Friend of the Family

by Tasmina Perry

‘About Marv.’ She nodded, as if to confirm their affair, and her face softened. Amy had never seen her look anything other than inscrutable. ‘Marv is a brilliant man, we all know that. He’s built Genesis up into a titan, and I don’t want rumours of nepotism or special favours to sully that. The Mode job isn’t worth it.’

  Amy couldn’t resist finding out more gossip. ‘You and Marv? When, how?’

  ‘Please, Amy. Don’t. He’s very special to me and I would rather not discuss it.’

  Amy’s eyes clouded with emotion. She had always had Suzanne Black down as a kick-ass powerhouse. But she loved him. Suzanne Black was in love with Marv Schultz.

  ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘No job is worth your relationship.’

  ‘The new Mode editor,’ Suzanne said after a moment. ‘It’s Juliet James. Marv was meeting her this afternoon for the final sign-off. It’s being announced tomorrow morning.’

  ‘So the rumours are true.’

  ‘As is the chatter that she’s sleeping with Douglas Proctor, although you didn’t hear that from me.’ Suzanne plumped up the feathers on her cape.

  Amy was stunned. ‘Juliet and Douglas?’

  Suzanne looked amused. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve never had a little office dalliance. The heart generally doesn’t want to look very far.’

  She touched Amy on the shoulder as she left. Amy remained rooted to the spot for a moment, then she pulled the door open and followed Suzanne out. She found David waiting for her.

  ‘So?’

  ‘Janice was right. Juliet is the new editor of Mode. It’s being announced tomorrow.’

  He turned and pulled her into a hug. ‘She’s not worth it,’ he said into her hair. ‘The job isn’t worth it. Is that really what you want? Another five, ten years of working for snakes like Douglas Proctor, competing with people like Juliet who are so desperate to get what they want?’

  She couldn’t even look up at her husband but she knew he was right.

  ‘I’m just so angry,’ she whispered.

  Over his shoulder she could see Lysanne Flowers, Juliet’s deputy at Living Style, standing by the stage. She pulled herself away from David and went over, tapping the younger woman on the shoulder. Lysanne spun around, looking embarrassed when she saw her. Amy knew this was something she was going to have to get used to.

  ‘Have you seen Juliet anywhere?’ she asked.

  ‘She left a few minutes ago,’ said Lysanne.

  Amy felt dazed, on autopilot, stuck between a desire to confront her former friend head on and wanting to leave all this behind her. Parties, people, the judgement of others. For years she hadn’t minded being so exposed, but now she didn’t care if she was hot or not. She had allowed herself to be taken in, seduced by it all. What a fool she was.

  They were silent on the way home.

  Amy let her gaze trail out onto the dark streets of London. It had begun to rain, dappling the grey pavements like droplets of oil.

  David was half right. It didn’t matter any more. But she couldn’t get over the betrayal by such a close friend. She had known that Juliet could be brusque and insensitive, but this was something else.

  A voice in her head told her that she should just sleep on it. Tomorrow, she felt sure, it would hurt less. She would plan a family holiday for half-term. Sooner than that: a weekend in the Cotswolds would be good for the soul. She thought of Tilly running along the banks of a river or through a meadow. She just wanted to scoop her daughter up in her arms. That always made her feel better.

  David stopped the car outside the house. She thought about a nice bottle of claret in the rack in the kitchen, and wondered if there were any cookies left from a batch that Claudia had made the day before.

  She pushed the key into the lock and the door swung open. The first thing that struck her was the smell coming from the huge vase of lilies in the hall. The second was the unnatural quiet and calm inside the house.

  ‘We’re back,’ called David, slipping off his suit jacket and hanging it over the walnut curve of the banister.

  ‘Rosemary?’ Amy went into the living room, but it was empty. ‘Where is she?’ She glanced at her husband, but he didn’t look concerned.

  ‘They’ve probably fallen asleep upstairs watching Mulan.’ Tilly wasn’t allowed a TV in her room, but there was a big set in the master bedroom, where the three of them would sometimes watch the latest movie that had caught the little girl’s imagination.

  ‘I’ll go and check,’ Amy said.

  She took the stairs carefully, quietly, not wanting to wake her daughter. The main bathroom was ahead of her, but the door was open, suggesting that no one was inside. The guest bedroom next to it was also empty. She popped her head around the door of the master suite. The duvet was smooth, cushions and pillows still neatly stacked against the headboard.

  Tilly’s room was on the next floor up. Amy expected to hear Rosemary creeping downstairs as she approached, but there was still not a sound. She quickened her step. Tilly’s bedroom door was ajar, the soft glow from the night light seeping onto the landing.

  As she crept inside, her heart seemed to stop beating. Tilly’s bed was empty. The covers were crumpled, the soft imprint of her head still on the pillow, as if she had been there only recently.

  ‘Tilly?’ she said out loud.

  She felt her hand come up to her chest as she forced herself to breathe.

  ‘David! She’s not here!’ she called, backing out onto the landing. She could hear the panic in her own voice.

  David came running upstairs, taking two steps at a time. ‘They’re not up there?’

  Amy shook her head. An image flashed into her head: Rosemary’s grey woollen coat had been on the banister when they had left to go to dinner. But it was no longer there when David had put his own jacket in the same spot.

  ‘Where are they?’ said David, looking at his watch. ‘Surely she hasn’t taken her out?’

  Amy tried to hold onto that thought. That was what it must be. Rosemary was a soft touch when it came to her granddaughter. She imagined them watching a movie together, mischievous, laughing, snuggling up, Tilly demanding popcorn.

  ‘Call her,’ she said urgently.

  David pulled out his phone and frowned as he looked at the screen.

  ‘“Have a good night”,’ he muttered out loud.

  ‘What? What’s happened?’ asked Amy.

  ‘Mum sent me a message.’

  ‘How could you not have noticed?’ she said, suddenly feeling more anxious.

  ‘We were driving, at the party, I don’t know . . . She sent it at nine thirty.’

  ‘Call her,’ said Amy, louder, more desperate now.

  David was stabbing at the keyboard. He put the phone to his ear.

  ‘Where are you?’ A pause. ‘What do you mean, on your way back to Esher?’

  Amy’s heart was pulsing louder as she waited for him to tell her what was going on.

  ‘Why? Why did you do that?’

  He barely waited for Rosemary to answer before he ended the call and looked at Amy.

  ‘Mum’s gone home,’ he said, his face pale and rigid.

  ‘Has she got Tilly with her?’

  David shook his head. ‘Juliet came to the house. Said that we’d asked her to take over the babysitting so that Rosemary didn’t have a late night with such a long drive home.’

  ‘Juliet came to the house?’ Every nerve ending turned cold.

  David nodded. ‘Mum set off half an hour ago and left Juliet and Tilly here.’

  ‘Then where are they now?’ said Amy. She knew without a doubt that her daughter was in danger.

  Chapter 39

  Amy ran down the stairs, slipping twice in her haste and banging her coccyx. Somewhere she registered pain reverberating around her body, but she could think about nothing but fi
nding Tilly. She called her daughter’s name over and over, but the silence that rang back made her blood run cold.

  She rested her head against the wall for a moment, trying to recover her cool. This was no time for hysterics. She needed to think, plot her next move, try and climb into Juliet’s head.

  Why had she come here? Where had she gone? Where had she taken Tilly?

  David was on his phone, dialling Juliet’s number again and again, but she was not picking up.

  ‘Keep trying,’ pleaded Amy, knowing that Juliet was far more likely to speak to David than to her.

  ‘I can’t get through,’ said David with undisguised panic.

  ‘Bloody Rosemary. Why did she leave Tilly alone with her?’

  She didn’t need her husband to tell her the answer to that one. Juliet and Rosemary had known one another for over twenty years. On Tilly’s birthday, when Amy always threw a tea party for close friends and family, the two women would huddle in a corner for almost the entire time. Amy had occasionally thought darkly that perhaps Rosemary would have preferred her son to marry Juliet.

  Rosemary knew how close David and Amy were to their old Oxford friend, how they moved in the same circles and shared the same high-flying lifestyle; it wouldn’t have seemed so unusual to her for Juliet to turn up to the house and offer to relieve her of her babysitting duties. That was what friends did.

  ‘Try Peter,’ she said, snapping out of her thoughts and grabbing the car keys.

  ‘Where are you going?’ David said.

  ‘Hampstead.’

  ‘To their house?’

  Amy nodded. ‘You wait here in case they come back.’ But she didn’t believe for a minute that they would.

  Thank God she hadn’t had a drink at the Design Week party, thought Amy as she drove up Elgin Avenue. She had driven this way hundreds of times before, and could almost have done the journey blindfolded, which was just as well, since she could hardly see through the clouds of emotion in her eyes.

  She wiped the tears from her cheek with the back of her hand as she tried to concentrate on the road, cursing every red light and parked car that slowed her down. She had no idea why she was driving to Hampstead. She should just have called the police, even though they would have been unlikely to take her report seriously; so her best friend had taken over babysitting duties from her mother-in-law and they now weren’t where they were supposed to be – it was hardly the stuff of Crimewatch.

  But there had been something nagging at Amy ever since Janice had told her that Juliet was going to be the new editor of Mode; the pieces of the puzzle beginning to fit together. Josie working at Genesis, the car on the train tracks, even the small details of the fashion party that had not gone to plan: it all told her that Juliet would stop at nothing to get what she wanted.

  But where did Tilly fit into this? Juliet and Peter had never had children. ‘We can’t,’ was the only explanation that Juliet had ever given. Amy had always assumed that it hadn’t bothered them too much; they’d never tried to adopt or look into surrogacy. But perhaps Juliet was desperate for a child in the same way she had clearly been desperate for the Mode job.

  Tilly, oh Tilly. Where has she taken you?

  Amy was in Hampstead now, the Heath to her right like a gaping black hole in the city. As she turned into Juliet’s street, she looked around for her car and saw it parked just a few feet ahead under a street light. She glanced at the house. The living room shutters were closed, warm light shining through the slats.

  She pulled her phone out of her pocket and called David.

  ‘I think she might be home,’ she said breathlessly. ‘The car is here and the lights are on.’

  She ran up the stone steps, pushing her phone back in her pocket, and knocked hard on the door.

  ‘Juliet,’ she cried, hearing the desperation in her own voice.

  When there was no reply, she plunged her hand into her bag and produced the spare set of keys that Juliet had given her years ago – back in the days when they had trusted each other. Her fingers were trembling, but she managed to slot the metal into the lock and pushed the door open slowly. She could hear soft classical music coming from the living room. Someone was home.

  ‘Juliet?’ Her heart was hammering, but her voice was steady and controlled as she called out.

  The music was louder now: soaring violins and a melancholy cello that sounded half familiar: David, Max, Juliet – they would all know the piece, the composer, but now it felt like another way in which Juliet was shutting her out.

  She stood at the door of the living room and took a moment before she stepped inside. She could feel the warmth of the fire, crackling in the semi-dark, before she saw Juliet sitting in the club chair in the corner, her face ghostly pale like the moon.

  Amy gasped. Relief and fear combined to make her shiver.

  ‘You’re here.’

  She noticed that Juliet had something on her lap – a photo album, as far as she could see. Shredded paper surrounded her chair like confetti She tiptoed closer, as if approaching a wild animal; Juliet sat motionless, her red-rimmed eyes and puffy cheeks betraying the fact that she had been crying.

  ‘Where’s Tilly, Juliet?’ Amy asked evenly.

  It was an agonising moment before she replied.

  ‘She’s upstairs, asleep,’ she said, her voice cracking.

  Amy exhaled deeply. Thank God. She turned and ran up the stairs, praying that Juliet was telling the truth.

  The guest bedroom was at the end of the landing. She crept inside and could make out a child-sized hump under the duvet. She pulled back the cover and saw Tilly’s golden hair. Her eyes were closed and there was the faint noise of breath escaping from her chest – up and down, up and down.

  She took out her phone and called David.

  ‘I’m on my way,’ he said.

  Amy ended the call and fell to her knees by the bed, stroking Tilly’s forehead softly.

  ‘Tilly, wake up, sweetheart. We have to go.’

  The little girl’s lashes fluttered as her eyes slowly opened.

  ‘Mummy, I’m tired,’ she said in a sleepy voice.

  ‘I know, honey. I know.’

  ‘Why did I have to come to Auntie Juliet’s? Why did Grandma go home?’

  ‘We’ll talk about it tomorrow,’ she whispered. But Tilly had already fallen asleep again.

  Amy walked slowly back down the stairs, trying to steady herself with every step. Perhaps there was a rational explanation for it. Perhaps an emergency had meant that Juliet had to return home. Perhaps something had happened to Peter, she thought, suddenly feeling uncharitable. But why had she turned up at Amy and David’s house in the first place?

  When she walked into the living room, Juliet still hadn’t moved from her chair.

  ‘Are you going to tell me what happened tonight?’ she asked finally.

  ‘I suppose you want an explanation about the Mode job,’ said Juliet, turning her head so that she didn’t have to meet Amy’s eyes.

  ‘I want to know why you took Tilly from the house. We were worried sick.’

  Juliet closed the shredded photo album and put it on the floor beside her, then picked up a remote control from the arm of the chair and turned off the stereo.

  ‘I deserve the Mode job,’ she said when the room fell silent. ‘I was approached about it weeks ago, if you must know.’

  ‘Where? In Douglas’s bed?’ said Amy, unable to resist the barb, even though she knew that nothing good ever came from poking the hornets’ nest.

  Juliet shot her a caustic look. ‘Did you expect me to just roll over and let you have it?’

  ‘I never expected anything,’ Amy said evenly. ‘I wanted it, yes, and gave it my best shot. But that wasn’t enough. Not when I seemed to be sabotaged at every turn.’ She tried to contain herself, aware that Juliet ha
d an edge of unpredictability about her.

  ‘Think how it feels to be me for a moment,’ said Juliet through thin red lips. ‘I made you, Amy Shepherd. You’d never have had the balls to go to London if it hadn’t been for me getting you a start at Genesis, letting you stay in my flat. And yet you didn’t even ask me if I was interested in the Mode job.’

  ‘I did ask,’ replied Amy.

  Juliet scoffed. ‘Not in any serious way. You thought I didn’t have a chance, because how could I compete with the great Amy Shepherd.’ She paused, her eyes wide and bright for a moment. ‘Well guess what. I’m smarter than you think. Better than you know. You’re not the only one who can charm and seduce and manipulate to get what they want.’

  Amy thought about Juliet and Douglas, wondering how their affair had got started. She had never seen Juliet as a femme fatale, although it was impossible to ignore the fact that there was something formidable and dazzling about her. From the moment they had met, Amy had always wanted to be as witty and sophisticated as Juliet James. She had allowed herself to be in her shadow for their entire time in the Oxford house share, following her lead, letting herself be shaped and moulded. Karen was right that she had turned away from her old life because she had been seduced by a new one. And oh, how easy it had been to be seduced.

  ‘It was you, wasn’t it? The car on the train tracks. That wasn’t coincidence. The rumours about heroin. Josie was like putty in your hands and you used her to do your bidding.’

  ‘A simple girl,’ Juliet said with a brittle laugh. ‘Smarter than you, though. More streetwise. More ambitious. I saw that steel in her eyes the moment I met her. It didn’t surprise me when she made a play for David in Provence. The only surprise was that she wasn’t his type.’

  Amy let her words settle.

  ‘She was telling the truth,’ she whispered, fitting it all together. ‘The bra in our bed. The receipt for the necklace. You did all that to make me suspect David of an affair he never had.’

  Juliet narrowed her eyes. ‘Don’t blame me for the fact that you were neglecting your marriage. Everyone could see it was dying, but neither you nor David had the guts to put it out of its misery.’