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PROLOGUE

12.03 p.m.

Saturday 1st November, 2008

They say love and hate are flip sides of the same coin. People can hate those they love, and love those they hate – and everything in between.

Oh, I don’t know, emotions are complicated.

But I regret doing it the second it’s over.

It feels like I’ve been holding my breath for the past three minutes, but at the same time it’s like my rapid breathing is having a sprint with my heart rate to see which can get to the finish line first. The finish line, presumably, is where I spontaneously combust with shame, guilt and horror over what I’ve just done.

A fifteen-year-old girl should not be doing this.

Most girls my age, at this time on a Saturday afternoon, are mooching around town, giggling at boys they fancy, trying on inappropriate clothes and make-up. But then again, I have never been ‘most girls’, and that’s why I’ve ended up here, today… doing this.

A crowd has started to gather, desperately trying to see what all the fuss is about. I’m furiously twiddling the thin black hair bobble I always keep around my wrist – something I always do when I’m nervous.

Three police cars are parked at skewed angles on the road as a result of the speed at which they’ve approached the scene, screeching to a halt, just like in the movies.

It was an eerie approach; no sirens, just a mesmerising sea of bright-blue lights to frame that brief episode of violent activity, played out to a soundtrack of shouted commands and angry, desperate yelling.

And then relative calm.

I can’t move.

What have I done?

I wait for the feelings I had expected: relief, release, revenge – the dish best served cold, or so they say.

But I’m just cold, numb and utterly consumed by the enormity of the moment.

Until it comes, in a savage, irresistible torrent. Guilt strikes like a lightning bolt to my conscience. A tsunami of crushing shame and pure, unadulterated worthlessness, washing through me, sweeping me away to be broken on the rocks of my own self-loathing.

The worst thing about it all is that I should still hate him, but I don’t. I should feel a satisfying sense of revenge, but I don’t.

But that’s the thing about emotions, they’re complicated.

Fucking hell, Amanda Slayder… what have you done?