Page 2 of Rich Little Liars

Cracking the window, I can hear it – the faint, rhythmic shush of waves against sand. The ocean. I haven’t seen it yet. Haven’t allowed myself that small pleasure. For now, I just listen. Let the distant sound remind me that there’s a world beyond these perfect streets. A world that doesn’t know about my past or secrets.

I turn away from the window.

Upstairs, the bedrooms are equally pristine. I’ve chosen the smallest one for myself – the one at the back, overlooking the garden rather than the street. The bed frame arrived yesterday, assembled by men who didn’t make eye contact and left before I could offer them coffee. I haven’t made the bed yet. Haven’t unpacked most of my clothes. The boxes are stacked against one wall like a barricade.

In the ensuite bathroom, I run the faucet and splash cold water on my face. The mirror shows me what I already know: I look tired. Pale. My blonde hair needs washing. My eyes are that indeterminate blue-grey that people call ‘pretty’ when they’re being kind and ‘washed out’ when they’re not.

I look like someone who’s been ill.

I look like someone who’s trying very hard to hold herself together.

Like exactly the sort of woman East Hampton was designed for – delicate, well-bred, in need of peace and quiet and a place to recover from unspecified trauma that no one will be rude enough to ask about directly.

The insurance money made this possible.

I try not to think about that too often.

I turn off the faucet and dry my hands. Then I go back downstairs, because staying upstairs means eventually I’ll have to sleep, and I’m not ready for that yet.

The boxes in the kitchen seem like the safest option. Practical. Necessary. I can unpack plates and glasses and pretend this is normal – that I’m a normal woman moving into a normal house for normal reasons.

I’m halfway through unwrapping a set of mugs when I smell it.

Smoke.

My hands freeze. The mug dangles from my fingers, still wrapped in newspaper.

It’s faint. Just a trace. But it’s there – acrid and wrong, cutting through the scent of roses and fresh paint and furniture polish. I spin round, scanning the kitchen. The oven is off. No candles burning. No toast in the toaster. Nothing.

But I can smell it. The thickness that catches in your throat. That makes your eyes water.

I set down the mug with unsteady hands and walk through the ground floor again. Living room: empty. Dining room: empty. Hall: nothing but roses and silence.

There’s no smoke.

There’s never any smoke.

The doctors said this might happen. Phantom smells. Sense memory. The brain trying to process trauma by replaying it in fragments. ‘Perfectly normal,’ the woman with the clipboard had said, as if normal was something I had any right to claim any more.

I go to the front door and pull it open, letting in a gust of October air. It smells like ocean salt. Clean. Safe. Real.

No smoke.

I stand in the doorway and focus on breathing. In for four. Hold for four. Out for four. The technique the therapist taught me before I stopped going to sessions.

That’s when I notice her.

A woman, standing on the sidewalk across from my house. She’s maybe fifty, dressed in an elegant navy coat and holding a small dog on a leash. Her hair is perfectly styled, the kind of blonde that requires regular salon visits to maintain.

She’s staring at me.

Not glancing. Not casually looking. Staring. Her gaze is direct and assessing, taking in my unwashed hair and my paint-stained jeans and the way I’m lurking in the doorway like I might bolt at any moment.

I should wave or smile or whatever normal neighbours do when they see each other.

Instead, I step back inside and close the door.

My heart is doing that thing again. That rapid flutter that makes me dizzy.