I know, I know. I did it. The one piece of advice everybody gives,!and I threw it out the window.

I brought a knife to a gunfight.

Now, it wasn’t a rash decision, mind you. I wasn’t told to be there at high noon, and scrambled for the first weapon I saw. No, I was logical about it, which is an achievement for me. I brought a knife to a gunfight, because I knew the other lady - Gardenia Dawson - had no bloody clue about how to use a gun. At best, the thing is decoration, at worst, an open admission of power, the fact she can wave the thing in a policeman’s face and walk away a free woman. But not a weapon.

So here I stand, little Naria Linell, in a shoplifted pair of trainers and an Oxfam jacket, holding onto my dad’s kitchen knife on a secluded London street. The moon left hours ago, and the rain kept pelting down, but GD said 11pm, and it’s 11pm. She wouldn’t be late to her own duel, would she?

The rain changes it’s mind before I do.

It softens, like it too can’t be arsed to keep up dramatics all the way until GD arrives.

“Bit dramatic, Naria.”

I don’t jump (I know, applaud now). I just turn, slow as possible, knife still down by my side. I don’t want to use it.

Gardenia Dawson stands under the flickering streetlamp like she’s been placed there. The gun’s in her hand, loose, casual. Decorative, like I said.

“You’re late,” I say.

“I’m right on time.” She tilts her head, looking me over. “You, on the other hand… look like you lost a fight with the church jumble sale”

I glance down at the jacket. “Oxfam, actually. Bit of class.”

“Mm.” She takes a step closer. The heel clicks again. “You planning to carve the truth out of me, then?”

I don’t answer. The rain fills the gap for a second. It’s picked up now.

“See, that’s the thing about you,” she says, almost kindly. “You’re not here to get anything, are you?” Another step. “You already have it.”

“Don’t know what you mean.”

“Oh, don’t be dull.” The gun lifts, unaimed, like a punctuation mark. “You’ve always been cleverer than you look. And you don’t look very clever at all, so that’s saying something.”

“Flattered.”

“You should be terrified.”

I shrug, because that’s what you do when someone tells you how to feel. “If you were going to shoot me, you’d have done it already.”

“Exactly,” she says.

She steps closer again, close enough now that I can see the rain catching in her lashes. She doesn’t blink it away. She could get them redone tomorrow, if she wanted.

“I don’t need to shoot you, Naria,” she says. “Guns are messy. People start asking questions. And you… you’re a quiet girl, aren’t you?”

“I can be.”

“I know you can. You’ve been very quiet lately. After the… incident.”

My stomach does something unpleasant. I ignore it. “Lots of incidents. You’ll have to narrow it down.”

“The kind where you overstep a little.” A beat. “The kind where a girl ends up swinging for it.”

I don’t move.

“Funny thing about ropes,” she goes on, almost conversational. “People think it’s the drop that does it. It’s not, usually. It’s the waiting. The standing there, knowing what’s tied and what’s about to tighten.” Her eyes flick, just briefly, to my hands. “Knowing there’s nothing left to hold onto.”

The rain feels colder all of a sudden.

“You’re not as subtle as you think,” I say.

“No,” she agrees easily. “I don’t need to be.”

The gun dips, then lifts again, idle as a metronome. She’s not aiming. She doesn’t have to.

“What do you want?” I ask.

Gardenia’s smile settles properly. “Nothing complicated,” she says. “You go home. You keep wearing your little charity-shop costumes. You forget what you saw, what you think you know, what you’ve been so carefully piecing together in that busy little head of yours.”

“And if I don’t?”

She looks up, briefly, at the streetlamp above us. The metal bracket. The wire running along the wall behind it. Measuring something.

Then back at me.

“Then you’ll learn very quickly,” she says, “how easy it is for a neck to find a noose.” A small pause. “It might be someone else’s, if you’re feeling selfish.”

I let out a breath I didn’t realise I was holding. “You’re bluffing.”

The knife feels heavier now. Less like a choice, more like a prop I’ve outgrown. She watches me clock it. Of course she does.

“This was never a gunfight,” Gardenia says, almost gently. “And it certainly wasn’t a knife fight.”

She’s close enough now that if I moved, if I really tried—

I don’t.

“It’s a conversation,” she says. “And you’ve just about said everything I needed to hear.”

I swallow. “I haven’t said anything.”

Her smile widens. “Exactly. Let’s keep it that way.”