‘We were close friends for a time, but she was never my best friend. I never felt that I knew her – you know, nobody felt like they knew her that well.” Rachel DeLoache Williams is recalling a friendship she made in her late 20s, back in 2016, beginning at an exclusive nightclub on New York’s Lower East Side. Her new companion was, she says, the opposite of her – a “bold, offbeat, audacious” trustafarian and good-time girl who thought nothing of tipping hundreds of dollars at hotels and restaurants. She seemed keen to be friends with Williams, treating her to lavish dinners and even inviting her to sessions with a personal trainer who had worked with Denzel Washington and Gwen Stefani. However, the party girl’s erratic, forgetful and often entitled behaviour masked something far darker, which is now clear to the former Vanity Fair photo editor.
“Any time you have to make excuses for somebody – repeatedly – it’s a good indicator that you should give the relationship space,” she says gravely. “I know much more now about sociopathy, and that enigmatic charm. That’s how the whole charade functions.”
