Cooper Bartholomew Is Dead

  ‘Libby. Wait a sec!’ She ran up beside me, grabbed my arm.

  ‘I just wanted to say, don’t worry about Hari. You know what she’s like.’ She grinned. ‘I noticed Cooper watching you the other day at Atticus’s. I think he really likes you, and I think it’s romantic. He’s lovely. Not to mention completely and utterly drop-dead gorgeous.’

  27

  CLAiRE

  Claire caught the bus home. She was meant to be waitressing that night at Alfredo’s, a popular and rowdy Mexican restaurant in town. Bree worked there too, which was a bonus. It meant Claire had someone fun to hang out with, and she could often count on a lift to and from work. And because she wasn’t driving, she could also down a few sneaky drinks, which helped smooth out the long hours and late nights.

  Claire quite liked her job, but she had to be in the right mood for it. That night she knew she couldn’t handle it. The customers, the spicy food, the noise – they would do her head in. As soon as she got home she called to say she wouldn’t be able to make it. She spoke to some girl called Sally, a waitress she’d never met, and told her she had a bad case of gastro.

  She texted Bree. Where are you? I’m home at the Palace. Sick. Not going in to work.

  She went to the kitchen, searched in the pantry for something to eat. There wasn’t much. A few tins of coconut milk. A can of corn. A bag of greenish potatoes. A bulk box of instant noodles. She found a family-sized bag of chips at the back, which seemed promising at first, but when she picked them up she realised they were already open. The chips were stale and soggy.

  She sighed, tossed the chips back, grabbed a single packet of noodles from the box. She left them on the counter near the sink. She’d microwave them later.

  What she really wanted was a home-cooked meal. Roast lamb and baked potatoes. Peas and carrots. Her mother’s gravy. Comfort food.

  The Palace, as she and Bree jokingly referred to their home, was a dingy and dark two-bedroom flat on the western edge of town. It was near the industrial area, miles from anywhere interesting. They had to drive or get a bus if they wanted to go out. They rarely had decent food, and they had to pay for their own electricity and gas. But it was all theirs. They could come and go as they pleased and do what they wanted. There were no parental interrogations. No ridiculous curfews. No rules except for the ones they both agreed on. Claire loved it, even if she did have to work three nights a week to afford it. Even if she did have to go without her mother’s roast lamb.

  She poured herself a large vodka, found some ice in the freezer, topped it up with a splash of half-flat lemonade, took it to the sofa. She had a million essays and assignments to do but the thought of getting out her books and laptop filled her with despair. She was studying urban planning. The course had sounded good when she’d first researched it in Year 12, and her parents had been encouraging, but from day one she’d known it was a mistake. She’d survived first year, scraping by with a pass average, but now, in second year, the work she hadn’t done, the stuff she didn’t understand, had started to feel insurmountable. She was so far behind she had no idea how she was going to get through the semester, or even if she wanted to.

  She grabbed the remote and turned on the television, pushing the thought of uni from her mind. There was nothing good on, but it didn’t matter: the noise and colour were a welcome distraction. They only had two channels in the flat – they’d never bothered to get their reception fixed, so she switched between a corny soap opera and a documentary about a guy climbing Mount Everest. But she’d never watched the soap before and couldn’t follow t