had been alone in the house at the time except for a couple of members of staff who had been busy and had apparently heard nothing. Her neck had been broken and there were a couple of bruises on her face but she had no other injuries. That was as far as the facts went; the rest was just lurid speculation.
Lizzie had hidden her shock at hearing the stark details. It sounded a horrible way to die, so sudden and so lonely. She knew that the lawyers, like Bill, thought she was a cold bitch because she didn’t cry for Amelia. They were as practised at hiding their emotions as she was but she could see the disgust in their eyes. She knew she had to be strong, though. With Dudley in pieces there was no one else. She didn’t want Kat’s gossipy sympathy; from the earliest age she was accustomed to dealing with crap all by herself. She just wanted to get on with it.
When Lizzie arrived at the police station it was clear someone had tipped off the press. They had to fight their way through the crowds just to get inside. The legal team stuck to her like limpets, often jumping in before she had the chance to answer any very simple questions which Lizzie thought made her look guilty and stupid. By the time she left two hours later she was in a foul mood and had a blinding headache. Outside, the crowd had doubled in size; Dudley had arrived, looking attractively haggard and rumpled. His tired face had lit up when he saw Lizzie but Bill wouldn’t let her speak to him and shoved her into the waiting limo like a prison officer hustling away a convict.
Bill and Kat took her off to some sort of ‘safe’ house after that, presumably a place Bill used for all the celebs he managed who blotted their careers with drink driving or drugs offences. Lizzie had never been there before and found it infinitely depressing. There was nothing to do except scroll through social media absorbing all the poison people were saying about her until she felt sick to the stomach. She didn’t want to look at it yet somehow, she couldn’t help herself. It was a compulsion. She tried to distract herself with music videos and films but she couldn’t concentrate for more than a minute or two, jumping up, pacing the flat, whilst Bill was endlessly on the phone or flicking through news coverage and Kat chattered on her phone to family and friends about all kinds of inconsequential things. By the evening Lizzie was at screaming pitch. Then Dudley did another press conference and they all crowded around the screen.
‘I’m innocent of any crime,’ Dudley said, so plaintive and puppyish with his sad face on. ‘The false accusations and fake news are truly hurtful at this difficult time. I can only hope that the police will swiftly exonerate me and I can be left to grieve in peace.’
‘I’m going home,’ Lizzie said, pushing aside the box of chicken tacos that Kat was offering her. ‘I’ve had enough.’ She wanted to see Dudley or at the very least, talk to him. She rang his number as soon as she got in the taxi but the call went to voicemail immediately. She felt annoyed that he was call-screening her along with everyone else.
‘Dudley,’ she said, when the tape beeped at her to leave a message, ‘I’m thinking of you. Call me when you can.’ But he hadn’t called back and when she rang again the line was dead.
Now she sat up in bed and reached automatically for the phone only to find that the battery was flat. Swearing under her breath she groped for the charger lead and plugged it in. In a minute she would try calling Dudley again.
The flat was quiet. That was unusual. In theory Lizzie lived alone but it never seemed to be like that. There was always someone hanging around; usually Kat or her family and friends, or Lizzie’s ex-bandmates, or Dudley with or without one of his brothers, or other friends, people whose connection to her was so tenuous that sometimes she had no idea who they were. Today however, there was a stillness about the place that would have frightened her if she had allowed herself to think about it.
Lizzie stretched and finding that she felt wide awake, got out of bed and wandered over to the huge windows that