Destroy Me by Karen Cole (red queen ebook .txt) 📕

wavy hair. Except for the fact that her skin is a little too smooth, and her face is expressionless, making her look slightly plastic, the image is very realistic. She’s got a high forehead, thick, arched eyebrows and there’s even a small brown mole on her left cheek. She’s an ordinary-looking woman – entirely unremarkable. She looks like the best friend in a movie – the one who inexplicably spends all her time worrying about the beautiful heroine and doesn’t appear to have a life of her own. You certainly wouldn’t single her out in a crowd, but nevertheless, her features make up a face that, like every face on the planet, is unique as a fingerprint.

And Dylan was right. She looks exactly like me.

Two

How is that even possible?

I was nowhere near Cecily Hill on Friday night. It must be a coincidence – a chance resemblance. They say everyone has a doppelganger, don’t they? This must be mine. But a deep feeling of unease crawls into my belly. How plausible is it that someone who lives in the same town as me looks exactly like me?

I barely have time to process it all before the news anchor peers gravely into my living room and drops another bombshell. This time it’s the victim: a photograph of a woman about my age, grinning at the camera, punching her hands above her head in triumph on top of a mountain. More images flash up. She’s at a party, her arms linked with friends; then she’s on a beach, holding up a cocktail glass. The implication: this is a woman who lived life to the full, making her murder even more despicable – her death even more poignant.

‘Charlotte Holbrooke, known to her friends as Charlie, was found dead in her flat on Saturday night. She had been stabbed four times.’ She continues, her eyes misting with tears. ‘She was married just last month.’

We are shown a photo of Charlie in a wedding dress with her husband, a man called Adam. They’re standing under a sort of arbour, gazing into each other’s eyes. He is handsome, square-jawed, with floppy, blond hair and piercing blue eyes. Then they show another photo of the happy couple on their honeymoon, in front of a wintry scene of Rome, the rooftops speckled with snow. Both are pink-faced and smiling in woolly hats and scarves. They look happy and in love.

‘If you were in the Cecily Hill area on Friday night or in the early hours of Saturday morning and saw anything suspicious, please get in touch,’ the newsreader implores as a phone number rolls across the bottom of the screen below her. ‘And if you saw this woman –’ that impossible picture fills the screen again – ‘or know who she might be, please contact us.’

My hand is shaking as I switch off the TV.

I don’t drink much as a rule. And I certainly never drink alone. But right now, it seems like the appropriate response. The only response to such an outrageous shock. I stumble into the kitchen and pour myself a vodka – a present from Gaby last summer, from her visit to Russia – and I gulp it down. The liquid burns my throat and I wince, but I carry on until the glass is drained. This can’t be a coincidence.

Because I know her. I know the victim. Charlotte Holbrooke. Charlie. She used to be Charlotte Kent before she married, but I would recognise her anywhere.

It must have been . . . what? At least seventeen years since I last saw her. But she hasn’t changed. She still has that same thick head of amber-coloured hair, the same heart-shaped face and bright hazel eyes. Still had, I remind myself. She has changed now, of course. She’s dead. Charlie is dead. You can’t change much more than that.

I pour myself another vodka, this time tempering it with orange juice. I try to remember the last time I saw Charlie. It must have been just before we left for uni. We were sitting in a pub garden at a damp wooden table. I don’t remember much of what we said or why we were there. All I remember is Charlie, pale and unusually serious, saying, ‘This is it, Cat. We’re off to start new lives. Let’s keep in touch.’

I think we both knew, even then, that her words were hollow – that there was no way we would stay in contact; that our friendship was ruined for ever.

The acrid smell of burning wafts into my nostrils.

Shit.

I rush back into the living room. Black smoke is billowing from the iron.

Shit.

I lift it up and uncover a large black scorch mark imprinted on clean white cotton. It’s burned a hole right through to the ironing board.

Shit shit shit. I only bought that shirt today. I’ll have to throw it away now.

I switch off the iron, toss the shirt into the bin outside and slump down on the sofa, clinging to the armrest, digging my nails into the velvet cover. The room seems to be swaying, lurching from side to side. Fear grips my throat so that I can barely breathe, blackness curling at the edge of my mind.

This can’t be happening. Charlie has been murdered. My old school friend Charlie has been murdered and the police are looking for someone who looks exactly like me.

Someone must have given the police this description. After all, that’s how they make photofits, by adjusting the image until the witness is satisfied that it looks like the person they saw. But who? And why? Could it be a deliberate attempt to incriminate me? Why would anyone want to do that? I am an ordinary thirty-five-year-old woman, who lives her life trying to be kind and trying not to cause offence. I don’t have any enemies.

I try to hang on to facts that make sense. What was I doing on Friday evening? But right now, panic floods through me, banishing rational thought. I can’t remember. What was I doing? I dropped off Dylan at