The Assistant

THE ASSISTANT AMANDA REYNOLDS For Hayley and Kate CONTENTS Lexington Gardens Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Email Subject: Interviews with Gail Frost Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Email Subject: Interviews with Gail Frost Diary Entry #1 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Email Subject: Interviews with Gail Frost Diary Entry #2 Chapter 12 Email Subject: Interviews with Gail Frost Diary Entry #3 Chapter 13 Email Subject: Interviews with Gail Frost Diary Entry #4 Chapter 14 Email Subject: Interviews with Gail Frost Diary Entry #5 Email Subject: Interviews with Gail Frost Chapter 15 Email Subject: Interviews with Gail Frost Chapter 16 Email Subject: Interviews with Gail Frost Diary Entry #6 Chapter 17 Email Subject: Interviews with Gail Frost Chapter 18 Email Subject: Interviews with Gail Frost Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Email Subject: Interviews with Gail Frost Calls/Voicemails with Gail Frost – Monday 21 November 3.00pm: Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Email Subject: Interviews with Gail Frost WhatsApp Messages – Monday 28 November Chapter 26 Lexington Gardens Acknowledgments More from Amanda Reynolds About the Author The Murder List About Boldwood Books LEXINGTON GARDENS PILOT SCRIPT – FIRST DRAFT FADE IN: EXT. LOCATION #1 – A GRAND LONDON STREET IN BELGRAVIA – 1 APRIL – DAY A line of icing sugar Georgian townhouses of grand proportions shimmers in the spring sunshine, a light dusting of unseasonable snow making them glitter. The camera pans down the street until it lands on the number 56 painted in neat font on a white pillar of a house near the far end of the exclusive street, then up to the glossy black front door where a mature woman’s hand tentatively lifts the polished brass door knocker and releases it. We don’t see her, just the hand, devoid of rings, the skin aged, a slight tremor detectable. NARRATOR V.O It was late 2022 when I first met Gail Frost. An unremarkable woman. Eccentric even, in that great British tradition. Socially awkward, prickly, defensive, but I was soon sloughing off my preconceptions which were purely superficial and based mainly on her unkempt appearance and reduced circumstances, as well as those terrible photos printed of her and salacious headlines. I interviewed her in the dank bedsit she was renting in Reading. An awful place, mould on the walls. She was lucid, intelligent, and entirely compelling throughout the lengthy interview process. The camera watches the grand door as the unseen woman waits for it to open, her breaths ragged, sounds of her clearing her throat, then the camera looks up to the very top floor and a roof terrace, lingering there until it snaps back to the door. She knocks again, louder this time and then we hear sounds of footsteps approaching from the other side. A figure is visible through the small sliver of obscured glass, someone is unlocking the door. NARRATOR V.O Gail and I were to meet many times over the following weeks and then months. I quickly set aside the opinion I had formed of her based on what I’d read in the tabloid press. I would ask you to do the same. Come to her story with fresh eyes. Come to her story with compassion. As this series airs, I would ask you again, Gail, to be in touch. We care 1 INTERVIEW WITH GAIL FROST – SUNDAY 2 OCTOBER What do I remember of that time back in April? Well, everything, of course. As if it were yesterday. How the icy air funnelled into my nose and mouth and shocked my lungs. And the grate of a metal gate being opened to the residents’ gardens across the road, a very ugly dog pulled through it, and my first glimpse of the long row of five-storey mansions. And how very beautiful that spring morning was. And so quiet. A slice of blue sky as the snow clouds cleared above Lexington Gardens. As if even the weather, on the first day of April, knew better than to play the fool at the home of Larissa Elroyd-Fox, or Ris as you probably know her better. Number fifty-six was within thirty, maybe forty paces of me, but I do have a short stride. Not that I’ve measured it, but I’ve been told so, repeatedly in my younger days. Although wouldn’t every child walk slowly compared to an adult? Sorry, where was I? Oh yes, Lexington Gardens. One of London’s most magnificent Georgian terraces, right in the heart of Belgravia. The home of the rich and powerful. And imposters. Like Ris. She was thirty-two when she met a multi-millionaire twenty years her senior. Not the twenty-something ingenue you might have assumed from the lurid headlines and paparazzi photo ops. A cocktail waitress turned pseudo-celebrity turned influencer, whatever that means. The bimbo who’d somehow bagged Miles Fox, of the Fox Hotel Empire. A handsome man in his fifties. Lured away from his family by the fake smile and the fake lips and the fake boobs. Head turned by trickery. Number fifty-six cost the newly-weds twenty million pounds just over two years ago. Not an improbable amount for one of the most prestigious addresses in London, but even so, would you spend twenty million on a home for two people? It’s obscene, in my opinion. Think of the good you could do with that kind of money. How much difference it would make in the right hands. Most people won’t earn a fraction of that in their whole lives. I certainly