The Dead Lie Down by Sophie Hannah

sister,’ she said, in answer to Kate’s raised eyebrows.
    ‘I’ll see you inside in no more than three minutes,’ said Kate.
    ‘Who was that?’ Olivia asked.
    ‘Sam Kombothekra’s wife. You’re late.’
    ‘It’s not a concert,’ said Olivia. It was a saying she’d picked up from her and Charlie’s father. Howard Zailer said it about all the things he didn’t care if he was late for. He never said it about golf, which he played at least five days a week. Howard’s passion for golf had been forced on his wife, though they both pretended Linda’s sudden enthusiasm for the game had been arrived at independently, by a huge stroke of luck.
    ‘So, are you giving a speech?’ asked Olivia.
    ‘Apparently.’
    Olivia was wearing an ill-advised tight skirt that bound her legs together, and could only take tiny steps towards the pub. Charlie had to restrain herself from screaming, ‘Get a move on!’ She would march back into that room and beat the shit out of anyone who looked as if they might have been predicting the demise of her and Simon’s engagement. How dare they? How dare they drink champagne we’ve paid for and slag us off behind our backs? Her speech—forming in her mind as she walked with feigned patience beside her shuffling sister—would be a verbal thrashing for all those who deserved it. Not exactly party spirit in the traditional sense, thought Charlie, but at least she was fired up.
    Once inside and upstairs, she stood on a chair. She didn’t need to bang anything or call out to get attention. All eyes were on her, and people quickly shushed one another. ‘Can someone turn the music down?’ she said. A man in a white shirt and a black bow-tie nodded and left the room. She didn’t know his name. She wondered if he knew hers, if word of her unsatisfactory sex life had spread as far as the Malt Shovel staff who were helping out for the evening.
    A quick scan of the room confirmed that Kathleen and Michael Waterhouse had left. Simon, in a corner at the back, was looking worried, no doubt wishing Charlie had conferred with him before opting to make a tit of herself in front of everyone they knew.
    The music stopped mid-song. Charlie opened her mouth. Two seconds ago she had known what she was going to say—it would have left no conscience unflayed—but she kept looking at the wrong people. Lizzie Proust was beaming up at her, Kate Kombothekra was mouthing, ‘Go on,’ from the back of the room and Simon chose that precise moment to smile.
    I can’t do it, thought Charlie. I can’t denounce them all. They don’t all deserve it. Possibly less than half of them deserve it. Kate might have been exaggerating. It struck Charlie that denouncing was probably the sort of thing that ought to be handled with a bit more precision.
    You’re standing on a chair in the middle of the room. You’ve got to say something.
    ‘Here’s a story I’ve never told anyone before,’ she said, thinking, What the fuck am I doing? She hadn’t told the story for a very good reason: it made her look like a world-class moron. She saw Olivia frown. Liv thought she knew everything about her older sister. It was almost true. There were only a couple of stories she’d missed out on, and this was one of them. ‘When I was a new PC, I went into a primary school to give a talk about road safety.’
    ‘The headmaster had never seen you drive, then!’ Colin Sellers called out. Everyone laughed. Charlie could have kissed him. He was the perfect undemanding audience.
    ‘In the classroom, apart from me and the thirty or so kids, there was the teacher and a classroom assistant—a young girl—’
    ‘Woman!’ a female voice yelled.
    ‘Sorry, a young woman , who was working as hard as the teacher was—wiping noses, helping to draw pictures of highway code symbols, ferrying kids to the loo. The teacher had introduced herself to me at the beginning of the lesson, and she’d made all the children tell me their names, but