Trust No Bitch: Part 2

Lilly Philipps: Wednesday, 4th November, 2015

There had always been something quite alluring about secrets to Lilly. Maybe the way they look, hidden from view by curled hands propped to mouths, or maybe their sound, like the flicker of a snake's tongue. Then there's the way they make you feel as they enter your ear, trusted, somewhat powerful, elevating you just that little bit higher than the person they concern. No matter how much they continued to fuck her life up, Lilly couldn't let them go. They formed her reality, after all. She was keeping her pregnancy from the father, Luca. Her boyfriend, Jordan. Her own dad. And then of course she was also keeping Luca from Jordan and from everybody else as well. The pregnancy, it had to be said, was marginally worse than the actual affair, the whole thing a situation straight out of a tacky television soap whose writers were running out of ideas. Lilly's due date was less than 2 months away, and not a soul, aside from Gemma, Alice and Clara, knew a thing about it. And before, she hadn't been able to say a thing about it either. If anything positive had come out of her screaming the truth in Gemma's face, it was that at least she now had someone to complain to. About the fatigue, the back pain, the heartburn, everything she'd been dealing with alone for the last several months. The nightmares, however, she would continue to keep to herself. They hadn't wanted to miss out on the party all the other symptoms had been having and were, as she supposed they aimed to be, the centre of attention. It was them that really preoccupied her. The baby girl she'd pictured in her mind, Sienna, was all white blonde curls and cherubic smiles. But in the nightmares, she was pearly grey, waxy, like her body had been fished from the bottom of the same river that Cleo's corpse had been dragged from.

It was all so messy, Lilly knew that.

It became even more convoluted when one considered everything else. Considered that on the night that Cleo King was murdered, Lilly, on the orders of Cleo's boyfriend, had started a fire, unwittingly on Cleo's behalf. A fire that could've somehow fucked over the person who ended up being Cleo's murderer.

If Cleo had been alive to see the plan out.

She was the one that had set it in motion though, Lilly was almost sure. Lined up her dominoes and sat to watch them fall. If Cleo was there to see the last one topple, Lilly didn't know. It was partly the reason she'd come to Luca; to see if he could shed any light on the situation. Because whether or not Cleo had, there was definitely someone else that saw Lilly light that fire, as the text on her phone served to remind her. And if this someone was the "supplier", that Alice and Gemma believed it was? They had more than enough motive to want to find out, besides Cleo, who was behind the whole thing. Waiting for Luca to answer his door, she opened the message again and stared at it:

You tell me who you're protecting, who's really behind it and I leave you out of it.

I'm giving you a chance, Lilly Philipps.

And I hate to dredge up the past, but this letter?

I have it. And I know how to use it.

So should you ever consider running your mouth about this message, keep it in mind, doll, that snitches get stitches.

Or in your case, arrested on suspicion of Cleo King's murder.

Closing the text and screwing her face up to stop herself from crying again, Lilly managed to compose herself in time for Luca answering the door and letting her in. They'd barely spoken since they arrived back at St.Edmund's. As much as he might have loved Lilly, Cleo was Luca's girlfriend; it was for that reason that Lilly decided to show up at his flat. There were other benefits to the arrangement, of course. Although her initial reason for going had been to see if he could help, she had realised on the way there, that the thing driving her was not that, but instead the prospect of seeing Luca's face. Despite that, the conversation upon her arrival wasn't discursive. As planned it turned swiftly to the night Cleo was murdered.

"The £700 I was promised for the fire showed up in my bank account at about 12:20AM. I transferred it to you the next morning." Luca murmured.

"So whoever paid us to start the fire-", Cleo, Cleo, Cleo nagged the low voice in Lilly's head, "-must have been at the party to see it." She said.

"Wow, that was smart."

"Oh, shut up, Luca. I'm not joking, I want to know who it was. Don't you recognise this expression?" Said Lilly, waving a hand over her lifeless visage. "This is my business face."

"Right. Knew I should have recognised it." Luca muttered, raising his eyebrows like he always did. But he seemed tired. Like his body was being weighted down by something Lilly couldn't see.

"Do you, like, think that it could be...do you think it could have been...Cleo? That paid us to set the fire, I mean." Lilly asked.

"Could have been. But she died that night, didn't she? I mean someone said the corpse had that green dress from the party on it and she went missing the next day." He said flatly. "So if you're right, makes her time of death after 12:20AM."

"But before 1AM." Lilly said quietly, her eyes fixed on the flickering images of the night Cleo died that Luca could not see.

"Why do you say that?"

"Because that's when we left the party. We tried calling her. She didn't pick up her phone. Cleo always picks up her phone. I know she disappears sometimes, catches a plane and ends up on the other side of the bloody world but this...It was different. Something felt off. We should have known something bad had happened to her."

"Nah." Luca shook his head. "It was Cleo. Nothing bad ever happened to her. She seemed invincible."

Invincible, thought Lilly. Now there's a word. And it was true, to some extent. Maybe that was why Lilly had never even considered how she would go about defending herself against Cleo. She was a David and Cleo was a Goliath and in real life, David's hand would be shaking far too violently to even pick up the fabled stone, let alone aim it. The woman had always seemed untouchable.

Until she wasn't anymore.