Angry Birds

Stephanie and Marnie were inseparable. They'd been inseparable since they met at Imperial College London five years ago, where they had both been studying a bachelor’s in data science.

They were on the same wavelength about quite literally everything. They laughed at the same jokes, had a shared Spotify playlist, followed the same people on Instagram, read the same books on holiday together, ate the same food, swapped clothes, had identical hairstyles, fancied the same blokes and finished each other's sentences. Everybody thought they were sisters.

When they left uni, they came up with a brilliant masterplan to get jobs together in the same company so they wouldn’t have to be apart for eight hours a day. Unfortunately, they couldn't find an employer that bought into this brilliant idea. They quickly discovered that most companies only took on a single graduate per year, not two. And the larger organisations with bigger grad intake schemes had these highly infuriating policies of not hiring friends. Heaven knows why!

So, after a few months of eye-opening interviews, Stephanie went off to work for a management consultancy in Hammersmith, while Marnie went off to work for a research organisation in Canary Wharf. But that didn't deter them. They phoned each other in their lunch breaks, gossiping and guffawing whilst inhaling their sandwiches.

They phoned each other as soon as they got home in the evenings, unless of course they’d met up straight after work and gone to the pub to compare and contrast the men they would and the men they wouldn’t in their respective offices. They spent their entire weekends together. Out shopping, at the nail salon, the hairdressers, the gym or the spa by day, and out clubbing, getting trollied by night, nursing hangovers together the next mornings.

When Stephanie was introduced to Negroni cocktails at a work event, Marnie immediately started drinking Negroni cocktails too. When Stephanie took up Zumba classes, Marnie took up Zumba too. When Stephanie had her eyebrows microbladed, Marnie had hers done too. And when Stephanie said she was moving out of her parent's home and renting a room in a shared flat in Balham, Marnie rented a room in a shared flat in Tooting - just 10 minutes away, too. But only after first asking Stephanie if it was only the one room available to rent in her new Balham flat. And then if her room was maybe big enough for the two of them.

They helped each other move. Packing boxes, loading them into their parents’ cars, unloading and unpacking them at the other end. They put the same framed photo of themselves riding a camel in Gran Canaria on their shelves. In the photo, they were both sunburnt, wearing matching looky-looky €8 blue-mirror sunglasses they'd bought on the beach and crying with laughter, heads flung back, mouths wide open. They were laughing because Marnie had weed herself a little bit as the camel nearly threw them off, lurching backward and then forward into a standing position.

After Stephanie had unpacked and put the new bedding that her parents had bought her on the bed, the girls went out to celebrate. They staggered back to Stephanie's new home at 2:15 in the morning, drunk and giggling. Stephanie kept saying shush too loudly, putting her finger to her lips and tiptoeing like a cartoon thief so as not to wake her new flatmates up, which made Marnie giggle even more uncontrollably. They sat chatting on Stephanie's new bed sheets, until nearly 4 am, when they could no longer stifle their yawns or keep their eyelids open. It made no sense for Marnie to go home now. She might as well stay.

Two weeks later when Marnie moved into her new flat and the final box was unpacked, Stephanie handed Marnie a bottle of chilled prosecco with a pink ribbon tied around its neck.

“To christen your new home.”

“We'll have to drink it out of tea-stained mugs.” Marnie grinned.

“Actually, that's for you. I can't stay I'm afraid. I've got other plans tonight.”

Marnie laughed and gave Stephanie a friendly shove on her shoulder.

“Yeah, right, like you'd make plans without me.”

But Stephanie had made plans without Marnie. Her new flatmates had a monthly Staying In Saturday, which they took turns to host and share their idea of a perfect night in. And now Stephanie was part of the trio ritual. And being the new girl, it was her turn.

To say she felt peer pressure was an understatement. She liked her two new flatmates, Gisella and Karo, so far. They were cool but chilled. Sophisticated but simple. Intelligent but not intimidating. So, she wanted to impress them, without it looking like she was trying to impress them. She could really have done without helping Marnie move today, so that she could have concentrated on this evening’s preparations, but there was no way she could let Marnie down. Instead, she'd compromised and taken yesterday off work to prepare for tonight, so she could still help Marnie today.

Of course, when Gisella and Karo had seen her coming in with bags of shopping yesterday they'd ribbed her mercilessly. But then they'd been kind too in their jesting and reassured her there was no need to go overboard – although that advice was clearly too late. It wasn't to be taken so seriously. It was just a bit of fun, where they could relax with their bras off, slouching in pj’s, messy, unwashed hair, no war paint and most importantly, no sleazy men.

Stephanie’s Uber was already waiting outside Marnie’s. She was back home twelve minutes later and took the Waitrose cheese selection out of the fridge before she’d even taken her jacket off. Half an hour later, the coffee table in the lounge was cleared of the magazines, an empty coke can and half a packet of Digestive biscuits, wiped down and filled with little bowls of olives and nuts, a wooden chopping board with a selection of cheeses decorated with grapes and figs and a breadbasket of a neatly sliced crusty baguette. Tempura prawns and duck spring rolls were cooking in the oven, their cardboard boxes flattened and folded in the recycling bin – not that she was even going to try and pretend she’d made them. Stephanie couldn’t cook to save her life and trying to convince anyone otherwise would lead her down a road of lifelong misery. She was, however, very good at inventing cocktails and tonight she was going to treat Gisella and Karo to her signature drink, the Mojazzle.

“Wow! This looks amazing.” said Karo, when she came in and saw the spread.

“It’s a mo what?” asked Gisella, guzzling the golden fizz enthusiastically through the straw.

Stephanie passed a glass to Karo, and they all cheersed and clinked glasses.

“Bloody hell! This is lethal” said Karo, “and also delicious.”

The evening was fun, and as her new flatmates had promised, relaxed. They made her feel welcome and comfortable in their company and in her new home. They took it in turns to choose their favourite songs and told stories about what the particular tunes meant to them. They played who am I? with Post-it Notes stuck on their foreheads. They stated facts about themselves, and the others had to guess if they were true or false. They ate and got drunk on Stephanie’s lethal cocktails and laughed more raucously as the evening went on. She finished the evening by handing out stick-on moustaches and they aped stereo-typical male characters, parading around the lounge with deep, lecherous voices. They took a selfie of the three of them sporting the moustaches and pulling serious man faces.

Stephanie brushed her teeth and went to bed still smiling. She couldn’t wait to tell Marnie about the evening and for her to meet Gisella and Karo. She knew they would all get along really well. She WhatsApp’d the selfie moustache photo to Marnie.

       ~ Steph

       You’ll love these two crazy birds

But Marnie was offline. It was late. They would catch up in the morning.

* * *

Marnie wasn’t answering. The two blue ticks were there. She’d seen the message. But not replied. Stephanie hoped everything was ok. It had been Marnie’s first night in her new flat and a panic was slowly rising in Stephanie’s stomach that something was wrong.

By 7 pm, Marnie had still not replied to the WhatsApp message, not even a laughing emoji reaction. Nothing. And Stephanie’s six calls had all gone unanswered. Stephanie had messaged again an hour ago.

       ~ Steph

       are u ok?

       ~ Steph

       pls call or msg to let me know you’re alive

       ~ Steph

       I’m really worried

The two blue ticks had appeared within minutes. But no reply. No animated dots and Marnie is typing. Nothing. Different horror scenarios started to play out in Stephanie’s mind. Marnie’s new flat mates were serial killers. Marnie had gone out celebrating with the new flat mates and had her drink spiked. Marnie was lying in a ditch somewhere and someone else had her phone. There was only thing one for it.

She put her trainers on, called an Uber and arrived at Marnie’s new flat twenty minutes later. She rang the bell on the wooden doorframe of the four-story Victorian house for Flat C. The intercom crackled.

“Hi, I’m Marnie’s friend, Stephanie – is she…”

But she was cut off by the intercom buzzing and the front door clicking and a cheery female voice on the other end.

“Hi, come on up.” And then calling into rooms of the flat beyond the intercom, “Marnieeee.”

Stephanie stepped over a pile of flyers and into the once grand entrance hall of the house. She started up the stairs when the door to Flat C opened, the woman with the cheery voice appeared in it, hovering nervously.

“Hi there, um, Stephanie isn’t it? Um, I’m really sorry, Marnie says she’s not well. Not up for visitors.”

Her cheery voice had lost its cheeriness and become awkward, as if perhaps she might not be telling the truth. Stephanie stopped where she was, halfway up the stairs, her hand still on the bannister, her right foot one step higher up than her left.

“Oh! Well, does she need anything? I can get her something from the pharmacy now?”

“Oh, um, I think it’s just a head cold, she says she do…”

But awkward-cheery was cut-off by Marnie’s perfectly clear voice, hollering from the depths of the flat.

“Tell her to fuck off.”

Stephanie and the woman in the doorway flinched simultaneously. Both their faces sprouted an instant matching red heat as they sucked in a little gasp of dead hallway air.

“I’ll, um, call her tomorrow.”

Stephanie backed down the stairs, eyes still on the door to Flat C, as if she was respectfully backing away from a Buddhist temple. The other woman gently closed the door with the tiniest, embarrassed bow of her head.

* * *

Stephanie could not get hold of Marnie all week. She tried calling every day at lunch time, at their normal time. She tried calling every evening when she got in from work, at their normal time. She sent a WhatsApp every night with a variant on hope you’re ok, miss you, do you need anything?

The next weekend, Marnie filled her Instagram page with selfies of the wild Saturday night out she’d had with her new friends. Stephanie liked all of them. And then Marnie blocked her.

On Sunday evening, Stephanie had just got back in from visiting her parents. She hadn’t yet told anyone about how weird Marnie was behaving. She was still trying to figure it out. She walked in to find Gisella and Karo shaking on the sofa, talking to a policewoman, whose walkie-talkie was hissing and clicking with static noise. Stephanie stopped dead in her tracks, the smile falling from her face and looked from one to the other of them.

“What’s happened?”

Gisella pointed to the lounge window. Stephanie followed her finger and saw the shattered pane, a beautiful starburst of fragments still held in place in the frame, the rest laying in shards on the floor beneath it. And a brick. A house brick.

Stephanie gasped, her hand covering her mouth and her eyes widening in shock.

“It was a girl” said Karo. “I saw her.”

The policewoman coughed quietly to remind the three flatmates that she was there.

“I’m just taking a statement now. Take a seat. I’ll want to ask you a few questions next.”

Karo was staring at Stephanie intently.

Stephanie looked back at her, not able to interpret the stare.

“What?” she asked Karo, shaking her head in confusion.

“Her hair. It was just like yours.”