The Friend: An emotional psychological thriller with a twist Read online

‘Sorry?’

  ‘Copywriter who can’t find the right words. Always said it was a good job you refused to work for me.’ He was trying to make me smile and I was grateful for the effort, but then there was this shift, a strange sensation in my stomach.

  He was looking right into my eyes still and I was sad that I was the one who had to look away first.

  Copywriter? Another thing that felt surreal. It was still on my LinkedIn profile but felt fraudulent. Some days I found it hard to believe I ever did it. Held my own in that world; no – better than that, I was good, actually. Pitches. Slogans. One-liners. Sometimes now it felt as if it all happened in some parallel world.

  At first when we moved to Devon, I shared all the stories with Caroline and Heather. The outrageous all-nighters when we were up against a deadline. The parties when we landed a big new contract. Once, after way too much wine, I showed them some clips from a campaign which went viral.

  ‘You wrote those ads? But I remember those. They were everywhere . . . You really wrote those, Sophie?’

  Both Caroline and Heather had sat wide-eyed and incredulous.

  ‘So why the hell did you give it up, Sophie?’

  I tweaked the script. Played down how much I missed it.

  ‘Ridiculous hours. Very macho culture. Half the people were on drugs to hold it all together. Completely impossible to combine it with children. Not if you want to be any kind of mother.’

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want to lie down, Sophie?’ Mark was still brushing moss from his fingers.

  ‘Yeah. Yeah. Fine. Sorry. Miles away.’

  ‘It’s just our son and heir wants a barbeque. And none of your fancy sea bass.’ His tone was still feigned brightness and I tilted my head, touched again by this effort. The patience, also. ‘The boy wants burgers. I’m taking him to the supermarket. We’ll probably try to find some frozen bait for fishing as well, if they’re still open. Do you want to come?’

  ‘No. If you don’t mind, I think I’ll just sit, actually. I’m hoping Helen will be home soon.’ I glanced at the only cottage visible from the front step – a larger, double-fronted affair, consumed in a bear hug of wisteria just a few minutes along the lane.

  I willed her to come quickly and it worked – I was just pouring a second glass of wine when the familiar battered Volvo crunched over the gravel of the unmade road and swung into the little parking bay opposite.

  Bill and Ben – a springer and a Highland terrier – leapt from the back seat and bypassed the gate to sneak through a gap in our hedge. All slobber and tails almost knocking my glass over.

  ‘Oh – it’s you at last. Thank heavens!’ Helen’s voice boomed – her hearing one of the few things to betray her age. ‘We’ve had some absolute shockers in that place so far this summer.’ Helen’s hair was mostly white now but her skin was still translucent. Ridiculously unlined.

  By the time she was through the gate herself for a hug, I couldn’t help myself, clinging on just a tad too long. Too tight. ‘I can’t tell you how good it is to see you, Helen.’ Voice breaking. Which of course made her pull back to check my face at arm’s length.

  ‘So what’s all this, then?’

  We met Helen the very first year we discovered the Lizard. You might say we owe her for falling so quickly in love with it. She is certainly the reason we return to this same cottage.

  Helen knows everyone. From the very start she was so incredibly generous with her time and her contacts – directing us to the best pasties in Porthleven, the best cream tea at a tiny café overlooking the Helford River. Our very first visit she fixed for one of her sailing friends to take us to tiny beaches which could only be reached by water, and she pointed out the best boats to buy fish and crabs at knock-down prices at the various local quays. She taught us to shuck oysters – shocked and amused in equal measure at my initial squeamishness. And she provided the champagne when, like giggling teenagers, we told her first when we got engaged on our third visit. Mark proposed at Kynance Cove – swept along by the magic of the place, though entirely unprepared.

  Helen had been horrified. So where’s the ring? You’re kidding me? No ring? And no champagne. What are you, Mark – a bloody amateur? And then she disappeared into her house, returning with a chilled bottle of Pol Roger, explaining that decent champagne was one of her few pleasures now that sex is off the agenda.

  Helen had been widowed in her fifties, moving to the Lizard soon afterwards, and we supposed that she was like this with everyone – extrovert, entertaining and eager in her loneliness for company of any kind. But no. The years taught us, with surprise, that this was not so. Comments in the visitor book of our cottage revealed Helen was regarded by many as an irritable recluse, evidently sharing her favours, her company and her contacts with a chosen few.

  ‘You look white as a sheet, Sophie. What on earth is the matter?’

  I was fighting tears but was not embarrassed. I always knew I would talk to Helen – practical, sensible Helen who would not gush and gasp as others back in the village had, too many feigning sympathy but in truth keen for the lurid details. So was there a great deal of blood?

  ‘You heard about the guy who was killed in our village. In Tedbury?’

  ‘Yes. I read about it in the papers. Saw it on the telly too. Awful.’

  ‘Well – I was the one who found him, Helen. And his wife. They were my friends.’

  ‘Oh my God.’ And then Helen, true to form, wasted no time with all the platitudes which were driving me insane at home, but instead stood to announce a temporary pause for supplies. ‘Forget the wine. We need something stronger. And ice. I’ll be back in a minute. Mind the dogs.’

  She returned not only with vodka but a tray of oysters also. ‘I see Mark’s got the barbeque out, which means he’ll be feeding you some burnt offering later. So here – we need fortification for this.’

  And now, for the first time since Saturday, I heard myself laugh – the shock of which made me pause, holding myself rigid.

  ‘Don’t fight it, Sophie. Delayed shock. Crying is good . . . but not over the oysters, please.’ She was passing a tissue from her pocket. ‘It will dilute the liquor.’

  To my surprise I cried for quite a long time but Helen at no point tried to shush me. And when I stopped, she encouraged me to describe it. Share it. Let it out, Sophie. And this was not like the policewoman prying; this felt different. So I told her about all the blood and how shocked I was at the bit of Gill’s brain showing. And how I felt guilty for noticing the orange espresso cups. That I was still in that strange zone, as if I were remembering and relating something from a book or a film, not something that was truly happening in my own life.

  Helen, in return, did not tell me to stop talking or to put it out of my mind, but seemed to understand instead that I needed now to rerun the film to accept it. She walked through it with me and she said that I would need to do this many times in order to get used to it. These reruns.

  She told me, quite matter-of-factly, that for the first two years after her husband’s heart attack, she relived finding him time and time again until she knew every beat of the scene; as if she needed to be sure of every single gasp of pain and every second of what had happened in order to accept it and learn to live with it.

  ‘People tell you to try not to think about it. Your own instinct is not to think about it. But that doesn’t work,’ she said. ‘The trick is to learn to cope with thinking about it. To accept how truly awful it was. Am I making any sense?’

  I nodded and I cried and ate more oysters and drank more vodka and thanked my stars that I had her in my life, so that by the time Mark and Ben returned, they told me that I looked better.

  ‘You look smiley again, Mummy.’

  Mark looked relieved, and I held Helen’s hand while the two dogs chased a Frisbee which Ben threw over and over.

  For the next two days Helen gave us space, as was our custom – exchanging morning and evening pleasantries only. I spent time with the bo
ys. Outings. Cards. Monopoly. And then when Ben and Mark set off for a day’s fishing, I was on her doorstep early. Our cue.

  ‘Ah. Crab sandwiches? I’ve been looking forward to this.’ Helen was smiling broadly.

  We set off in the Volvo for Coverack, parking in the official car park at the top of the hill and walking slowly down to the seafront to a favourite café. Another little secret – from the outside an unpromising affair with plastic chairs and tables and wasps playing havoc around a huge bin awaiting collection by the council, but to those in the know a blissful little haven offering the best coffee locally and sandwiches packed with the sweetest, freshest crab straight off the local boats.

  We queued for our treat and took the brunch on to the rocks opposite, watching the children on the beach.

  ‘So, how are you doing really, then?’

  ‘Quite a lot better – thank you, Helen. Mark was right. This place is just what I needed. I only wish Ben wasn’t starting school next week. Truth be told, I don’t want to go home.’

  ‘Well, you know you can always stay on with me. You’re welcome any time; I’ve told you that before.’

  I looped my arm through hers. ‘That’s very kind but I have to think of Ben. Also – I rather think we take enough advantage as it is.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. Like I said – we get some real shockers in that place. Last week there was a couple who complained about the noise from the seagulls. Imagine that, eh? Seagulls by the coast. Oh, and they didn’t like the smell from the oil-fired Rayburn. Or the downstairs shower. And they couldn’t come to terms with a barbeque without an on-off switch. Complete bloody nightmare. If it was my place, I’d have turned them out.’

  I was smiling, and pushed my hair behind my ear before starting on my sandwich – a chunk of crab spilling on to my jeans which I scooped straight into my mouth.

  ‘Actually, I have something else I want to talk to you about,’ I said.

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘It’s just. This is going to sound very selfish . . .’

  There was a pause as Helen finished a mouthful of food before swigging at her coffee. ‘I said I’m listening, Sophie.’

  ‘I mean, I feel terrible for Antony and Gill. Shocked rigid.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Like I said, this sounds terrible – but I’m surprised at how angry I feel.’

  ‘That you were the one to find them?’

  ‘That. Yes, I suppose, but also . . . Oh, Helen – it’s the timing. I mean, for the first time in so long, I was just beginning to feel more like my old self. Stepping back a bit. Thinking things through. This new friend I’ve been telling you about.’

  ‘Emma?’

  ‘Yes. I know I’ve been going on about her a bit, but if you met her you would understand. You’d really like her, Helen. She has this incredible energy; it’s like she’s breathed new life into the whole place and it’s been so good for me. I honestly had no idea how bad a rut I was in. She’s really got me thinking about my future. Before this awful business with Gill and Antony, we were even talking of resurrecting my deli plan.’

  ‘You are kidding, I hope? After what happened with Caroline?’

  ‘I know, I know. And don’t worry, Mark’s done all the lectures. And to be honest, I see his point. Start-ups are going to the wall left, right and centre, and I think it would be a small return for a bucketload of work. But it at least got me thinking properly about going back to work – with Ben about to start school, I mean. And I know I blow hot and cold on this, Helen. You must be sick of all these U-turns, but I realise now that I can’t just sit doing nothing while I wait for the next baby. So I was starting to gee myself up, work through some options in my head – and I was feeling really good about that. And then . . .’ I had been gabbling but now my voice faltered. I coughed. Paused.

  ‘Look, you’ve had a big shock, Sophie. You’re bound to feel knocked back. We always think these things happen somewhere else. On the news. Not in our own lives. But places and people do recover from these things. They have to. I know it doesn’t feel that way right now but you just need to give it time. The great thing from my point of view is to hear you talking like this. About getting out there again. It’s good, Sophie. Really good.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘I know so.’

  ‘A joke, though – that we moved here, to the south-west, because I thought it would be safer.’

  ‘Yes – but it’s a domestic, Sophie. And domestics happen everywhere and anywhere. You moved for the best of reasons. For Ben.’

  ‘You’re right. I know you’re right.’ I took in a long, deep breath. ‘And you’re not to worry. I haven’t agreed to anything. Over the deli, I mean. I don’t like to disappoint Emma, but just between us I’m thinking more along the lines of a part-time job. PR agency maybe? Something to stop me bonking the postman once Ben’s in school.’

  And now Helen was smiling.

  ‘Sounds like a plan. Just give yourself time to get over the shock with your friends. To let things in Tedbury settle down again.’

  ‘Oh, and that’s the other spanner. Mark is now talking about us moving. A fresh start. The dreaded suburbs.’

  ‘Well, he’s probably just panicking. Feeling protective. I mean it can’t be easy for him. All the commuting.’

  ‘Oh God – I know. To be honest I feel terrible about him doing all that driving. But I just don’t think it’s the right time for major decisions. I’d still prefer him to relocate the company at some point, especially if I can get some work going to balance the income. I mean, that is what we originally agreed. Him moving the company nearer.’

  ‘So tell him that. Buy time. Say you sympathise but it’s not the right time for such big decisions . . .’

  ‘You’re right.’ And then I turned my head to glance up to the coastal path in the distance, and that’s when I suddenly saw her.

  Helen frowned and turned her head to follow my gaze. ‘You all right, Sophie? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.’

  I didn’t answer, instead blinking to reset my vision. The flash of red linen coat disappeared as the woman turned and strode out of sight.

  ‘What is it, Sophie? Seriously? You’re white as a sheet.’

  CHAPTER 11

  BEFORE

  ‘I need you to come out from there right now, Theo!’

  Emma’s knees were hurting as she crouched to peer under the bed again. It had been a long day and she was tired. There was no response – Theo, in his hideous dressing-up outfit, was now wedged into the far corner, wrapped in a blanket with his hands over his ears. His exposed arm confirmed that again he had drawn a small robin in felt pen on his skin. His new craze. Damn him. Another fight at bath time.

  ‘I mean it, Theo. You need to come downstairs and see what you’ve done. Also I have some more questions. About Ben and his mummy.’

  ‘I haven’t done anything wrong. I’m Superman and I have special powers. I can fly out of this room right this minute if I want to. I can go find my robin and we can both fly to Cornwall to be with Ben.’

  Emma sat back on her heels. She was wishing that Granny Apple were still alive. Yes. If Granny Apple were still around Emma would drive Theo to Kent right this minute and leave him there.

  She had done this more than once – left Theo for weeks at a time when he was really small and especially difficult. Granny Apple always complained that it was not a good idea, not good for the child, but she never actually refused; always gave in.

  These days Theo was becoming more and more impossible. He wouldn’t answer any of her questions about Emma and Ben. He just pulled this ridiculous face and challenged her. Why do you keep asking about Ben and his mummy?

  ‘Did you hear the smashing noise earlier this evening, Theo? Just after we got back from Heather’s?’ Emma had shifted position again to stretch her sore knees, still leaning down to stare at her son.

  ‘Is it like in France? Because I didn’t do anything. I didn�
��t break Granny’s plates in France. And I haven’t done anything bad today. I promise. I was a good boy for Heather. Ask her.’ Theo was curled into a ball on his side now, with his knees up to his chest.

  ‘Well, how about you come and see, Theo, because I’m not imagining it. I mean it. Downstairs in two minutes or you’ll be sorry.’

  The phone was now ringing. Emma glanced through the open bedroom door and across the hall to the extension on her bedside table, but decided to ignore it. After a minute her mobile started up. Damn. She guessed it would be Nathan again, wondering where she had been, and so she stood and headed downstairs, out of earshot.

  Nathan’s mood was at first hesitant and apologetic; he was clearly still baffled over her pressing on with the deli work. The last couple of days he had been trying to get her to slow down. Seemed to think it was upsetting people in the village, her pushing ahead with the builders with Gill in her coma and Antony barely cold in the morgue.

  ‘Look, I do get that people are in shock and I understand that village life is different. Tight-knit and all that. But I didn’t really know Gill and Antony very well so I don’t understand. I can’t put my life on hold and I really don’t see why it’s anyone’s business what I do.’

  ‘OK. Here’s the truth. Tom had a bit of a go at me in the pub last night. Seems there’s some stupid gossip flying around.’

  ‘Gossip? What gossip, Nathan?’

  There was a long pause as Emma made it to the sitting room to again survey the damage.

  She listened to Nathan explaining that the village crones were badmouthing her. Had entirely the wrong end of the stick.

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t normally give a damn, Nathan, but that might explain something.’ Emma stared at the brick on the floor. ‘In fact I was hoping you could come over urgently and help me out. I’ve just got in and something horrible has happened.’

  After she explained further, Nathan changed his tone completely and agreed to stop by in half an hour. Emma hung up and picked up the brick as Theo appeared in the doorway.