“So youdidkind of know her,” Leesa says, eyes wide.
“We’d texted about misdelivered packages, arranging for them to be picked up and re-delivered. I dropped them off myself at her porch acouple of times. And…I suppose I liked living her life vicariously, through her purchases and her Instagram. A kind of one-sided bond that was all in my head.”
Leesa nods. “You connected with her. I get it.”
Greta purses her lips. Clearly, she does not get it.
“I guess she had the life I might have, if I wasn’t walking around with a muslin cloth on my shoulder,” I explain. “If I was that kind of person—beautiful and poised and glamorous.”
Beautiful and poised and glamorous and dead. I google the story, and her photo comes up now, a familiar one from Instagram, and suddenly, I feel like crying.
Grim-faced, Greta rubs my shoulder. Leesa takes over making tea.
More details begin to emerge—on Facebook mostly, not on official news channels. Savannah’s body was found by a courier, it seems. A man there to collect a package. He’d peered through a crack in the blind and had seen something that made him call the gardaí.
“Oh my god,” Leesa says as we read this update, heads bent together over the iPad. “Maybe it was your package. Are you missing any deliveries?”
I nod slowly, thinking of the skincare order that hasn’t arrived.
“So maybe he was there to pick up yours and found her dead? Jesus.”
Silence as the three of us take this in.
“Wait.” Leesa again. “What about the death threat you got? The doxing. Like, your address was put online. And she looks like you. It’s almost as if…”
“Oh, come on, that’s a leap,” Greta says.
But Leesa is adamant. “No, wait, listen. Savannah Holmes, a dark-haired, medium-build woman living at 26 Oakpark, the same address as yours. You got a death threat and she is dead. Jesus Christ, Susan, is Savannah Holmes dead because someone mixed you up? Because…because it should have been you?”
8
Savannah
Thirty-six hours earlier
On her last day on earth, Savannah Holmes woke at 6 a.m., just as she always did. Her morning began with a workout in her home gym, followed by a protein shake and 600ml of filtered water. The home gym was Savannah’s pride and joy. A simple room, really; the room most of her neighbors used as a second living room or a playroom for their kids. Wooden floors, ceiling-height windows and the vast array of mats and weights she’d accumulated over the years. Savannah liked to get out to XSGym in Dún Laoghaire three or four times a week to use the machines, but on mornings like this, with the sun streaming in through slatted blinds, home was idyllic. Plus, it meant she could be showered and logged into her laptop by seven, getting a head start on her day.
“You’re a machine!” her colleagues liked to say, when, bleary-eyed, they logged on at nine to find a slew of emails from Savannah. But she didn’t see it that way. She was efficient and disciplined. That’s all. She worked hard, and had the lifestyle to show for it. She played hard too, no doubt about that. Otherwise, what was the point?
At nine, two packages arrived. She already knew what was insideone—silver ballet flats—and recorded herself opening them. Her Instagram followers liked pretty much anything she put up, but shopping hauls and makeup reels always got the biggest response. The other package was from Cult Beauty, containing the retinol she regularly used, but, she realized, looking at the invoice inside, it wasn’t actually for her. As she taped it back up, a ping on her email announced that the Sézane jumpsuit she’d ordered had been delivered too, only it hadn’t. The “proof of delivery” photo showed her package sitting behind a pot of pink hydrangeas. Savannah had two faux bay trees on her porch and no pink flowers of any kind. She let out a sigh. The package had gone to the other Oakpark. Again. She shot off an email to the courier company, reminding them for the umpteenth time that if they just used the Eircode, none of this would happen.
The jumpsuit, cream and flowy, was for a barbecue at her mother’s next weekend. Her mother would say cream was impractical and that she looked like a runaway bride. Savannah would drink too much white wine and seethe inwardly then feign a headache and leave early. Her mother particularly loved a wedding barb. The only time she had ever been happy with her daughter was on Savannah’s wedding day. And she had never forgiven the divorce. Savannah glanced at her wedding photo on the kitchen shelf. Her ex was getting married again, according to his sister. Not that they were in direct contact, Savannah and her sister-in-law, but theydidstill follow each other on Instagram. Maybe, eventually, Savannah would marry again too. And, just to annoy her mother, next time she’d elope.
At one, she put together a prawn salad. The dressing she wanted to use—a substitute in her online grocery shopping—contained traces of nuts.For god’s sake. She sighed and left it unopened. Why could these people never read her notes about substitutions? She decided to eat lunch in the garden, stopping at the back door to pluck sunglasses from the shelf. Only they weren’t her sunglasses. She frowned, confused at first, thenrealization dawned. Popping them on, she checked how they looked in her reverse camera. Cute. Too big for her face, but cute. She took a selfie, sent it with a text that read “might keep these!” and got on with her lunch.
By three, she was contemplating a crisp glass of white wine. She was trying not to drink during the day, but in weather like this…normal rules didn’t apply. She went inside for a small glass of wine, glancing at her wedding photo as she passed the kitchen shelf. It stopped her for a moment, thinking. About her ex, about the past and about the future. About moving on.
By half three, she’d poured herself one more small glass of white. Who knew how long the sun would shine? She imagined sitting indoors next week, staring out at rain, wishing she’d had the wine. Of course, she didn’t know then there wouldn’t be a next week. This time tomorrow, Savannah Holmes would be in a morgue.
9
Susan
Wednesday
The garda who takes my details—a fair-haired woman in her twenties—looks skeptical, and I’m not surprised. It smacks of self-absorption, making their murder inquiry all about me.
Leesa is beside me, pitched forward in her chair, in a dimly lit office inside Blackrock garda station.
