But I was alone too. With every other death I had made it happen, been there for the last breath, felt like I was in control. Here, I was just like everyone else who had picked up a paper. I knew nothing and could tell nobody. For the first time in a long while, I wanted my mum. I wanted her to know that her daughter was the one who was alive, that I was doing this for her, that I would never let her life have been discarded and forgotten by these people. But I wasn’t going to be one of those people who thought that they could sense their dead loved ones smiling down on them, and I wouldn’t be pulled into a maudlin pity party for myself. I opened a bottle of wine, and ran a bath. Bryony was dead, the details could wait. Her demise meant so much more than ticking another one off my list. It meant that the list was almost complete. One more to go. Daddy dearest, I was coming for you.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Writing all that down made me laugh. What a hammy cliffhanger to end on. But I’d finished the story of Bryony’s demise at 2 a.m., in total silence and darkness. Even Kelly wasn’t snoring. I was wired by the end of it, remembering the moment when I realised that I only had one target left. I’d been so close and it had felt so monumental. From the confines of this cell, I wish I’d enjoyed those moments a little more. I should have gone dancing after every murder, or bought myself precious jewellery for every target I’d crossed off the list. I had a list; did I mention that? A physical list, I mean. It was written down in pencil on the back of a photo of me and my mother. The Latimers had given it to me one Christmas, shortly after I’d moved into their house. It wasn’t a huge surprise, given that it was my photo. But Sophie had found it in my desk drawer and taken it to the framers to be displayed properly.
‘You must see this every day, my darling,’ she said when I opened it. ‘Your mother loved you so very much.’ I knew this of course, and I didn’t need Sophie to tell me how much. Besides, I’m not sure Sophie had spoken to my mother really, beyond brief arrangements about playdates which always took place at the Latimer house （‘So much easier for the kids with all this space,’ she’d tell Marie）， so her insistence at constantly reminding me that I had been so loved used to get slightly irritating. Jimmy used to roll his eyes when Sophie would trill about how proud Marie would be of my exam results, or my ‘excellent’ fairy cakes. Thank fuck for Jimmy.
But it was a nice frame, and I’d hung it by my bed at the Latimers’。 When I moved out, it was always displayed somewhere I could see it when I woke up. When I was planning how to kill Kathleen and Jeremy, I’d taken it off the wall and held it, looking at Marie’s face a while, wondering what she’d make of my intentions. Probably she’d have been horrified and anguished, devastated that I’d decided to waste my life trying to avenge her own. But she wasn’t here to tell me that, so I didn’t have to give her opinion much weight. And besides, I was doing this for myself as well. Marie was dead and gone. In life, she’d never wanted to right the wrongs done to her. But she’d never wanted to right the wrongs done to me either. We both suffered because she was too weak to demand what was fair. I’d ended up as an extra in a family that wasn’t my own, with no security or safety net. With the shot of losing my mother and the chaser of seeing my father parade his legitimate family all around town. If I wanted to redress the balance, she could hardly protest.
Before I’d put the photo back on the wall, I’d taken the pencil I was making notes with and scrawled the names of every Artemis I figured I’d have to kill on the back of the frame. The marks were light enough that you’d barely notice them unless you were really looking, but every time I’d drawn a line through a name, I’d held the pencil down, dragging it through every letter until they were completely obliterated. It was a small but important marker. But I could have bought some nice jewellery too.
After I’d finished recounting the tale of Bryony and her sad encounter with some peach serum, I’d fallen asleep, waking in a panic when the morning bell sounded. I was still holding my notepad, and Kelly was moving about the cell, singing a hideous rendition of a One Direction song. I assume the original was dire enough, but her pitch made it endlessly worse. I pushed the paper between the mattress and the bed frame and said good morning. Stupid, careless mistake to risk Kelly seeing my work. I watched as she brushed her teeth and applied foundation that was slightly too dark for her skin. I was surprised to see how many women made an effort to look nice while locked up when I first got here, but now I understand it better. Prison will try to dominate every part of you if you’re not careful. From prosaic things like how many pairs of socks you can have to more intimate ones, like changing the things you dream about. Before I came here, I had vivid and surreal dreams almost every night. Now I dream about just one thing. Running down the river path, wind behind me and sky all around. Don’t need Freud to analyse that. So if a bit of makeup helps ground you a little bit, I understand. But blend it better, Kelly, that’s all it would take.