‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘It would.’
‘But it’s definitely a fake.’
That clinched it. Joe was going face down in the duck pond first.
‘I don’t know how I feel about you buying fake handbags,’ Mum said, taking my bag baby back once again. I shuddered at the thought of all those unwashed hands touching my precious child. It just wasn’t right. ‘These counterfeit rings are into all sorts of nasty business, I read about it in theGuardian. Organised crime, drug trafficking, child labour—’
‘And they’re full of disease,’ Uncle Bryan chimed in. ‘That’s how the black plague got here.’
‘In a knock-off designer handbag?’ I replied. ‘Really?’
Charlotte snatched it out of Mum’s hands and held it tightly to her chest, the shape of the bag protesting only slightly at the strength of her love.
‘Can I have it?’ she said, for some reason speaking to my mother instead of to me. ‘I don’t care if it’s fake, it’s the best replica I’ve ever seen. They’ve lined up all the diamonds and got the correct number of stitches in each one and there’s even a microchip inside. Please let me have it?’
‘How do you know so much about Chanel handbags?’ I asked, my heart pounding altogether too fast for this time in the morning. I really should check what brand of coffee my mother was brewing.
‘I’ve watched all the videos on TikTok. Please, Sophie, I’ve always wanted a Chanel bag. Mum, tell her?’
‘Always? You’re eighteen!’ I exclaimed. ‘The last time I checked, the only thing you’d always wanted was a pony.’
‘Well, you don’t have a pony but you do have a fake Chanel bag.’
I recognised her wheedling tone and knew I was fighting a losing battle. Charlotte had already convinced her parents to back her business, for fuck’s sake, they weren’t about to lay the law down now. ‘Oh, Soph, don’t be such a miser.’ Dad draped his arm around his youngest daughter’s shoulders and winked. ‘Look how happy she is. Let Lottie have this one and I’ll give you the money to buy a new one. How much could it cost anyway?’
‘They were practically giving them away on Canal Street last time I was in New York,’ Joe offered unhelpfully. ‘What was it, Sophie, fifty? A hundred?’
‘A hundred pounds for a fake bloody bag,’ Mum grumbled as Charlotte bounced around the kitchen with glee, her bag slung across her chest, while I eyed the knife block, wondering which one would cause Joe themost agonising pain when I ran him through with it. ‘I thought we’d raised you better than that, Sophie Taylor.’
‘Apparently not,’ I replied, Joe’s bemused gaze burning into the back of my head as I stalked out the kitchen door and into the garden.
CHAPTER NINE
In the morning sunshine, my parents’ garden was a completely different place to the night before. The long shadows had been replaced with a children’s paintbox full of colour; green grass, blue sky and every colour of flower you could think of, red, pink, purple, orange, pansies, petunias, delphiniums, geraniums, hollyhocks. The scent of honeysuckle, rose and an ever expanding lavender bush at the bottom of the garden filled the air with the kind of perfume I spent a fortune on trying to replicate in candle form, and the tall, elegant silver birches towered above me, nodding in a breeze that was too high in the sky to bother me and my pyjamas. It was the kind of garden that transported you back to a time when people could be easily tricked into thinking fairies existed and the worst thing that could happen to you was having your sleeve nibbled on by a passing sheep from the neighbouring farm. But I could survive a bit of sleeve nibbling. What I couldn’t see myself surviving was this weekend.
Leaving the house and its inhabitants behind, Iventured down the garden and curled up on a bench hidden between a rhododendron bush and a sycamore tree, cursing myself for leaving my phone inside. William could be trying to call me to let me know about my bag. For all I knew he was at the train depot right now with my perfect little laptop in his hot sweaty hands. He might already have the manuscript, covered in slashes of scarlet pen with the words ‘fix this – it’s shit’ scrawled in the margins of every other page.
Above me, I saw the tree twitch and a pair of bright green eyes peeked out from the branches of the sycamore. A tiny grey tabby cat with a white bib and paws shuffled into view and miaowed.
‘Hello there,’ I said. ‘Cute whiskers.’
The cat did not return the compliment. Instead, it gave me a dismissive once-over before it began the very serious business of grooming. I couldn’t help but feel a little bit judged.
‘Just so you know, some of us haven’t had a chance for self-care this morning,’ I grumbled. ‘Some of us have been very busy trying to make it to—’ Pausing, I checked the time on my watch. ‘Is it really only half-past ten?’
The cat blinked once then stuck its back leg straight up into the air.
‘Show-off.’
I buried my chin in my chest and slumped back until my spine curled, shoulders hunched and my tailbone teetering dangerously close to the edge of the bench. The internationally recognised sulking position.
Three days.
I was stuck here for three long days.
All I had to do was not kill my sister, pray that William was able to locate my bag with the manuscriptbefore someone published the sequel on Reddit, avoid my ex, survive the rest of the family, keep my secret identity a secret, come up with a better ending for my book and never, ever let myself be alone with Joe bloody Walsh. How hard could it be?
‘Morning.’
