Darling: The most shocking psychological thriller you will read this summer

Food, though, was turning from my gift into our battleground. Most days Stevie ate anything, but Lola? She was a tricky one. That night I offered her spaghetti, with either bolognese or a tuna and tomato sauce, but she ‘wasn’t feeling’ pasta, so I offered grilled chicken and potatoes, but she wasn’t feeling chicken, or potatoes, so I offered a sea bass fillet, not feeling it, sausages, nah, sirloin steak, nah – she wasn’t feeling any meat at all. By this time I was feeling the need for air, so – back in a minute! – I left her in front of the TV and grabbed my bag, which now held a fresh pack of cigarettes, put there by me alone.

I smoked. Then, with my deliberate failure already stale in my mouth, I hit upon a meat-free inspiration: everyone loved my Caribbean vegetable curry. I aimed for Pattie’s West Indian Food Store a few streets away, bought what was needed and wandered back.

There was no sign of Lola downstairs.

I snatched up a knife and cut out the scowling. There would be no asking, nor pleading; no telling, no pandering now, just dinner on a plate. I needed to calm my blood and get this sauce to bubble; it would taste almost as good from Thomas’s overpriced pot. I diced the onion fast – chuk-chuk-chuk – grated the ginger, then fried them together nice and slow. I whistled as I chunked up the vegetables, inhaled a savoury puff which seared my skin as I poured liquid over. A breather.

I padded to the back door. Time for the flavours to mix themselves up, for it all to meld together and break down a touch. I considered another cigarette but remembered Lola’s gift of suffering and pushed the urge aside, for now. I went back to the hob, added coconut milk, stirred and covered.

Soon come.

After at least twenty minutes, I decided to seek her out upstairs.

Lola was in her room. She was sitting up on the bed, Facetiming some friend, and when she looked up I saw it: that naked, honest hatred that she had not been quick enough to hide. So then, Lola.

I stood, rock steady, in her bedroom doorway until she killed the call.

‘I’m making a Caribbean vegetable curry for you …’

‘I’m not really feeling—’

‘What aren’t you feeling now Lola?’ I said. ‘Curry? Vegetables? Or simply the Caribbean?’

A twitch at her mouth. ‘Well. No. I was just going to say I wasn’t feeling that well.’

‘Oh,’ I said. I waited for the sympathy to come, but it did not.

Two seconds passed. Three.

Then from cool flat nothing the magnesium sparked and flared, and Lola reheated a smile:

‘Hey, want to see my new skirt? Try it on if you like!’

It was a black and turquoise patterned mini, and it was pov-chic and it was witty-tacky and it was small as hell; it would never have fitted over my rounded old black backside, even at her age. She threw it down on to the bed, a polyester gauntlet.

I did not rise, I did not move; I paused, made admiring noises.

‘So yeah,’ she said. ‘Not bad for High Desford.’

‘It’s lovely, Lola,’ I said. ‘Anyway, I’d better check on dinner.’

‘I told you.’ That hot metal stare. ‘I’m not that hungry.’

I met her long gaze, eye for eye. A flexing of time, and of wills.

‘OK then.’

I walked out of the room. Lola got up and followed. I stopped by the stairs; she stopped.

‘What?’ I said.

She moved closer.

A loud purr, gravel. A car. Lola edged me forward along the landing, seeming to hear something that made her cry out:

‘Why? Why do you need to be like that?’

‘Like what?’ I said, literally on the back foot.

‘You act like you hate me the whole time!’

She was shouting now, a full-throated yell.

‘What? You can’t be—’

‘It’s true! No. You talk like you like me, but—’

‘Lola!’

‘You—’

‘Lola—’

‘Hi, Darling!’ called Thomas.

And, poor silly girl, in that one weird second she heard not Darling, but darling, and she rushed to the top of the stairs.

‘Hello?’ called Thomas.

But I was still moving forward and she pushed, pushed at me, then more shouting, screaming, a heart-jerking lurch – she was screaming? – and then my arm flew out somehow, anyhow, but she flailed, flew backwards.

Down she fell, a tripping, twisting, puppet’s dancefall right down to the bottom of the stairs.

I looked at Lola lying there, one arm up in a question mark above her small fair head, one arm down, legs bent. A beautiful catastrophe: her broken swastika of a body.

Lola (#u20f182fe-03b7-5dab-90fd-2cc3e7fb2f8c)

DONE LIST 2

You’ve got to be joking, right?

They’d been together for a few days and he wanted to fucking marry her? Well, at least that’s never going to happen now.

Trust her to try to spoil the most important time of my life, ever. I have the most unbelievable, amazing, freaky-deeky news. We did it. How fucking crazy is that? No one can know. I’ve always wondered if he felt like that about me deep down and turns out he does. He really does. And the weirdest thing of all is that he does not realise that he is more or less a total god to me. Especially now.

But of course Darling has to ruin my life at the same time. Did she mean to push me down the stairs? What was that? I’ve told Dad she meant it, of course, over and over … but deep down I’m guessing the silly cow would not have had the bollocks to risk prison over me. I heard Dad coming back and got distracted so, who knows? She may harbour a criminal intent, it happens. OK, so I did sort of want to catch her out, make a scene – but not that much of one! #familiated

Between you and me, kiddos, I might just have got it into my stupid skull that I could try to fly, as high and as far as a bouquet tossed over a bride’s head …