Trust No Bitch: Part 2

Gemma Akintola: Friday, 6th November, 2015

Though they had grown apart over the months following Cleo's disappearance, Gemma was once again becoming accustomed to the various inflections of Alice Jenkins' voice. It was brilliant. Her loyalty meant that losing friends had always been the stand in for the fear of heights, the phobia of bugs, the hatred of the dark that everybody else, but never Gemma herself, seemed to have. Well, apart from the bugs; of cockroaches, she had always been petrified. Though Alice was naturally well spoken, Gemma had learned to classify her mood, her characteristics, based solely on the tone of her sentences: frenzied, judicious, authoritative, drained, and Gemma's personal favourite, done with your shit. The latter could also be detected by a look of brazen disbelief at the target's stupidity. She doubted that she would see that expression at Cleo's funeral. Only the poise and professionalism she was sure Alice had perfected at a young age. But she had missed them.

She had missed them all.

So much so that they had reverted to that secondary school-esque honeymoon phase of doing pretty much everything together. Gemma had rescheduled her plans that evening with Georgie Caines so that she could go to the pub with Alice instead. She also knew that unfortunately the superfluity of cheap beer meant that Clara would probably show up with her boyfriend, Joe. Alice had said she would invite her boyfriend, Louis Blackmore, but the odds of him actually showing up were slim. Gemma liked the man but she really hoped that he too would give it a miss; everyone knew he was a nasty drunk and since Gemma was going to be on her own (she could hardly invite Josh Young along, unless she fancied inviting his bitch of a girlfriend Jade March too), she would rather that Alice was too. Their seminar had been in the late afternoon that day so afterwards, the pair of them made their way straight back to Alice's flat to look at the photos from the party that Lilly had sent before making their way to the pub. After making Gemma a cup of tea, Alice collapsed onto her bed and pulled her laptop out from underneath it with a yawn. She patted the space bed next to her to signify to Gemma to sit down, momentarily looking too exhausted to even get any words out. Gemma strode over and ensconced herself in Alice's pillows peering at the computer screen where Alice loaded up her emails.

"You alright?" Gemma asked her, taking a sip of tea.

"Hm?" Alice said, the dazzle of the screen casting light onto her face so that Gemma could see the shadow beneath her eyes and her bloodless skin (usually hidden by an immaculate layer of make-up) in full definition. Gemma nudged her gently, being careful not to spill tea on the periwinkle duvet cover, Alice glancing away from the laptop for long enough for Gemma to notice the whites of her eyes. Up close they were not so white but in fact, tinted scarlet by swollen capillaries.

"I said, are you alright?" Gemma repeated.

"Yes, I'm fine, why? Are you okay, Gem?" She said airily, nudging Gemma back as if it was some kind of game. As if she really didn't know how frail she looked. As if being preoccupied by wellbeing was something that lesser people did. Gemma thought back to that night, walking into Alice's room at 4AM, that same look on her face, her form besieged by textbooks. It's showing, babe, Gemma thought to herself, staring at the ceiling. "I'm assuming you've already seen the photos?"

"No, why?" Gemma asked, puzzled.

"Because I can't think of any other reasons why you'd lying there doing nothing instead of helping me look through them." Alice replied with a small smile. "These photos need two sets of eyes."

"Alright, alright, sorry." Said Gemma, sitting up and squinting at the screen. "How far have you gotten?"

"Well, Lilly seems to have sent all the photos not just the ones from the time frame we've discussed so I'm only up until about 9:45 which is just after we got there and actually, I'm quite sure she was arguing with me at around that time..." She zoomed into the photo. "There we are in the background. Let's just move on from that one." She said through gritted teeth, opening up the next photo and examining it. "These are strange photos. I generally refuse to use the word selfie but honestly, I would've expected to see more of them. These are mostly long shots and they don't seem to have subjects. Lilly took these, didn't she?"