The Yacht Party (Lara Stone)

Alex winced at the ‘bip-bip’ as he locked the car. The road off the Embankment was residential and it was still early enough to wake… to wake the dead, his mind added. Alex took a deep breath, then walked briskly towards the wharf. He was dreading it, but he knew a friend should break the news about Sandrine’s death to Lara and he needed to get to her before she checked the wires too. Alex had called a contact in the Met on the way over to check that the news agency hadn’t got the name mixed up, but there was no doubt about it: the couple from the basement flat in Sandrine’s block had found her and there had already been a positive ID.

Alex knew the code to get into the marina and as he walked along the pier he tried to think of the right way to break it: ‘Sorry, there’s some bad news,’ ‘I think you’d better sit down…’ There was no easy way to do it. In his days abroad, dredging human interest from the rubble of war zones, Alex had done plenty of doorstepping, informing parents that their beloved son or daughter had been blown in half. But this was different. Sandrine was his friend too.

He had met the beautiful Parisian within the first couple of weeks of starting at City University, where he and Lara had places on the prestigious newspaper journalism MA course. Sandrine was Lara’s housemate, her best friend from her undergraduate time at LSE, and somehow, after a big night out, they had all ended up at Lara and Sandrine’s Fleet Street flat ‘for cocktails’, which had pretty much amounted to adding ice to vodka. Alex could rem

ember that first night clearly, Sandrine seeming so sophisticated and worldly and so grown-up, already working as a stringer for Le Figaro at twenty-one. Such a damn waste.

Shaking his head, Alex walked up the gangplank onto the narrowboat, bending to knock on the door.

‘Up front.’

Alex straightened and followed the sound of the voice. Lara was sitting on the deck at the front of the barge, watching the sun rise over the city. She had on a thick fisherman’s jumper, her chin tucked into the funnel neck, knees drawn up to her chest. There was a glass of wine next to her, but it didn’t look touched. It seemed very early for a drink, although Alex could hardly blame her: Lara had not only lost the libel case that week, but her investigations department and her job too. And now this.

‘Hey,’ said Lara softly, barely glancing up from the river. ‘Making house calls now?’

Alex sat down on the wooden chair next to her and for a moment he was reminded of happier times – summer BBQs, the midnight gin sessions, fishing for trout from the deck and reeling in old boots instead. Right now, they all felt so far way.

‘I needed to see you.’

She glanced down at her phone, glowing on the arm of the chair.

‘6:30? I’m honoured.’

There was an edge to Lara’s voice, none of her usual warmth. Alex swallowed: cut to the chase.

‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I need to tell you something. I spotted something on the news wires when I got up, it’s…’

‘Sandrine,’ said Lara.

Alex blinked.

‘You know?’

‘We went out together last night. The police called me first, my number was in her phone – last number she called. I went down to Marylebone and ID’d the body.’

He should have guessed – the positive ID would need to be someone who knew Sandrine well.

‘I asked her to stay here, you know,’ said Lara, looking back at him. Her complexion looked washed-out, her green eyes were lifeless and dull. Lara was always a magnetic presence, the brightest star in the sky, but today, she looked barely there, like a ghost.

‘She said she wanted to stay nearer to Paddington, but I should have insisted. If I had insisted she would still be alive.’

He heard her voice catch as she spoke.

‘Lara, none of this was your fault,’ said Alex gently. ‘If Sandrine had made up her mind she wanted to hurt herself, she would have done it wherever she was.’

‘Hurt herself?’ repeated Lara, turning to face him, those eyes suddenly fierce. ‘You think she did this deliberately too?’

He saw her searching his face, desperate to hear a firm denial, but his police contact had told him that alcohol and anti-depressants had been found at the scene.

‘We’ll have to wait for the inquest to know for sure,’ said Alex. ‘And even then it will probably be an open verdict.’

‘Verdict?’ snapped Lara. ‘This isn’t another case, Alex. This is Sandrine and I know she wouldn’t do a thing like that.’

Alex had worked long enough in news rooms to know that you never did truly know people or what they were thinking. He had interviewed the parents of terrorists and high school shooters, mothers and fathers who had zero idea their child had warped ideologies, until it was too late.

‘She was fine last night Alex, happy, talking about the future. I saw scratch marks on the balcony too. Maybe she was trying to scramble back.’

Alex knew that didn’t necessarily mean anything. Suicidal jumpers often had a change of heart at the final moment. But he really didn’t think now was the time to bring it up.