The wine was breathing on the sideboard, the good glasses were out, and I had already rearranged the cushions twice before the doorbell rang for the first time. A tradition. Book club. Every Wednesday. My house. My rules. Everyone knew what they were, even though they were never spoken, like never bringing red wine anywhere near my cream carpet.
Audrey and Vivian arrived together, mid-conversation, as always. This week’s topic was the new episode of some show they were watching about people getting married right away. Audrey swept past me with a bottle of Prosecco that, at best, was reasonably chilled. Vivian trailed behind her, rolling her eyes, in the way she reserved just for me. The kind that says you know what she’s like without needing to say anything.
Sheila and Barbara came next, arriving in the same car the way they had for the last four years. It was convenient, easy. Although living a street over, you’d think they would just walk the four minutes and save the petrol. But it was their ritual. They settled on the couch together, shoulders brushing one another, the way old friends do when they’ve stopped noticing they do it.
Joan arrived, fussing with her glasses and apologising for being a few minutes late even though nobody said anything and we were all used to Joan never showing up on time. But that was Joan. Always apologising for things nobody’s noticed. It’s one of her quieter charms, if I’m honest. It had been the six of us for so long, but a new neighbour was joining us tonight and I was a little apprehensive, but she seemed pleasant enough.
And then she arrived. Fiona.
She had been on the street three weeks, and I had taken some home-baked cookies as a welcome gift. We chit-chatted and she seemed excited about a regular book club. Fiona edged into the room, carefully, checking where to sit and whether she was taking someone else’s usual seat. Audrey brought in the tray of glasses and offered one each to the group. They made a soft clink and we sat down, ready to delve into a new story. I wasn’t sure if everyone had met Fiona yet. I’d been perfectly warm towards her so far, friendly enough that she couldn’t accuse me of anything. In fact, it was I who would end up doing the accusing.
‘Ladies, as you can see, we have a newbie with us this evening,' I said, indicating to my corner chair. 'Fiona. That's Audrey, Vivian, Sheila, Barbara and Joan. And I’m Pamela, in case you’ve forgotten. But everyone calls me Pam,’ I said, smiling.
‘It’s lovely to meet you all. I’m excited to get started. As Pam said, I’m Fiona. Or as my closest friends call me, Nona. A nickname I’ve no idea why it stuck.’
I don’t quite remember what I said back. Something polite, I’m sure. But something in my chest had gone very still, the way a room does the second before the glass hits the floor. I sat there, paralysed. Nona. A name I could never forget. A name linked with one of the worst times of my life. It had been eleven years since I’d heard that name spoken aloud. And I had spent that time hoping to never, ever hear it again.
The evening carried on around me in a blur. Audrey finished her outrage about the ideas of marriage and love while everyone stayed quiet. Vivian argued that the story was ‘a little too dark’ for a Wednesday and suggested something more ‘light’ for next week. Sheila and Barbara exchanged one of their looks, a whole conversation with a raised eyebrow. I couldn’t for the life of me work out what it meant, only that it happened when Fiona spoke.
Fiona, blissfully unaware of the tension building in the room, continued talking, warmed up by wine and comfort now that she considered herself part of the group. She mentioned, at one point, some old boyfriend from years back, married if you can believe it. She laughed like it was nothing, some little anecdote to offer up to a group of women she didn’t even know. My hand tightened around the stem of my glass hard enough I’m surprised I didn’t break the glass.
‘You’d be surprised,’ I said, before I could stop myself, ‘how often that story comes out on streets like ours.’
Silence filled the room. Everyone glanced in my direction as if asking if I had meant to say that out loud.
‘Sorry?’ Fiona asked, still smiling, never understanding.
‘Oh, nothing. Ignore me. Too much wine, I think.’
But I couldn’t ignore it. Fiona sitting in my corner chair, my husband’s face swimming to the surface and eleven years of betrayal were building like a volcano ready to erupt. By the time I next looked up, the conversation had carried on without me. Fiona was still laughing at something Audrey had said, completely unaware that she’d just detonated something in the middle of my living room. I don’t remember deciding to say anything else. I just remember that I did.
‘Nona,’ I said quiet enough that it might have passed for casual. ‘That’s an unusual nickname, I must say.’
Fiona’s smile faltered, just slightly, the way it does when someone senses a shift in the room.
‘It just… stuck,’ she said again, more carefully this time.
I watched something shift behind her eyes, not recognition, maybe just a flicker of unease. The sense that she was in the last place she wanted to be.
‘I think I might just…’ she started, already reaching for her bag. ‘Could I use your bathroom?’
‘Upstairs,’ I said. ‘Second door on the right.’
She left the room a little too quickly. The kind of exit people make when they want to believe nothing’s wrong. None of us said anything for a minute. Then Vivian attempted to break the tension.
‘Well, that was odd,’ she said, and the room limped back towards normal, or near enough.
I didn’t know, sitting there, that it would be the last time any of us saw her alive.
I didn’t say much. I sat with my wine going warm in my hand. I thought about the last eleven years of my life. The anger. The betrayal. I thought I could go the rest of my life without that name ever being spoken in it again. I hardly noticed some of the ladies were drifting back in from the kitchen and hallway, surely to gossip about what was going on. I’m not sure how much had passed but it was long enough Fiona should’ve been back downstairs.
‘She’s taking her time,’ Joan said eventually, glancing towards the ceiling. ‘Should someone check on her?’
Typical Joan. Always the one who noticed the little things. The one who could never sit comfortably while someone else might be feeling unwell, embarrassed or in need of rescuing. I should have gone myself. It was my house. But something in me, something that still hadn’t released the grip around my chest since hearing the word Nona, didn’t want to be the one to find her.
‘I’ll go,’ Joan said, already rising. She fixed her glasses the way she always does when she’s nervous. ‘I need the loo myself anyway.’
Nobody objected. It seemed no-one else was in a rush to bring the awkwardness back. Sheila and Barbara were too busy muttering away, as usual. Audrey had finished her Prosecco and had stumbled back in with a glass of my fine whiskey. Vivian giggled beside her.
I remember the sound before I understood what it meant. A short, piercing cry from upstairs filled the air. Like the sound someone makes when their body reacts before their mind has caught up. Then silence. Then Joan’s voice, timidly calling my name.
We were all moving before anyone said a word. I was running up my own stairs. Audrey and Vivian close behind me. Sheila and Barbara behind them. Joan was standing in the bathroom doorway when I reached her, one hand over her mouth, the other gripping the door handle like it was the only reason she was still standing. She didn’t speak. She didn’t need to. She stepped out of the way so I could see.
Fiona was lying on the floor, sprawled out, blood circling around her. The shower head was dangling by its hose, swinging slightly. I simply stared at the picture in front of me before I let myself understand that this wasn’t an accident, and it wouldn’t resolve itself once we had called the police. I don’t remember screaming. Vivian said I did. I only remember reaching for my phone, my hands not quite feeling like my own.
‘Don’t touch anything,’ I heard myself say. ‘Don’t! Everyone out. Now.’
Barbara guided Joan away, an arm around her shoulders, murmuring something too quiet for me to catch. Sheila stood in the doorway, looking at Fiona in a way I couldn’t quite place. Not horror. Something closer to calculation. Although grief does strange things to a person’s face and I had no right to read anything into it. The call to emergency services was a quick one, although hours seemed to pass. I gave my address, answered questions I don’t remember being asked, and somewhere in the middle of it, Audrey began to cry. Not delicate, soft tears. But the kind of crying that comes from shock. None of us had known Fiona long enough yet to properly grieve her.
By the time the blue lights arrived, we were all sitting in my living room, exactly where we’d been an hour before. Except now there was a dead body upstairs and a group of women who could barely look at one another. A police officer took my statement first, since it was my house. I told him this was a weekly book club we’d done for years and that Fiona was new to the street. I didn’t tell him about Nona. I should’ve. It would've looked better coming from me, but it also would've made me look guilty, admitting I knew her, admitting there was history. But I saw the way his colleague glanced towards me when Vivian, without meaning to, mentioned the strange thing I’d said earlier in the evening. You’d be surprised how often that story comes out on streets like ours. I understood, with a horrible sinking clarity, that I would be the one they looked at first.
I hadn’t killed Fiona. But I was starting to realise that might not matter nearly as much as I needed it to.
***
Grief doesn’t announce itself the way you’d expect. It doesn’t come in one clean wave. It comes from all angles, overwhelming and overpowering. The empty seat where a woman sat at a book club. The unused coffee cup lying in the cupboard because its owner no longer needs it. It’s been four days since Fiona died in my bathroom, and in that time, without being accused of anything, I’ve become the person my own neighbours and friends don’t quite know how to speak to.
The police had questioned me twice more since that first night. They were just ‘clarifying the timeline.’ But I hadn’t heard any of the other women being questioned again and alarm bells were ringing. I knew, watching the detective’s face every time I mentioned Fiona’s name, that I was no longer simply a witness. I was a person of interest. The woman who’d said something odd to a new neighbour who ended up dead, not even an hour later. The woman whose husband had once strayed with a woman called Nona.
I told myself I was investigating for Fiona’s sake. But that wasn’t true. I needed to prove it hadn’t been me and a small part of me believed if no-one looked hard enough, I wouldn’t be living in this house much longer. Audrey and Vivian, predictably, had become a fountain of information I hadn’t asked for and couldn’t stop receiving.
‘Apparently, she’d only moved to this area because of a divorce,’ Vivian said, settling into my kitchen as if she owned it, teacup in hand before I’d even offered one. ‘Maggie next door said the ex-husband’s lawyer sent flowers to the funeral home. Can you imagine?’
‘And apparently,’ Audrey added, lowering her voice as though the walls themselves were listening, ‘Fiona had quite a bit of money tucked away. No job that anyone could work out. Maggie thinks she might have been... well. You know.’
I didn’t know or at least that’s what I told myself. But I filed it away, the way you file away something that might be useful later. It was Joan who unsettled me most. Not because of anything she said or did. Joan barely left her house, according to Vivian, and when she did she seemed like she was expecting something to hit her. She’d apologised twice to me for finding the body and there was something unbearable about watching her carry the guilt over it. I should have suspected her less than I did. And yet, the guilt of the innocent is so often louder than the guilt of the guilty, because the innocent haven’t learned how to make peace with things they can’t control.
A few days later, the police returned some of Fiona’s personal effects to me. They explained that, due to an administrative mix-up, someone had assumed I, as her closest neighbour, since she appeared to have no next of kin, would know who to pass the belongings on to. I didn’t. I couldn’t pull myself away from looking through her purse anyway. A hairbrush, lipstick, a half-finished crossword and a small black book, the kind you’d buy from a stationery shop for keeping addresses.
I nearly didn’t open it. I told myself it was private and whatever was written in there was none of my business. But something about the weight of it in my hands, heavier than a book that size should be, as though it was carrying more than paper, made me sit down at my kitchen table and open it anyway.
It wasn’t addresses.
It was names. Initials, mostly. They were paired with dates, a hotel, and sometimes just a room number. I recognised the first name immediately. My husband’s, the one I’d spent the last eleven years trying to forget. Beside it, a date I remembered so clearly, the first time I'd begun to suspect my husband was having an affair, back when he claimed he was travelling for work, staying in hotels for conferences.
I kept reading.
The second name I recognised took longer to place. A first name and a second initial that matched, unmistakably, a man I saw most Sundays at the newsagents, a man whose wife came to my house every week for book club. Then, the third took my breath away entirely.
I sat at my kitchen table for a long time after that. I thought about the night Fiona died. My comment about this street hearing those kinds of stories. Married couples discovering affairs. That this quiet street had been carrying its own version of this secret was more than I could ever have imagined. Somewhere among those initials, I was almost certain, was the reason someone wanted her dead.
***
I didn’t go to the police. Not right away. I told myself I needed to be sure, that a black book full of names and initials wasn’t proof of anything. Yet the truth, deep down, was I wanted to look Sheila in the eye first. I wanted to see it, before anyone else got the chance to explain it away.
I invited them both for coffee. Just the two of them. This wasn’t unusual. The three of us had done this a hundred times over the years. Sheila and Barbara arrived in the car together, as always, and settled onto my sofa in the same, practised, comfortable way. What was unusual was the black book, sitting in the middle of my coffee table between the biscuits and the milk jug, closed, waiting.
‘What’s that?’ Barbara asked. She had spotted it first and I studied her face for any signs of recognition, worry or curiosity.
‘I think you both know exactly what this is,’ I said.
Sheila sat perfectly still. She didn’t reach for it. She simply looked at it, and then me, and something in her expression settled into a kind of tired resignation. The kind of look of someone who has been waiting a long time for a conversation they always knew was coming.
‘She had it on her the whole time,’ Sheila said, quietly. ‘Of course she did.’
‘You knew her,’ I said. ‘Both of you.’
‘We knew of her.’ Barbara’s voice had gone very small. ‘We didn’t know it was her, not at first. The same as you, I’d imagine. But when she said that stupid nickname, it clicked and your face said everything we suspected.’
'You could have said something. That night or after,' I said.
‘And say what?’ Sheila’s composure cracked, just slightly, enough to show me the anger she was carrying, the kind that’s had years to settle into the bone. ‘That my husband spent two years’ worth of Friday nights in hotel rooms with a woman who called herself Nona? That Barbara’s husband did the exact same thing, probably at the same hotels, on the same nights and neither of us ever said a word about it to one another. Not until we worked it out. Right here at your book club, watching each other’s reactions.’
I hadn’t expected that. They had made that realisation, together, here, in this room, over the very books we pretended mattered more than our own lives falling apart around us.
‘We wanted her to admit it,’ Barbara said. Her hands were shaking now. ‘That was all. We followed her upstairs after your little scene. Joan scurried away and Audrey and Vivian were too busy concerning themselves with the alcohol. We wanted her to look us in the eye and say it. To admit what she’d done, to say their names and at least apologise. We didn’t go up there to…’
‘But you did,’ I said. ‘Whatever you meant to do, you did that instead.’
‘She laughed. She said we should be thanking her, really, since at least we knew what our husbands were really like,’ Sheila said, as she closed her eyes.
‘I just wanted her to stop laughing. I put my hand out and she slipped. Her head hit the pipe. The shower head fell. It was an accident.’ Barbara had her hands over her face as I sat paralysed with shock.
The black book was still closed on the table between us. I looked at it and understood that I had spent the last week being afraid of exactly the wrong thing. I had been so certain that Fiona’s death was going to cost me everything. Instead, it had cost Fiona her life, and it was going to cost two more women everything they had left.
‘I have to call them,’ I said.
Neither of them argued. I think there was a sense of relief in being caught. They were in it together. The police arrived within the hour. I gave another statement, then Sheila and Barbara gave theirs. I looked around my kitchen and living room that had hosted so many weekly book clubs and realised it would never quite feel the same again. Vivian and Audrey found out before the day was over and by the evening there wasn’t a curtain twitching on either side of the road that didn’t know some version of the truth.
I think about Fiona sometimes, more than I expected to. Not the woman with the black book, not Nona, but the woman who sat in my corner chair for one single evening. I think about how she walked into a street full of women who had, without ever meaning to, already decided to hate her, long before any of us understood why.
We started book club a month later. Different house. Some rooms simply stop being able to hold certain kinds of evenings ever again. I still don’t know, some nights, whether I did the right thing, calling the police. I think about Barbara’s hands shaking and Sheila holding onto her.
But I know this: for eleven years, I carried a secret because I believed silence was the safer choice. It cost me nothing but a marriage I no longer entirely trusted. For Sheila and Barbara, silence would have cost them everything, one way or another.
I’m not sure, in the end, any of us ever really get to choose which kind of ruin finds us. We only get to choose what we do once it has.
© 2026 CMG Writing. All rights reserved. This story is the original work of CMG Writing and may not be copied, reproduced, distributed, or republished in whole or in part without prior written permission from the author. Unauthorized sharing or reproduction of this content is prohibited.
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