Katherine Debona - Love Me, Love Me Not - An addictive psychological suspense with a twist you won’t see coming

Or was it simply a twist of fate? I may have been a shrew sat next to a peacock, but to me it was the only thing I needed. Every great journey starts with the first step, and I was given an opportunity I knew not to squander.

‘I loved the fact you were so different.’ She’s staring across the lawn now to where a squirrel is busy burying its winter wares.

‘By different you mean poor.’ I take a sip of my tea and resist the urge to throw something at the vermin. Hopefully it will get snared in the trap I have set so I can drown its rancid body in the river once Elle has gone.

‘No make-up, hair scraped back and the most enormous, incredible eyes. I loved how you didn’t care what anyone thought of you.’

‘I was the freak, the outsider, Elle. The only reason anyone ever talked to me was because of you.’

Every school has a system, a hierarchy of sorts, and the trick was to choose your position within it with care. For once you’re in, once your camp has been chosen, it is nigh on impossible to break ranks.

At my previous school I had gratefully accepted the camp of geek. Not only did it keep me away from the glue-sniffers, the vagabonds, the dregs that linger at the outskirts of social decency, but I also managed to set up a side business in what I liked to refer to as ‘homework assistance’. Which basically meant that for the right price I was willing to do the work for you.

But I had arrived that fateful morning at an altogether different kind of establishment. Too much gloss, the air thick with boasts about where Tobias and Grace and Elijah had spent their summers. A constant battle of one-upmanship as teenagers compared the size of their parents’ bank balance. The only reason I was there was because of a scholarship my mother took great pleasure in reminding me could be rescinded if I weren’t able to live up to my potential.

I knew I had potential. Just not the kind she was hoping for.

‘They were jealous of us,’ Elle says as her lips begin to tremble. ‘Of how close we were.’

I wonder which part of our history is making her react in this way.

‘They thought I was in love with you.’

She nods her agreement. ‘Until France.’

Until the summer we spent in a house overlooking the Côte d’Azur. The summer when Elle was getting over a breakup by wrapping her legs around a local boy called Jean-Pierre who rode a Lambretta and had skin as dark as a conker.

The summer she found someone willing to rid me of my virginity, my innocence camouflaged by red wine and teenage lust. A diminishing experience that took place in an iron-framed bed with white cotton sheets, the complaint of springs drifting down to where Elle sat smoking in the garden below. A night she embellished when we returned to school, thereby putting to rest the rumours about my sexuality, but never quite erasing the sting that came with being poor.

Years were spent acquiring Elle’s friendship, her trust. Each and every time I stepped aside, edging her ever closer to the light, it was done for my benefit as much as hers.

Until she took something that belonged to me, something I now want back.

‘You’ve always been there, no matter what.’

The ‘what’ being my first love. My one and only. The man I thought I was going to marry, spend the rest of my life with. But she knew even this wouldn’t be enough to break the love I had for her. She knew that I, along with everyone else, would always, always put her first.

It’s a privilege reserved for the impossibly beautiful, the ones who are so used to adoration, to the heads that turn whenever they enter a room. I wouldn’t even call it an assumption, because if something has always been there, if you have forever been placed on a higher rung of the ladder, does it not simply become part of you?

‘It’s what best friends are for,’ I say, and she looks at me with such a pathetic look of gratitude on her face I have to stop myself from picking up the vase of flowers and hurling it at her irritatingly perfect features.

‘But now I’m not so sure,’ she says. ‘Perhaps it’s too much. Perhaps we’ve asked too much of you, especially when…’ She hesitates, uncertainty no doubt a novel experience for her.

‘What is it?’

Sitting forward on my chair, I bite back the temptation to push her answer. Could this be it? Have I done enough to make her question that which she holds most true?

‘I think Patrick’s having an affair.’ She avoids my eyes, the bottom half of her face obscured by the grinning picture of a Cheshire cat on her mug as she continues to drink. I picture the warm liquid travelling down her throat and into her stomach. Little by little the poison administered will unfurl into her bloodstream. But as with everything else already set in motion, such an outcome will take time.

I allow myself a moment to inhale the words she has finally spoken, to let them settle inside of me in the shape of a smile. Patience is a virtue, my mother always said, and I have it in droves.

So it begins.

Oxford, nine years ago

I saw him first.

Sat in the corner of the library with thick-rimmed glasses reminiscent of a certain schoolboy wizard. The sleeves of his jumper pushed up and the bones of his wrist tensed as pen scratched paper.

But he didn’t see me. Not then. Nor as I followed him down the cobbled alleyway that led to the pub. Not as he supped his pint and swapped ideas, hopes and dreams with his chosen friends. He didn’t notice the way I lingered at the bar, my arm a breath from his own as he passed over a crumpled note to the student serving pints.

He didn’t see me at the back of the lecture hall, watching the curl of hair at his neck, the twitch of leg as he listened. He didn’t realise that I overheard his comment about Professor MacGillis’s tutor group. About his joy and fear at having been chosen. A group I knew I was good enough for. A group that would change everything, if only I could find the golden key that would allow me to enter.

‘So all I need to do is keep the water topped up and it will flower, even in December?’ Professor MacGillis peered at the Narcissus’s sculptural tangle of creamy tendrils, moving too slowly for the eye to see. A small gesture of my appreciation, a thank you of sorts for allowing me to join a study group usually reserved for grad students. He made an exception in my case, based both on a recommendation from my own college professor and the fact I had scored the highest results in the university for my first- and second-year exams. Having me as one of his students made him look good; he knew I was worth more to him than the other way round.

‘Plants are like numbers, they follow the rules as long as you know what they are.’ I turned the vase full circle, just to check all was okay. Because I always looked. I always noticed if a root had grown … If a root had grown, a leaf unfurled, a petal’s hue lightened by the sun.

‘And you don’t mind me keeping it?’

‘Not at all. I can always grow more.’

‘It would seem your talents aren’t just limited to numbers, young lady.’ A pat on the hand that lasted a moment longer than was acceptable. A lowering of lids that failed to hide his intention.

There was a letter opener on his desk and I allowed myself to imagine what it would be like if I were to thrust it between his carpal bones, snapping the tendons between his lusty fingers. To register the surprise on his face as it transformed to pain. For him to understand I was not someone he could manipulate into a cliché. I didn’t need his help, nor his desire.

University was a new world, much the same as before but filled with subtle intricacies that allowed me to simply be. I was no longer the geek, the nerd, the girl with all the answers. Instead my ability was praised, revered and I was not alone in my brilliance. But in two years I hadn’t made any real friends. Hadn’t found anyone to fill the hole I thought could only ever be filled by Elle.