47. Starling
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
STARLING
Patricia went to prison, of course.
There were mitigating factors. Still murder, but fifteen years. It’s the best outcome we could have hoped for with her.
Here’s a fact about killers that isn’t known: When a certain group of four friends works together to hide their crimes, that is when the magic really happens.
Patricia took the fall so graciously that night.
She told us not to worry, that the truth was what mattered, that she knew she’d face time for what she did to Cassandra, but that she didn’t care, she deserved it.
That, at least, was true. When the police arrived, stunned, to the property, we were all taken for questioning and put on our best acting faces.
Did we ever suspect Goldie had been with Hugo?
Did we ever know she had a secret relationship?
Did we know she had been sneaking out? Why had we come back together after being apart for so long?
Had we known Cassandra before all of this?
I expected the others, especially Wren, to crumble under the pressure, but actually it wasn’t like in films. There was Patricia and a body and a murder weapon, and it was all rather simple.
Not grand and dramatic like I imagined. Though there is a search for Hugo, who authorities believe is still alive.
And we were witnesses at the trial. I got to stand up in court and speak to a jury, to a judge, to barristers.
Part of me wanted to pinch myself, somehow wake me up.
Crow was more stressed than the rest of us, but Cuckoo and Wren were panicking too.
I think they all thought I just enjoyed it all, but that’s because that’s what I pretended my anxiety was.
Fake it till you make it—and we made it.
Patricia was found guilty, and we were Goldie’s poor friends who finally learned what had happened her.
Grief is funny. It works in waves, and the trial was a particularly tough one.
Hearing Goldie’s name mentioned after so long felt like a gut punch, especially the first time, and tiny punctures each time after that.
This time, she’s really gone. Her case is closed.
And even though it’s what we’ve wanted for so long, it still twists my gut because that means we really do have to let her go and move on.
Her body has never been found, and that’s hard because, at least to begin with, it was our secret, and now no one knows because Cassandra is dead.
We won’t be the five of us ever again.
Bishop’s House was a crime scene for a while.
After the forensics had left and the crime scene tape was abandoned like everything else, it sold at last, as if all the negative attention had actually just helped bring it into the spotlight more.
The new owners brought a team in to clear it all out.
One day I walked past and saw seven skips lining the pavement outside and recognized the items that were piled up inside them.
I took a broken-off tap, dusty in some places and shiny in others, and it sits in the bottom drawer of the cabinet in my bedroom.
Something to remember Bishop’s House by.
To remind myself that it existed. A few weeks after that, the whole place was razed to the ground.
The new flats built there will make a lot of people happy, but they won’t understand what was lost in the process.
Cuckoo writes to Patricia. Which is funny, really, because Cuckoo was always the fiercest detractor of Patricia. I wonder what Goldie would say about it all.
There’s a happy ending for us, I think.
We were prepared to kill to get what we wanted.
How many people can say that and mean it?