geraldine points to a small woman with blond hair so perfectly styled it looks like a helmet. “Moira!” The woman looks ecstatic to be singled out. “Your niece did the IVF, didn’t she?”

“Oh yes. Six rounds in the end. Horrible process, but needs must.”

“See,” Geraldine hisses. “She did six rounds. And you won’t even do one.”

“Edward and I are looking at our options,” I tell her, wishing we could drop this ridiculous charade. I do not want children and neither does my husband: we never have, our love for each other is more than enough, and we want to have careers and travel and freedom. I once asked Edward if he was upset that the Taylor name would end with him. He had smiled and gently chastised me that “continuation of the family name” is probably the worst possible reason for having children. His mother, however, is of an entirely different opinion and continues to insist I must be having trouble conceiving.

“I just don’t understand why you haven’t made an appointment yet. I gave you the number of that specialist who Cecily’s friend was seeing. She just had triplets.”

“I—” But my reply is interrupted by the sound of glass on concrete. A lot of glass. Ella is standing in the doorway of the dining room amidst a sea of glittering shards, a look of abject horror frozen on her face, an empty tray held vertically out in front of her.

“Oh, you stupid girl!” Geraldine exclaims. “Look at this mess!” Geraldine turns to her friends and rolls her eyes. “At this rate I’m going to have to find yet another waitress.” She turns her gaze to me. “As if I don’t have enough to worry about.”

When Ella turns up at my house later that afternoon, frazzled and nervous, I immediately assume the worst.

“Did she fire you?” I ask, trying to sound sympathetic, pushing my rising anger to one side.

“Not yet,” Ella’s voice cracks as she talks, “but I think she wants to.”

“What did she say?”

But Ella only shakes her head, dashing her hand across her face as if to hold back her tears. My heart breaks a little for her; she looks so vulnerable, so young.

I take a step to the side and motion for her to come inside the house. “Let’s have a drink, OK? And I promise I will help you to find something else, something better.”

“Why are you being so kind to me?” she asks.

I shrug. She’ll probably assume it’s to get back at Geraldine, and I admit that is part of it, but I just can’t help but see myself in her. Once upon a time I was completely out of my depth, stuck in a place where the people around me treated me as if I were a second-class citizen. Ella and I have a lot in common.

“Follow me,” I say to her, and lead her down the hallway and into the kitchen. It’s my favourite room in the house; light grey cupboards and oak worktops give it a modern farmhouse vibe, and there’s a large island with these fabulous bar stools. Although I’m not the most talented chef, I love to cook for Edward as he sips a glass of wine and we talk about nothing in particular, as if we are the only two people in the world.

“Wow!” Ella exclaims, turning slowly to take in the whole space. “Your kitchen is bigger than my flat.”

“You should see Geraldine’s place,” I say quickly, doing what I always do when people assume we’re wealthy, putting someone else in the spotlight.

“I bet that isn’t any near as stylish as this,” Ella replies with a grin.

“Let’s just say her place isn’t to my taste,” I reply and then cover my mouth with my hand. “Don’t tell her I said that,” I add.

“Your secrets are safe with me. Now, are you going to give me the tour?”

I show Ella around the house and she oohs and ahhs at the open-plan living and dining room, the walled garden with its pretty patio seating area, the three large bedrooms each with their own en-suite. “It was originally the gatehouse for the estate, but it’s been expanded over the years,” I tell her, “and then I redecorated when Edward and I got married and moved in. It was almost derelict before then.”

We end the tour in the bedroom I predominantly use for additional storage. It is impeccably neat—my tidiness is a bit of a hangover from my boarding school days—with deep pile carpets, light oak built-in wardrobes and a fabulous purple sofa to add just the right pop of colour. “Now then. Let’s find you an interview outfit.”

Half an hour later, I’ve found the perfect skirt suit for her; classy and demure but with a clinging skirt that keeps the look feeling young enough for someone who is only just twenty-three. The only problem is a blouse, as Ella is blessed in a way that I am not and so all of mine gape unattractively. “How about I take you to this outlet place I’m a member of?” I offer.

“That would be amazing!”

“Great. Now, shall we have a sneaky cocktail?” I ask her. I’m enjoying her company and don’t want her to leave just yet.

“Hell, yes!” she replies with gusto, and we head down to the kitchen. Her enthusiasm is infectious, she’s so different to most of the other people in my life. Geraldine and her geriatric mean girls. Edward and his “rugger chums”—his term, not mine. Apart from Thea, all my friends are parents now, conversations dominated by school choices and screen-time limits. They’ve moved on from the baby phase, passed the toddler days, careering towards the tween years as I stay exactly where I’ve always been. I stand by the decision Edward and I made, but if I’m entirely honest I hadn’t realised how much my life would diverge from the lives of my peers. Or that there would be some parts I would miss: no first words, first day at school, dance recitals, chess tournaments, their first love and first heartbreak. I’ve never told even Edward but I was pregnant once, but it wasn’t meant to be. I would have called her Thea after her godmother and she would have been fierce and fearless. She would have changed the world.

“You must be so proud of your business.” Ella pulls me back from the daydream. She’s scrolling on her phone. “This is UH-mazing!” She turns her screen to show me what she’s looking at. It’s my Instagram feed. “You have like a hundred thousand followers. You’re practically a celebrity.”

“Hardly,” I reply, but I can’t help smiling while I busy myself by preparing us a Mojito. I try to avoid glancing at the alcove I use as a home office, the vintage roll top closed to hide the chaos of papers sprawled across it. And the hidden drawer stuffed full of the evidence of my notoriety.

“Tell me all about it,” Ella begs, taking the proffered cocktail, curling her legs underneath her on the sofa.

“There’s not a lot to tell.”

“Really? I don’t believe that for one minute.”

“Well, there’s this investor who is interested…” I trail off. “But it’s early days and I can’t really talk about it.”

Ella applauds. “Brilliant. I’m in awe of you. It must piss your mother-in-law off, seeing you with this big successful business.”

“Not quite… Geraldine is horrified that I suggest people wear high street.” I do my best Geraldine impression and Ella snorts Mojito as she laughs. “Like where else do real people shop?” My mother-in-law only wears vintage Diane von Furstenberg wrap dresses; she has a whole wardrobe of them. Geraldine’s functionally bankrupt, essentially living on money borrowed against The Grange, but she’s very good at keeping up appearances. The late Mr. Edwin Taylor—my father-in-law—put all the cash assets in trust rather than leave them to his wife, or directly to his son. Which means there is no Taylor money unless Edward produces an heir. Edwin revelled in making everyone’s lives as shitty as possible when he was alive and he just couldn’t help continuing his sadistic legacy in death.

I drain my glass, pushing the thought of him from my mind. “Another Mojito?” I ask Ella, not waiting for her answer before walking back into the kitchen to prepare another cocktail.

“I’d love to, but I’d better run.” She wrinkles her nose and sounds genuinely disappointed. “But I’ll see you on Thursday?” The question is accompanied by a raised eyebrow and hopeful smile.

“Absolutely,” I confirm, following her into the hallway.

“Ooh, what’s that?” She scoops a little envelope from the door mat and passes it to me. It’s small, about the size of a postcard: Helena written on it in elaborate calligraphy. Did I miss it earlier, or was it delivered while we were sipping Mojitos? I try to peer round Ella, but it’s almost dusk, the trees silhouetted against the darkening sky, offering the perfect place for someone to hide. A chill runs down my spine.

Is someone watching from the shadows?

“Thank you, Helena,” Ella says, lifting the suit slightly. “For the suit and for… well, for treating me like a person.”

I close the door behind her and look at the envelope in my hand, exactly like the others hidden in my desk. Inside is a simple white card, a single sentence written on it.

We all have secrets… but you’re going to pay for yours

2018

HELENA

We all have secrets… but you’re going to pay for yours

Just a single sentence written in curling lettering on a plain blank card.

Just like the ones which have come before:

Secrets and lies ruin lives

Some secrets are buried deeper than others

How far do I need to dig before I find yours

I feel numb as I head back into the kitchen and the open bottle of rum. My hand is shaking as I pour two fingers into my glass and gulp it down, wincing at the taste of the salt I’d applied to the rim. I pour another shot, the sound of the bottle thumping onto the work service as loud as thunder in the silent kitchen.

Fortified with alcohol, I pick the card back up, turning it over in my hands. There is nothing else written on it except that one line.

We all have secrets… but you’re going to pay for yours

The first note arrived just under two weeks ago, pushed through the letter box while I was upstairs. Sometimes when Edward is out—this time Geraldine had dragged him to dinner with some boring banker types she was hoping would invest in The Grange—I lock myself in the bathroom so I can pretend I’m not all alone in the house in the dark. The Gatehouse can feel so isolated, surrounded by tall trees that block the noise from the road and cast eerie shadows against the windows.

I thought it was junk mail at first, expecting to open it to find a flyer for a local takeaway, or a letter from an estate agency telling me they wanted to help sell my home. But then I read those five words, written in curling copperplate:

Secrets and lies ruin lives

I had frozen, staring at the words as the room started to swirl and shift around me. My feet turned to blocks of ice on the cold stone floor and all the blood rushed to my heart, beating a mile a minute. Who had sent it? How could they possibly know?

After a few minutes the spell holding me in place had begun to dissipate. I locked every door, every window. Lowered every blind. Drew every curtain. Tried to fight the overwhelming desire to crawl into the darkest corner of the house and hide there until morning. In the end, I went to bed, the covers pulled over my head, praying for the sun to rise and reveal this was all just a bad dream.

But the note was still hidden in my desk when I looked the next morning. And so I composed myself, put on a nice dress and some makeup, and went to the police.

The police officer was an attractive guy in his late twenties. He’d put the note in one of those evidence bags—you know, the ones that look like a glorified sandwich bag—and spent all of about twenty seconds looking at it before he handed it back to me. “And?” he asked, tilting his head slightly.

“And?” I replied, confused.

“Is this all?”

“It’s a threatening note, sent to my home. Someone knows where I live.”

“Right.” He drew the word out. “It doesn’t seem very threatening.” He shrugged his shoulders.

I went back a few days later when the second note came. Some secrets are buried deeper than others

It was the same officer. “Back again?” He read the new card before sitting back into his chair. “Do you use social media, Mrs. Taylor?”

“Of course.” I stopped myself from adding who doesn’t? “I blog and use Instagram. For my business.” I added that last bit hoping it would make him take me more seriously.

“And do you post pictures. Of yourself, your home?”

“Of course.”

“Could someone have seen your address online? A stack of post in the background of you pout— err, posing, I mean.”

“Well…”

“Because I think this is probably just someone messing with you.”

“You think it’s a prank?”

I didn’t bother going back. Especially after what had happened to my friend Natalia.

Natalia Ormerod was a fashion blogger and Instagram star, one of the very first “non-celeb” people to hit over a million followers. Was. Past tense. Eighteen months ago she began receiving these anonymous notes. Day after day she would get them, week after week, month after month. She only showed us the first few. A year ago, someone hacked her Instagram account and uploaded photos onto her feed. They weren’t explicit—Instagram would have deleted them if they were—but they pretty clearly showed Natalia with a guy who wasn’t her husband. The next day her entire social media just vanished. We met through this group chat for “influencers,” a bunch of us getting together so we’d feel less alone in an industry that is basically bonkers. She posted a cryptic message before leaving the chat: about wanting to be left alone to “rebuild” but that she wished she’d just given them what they wanted.

The rumour mill had gone into overdrive, but the consensus was that she was the victim of a reputation scam and had refused—or been unable, I guess—to pay the demands. So whoever was behind it had revealed everything. Her shameful secrets splashed across the internet for everyone to see.

For her husband to see.

I didn’t tell Edward when the notes first started arriving. My husband is supportive and lovely and even helped me to set up my website back at the start of this crazy journey. But he also hates what he calls the “celebritisation” of my job, the way I have to give over a huge part of myself to appear approachable and real on social media. I get what he’s saying, but I love that I get to help people, that my clients don’t think of me as some faceless person hiding behind a corporate machine. He thinks I am making myself a target for weirdos and freaks. I knew that first smooth white card with those five perfectly written words on it would just prove him right. Plus of course he would worry and he has so much else on his plate right now. He’s always tried to take my problems and make them his own, looking for a solution, for an answer. And then he would have started digging and eventually started asking questions. Questions I’m not sure I want to answer.

Questions like what secrets I might be keeping.

We all have secrets. But one of mine might break him. Might break us. So I just kept stuffing the notes into the little drawer of my desk, until they threatened to explode. I began to have nightmares where the drawer would fly open, the notes—in my dream there were literally thousands of them—raining onto every surface of the house, drowning me in little rectangles of card, cutting my skin to shreds, the blood staining the white.

His key scraping in the lock makes me jump. The card is still in my hand and I only just make it to the desk before he’s inside.

“What a day!” he calls as he moves from the hallway to the kitchen. “You have no idea how busy things are. It’s a fucking nightmare.”

“Hmmm,” I say, trying to slide open the secret drawer in silence. The note safely ensconced inside, I vow to forget about it. Plaster a smile on my face and have a glass of wine with my husband. I’m good at pretending nothing is wrong, I’ve had plenty of practice.

“Mum said you were a bit off at lunch earlier,” Edward says as he settles on the sofa. He takes a huge swig of wine and watches me over the brim.

“Off?” I ask. Because what the hell does off actually mean?

“She’s worried about us.”

“No, Edward. She’s worried about herself.” I’m tired, a little drunk after the rum earlier and my mind is half concentrating on the notes tucked in the drawer of my desk. I am absolutely not in the mood to talk about his fucking mother.

“She wants what is best for all of us.”

“No, Edward, she doesn’t. She wants what’s best for her. She’s banging the babies drum louder than ever. You aren’t the one who has to sit there while she makes not-so-subtle digs in front of her awful friends.”

“I’m sure she isn’t making digs.”

“She is. Jesus, she brought Moira along today just because Moira’s niece had the IVF.” I mimic Geraldine, a nasty nasal quality to my tone.

Edward sighs and runs his hand through his hair. I stare back at him, waiting for him to finally agree to tell her the truth. But he doesn’t. That would involve having a proper adult conversation with his mother, one he has avoided for years. “She thinks she’s helping, H-Bear.”

The way he uses our nickname while defending her makes me want to scream. “Why do you always take her side?”

“I don’t.” He almost sounds offended, like he doesn’t see the same dragon I see; he sees some poor innocent old widow instead. “She just wants to be a grandmother. That’s all.”

He still thinks she wants a grandchild to coo over, that it would break her heart if she knew her only son was denying her that dream. He really can’t see that a baby would simply be the key to unlocking all the Taylor money.

“I’m going to bed,” I tell him, picking up my glass and heading to the kitchen for a refill.

“Night, H-Bear,” he says softly from his position on the sofa. I don’t answer, but I take a full bottle of Sauvignon Blanc from the fridge and go upstairs without another word.

He slips into bed, making the mattress buck slightly beneath me. “Are you awake,” he whispers.

“Yes,” I reply.

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?” I hold my breath as I wait for his answer.

“I just want you to be happy.”

I try to dampen my disappointment in him. All I want is for him to recognise that his mother is a bully. I just want my husband to take my side for once. “Good night, Edward.” I keep my voice neutral. It just isn’t worth fighting anymore.

“Night, H-Bear,” he says softly, burrowing a little more under the duvet. “Love you.”

“Love you, too,” I reply, almost reflexively; the same words we always say in the dark.

Five minutes later he’s snoring softly, but sleep evades me. You know how when you try not to think about something, it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger? It’s only words on a piece of A6 card. Words can’t hurt me.

We all have secrets… but you’re going to pay for yours

But whoever is sending these notes can hurt me. Especially if they really do know the truth.

Everyone has secrets. But mine could tear my life apart.

At one a.m., I’m still wide awake. Edward has curled himself into a ball, taking most of the duvet with him. I debate stealing it back, but I know that would only wake him and at least he isn’t snoring. The house is silent, the moon casting a grey glow in the darkness. Outside an owl hoots, a fox screams, and I curse them both for the racket they are making, even though they are hardly to blame for my insomnia.

After another five minutes I give up and pick up my phone from the bedside table, reducing the screen brightness so I don’t disturb Edward or attract moths in through the open window. I fire off a stream of texts to Thea in a veritable bitch-fest about my mother-in-law. It’s about seven in the evening in New York, so she’ll still be at work, but it feels good to just offload into the ether, to alchemise all that fear into hate. I’m lucky my mother-in-law is such a justified target for it.

Thea is my “little sister.” She’s not actually my sister; we’re not blood relatives, but she was also a scholarship girl at Ferndown, a few years younger than me, and I took her under my wing. There was a time when she was basically the only friend I had in that place and even two decades later and with over three thousand miles between us, we’re still close.

I’m awoken at five by the dinging of a stream of messages from Thea, replying to my earlier diatribe. She is absolutely vicious in her response and I love her for. . .