Even though she’d given up years ago, Natasha lit up a cigarette (from the pack of ten she’d bought whilst out for her morning run) as she pored over her board presentation, unable to concentrate. It was Sunday afternoon, three days since the picnic, and she knew things weren’t looking good now. Where the hell was she? Maybe she’d gone back to a friend’s house that night, had been too upset to go home, and perhaps now had gone away for the weekend – which was why there had been no answer when Natasha had gone round earlier. But even if that was the case surely she’d have charged her mobile by now, posted something on Twitter at least? Another possibility, Natasha thought hopefully, was that she’d passed out on a bench somewhere and been picked up by the police – she must have been paralytic to have run off into the night like that, she wasn’t usually that rash – but if that had happened wouldn’t they have let her go by now? Normally even Natasha wouldn’t hope that someone she knew had been arrested, but it was a hell of a lot better than the outcome she kept trying not to think about, the one where the reason her erstwhile friend still wasn’t answering her mobile was because she wasn’t able to, was because she was lying cold and dead at the bottom of The Serpentine. It was like a nightmare, like something you saw on the news that happened to other people.
Natasha knew in her heart now that it wasn’t a bird that they’d heard, it was a bloody big woman-sized splash. But if that was the case why had there been silence afterwards? What could have happened? Surely if it had been her she would have splashed around, screeching for help?
Natasha’s heart thumped as she redialled the number, but still it cut to voicemail, and Natasha cursed the cheery, ghost-like voice, and then the horrors, circling in her head like buzzards around a dying carcass, all got too much for her, along with the cigarette smoke, and she ran to the bathroom and retched endlessly into the toilet bowl.