Chapter 17
Kitty and Antoinette’s Airbnb, West Hollywood, Los Angeles
I can’t sleep.
For someone with literal bodies in my basement, I generally have a pretty clear conscience and don’t suffer with insomnia.
But tonight I cannot sleep for shit.
I’ve tried everything.
Lying on my back.
Lying on my front.
Lying on my side with a pillow between my knees.
I’ve listened to two full guided meditations and I think I’m actually able to astral project but I still can’t actually get to sleep.
Even though I am exhausted.
Every time I close my eyes, I see Tor’s face.
Her face from our call earlier, not her face how I want to remember her.
I see the bruised, swollen, broken version of her.
And that’s usually followed up by Ron Wilde’s lipless face in the sink at the Chateau, staring at me.
Two really unwelcome images when I’m trying to drift into a state of rest and relaxation.
I give up and get out of bed.
Maybe I should go and ask Agnes if she’s got anything that can knock me out.
When I was little and couldn’t sleep, my mother used to make me warm milk – I wasn’t vegan when I was a kid – and sit with me. I wish Carmella was here now to stroke my hair and tell me to think about nice things until all the horrible things go away. But she’s not. I have to self-parent.
I creep out of my room and down the stone stairs.
The villa is too quiet.
I expected LA to be like London, motorbikes, cars, sirens, people shouting in the street. Proof of life even at three o’clock in the morning. Maybe this neighbourhood is one of the peaceful ones. I can’t really complain about that. It’s literally what I wanted.
I pad through to the kitchen, thinking I’ll make myself a herbal tea and doomscroll Insta until I feel sleepy. But when I flick on the lights, I almost scream.
Antoinette is sitting cross-legged on the kitchen counter, eating a bowl of cereal. She is also very much wide awake.
‘Oh,’ she says when she sees me. ‘Hello.’
‘You scared the living shit out of me,’ I say. ‘Why are you up?’
She shovels a spoonful of cereal into her mouth before answering.
‘Can’t sleep,’ she says and I watch as bits of Lucky Charms fly across the floor. ‘Thought you were a burglar.’
‘A burglar that turns on the lights?’
She stares at me. ‘Burglars need to see things, Kitty.’
‘Never mind,’ I say as I fill the kettle and click it on. ‘Tea?’
But Antoinette doesn’t answer.
I look at her and she is staring into space like a kid from a creepy early noughties movie.
‘Antoinette?’
‘I can still feel it,’ she says, her voice is detached, eerie.
I pull a mug from the cupboard and put it down carefully. ‘Feel what?’
‘Killing him.’
Ah yes.
That.
‘And?’ I say. Is this the moment when she crumbles? When she realises what she’s done? That it’s something she can’t hit ‘undo’ on. Is there a breakdown incoming?
‘I liked it,’ she says. She looks at me and there’s something I recognise in her eyes. A fire of purpose. ‘I feel like I’ve done something bad but ultimately good. Was it like that for you? Your first time?’
I think back to the first man I killed – our father.
‘Yes,’ I say quietly. ‘Yes, it was.’
She keeps looking at me, wanting me to say more.
‘It felt like … I don’t know exactly … like I was finally doing something worthwhile. After the adrenaline. And the excitement and the rage all went, I was still glad I did it. I’ve never regretted it. Not for a moment.’
She nods solemnly.
‘But that time, my first kill,’ I say. ‘It was chaotic. It was unplanned. I needed someone else to clean up my mess for me. That’s the one thing I regret. Dragging someone else into it.’
I think about Carmella’s face as she watched me obliterate my dad with that antique vase. A little bit relieved. But mostly horrified.
‘It’s so important to be more controlled,’ I say. ‘We can’t bring anyone else into this.’
‘But that was your mother,’ Antoinette says. ‘She’s not just anyone. She’d clean up any mess for you.’
‘Maybe,’ I say. ‘But she shouldn’t have to. She’s not like us.’ Not that much anyway. ‘I know what you did to Ron was self-defence. But we have to be careful. We have to keep this—’ I gesture vaguely at the space between us, ‘we have to keep this on the rails. It cannot get unhinged.’
Antoinette’s right eyebrow shoots up. ‘There’s a dead A-lister in the wine cellar,’ she says. ‘If you don’t count that as unhinged, I don’t know what to say.’ There’s a small smile on her lips, like a secret.
I pour boiling water over the bag of miscellaneous herbs I grabbed from the caddy on the side.
‘I wasn’t scared of him, you know,’ Antoinette says. ‘Ron Wilde.’
I frown. ‘You should have been. He was fucking terrifying. And twice your size. That middle-aged spread really caught up with him.’
‘I just thought he looked a bit like a sad, ageing pirate,’ she says. ‘Like Captain Hook but in need of a midlife health check and some citalopram.’
A laugh sneaks out of me. ‘That gold tooth,’ I say.
‘Those fucking tattoos.’
‘The unbuttoned shirt! Oh my God.’
We share a tiny moment of eye contact before collapsing into waves of laughter.
‘I’m not sorry,’ Antoinette says when she sobers.
‘No one is asking you to be,’ I say.
‘And I don’t want to be some annoying kid you’re stuck with.’
I wasn’t expecting this moment of raw honesty from her. I look at her, reach for her hand.
‘You’re not,’ I say. ‘You could never be that.’
She smirks. ‘I’m not annoying?’
I laugh. ‘I’m not stuck with you,’ I say. ‘I choose you. Always. We’re sisters.’
She breathes out and it’s so heavy I feel the shudder.
And then she leans her head on my shoulder.
And I realise she’s not a liability.
Or, if she is, she’s my liability. She’s a hurricane. A force of full nature.
And I wouldn’t change her for the world.
‘Great,’ she says, ‘then you’re going to love hiking with me in the morning.’
I’m not sure my new sisterly love stretches quite that far.