‘It was a mistake,’ Sam said. ‘We’d been drinking so much, you know? You can’t hold someone responsible for what they do when they’re drunk. But we didn’t want to hurt you. You believe me, don’t you? We never wanted to hurt you. And that would have been it.’ Sam was crying, the tears running down her face. It was such a relief, she thought, being able to confess to the worst thing she had ever done. ‘Except I missed my period the next month.’

  ‘No,’ Lisa whimpered. ‘This isn’t true. You’re lying.’

  ‘Why would I make this up? As soon as I went to the doctor, I knew the dates didn’t add up.’ She grabbed Lisa’s face, forcing her friend to make eye contact again. ‘Think about it, Mouse. Remember how scared I was when I found out I was pregnant. I didn’t have much time, did I? But I decided to just let you think it had happened the night of your birthday party. I wanted to protect you. Everything I’ve ever done has been to protect you.’ Lisa gasped but Sam refused to let her look away. ‘That’s why Josh has been trying to get rid of me since I arrived back in Bennford. He was afraid I would tell you the truth.’ Sam made a face. ‘All these secrets you two have been keeping from each other … What kind of marriage is this?’

  ‘I don’t believe you. I don’t. Josh would never do that to me.’ Lisa folded over her lap like a rag doll, heaving as if she might be sick, and Sam rubbed her friend’s back, feeling the bones of her spine protruding through the skin. ‘No,’ Lisa whimpered. ‘Don’t. Don’t do that, please,’ and Sam started at the words.

  No.

  Don’t do that.

  Please. No.

  An electric jolt running through her, pumping her heart faster. It was as if she had found a door in the middle of an empty field, leading nowhere, and when she stepped through it, she’d fallen into another world. Walking slowly through a dream she’d had many times before but forgotten upon awakening, shaking it off her like water. She was standing at the edge of her childhood bedroom; it was night-time, a makeshift bong and an empty vodka bottle on the nightstand, the air so thick with stale beer she could almost taste its heaviness on her tongue. Josh was lying on the floor, snoring, and there she was, too. Sam could see herself. Eighteen and desperate to be loved, desperate to belong. She was so young, just a girl, really. She had thought the world was hers for the taking; she didn’t know yet that she would make mistakes, do things she didn’t think herself capable of. She watched as this younger Sam folded her body around Lisa’s, telling the girl she loved her, she loved her so much. But this wasn’t right – in her memory, Sam recalled Lisa mewling in pleasure, arching her back, calling Sam’s name. But here, here, her friend was crying quietly in the dark – don’t do that, please, please – and Sam was whispering, shh, shh, someone will hear. Don’t cry. Don’t cry, Mouse. One hand over Lisa’s mouth, the other moving lower, while Lisa stayed so very, very still, her eyes fixed on the wall opposite. Frozen.

  Sam gagged at the image, something unbearably wild twisting in her gut, and her hands began to tremble. No, this wasn’t right, she wouldn’t – what would it mean to accept that this is true, Samantha? – she didn’t mean to, she didn’t – what would it mean to accept that this is true, Samantha? – but she wasn’t like that, she wasn’t like them, this was different, this was different, this was – what would it mean to accept that this is true, Samantha? She crouched down on her haunches, touching the tips of her fingers to the wooden decking below, waiting for her breathing to settle again. This was different, she told herself again and again, carving the letters into her heart. Sam was a good person. She hadn’t done this to hurt Lisa, she’d simply wanted to bring her friend back to her, to remind Lisa that Sam was the one who loved her the most. Lisa and Josh had treated her so poorly, they had left her to drown. Was it any surprise that she had reached out for something to keep her afloat? Sam had made mistakes; she’d never claimed to be perfect. But she wasn’t like Gabriel, or those men in Paris with their dark hair, their thin fingers, that smell of tobacco. Those men had been adults; they had known what they were doing, what they were taking from her. Sam and Lisa, they’d just been stupid kids. They’d all been drinking that night; they had taken pills; they’d been smoking weed. She was out of her head, she didn’t know what she was doing. This wasn’t her fault, any of it. She was a good person.

  ‘Lisa,’ she tried, but the other woman backed away, one hand out to keep Sam at a distance.

  ‘You have to leave,’ Lisa said. ‘I’m begging you.’

  ‘Mouse. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I would never—’ Sam felt like something was breaking inside her, and with sudden, terrifying clarity, she understood that if it did, there would be no putting it back together again. There would be no return from this. She had to save herself. She focused on her breathing, as she had done so many times before, and she visualized a bright light flaring through her body, cleansing these bad memories to nothingness again. This wasn’t true, what Lisa was saying. She was a good person. Her friend was creeping through Sam’s memories, readjusting the colours to suit herself, and she had almost convinced Sam of it too.

  ‘We were kids,’ she said sharply. ‘I don’t deserve to have my life ruined because of something that happened a million years ago. What about you, Lisa? Were you really so perfect back then? When that rumour was going around about Jessica Simmons fucking Chris and Brandon, did you speak up and say it was bullshit? You bought a fake ID to buy beer when we were sixteen – should I have called the cops on you? We broke into the Garcias’ house when they were on vacation so we could go skinny-dipping in their pool. You drove my dad’s car after we drank half a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and you didn’t even have your fucking licence! Do you think you deserve to have your life ruined because of all of the dumb shit you did as a teenager? Or is it just me, Lisa?’

  ‘Please. Just leave me alone. What will it take for you to leave me alone?’ Lisa tore her hands through her hair. She had looked so beautiful, in the beginning, and now she was ruined. ‘What will it take for you to leave and never come back?’

  ‘Don’t say that. We can work through this. It’s only two weeks since you came to my mother’s house, for fuck’s sake. You said you’d missed me all those years. Was that a lie?’

  Her friend looked up at her, her eye make-up smeared. ‘You can still love someone who hurt you. Was that a lie?’

  ‘But I didn’t mean to hurt you, Mouse. It was a mistake. You made mistakes too! We can forgive each other, right? Isn’t that what we do?’

  Lisa’s face contorted in agony and she put her hands over her head again, rocking back and forth. Sam could feel something shift inside her as she watched her friend, something hardening. Lisa was crying so hard it sounded like her ribs might crack in two and really, what did she have to cry about? She had this beautiful home, two daughters who adored her. She had Josh. Sam was the one they had abandoned. She was the one whose life they’d tried to destroy with their lies. She was the real victim in all of this, but the difference between her and Lisa was that Sam would never have claimed that identity for herself. She was too strong for that. Gabriel had once described her as a cockroach, saying she could survive anything. It’s a compliment, Sami, he’d said when she’d huffed, and maybe he had been right. And so, too, she would survive this. She knew exactly what she had to do.

  ‘Fine,’ she said in a clipped voice. ‘I’ll leave. But not before you do something for me. Get your cell out. I want you to send an email to my manager.’ She waited for Lisa to take her iPhone out of her pocket. She could barely hold the device, her hands were shaking so badly. ‘Dear Jane,’ Sam dictated, gesturing at Lisa to type out exactly what she was saying. ‘I am writing to you today to retract the false allegation that I made against Samantha Miller.’

  Lisa couldn’t do it; her entire body was convulsing, her teeth chattering. Sam took the phone off her with a sigh and tapped at the screen. ‘I only started this because I was jealous of the amazing life my old friend had made for herself,’ Sam said aloud as she typed the email, watching Lisa to see her reaction. ‘I have been envious of Samantha for a long time but I know now it’s unfair to destroy her life and her incredible career because of my own issues. Her work is too important for that. Sam and I have reconnected over the last few weeks and I’ve come to realize how much her friendship means to me.’ Lisa broke out in a sob but Sam ignored her. ‘Samantha is innocent of everything I have accused her of,’ she continued, ‘and I apologize not only for hurting her, but also hurting the cause of every real victim of sexual violence who comes forward. Yours sincerely, Lisa Taylor, née Johnson. Et voilà,’ she said with a flourish. She sent the email to Jane, CC-ing the journalist from the New York Post, then handed the phone to Lisa. Her friend slid to the ground, her back against the door frame, and she buried her face in her hands as she wept.

  ‘Stop crying,’ Sam said. ‘I promise, this is going to fix everything. I told you to trust me, didn’t I?’

  Sam’s cell lit up, Jane’s name on the screen. ‘What the fuck?’ Her manager’s voice, high and excited. ‘Is this for real?’

  ‘You should know enough at this stage not to doubt me. I said I would get the statement and I did.’ Sam pressed the phone between her ear and her shoulder as she belted her trench coat. ‘I want you to contact that woman from the Post and make sure the story is dead in the water. OK? And ring Darcy for me. Tell her to get my apartment ready; I’m on my way home.’

  She hung up – she and Jane needed to have a long conversation when she returned to the city. It was time her manager prioritized her; Sam needed to feel valued and she didn’t think that was too much to ask for – and clicked into the Uber app, booking someone to pick her up in five minutes. Her mother would return the rental, she thought as she stood there, the tiny car moving on the screen, closer and closer to West Cross Street. A Toyota pulled up outside the house, and an older man in a red baseball cap rolled down the window, asking, ‘Samantha?’

  ‘Yes,’ she called back. ‘That’s me. Just give me a sec.’

  She crouched down, pulling Lisa’s hands away from her face. ‘Your beautiful make-up,’ she said. ‘Oh, Mouse.’ She hugged her, her arms wrapping around Lisa so tightly it felt as if she was sinking into her bones. ‘Do you remember our song? They were playing it earlier when I arrived and it made me think of you. In her kiss, I taste the revolution,’ Sam sang softly and Lisa shuddered in response. ‘I want you to know I don’t hold any grudges against you, no matter what’s happened. I want us to stay in touch. Promise you’ll phone some time, ’k? Maybe we can get lunch when you’re in the city, my treat.’ She squeezed Lisa’s hands as tightly as she could. ‘Come on. It was good, that night, wasn’t it? With us? Don’t say you don’t remember, Mouse. You know it was good.’

  Her friend’s eyes were haunted. ‘It doesn’t matter what I say, does it?’ Lisa said, desperation carving through each word, hollowing it out. ‘You’ll tell this story the way you want to, anyway. That’s what you do, Sam.’

  ‘Lady,’ the Uber driver called. He tapped at his watch. ‘I don’t got all day.’

  Sam nodded. She walked towards him, that strange feeling of lightness flooding her limbs again, like she might float off the ground and take her place among the stars. The car smelled of stale smoke and a vanilla air freshener, the leather seats worn and scuffed. She touched a hole in the fabric, feeling the spongy material beneath her fingertips.

  ‘Manhattan?’ he asked, looking at his phone. ‘That’s going to cost a—’

  ‘It’s fine.’ She unlocked her phone, about to text into the Spirit Mafia group to let her girlfriends know she was on her way back to the city, when the screen flashed with a message from Jane to her and Teddy, explaining that Lisa had retracted the allegations of abuse. We still have a long road ahead of us if we want to rehabilitate Sam’s image, her manager wrote, but this email will do a lot to stop the situation from getting worse, at the very least.

  This was what would happen next, Jane said. Lisa’s statement would be made public, posted on Sam’s social media channels. Brooke Campbell would be paid off handsomely, as well as reminded of the stringent non-disclosure agreement she’d signed when she was first hired at Shakti. Teddy would have a phone call with his friend at the Post – just a little chat, nothing formal. Man to man, you know – and this friend would encourage Alyssa Reed to look the other way; after all, there were plenty of other stories that were far more newsworthy than a wellness guru’s spat with her childhood friend. The email from Sam calling Lisa a lying cunt would disappear into thin air. Then she would arise, like a phoenix from the ashes. Triumphant.

  People love a comeback, Jane said, especially when it’s a beautiful white woman. They wanted to believe in second chances, and Sam wanted so desperately to be given one. She could almost taste it, the sweet rush of her glittering career, reformed and reshaped, using this unpleasant experience as a teachable moment. It might even bring her more success, in the end. She turned in her seat as they drove away, staring back at Lisa, standing on the front porch, alone. Her red hair whipped up by the wind, clutching at the sides of her jumpsuit. She watched as Lisa became smaller and smaller in the rear-view window, until Sam had to squint to see her. Then the car turned a corner, and her friend was gone.

  ‘Do you mind if I turn up the music?’ the driver asked.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘The music?’ the driver asked again. ‘Can I turn it up?’

  ‘No, don’t do that,’ Sam said, fastening her seatbelt. ‘Please.’

  She didn’t look back again for that was her past now, and as she always told her girls, it didn’t do anyone any good to dwell on the past. She would return to the city, to her busy, busy life. She would send private DMs to the people who had supported her – she’d kept a Notes app list of those who had spoken out against her so that when this was all over, she would remember exactly who had remained loyal. She made a note to speak with Jane, too, asking her manager to sort out the situation with Gabriel; that was nothing a little money wouldn’t take care of, and she’d never have to think about that man again.

  Lisa would be fine, of course. Sam had done this to protect her; she knew her friend wouldn’t have survived the public humiliation of that story running in the Post. She would appreciate what Sam had done, in time. In a couple of months, it would be like this had never happened. Lisa would be happy then. They would all be happy. Her phone beeped, and she frowned at the screen. It was a WhatsApp message from a number she didn’t know and when she checked it, the profile photo was of Becky and her surprisingly hot husband, lying in fringed hammocks on a sandy beach.

  Becky: I can’t believe you left without saying goodbye.

  Sam rolled her eyes. Becky was pathetic, she thought, as she adjusted her dress, leaning forward to ask the driver to turn the heat up. She half smirked, reading the message again. After everything that had happened, she still thought she could be Sam’s friend?

  Becky: I had a present I wanted to give you.

  A video appeared in the chat, uploading slowly. When it was done, Sam clicked on it. It showed red brick to begin with, someone moving slowly through bushes and trees, the only sound that of the heavy breathing of the person recording it. What the fuck is this? Creeping and creeping, a hand reaching to push some branches out of the way, and there was Lisa’s front porch, the wooden decking and snow-covered steps, the flower arch and the lilies wound around wrought-iron railings. Sam inhaled sharply when she saw herself come into view, ugly with rage as she stood above a cowering Lisa, shouting at her.

  I’m hungry for everything, she screamed. For love, for money, for acceptance. To be valued. To be special. And I made myself into this. I made myself a fucking idol for millions of women around the world. They’ll do anything I tell them to do, anything. I fucking own them.

  Sam’s vision was contracting, darkness nudging around the corners, and her breath was coming in desperate, dry gasps. The woman in the video said so clearly, I don’t deserve to have my life ruined because of something that happened a million years ago, and Sam could hear someone moaning, no, no. It was only when the Uber driver turned around in alarm, asking, ‘You good, lady?’ that she realized it was her. She went on to Twitter, her hands shaking, praying to God to protect her, to stop this from happening, but she immediately saw that she was tagged in a new YouTube video. Samantha Miller Meltdown, it was called. She watched the first few seconds, a desperate wail crawling out of her throat when she realized it was the same video Becky had sent to her. She rang Jane, begging her to ‘take it down, get it taken down, Jane, please’, but there was silence on the other end of the phone, there was nothing, there was nothing, and all Sam could do was watch as the video was shared and reshared, thousands of times in a matter of minutes. Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and Snapchat and TikTok and YouTube and countless WhatsApp groups. It was like a virus spreading, mutating, gathering speed. There would be no stopping this now. She opened her mouth and she screamed and screamed and screamed.

  Becky: Oh, Samantha.

  Becky: You didn’t think I was going to let you get away with this, did you?

  Song credits

  Lyrics on p.192 from ‘… Baby One More Time’ by Britney Spears, written by Max Martin and produced by Max Martin and Rami.

  Lyrics on p.264, p.284 and p.299 from ‘Rebel Girl’ by Bikini Kill, written by Kathleen Hanna, Billy Karren, Tobi Vail, and Kathi Wilcox.

  Acknowledgements

  I feel very lucky to have Juliet Mushens, agent extraordinaire, in my corner. Thank you for your brilliance, humour and determination – you are a force of nature.

  I’m so grateful to Frankie Gray. Your vision for what this book could be surpassed my own, and I’m indebted to your incredible skill and insight. Working with you has been such a pleasure.