Trust No Bitch: Part 1

Lilly Philipps

Lilly had a thing for cliches. She always had. She would mostly likely describe the passing of time since Cleo King's body was found "a blur". But an actual blur. Not the great night out, or rear-ending someone's car kind. She'd been on and off the phone to her dad, then to her dad's lawyer, then to her boyfriend Jordan, then to Tess and Naomi since she'd left the crime scene.

"Lilly, are you ok? Are you sure you're ok? Just stay calm, me and Jasmine are coming down as soon as we can. I've left my lawyer a voice mail and I'm expecting her round any minute-" Lilly's dad Carl said down the phone. A mild-mannered man, usually level-headed with a placid, docile temperament, he was in hysterics. Lilly could hear her dad's fiancee, Jasmine, reassuring him in the background: "Carl, honey, Lil's going to be ok. Like you said, we'll get the lawyer on the phone, Lilly's not guilty of anything. There's no need to worry." The thought of her dad in that state was like a pack of famished wolves, the way it tore Lilly apart. She'd had to bite her lip to stop herself from crying; the last thing her dad needed would be for her to start bawling down the phone.

"Daddy, I'm fine, please, honestly." She had said repeatedly, taking deep breaths. She had acquired a strangely maternal feeling towards him at times since her mum had passed away. Lilly had been the one to rouse her father from his bed, to make him dinner, to practically resurrect him from the dead, where he'd wanted to stay along with her mum. It had been the weight of the world lifted off her shoulders when he had met his now-fiancee, Jasmine; she would never replace Lilly's mother but she managed to somewhat replace Lilly's dad's deceased wife and whilst that process was unsettling for Lilly to witness, it was necessary. Going off to uni, she would have never been able to leave him in the state he was in had Jasmine not been there. She was a calming force on the raging waters of grief that still haunted Lilly's dad and their wedding was in less than a month. November the 16th to be exact. Lilly herself had been 10 when her mother had passed from breast cancer; they didn't discover it until it was too late. And growing up without a mum was the hardest thing she'd ever had to do. The body bag in which they enclosed what was left of Cleo had evoked memories she would have rather suppressed. Wailing in fright at 11 when she woke up in a pool of blood, her dad shaking his head and the extempore lesson of the female anatomy that ensued thereafter. Venturing into Ann Summers at 12, and being laughed and "oh sweetie"'d out of the shop when she asked the lady on the till to help her find a bra. Her first real boyfriend at 15, scoffing at her as her trembling fingers wrestled with a condom. The rumours of her inexperience that flooded the school corridors in the weeks that followed.

"Did nobody tell you this stuff?" Her friends would cry, collapsing in convulsions. There were dads that were great at that kind of thing, but her own dad was not. He would stammer and blush like a schoolboy if she brought up anything remotely feminine, removing his glasses and then scratching his head in thought, grinning sheepishly. Lilly knew he had none of the answers. He had expected her mother to cover those topics of conversation. College had been better in those areas, she supposed; Lilly had learned form her "mistakes". She bought Cosmopolitan. She invested in a good push up bra. She scoured the internet for sex tips. She got "street-wise". By the time her dad took her to Paris at the end of her last year at college, with his then-girlfriend Jasmine, she had become quite adept at the art of flirtation. They stayed in an spacious, minimalist apartment overlooking the River Seine, where Carl proposed to Jasmine on the Ponts Des Arts and she became his fiancee. It was unexpected, to say the least; they'd been seeing each other for less than a year. But to Lilly, her dad's happiness was of paramount importance. Jasmine was practical, good-natured, she was a good match for Carl Philipps and she really did try hard with Lilly, but ultimately she just wasn't Lilly's mum. Lilly's mum, the artist, the liberalist, the flower child of the 70's. Over that summer, Lilly had found herself in old photos of her mother. She wandered down Parisian streets, foraging for the most delicate vintage finds, fine gossamer fabrics that trawled along behind her on the grimy pavements. She died her mousey hair a sleek, white blonde to bring out her moon-like eyes, high forehead and delicate facial features, and she plaited tiny sections of it too, fastening them in place with silver beads. Finally, her childhood dream of being a mermaid was fulfilled. Well, aside from the whole breathing under water, being part fish element of it. It was in the pastry shops of Paris that she was able to put her new flirtation skills to the test, meeting French men named Ansel, Remi and Marius (She couldn't actually remember what any of them were called, giving them all French sounding names in her head as a means of separating one from another) but never eating a thing. Sometimes she would take a bite or two to give the photos she captured for her Instagram a more authentic touch, but anymore than this and she'd end up spitting the food into a napkin. She'd been going through her order, snap, spit ritual in one of these cafes when she'd been approached by a talent scout; they wanted her to take some head-shots for their modelling agency. It wasn't a question of money for her dad: as the owner of a successful computer graphics company, his net worth grew exponentially. It was Lilly's health. She had gone from being a healthy 145 lb to a precarious 110. To Carl's frustration, she had always been equivocal when it came to her dieting habits, never elaborating when he asked if she'd eaten that day. He attempted to persuade her to join him and Jasmine at dinner, but she would make a lacklustre excuse, barely bothering to conceal the fact that she was lying. Carl presumed it was Jasmine: eating dinner together, the 3 of them, would make them a family and Lilly didn't want to accept that.