The Guilty Party: A new gripping thriller from the 2018 bestselling author Mel McGrath. Mel McGrath
One of her followers had asked her to grade the date out of ten. Flirting (9), Kissing (3 – he had smoker’s breath), Other Foreplay (6), Overall (7).
We all noticed Bo had gone very quiet.
‘That’s not really a secret, is it?’ Dex said.
‘It would be if we all did it and only showed each other – oh my god, that’s genius. We should keep a joint Black Book!’ Anna said.
‘Dex and I are, like, monogamous,’ I said.
‘Well, then Bo and I can do it.’
And that was how the Big Black Book was born, as an instrument by which Anna and Bo could take unspoken sexual revenge on one another, though it was never a book, really, but rather a secret Facebook group and, latterly, after Bo decided that Facebook was insecure, an encrypted site on the Cloud. It should have stopped there but when Dex and I split and Dex began an open relationship with Gav, there was a crazy period when all four of us were uploading pictures of our dates in the buff, captured whilst they were asleep or looking the other way. It became a game, though looking back I can see it was a kind of warfare conducted by other means, as everything involving Anna always was.
We kept the Book secret as our lives morphed and we moved to different corners of the capital. We were working all hours, Anna in PR, Dex in a law firm then at a gallery, Bo in software design and me in teacher training, and the Book became the thing in our present we all had in common. In the backs of our minds we all feared that, without the secret of the Book to keep us together, we’d wind up as cybermates: four friends who were once closer than family, sending each other smileys on high days and holidays and gradually, inexorably, losing touch with each other’s real lives.
As it was, the four of us would sometimes meet for Sunday brunch and talk about the week’s encounters: the guy who wanted his ankles stroked, the woman who showed up with her friend. Soon it became a reckoning of the weird and the inadequate and the bizarre, a sort of Domesday Book in which our sexual experiences were recorded and ticked off. We became the holders of each other’s secrets and by that means we survived as friends. None of us ever stopped to think about the invasion of other people’s privacy or whether by what we were doing – capturing the images of lovers when they were at their most vulnerable – we were in some small way stealing some private essence of their innermost selves and repurposing it for the purposes of gladiatorial combat.
‘It would only be creepy if other people were doing it, but because it’s us, it’s not,’ says Anna now.
‘Us? You haven’t done it for years, Anna,’ Dex says.
There’s a moment’s silence, punctured by Anna who, in a tinkly, brittle voice, says, ‘As you all know, I’m happily, happily married.’
Everyone around the table holds their breath. It’s as if we’re all suspended in time. Then, all of a sudden, Bo lets out a bitter little laugh.
Anna
1.30 a.m., Sunday 14 August, Wapping
Anna is standing to one side of the main stage at the front, swaying to the music, glad, on balance, despite all that unpleasantness earlier, that she’d come.
She hadn’t wanted to, not really, but had forced herself out for Cassie’s sake. Plus it would have looked bad if she’d cancelled at the last moment, even if, as she’d done before, she’d lied and used Ralphie as an excuse. But it has turned out to be really quite a relief to have a night away from Isaac. What a bloody bore husbands could be. Bo did warn her. He said, marriage is for bores, don’t do it, Anna. And yet, it was because of him that she had. Daddy had warned her too. She remembers him saying, ‘Is that Isaac fellow really the best you can do? He’s a solicitor, for God’s sake.’ He’s a terrible snob, but it’s always the ones who have the least right to be who turn out to be the worst. Daddy just wanted her to marry someone who was either very, very rich or from a family who sat at the top of the Establishment. Preferably both.
Anna takes a sip of beer and runs the bottle along the scars on her forearms, smiling at the memory of Daddy telling her to keep her limbs covered so prospective beaus wouldn’t see them and assume she was a fruitcake. Which was exactly what she was. Mostly thanks to Daddy’s grim ministrations. Mummy wanted her to marry Bo, who had flirted and charmed his way into her affections and because he’d been to Harrow. She had always sensed that her mother resented lovely, kind, sensible Isaac, who was immune to her flirtations. What would they think if they knew who their grandson’s father really was? Not that Anna would ever tell them about Ralphie even though her mother, she thought, would probably be thrilled and a little envious. Her father? Who knew? In some odd way she thought he might turn protective, two decades too late.
She wouldn’t want to give either of them the satisfaction. In any case, men generally don’t seem put off by the scars. There are three, just over there, really obviously checking her out. All younger. All fit.
She turns herself slightly so as to present a side-on view of her long, slender legs and tiny waist. The lovely sharpness of her collar bone. Absolutely no one would know she’d had a baby. Stomach like a runway. They’re very insistent, her admirers. It must be something to do with the aftermath of sex. Even Bo and Dex. Like dogs scenting a bitch on heat. They’re not even conscious of it. How could they be? They’ve no idea what she’s been up to. Which only makes it all the more delicious.
As for the other thing with Oliver, that will calm down and sort itself. There may well be a rapprochement. And if there isn’t, there are plenty more fish. Ha, maybe she could build a secret profile on Bo’s new app? But no, that wouldn’t be wise. Maybe one day, when Bo has had sex with everyone in London, he’ll boomerang back.
Speaking of, here he is, making his way through the crowd with three Coronas aloft. Which must mean . . .
She waits until he’s near before asking, ‘You didn’t find him?’ Even though they’ve been losing and finding one another all night, it makes Anna anxious when a member of the Group goes off on their own, particularly when it’s one of the boys. It’s been fifteen minutes since Dex disappeared without saying where he was going.
‘Nope.’ Bo passes out the beers and takes a long swig of his own, doesn’t meet her eye. She knows exactly what this means. He hasn’t taken the time to look. A whirl of irritation, like a little spinning top, starts up inside, but she knows it won’t last. It never does when the whipping cord is Bo.
‘Maybe we should just go,’ she says, taking a sip from her beer. She checks the time on her phone. She’ll stay on if the boys want to though she’s rather hoping they won’t. She’s never really liked festivals anyway, too touchy-feely, far too woo-woo and it’s just occurred to her that at this point, she’s got everything she wants from the evening. The company of Dex and Bo (particularly Bo), a session leafing through the Big Black Book, which set off her imagination and led to some great sex, albeit with an upsetting finale, and a ton of male attention. Plus celebrating Cassie’s birthday, naturally. She could hop in an Uber and be at the house in half an hour. Isaac will be asleep, so it’d be a lovely undisturbed rest of night in the bed in the spare room or she could slide in with Ralphie. The prospect suddenly seems incredibly appealing.
‘It’s not even two yet,’ says Cassie.
‘Don’t be boring, Anna,’ Bo says, shooting side eyes.
Anna takes a step back, stumbles, really. A thin thread of alarm worms its way up through her belly and into her chest. She wouldn’t be able to bear it if Bo thought motherhood and marriage had made her boring. Christ, if only he knew! Not just about Ralphie, obviously, but about Oliver too.
‘Obviously, I didn’t mean go home,’ she says, smiling. A very sour taste collects in her mouth. Why does she still give Luke Bowen the power to hurt her? Why does she allow it? She watches Bo drain his beer almost in one. They started drinking around nine