Do Her No Harm

by Naomi Joy

  I take a step back, my leg contacting the chair. It scrapes the floor as it moves, the only sound now, between us.

  ‘How do you…’ I half-ask, the horror that this all might be about to unravel paralysing me.

  ‘Annabella sent me this picture.’

  Rick shows me the car everyone’s been looking for, the one with the Polish number plates, obscured by the tall grass in the garden. How had she found it? She must have crawled in there, searching, sniffing, smelling it out.

  ‘Then she sent me this address.’ He takes a step towards me. ‘And I haven’t heard from her since.’ His eyes narrow. ‘Where is she?’

  If he was a step closer, I wouldn’t have the advantage, but I do and my black hair billows as I sink to the cupboard below the sink and rattle with a catch that holds Tomasz’s old shotgun. Rick doesn’t understand at first, making no move to stop me. As I pull it out from its position, already loaded, his face colours, pumping red back into his cheeks.

  ‘Stop,’ he demands, which almost makes me laugh.

  Standing in front of him, I prop the weapon up to my chest, I can’t give him a chance to make me change my mind. My heart thuds against the barrel and my finger clasps the trigger, slippery with my sweat. Rick moves quickly, then, ripping his jacket and jumper and shirt from his torso.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I growl at him, distracted, unable to take a clean shot.

  ‘I’m wearing a wire, Kay, the police, they’ve seen the picture, they’re here, they’ve heard everything.’

  Inside the four walls of my kitchen, I smell gunpowder. My shotgun, an ancient barrel of a thing, floats its residue on a gust of air that blows from the outside in. The back door has been forced open and I hear Rick shout. I picture bonfires, flames licking up wooden kindling, a puppet propped on top, the character burning, consumed by fire in a way that’s not normal. That’s how they’ll see me now. Not as someone fighting for justice, as a mother fighting for her daughter, but as a killer. As someone to be burned for her crimes. Tomasz could have stopped this, could have helped, but he left, his character somewhat failing him when push came to shove. Uncomfortable with ‘what the podcast had turned me into’, apparently. Perhaps it’s true what they say about a mother’s love: it burns far brighter.

  ‘This is for you, my darling girl,’ I whisper, the wind picking up again as my front door crashes off its hinges, an army of boots on their way towards me. I close my eyes and focus, let Orla do the aiming, my knees rattling as I pull the trigger and fire once more.

  In the moment, I picture being with her again, my daughter, flashing through the memories we would have shared over the years: leaving school, choosing a university, the right course, setting her on her career path, helping her move into her own home, meeting partners, imagining the children she’ll never have. Misshapen tears spout from beneath my eyelids and clump my lashes as I think about what Tabitha Rice took from me. I hear the sirens, next, and I know that it is over. I’ve known it for a while. It was over when Annabella found the car. Or perhaps it had been over since the moment I picked Tabitha Rice up from the side of the road and told her I only wanted to help. I’ve been running on fumes ever since. Perhaps Tomasz was right to escape.

  I slop into the ground, feel the pull of Earth’s gravity as it keeps me there, holding me in place until the officers arrive and drag me from it.

  Annabella

  Now

  First, the police found Rick. He’d been shot and was bleeding heavily when they picked him up and loaded him into the back of an ambulance. Then they found Kay, part of her skull blown from her head in a last-ditch suicide attempt. She was still breathing when they found her.

  They searched the house, next. They found Kay’s investigation room. They kept it intact and officer after officer went to the house to look at it – to marvel at the exceptional detail that had gone into planning such an intricate deceit. It was better than anything they’d seen at the station, and one of the policewomen joked that they could have used a woman like Kay on the force. Shortly afterwards, they found me. I was sedated and bruised but otherwise unharmed, saved by Rick answering my text, saved by Rick doing the right thing.

  *

  I sit inside the police station, rubbing my hands round one another in frustrated loops, waiting for the officer I’ve grown to know so well over the last few months arrive. Each time someone new comes in through the automatic doors, a new gust of Baltic air crawling into the space, I sit up meerkat-like to look out for him.

  Twenty minutes later, Gerry barges through the door and tells me this:

  ‘We’ve got her. Bang to rights. DNA. Blood. Gunshot residue. Her defence team had been running us in loops trying to pin Tabitha’s murder all on the husband, trying to get the gunshots written off as self-defence against Rick.’

  ‘How is Rick?’ I ask, eager for an update. I’d heard his shoulder had been completely obliterated, that he’d had to have it rebuilt with plates and wires in the weeks after he was shot.

  ‘Discharged.’ Gerry tells me, a glint in his eyes.

  I pick up on his silent meaning but choose to ignore it. Rick’s better. That’s all that matters.

  ‘Seen this?’ Gerry asks, throwing a paper in my direction.

  Mandy Evans tells all, the headline screeches from the paper’s red top. I roll my eyes and throw it back in his direction. ‘Inevitable. Next she’ll be a reality star.’

  Gerry smiles strongly at me and sits down.

  ‘Not on the Christmas card list, then?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  We stare at each other, talking as friends, and Gerry picks at a spot on his arm.

  ‘They’ll want you to talk about Kay in court, you know. How are you feeling about that?’

  I’d been relatively coy with Gerry about Kay. She killed Tabby, she tried to kill me, she tried to kill Rick but, even so, I’m fearful of getting involved. Everything I seem to touch when it comes to Tabby ends up going wrong. If I spoke out about Kay… what if I got it wrong again? What if she got off because of me?

  ‘You still treading lightly?’

  I think of Rick, of the way I’ve let him down.

  Gerry sighs and tells me straight. ‘You should go and see him, Annabella.’

  True Crime Criminal

  A report by the London Times

  The woman behind the world’s most-downloaded true-crime podcast was charged this week with the murder of her podcast victim: Tabitha Rice.

  Kay Robero, described as a ‘hoarder’ by a close neighbour, released this year’s most successful true-crime podcast that delved into the particulars of Tabitha’s missing persons inquiry. But the show was nothing more than an orchestrated investigation constructed, behind the scenes, by the show’s host.

  Kay, in the off-beat and eccentric style for which she’d become known, led listeners through twists and turns that, listening back, were far closer to fiction than fact.

  But it worked. Kay was in talks with a major film production company to bring her podcasts to the screen in a series of televised episodes. That was, at least, until Annabella, close friend of victim Tabitha Rice, discovered the truth. Hours earlier, Kay’s podcast had pointed the finger at Annabella – had accused her of masquerading as her deceased friend. But, behind the scenes, a ferocious struggle was taking place. In an explosive final episode, Rick Priestley outed Kay live on air. The broadcast was cut short and, shortly afterwards, Kay shot Rick, then turned the gun on herself. Her condition is officially described as ‘stable’ but reports from inside the hospital suggest she is severely brain damaged and unlikely to lead a normal life again.

  Annabella

  One Year Later

  The gold-gilded patterns on the side of the bridge glow under the nearby streetlight, my mind preoccupied with how many people had been wronged. Orla, Rick, Mandy, Tabby, Kay, Me. All of us, really, to varying degrees.

  I don’t know if I’ll ever be completely fixed – I was already a little br
oken to begin with – but I’m on the road to recovery. I’ve accepted help, I talk to a counsellor every week. I’ve been trying my best to make new friends, new connections.

  Kay Robero has been convicted for the kidnap and murder of Tabitha Rice and, though that’s a good thing, I’m surprised I don’t feel happier. I think I understand, now, what people mean when they talk about closure.

  I stop to look out across the river, staring in the distance at Tower Bridge, the sparkling lights of the city all around me and think about how long it has been since I last saw Rick Priestley. I chew on the side of my nail as I mull it over, then make the decision.

  I catch the train across town and alight at Queen’s Road Station in Battersea, pavements lining the way, curtained windows either side.

  Rick hasn’t moved to a new house – he probably can’t sell – and looks exactly as I remember. He walks around the grey-silver kitchen in a loose sweater and jeans, poking his hand into the refrigerator, tilting his face towards his phone, his broad shoulders and wide smile laughing at something on the screen. The same dangerously handsome man I’d met so many years ago.

  I freeze, for a moment, in the darkening sky, trapped in the memories of him. Of us.

  *

  It had been exhausting. Hiding it. I’d be wildly anxious, aflame with guilt whenever we were together, but Rick had been impatient, desperate to end things with Tabby, to get our partnership out in the open and deal with the fall out as it happened.

  Rick and I grew into each other’s lives just as Tabby and I intertwined and, rather than sever the relationship, I wrapped Tabby closer, hurting her behind her back made easier by being such a steady and reliable friend to her face. Deflecting. Would we have been such good friends, such close friends, if it hadn’t been for Rick? I’m not sure. Tabby would take me to CBT classes, confused by my anxiety, and she’d sit, holding my hand, as I discussed the crushing guilt I felt every day when I woke up, made bearable only by a series of strange rituals I found comfort in.

  There was the night of the Perspextacular, not long after Rick and I first realised there was something between us, my feet strapped in a pair of plastic sandals as I limped Tabby back to their house. She was out of it, her heart fluttering in her chest, the faint whiff of vomit on her breath. I cleaned her face with warm water and tucked her into bed. I headed downstairs. And there was Rick. Waiting in the kitchen for me to come down. I really liked him. I’d known it for a while. He was bright and successful, kind and cheerful. There was a light spray of freckles across the bridge of his nose, a fittingly sunny accessory to the warmth I felt in his company. His hair was dark chocolate, his teeth spotless ivory. So, I drew closer that night, under this light, and stayed there.

  I became a fixture in their lives, I would cook dinner with them, sleep over, make breakfast in the morning, play house. Tabby would ask me questions about my love life, and I’d tell her there was someone, but I wasn’t ready to introduce him. Rick would press his foot against mine under the table, warning me. When Tabby was at home, Rick would sometimes come to my place. I was comfortable with him being there, even when Rick disordered my carefully ordered apartment, it was OK, because it was Rick. While we grew, he and Tabby shrank, increasingly cold towards one another. She was letting it affect her, coming in late to work, obsessing over his messages, hurt by the betrayal she suspected, the person causing her suffering listening to her talk all about it. One day, hanging by a thread with Caroline at work, I saved her. If she lost her job, then lost Rick, then me, she’d have nothing. The guilt crept closer, wrapped its cold fingers round my throat.

  One night, I woke with Rick in my bed, awake beside me. ‘It would be so much easier if she just, I don’t know… just disappeared.’ He’d laughed, he’d been joking, but it had stuck with me, the throwaway line with which I later came to build his guilt on top of. Because that’s exactly what happened. Now I know it was by coincidence and not design, of course, but Tabby disappeared, just a few days after Rick had wished for it. Consumed by fear – at first I didn’t want to believe he was to blame – I went to his place to find out what he knew, if he thought there was any danger, any at all, that our affair would be exposed. He guided me into the lounge, sat me down on the sofa, wrapped his hands around my sweaty palms, pushed the hair from my face. He opened his dull blue eyes and said, ‘I want you to move in with me.’

  It had been three days.

  I made my excuses. I cried so hard my eyes dried up. Rick had murdered Tabby to make way for our relationship, it was obvious. I couldn’t live, I couldn’t cope. I pulled my clothes from my head that day, poured a cap of toilet bleach into the bathtub and ran the hot tap. ‘Clean body, clean thoughts,’ my mother’s voice trilled as I stuck my foot into the steaming water. It stung as I made contact, the smell so hot, so thick, it made me cough. Part of me wanted to drink it, to clean myself from the inside out.

  I dropped down into it, naked, pushed slimy red limbs to the edges of the tub, jagged bones sticking out of my chest, front and back. I hadn’t eaten properly since she vanished. I couldn’t bear to. I would try tomorrow, I thought. I pulled my legs to my chin. ‘My friend,’ I whimpered. ‘It’s all my fault.’ My tears turned the bathwater salty. I vowed to do more, to catch him. Though I let her down in life, I would do everything I could not to let her down in death.

  *

  It took years to pull myself from the darkest of places. I shut Rick out completely. I hired Chad to find out what he knew about Rick and, more than that, I hired him to find out if there was anything about Rick and me to be found. I sent Chad fishing, I told him there’d been another woman when Tabby went missing. But he never found her. Me. Even though I was right there.

  When Kay got in contact, she told me Rick had moved on with Mandy. I couldn’t understand it. He’d killed for me… and yet he was happy with someone else? It didn’t make sense. I grew angrier, red skin under my work uniform as I watched from afar, still punishing myself for what I’d done. When Kay pushed me to see Rick, our reunion was complicated. We didn’t speak about what had come before. It was an unwritten rule between us, our tryst had been a secret we weren’t sure the other would even admit. But being with him again, even duplicitously, unlocked something in me. He won me back with his honesty. He told me things about Tabby I didn’t know, hadn’t thought to question. He proved to me that he wasn’t the monster I’d invented to hide my own guilt. Because that was it, really, that was the crux of why I was hell-bent on proving Rick’s guilt: because it would prove mine, too. I tortured Rick because I wanted to torture myself. How could Tabby have gone missing a few days after her husband begged for her to disappear so he could be with me? She couldn’t. I deserved to die, the same as Tabby, for what I’d pushed Rick to do. The story was quite different, in the end, and I am grateful, for my sanity, that I have seen it to its conclusion.

  Now all that’s left is the rest of my life. My future. Do I want to spend it hiding? Or do I want to change the narrative, flip the page, live the life I’ve wanted to live ever since I met him? Pepping myself up, I walk directly towards the black brick of his house. I stride across the street in a confident cadence, my face a little pinched with the nerves. Then, when the front door stands tall before me, I grab the brass handle in my grip and knock twice, with force enough to show I mean it, that I’m here, that I’m not an invisible woman skulking in the shadows.

  Rick appears in the gap, the door opening, his face in muted surprise.

  ‘Annabella,’ he says. ‘You’re back.’

  Author’s Note

  Do Her No Harm – a play on the Hippocratic oath declaration Primum non nocere, ‘first, do no harm’ – was inspired by the current state of the non-surgical cosmetics industry in Britain. In the UK, it is legal for procedures like Botox and dermal fillers to be injected by anyone, regardless of their training or experience.

  With the proliferation of Instagram, and the perfect pouts and filtered faces that go with it, an increasin
g number of people are suffering serious consequences of being injected by untrained and unprofessional individuals. Save Face, a national register of accredited practitioners, received 934 complaints from patients in 2017-2018 regarding unregistered practitioners. Of these, the vast majority, 616, related to dermal fillers.

  A BBC documentary, The Botox Bust, took this one step further and found beauticians across the country happy to give Botox to an undercover reporter without a valid prescription, and a struck-off doctor supplying Botox on the basis of telephone conversations. The BBC’s One Show found that 17 out of 23 providers visited were happy to offer lip fillers to a 15-year-old.

  In the process of researching for this book, I was stunned to find out that Botulinum toxin – Botox – is the most poisonous biological substance known to humankind – a couple of teaspoons would be enough to kill everyone in the UK – and yet it is so routinely used in an industry that is not currently well regulated.

  If you are thinking of having non-surgical cosmetic surgery, check the Save Face register first.

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks first to Hannah Smith at Aria, my brilliant editor, whose careful refinements and cracking plot-twists are second to none. Thanks also to Vicky, Rhea, Nikky and the wider Head of Zeus family who do such a fantastic job. Utmost thanks to Kate Nash, my agent, who is always so helpful and gives great advice.

  Shout out to my amazing family, especially my mum and sister who are such super beta-readers! Gratitude also to my uncle James for taking the time to look at some of my earlier work and offering such valuable comments. And to Nana, I love that you read every book! Thank you to my friends who continue to be so supportive and wonderful; Georgie, Sophie, Fiona, Abby, Emily, Charlotte, Kirsty, Chloe, Eli, Kim – to name a few.