The Sum Doesn’t Add Up

Priscilla knows how to count — and the sum has stopped adding up “to anything decent”: the “baby”, that practice session, the gaze forever caught on one grey figure in the crowd, and now — a readiness to smash his best friend’s face. The denial that has been saving her since chapter one held on to the word “victim”: he’s just guarding his prey.

The explanation almost fell into place — and collapsed over a pronoun she thought herself: “his”. This is how denial ends: not from other people’s words but from one’s own slip. Ahead of her lies the choice of everyone who lives next to someone else’s secret — to see it through to the end, or to urgently forget what she has counted.