Her Closest Friend (ARC)

by Clare Boyd

  ‘Alistair.’

  ‘Alistair?’ My mind wasn’t engaging.

  Charlie finished serving up. ‘Tamara’s dad,’ he replied, and his eyes flicked down to my glass and away again. That disapproving little glance was enough to remind me of how sober he was. It convinced me to back away from a confession. If he had a problem with me drinking a couple of glasses of wine on a weekday – whoopdie-do! – what the hell was he going to think if I opened up to him completely?

  ‘Oh. That Alistair,’ I laughed. ‘How did you avoid him this time?’

  ‘I ran to the last carriage and hid behind my Evening Standard.’

  ‘Lucky escape,’ I said.

  I looked at my husband’s grey hair and muddy green eyes, whose mood was hard to pin down behind the reflection of his glasses, and I shivered at the thought of telling him.

  Dutifully, I asked him about his day.

  ‘There were more redundancies today,’ he said.

  ‘You’re not worried, are you?’

  ‘No. Not at all,’ he replied, vigorously shaking his head. ‘Last in, first out.’

  Reassured, my mind drifted back; far, far back again.

  ‘Earth to Naomi.’ Charlie’s hand was waving in front of my face, pinging one of my curls. ‘Are you okay?’

  I looked down at my plate, as though this might have the answers. It was empty. Had I eaten it?

  ‘Sorry. Yes. Just a bit tired. I might go to bed early and read for a bit.’

  And I walked out of the kitchen, leaving Charlie to clear up, which was unusual, possibly unheard of. But I could not have lifted one fork or one plate, let alone coordinated the clearing of a whole table.

  I climbed into bed, took my watch off, placed it on my bedside table, reached for my book, stared at the pages, closed my eyes and felt my whole body seize up. Another memory came to me. It strobed through my mind in nasty bursts. It was not the night of the accident, it was before that, two months before.

  I opened my eyes to stop the atrocity from playing out in my mind, disorientated, surprised I was still in bed with my book in my hands.

  A violent rage thundered through me and I ran to the bathroom to be sick, just as I had been sick outside the pub that night.

  Chapter Nineteen

  ‘What are you going to do now you know?’ Sophie asked Naomi down the phone line as she continued her run through the woods.

  ‘I went to the police station.’

  A lag of recognition, as she paused to catch her breath, as she thought about what this meant for them.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Yesterday.’

  Sophie’s heart thundered. She started jogging slowly.

  ‘Did you go in?’

  ‘No. I’m going to tell Charlie first. Get a lawyer.’

  She sounded bold and sure of herself.

  ‘Do you know what will happen to us?’

  ‘Yes.’ There was a crack in her voice.

  ‘You know, then, that it’s an indictable offence. Death by dangerous driving. Fourteen years’ imprisonment.’

  ‘But it was an accident. They won’t send us to prison.’

  Sophie laughed at Naomi’s naivety. ‘They might not rely on our memory alone after all this time. They’d certainly need evidence to convict.’

  ‘What evidence would they use? It’s been twenty years.’

  Sophie stopped in her tracks to explain.

  ‘What if they decide to use our taped interviews for evidence? What if they already have more evidence from the crime scene than we think? What if someone saw the car? What if they found remnants of the car paint on his body? What if someone in the house-to-house investigations told an officer something they didn’t follow up on at the time? What if they are waiting for one more piece to the puzzle, which you would provide if you walked in to report the crime?’

  ‘Still…’ she said, trailing off.

  ‘Why do it now, Naomi? What’s the point?’

  ‘You really have to ask? Can you even imagine what his mother is going through?’

  ‘But you’re a mother, too, now. What about the girls?’

  There was another break in the flow of their conversation. Then Sophie heard Naomi’s soft crying. Sophie had to bite the inside of her cheek to stop the wry burst of laughter. It hadn’t taken much to break Naomi’s tough talk, to weaken her moral stance, but as she listened to her cry, Sophie felt a spasm of guilt: the emotion she had buried so successfully. Naomi’s anguish was digging out her own. Her sympathy for Jason Parker’s mother brought Sophie’s to the surface. Before now, the event had been clear-cut, a cardboard cutout experience. The rest of it, the bulk of it, the panoramic emotional view of it had been pushed down so deep into her psyche that she had not been able to dredge out one iota of her empathetic self. The mess of it had been streamlined for survival. If she kept the secret, they would escape prison. If she kept the secret, they would have a life. The moral maze had seemed a luxury. Until now.

  ‘I hate myself,’ Naomi hissed down the phone.

  ‘You know you wouldn’t survive prison, Naomi,’ Sophie said, poised to tell her the full story if necessary – the need-to-know moment – braced for impact, in full survival mode, which had served her well enough so far. She would not let Naomi bring her down.

  Naomi sobbed. ‘I’m not brave enough.’

  And then Sophie knew they were safe. The tingles of angst dispersed. She was relieved that Naomi was not a brave person. Naomi was a charmed person, who had been blown through life, like a dandelion seed, by others’ love for her: relying on her mother to steer her through childhood, then Sophie at university and then Charlie in adulthood. It was too late to become the self-sacrificing heroine. People didn’t change. Neither would Naomi. She would continue to float on the breath of others: two breaths, two o’clock; five breaths, five o’clock; twelve breaths, midnight, until the stamen was bald, until time had run out, until death took her under its own aegis.

  Sophie unravelled the greying bandage on her hand to see that the skin across her palm had healed.

  Sophie held two linen swatches over the showroom sofa.

  ‘What do you think? The grey or the coral?’ Sophie called over to Dylan.

  Dylan didn’t answer, and continued grabbing handfuls of swatches from the cubbyholes.

  ‘I think that might be enough now, sweetie,’ Sophie said, rolling her eyes at the sales assistant, who offered a fake smile in return.

  Dylan emptied three cubbyholes completely and returned to the sofa with the squares of velvets and linens bunched into his fist. Kneeling at the sofa, he began to lay them out over the seat cushions like a mosaic.

  ‘Beautiful, darling,’ Sophie said, returning to her own two linens. ‘I think the coral,’ she said to herself. ‘I’ve decided,’ she said to the sales assistant. ‘Can I order it now, please?’

  It took half an hour to work out the added extras, insurance and delivery options before she handed over her credit card to pay for it. She could afford the monthly repayments now that they had found new tenants for the cottage. A Mr and Mrs Etherington would be moving in on 1 May, in a month’s time.

  She walked out of the shopping centre, high on the money she had spent and thrilled by the prospect of this coral linen sofa, which was going to be delivered to Deda’s front room in two weeks’ time. She had not wasted a moment before setting out on the transformation of the cottage, spending all week painting the front room a fashionable light grey.

  Adam had warned her that there was no point choosing good paint and furniture for a rental property, but Sophie had ignored him. Having pinned various photographs on a mood board on her phone, she had a dream of how it would look when she was finished. Creating it from scratch had given her a new lease of life.

  In the future, when she had the money, when she had found herself a job, she planned to live in the cottage with Dylan, as she had once promised Adam they would. Naomi would approve of this plan. She and Naomi could repair the
ir friendship in this new setting. They would sit curled up next to each other on the coral sofa, sipping weak tea with lemon out of delicate china – just as Deda had liked it – putting the world to rights. Dylan and the girls would play outside with the chickens or on a tree-swing or with a new puppy. Rare-breed chickens and puppies and tree-swings! Fresh paint and new floors and forever friends! That was all she wanted.

  When she unwrapped the fresh, new life she was preparing, she wondered if Adam would be able to resist coming back home. Once upon a time, they had shared the same outlook and aspirations for their future: quite simple, low-key, happy. Somehow, along the way, Sophie had lost sight of this, by staying in the past, holing up in the mess of the shack like a chick burrowing into the twigs of her nest, waiting to be fed, beak open; waiting for Adam or Naomi or Deda to help her, unable to process her resentment towards Naomi, unable to accept that Deda wasn’t coming back, dying of starvation before helping herself to what she needed.

  Everything was different now. Her friendship with Naomi had been solidified. The secret was shared. The vodka bottles were in the bin. The shot glasses were packed away. The house was being renovated, with a new boiler and damp-proofing and fresh paint. The hovering fear of losing Naomi was gone, as though an aircraft laden with bombs had zoomed off, leaving her free to twirl under a crisp blue sky.

  * * *

  Sophie was sweeping the dust from the newly sanded parquet floor in Deda’s sitting room. She wanted it to look perfect for Naomi.

  The window was open to let the paint fumes out. Sharp, cold swirls of wind blew the windows, bang, back and forth. Bang. Bang. Bang. They did not have latches. As Sophie closed them, she glanced out and saw that Dylan was dragging the axe that was bigger and heavier than he was towards the small pile of logs in the middle of the front garden. ‘Put that thing down, Dylan!’ Sophie yelled out of the window.

  ‘I can do it, you know! I’m the man of the house now.’

  Sophie’s insides melted with pride and sadness.

  ‘As the man of the house, I need you to come and help me clean up in here.’

  ‘Don’t want to,’ Dylan whined, lifting the axe, letting it wobble precariously in his skinny, scabbed arms, raising it higher and higher above his head.

  The broom clattered to the floor as Sophie ran outside.

  Just at the point when she was wrestling the axe out of Dylan’s hands, Naomi’s car swung round the corner. Behind the reflection of the shiny car windows, Sophie could see Izzy and Diana’s mouths open, agog. Sophie yanked the tool forcefully from Dylan, feeling immediately judged by the Wilson girls.

  Sophie expected them to slide off their cream leather seats, perfectly turned out, with neat jeans and brushed hair, as per usual. She expected to see Naomi’s beautiful corkscrew curls tamed and shined, her lips glossed, her plumped-up cheeks rosy.

  And here Sophie was wrestling with Dylan over an axe.

  The girls’ car doors opened first. A crisp packet fell out and swirled in the wind at Izzy’s feet, which were covered only by flip-flops on this cold April afternoon. She had a smear of milk across her top lip and her hair consisted of two clumps in pigtails. Diana was no less dishevelled. It looked like she might be in her pyjamas under her down jacket. Sophie was alarmed by this change in them.

  Worse still was the state of Naomi. Her curls were greased into a tight, low, centre-parted ponytail. Her eyes were as puffy as marshmallows and her skin was mottled pink and white underneath smears of badly applied foundation.

  Her greeting, hello, was loud and high and enthusiastic in Sophie’s ear as she kissed her on one cheek, but there was no smile attached.

  When she bent back into the car to bring a supermarket bag-for-life out of the front seat, she grunted as though the effort was too much.

  Having felt rankled by the prospect of their smugness a moment before, having spent her life resenting it, she now wished they were back to their normal selves.

  ‘I brought you something to celebrate with,’ Naomi said, handing her the bag. The light in her eyes had returned for a second, and Sophie wondered if she had read too much into their outward appearances.

  Sophie peered into the bag.

  ‘Two rather posh sparkling wines. I was sent them yesterday with a complimentary box of chocs,’ Naomi said, rubbing her hands together. And in a whisper, ‘Thought we could sample some this afternoon!’

  Sophie’s optimism began to dissipate. ‘I’m not really drinking at the moment, remember,’ Sophie said, reminding Naomi of the sobriety that Naomi herself had insisted upon.

  ‘A little glass of good-quality bubbly won’t hurt. We’re celebrating your new rental business, aren’t we?’

  ‘I can eat the chocolates, thank you,’ Sophie replied stiffly. ‘Come in and see. Come on girls, come and see what I’ve done.’

  She chucked open the door to the sitting room. ‘Et voilà!’

  ‘Wow! Lovely!’ Izzy and Diana cried.

  ‘Look at this!’ Dylan said, surfing the shiny floorboards in his socks.

  Sophie was endeared by his showing off, but she was the only one to laugh.

  Naomi brushed one hand across the paint. ‘We have the same colour in our sitting room.’

  ‘I saw it on Pinterest,’ Sophie replied defensively. Naomi wasn’t the only person in the world to have light grey walls, she thought.

  ‘It looks so stylish in here,’ Naomi said, wandering over to the inglenook fireplace. Her fingers drummed the stone mantel.

  ‘Mummy! Look!’ Izzy cried. ‘We have this table!’

  ‘Do you?’ Sophie said. Sophie had not consciously chosen the same chrome coffee table.

  ‘Ours is slightly smaller,’ Naomi said.

  ‘Don’t you think it’s transformed in here?’

  ‘Very nice,’ Naomi said, and then patted the five-bar heater as though it were a dog. ‘What are you going to put here? Wood burner or open fireplace?’

  ‘We’re keeping it, actually. Even with the fixed central heating, it gets cold in this room for some reason, and we wanted to keep the costs down.’

  ‘I saw one of those pretty iron fireguards in that bric-a-brac shop on the high street. I’ll get it for you as a house-warming present.’

  Sophie flushed. She hadn’t thought about its poor aesthetic. She had grown so used to the fireplace over the decades. ‘The tenants didn’t seem to mind.’

  ‘They want the place furnished, I see,’ she said, sitting down on the new coral sofa, which had been delivered yesterday.

  ‘They’re an older couple. Just retired. They’ve sold their house in London, and most of their furniture, downsizing or something, so they can afford to travel. They said they’ll be off on cruises a lot, which suits me.’

  ‘Well done for turning it around,’ Naomi said, winking.

  ‘Can we go outside?’ Izzy asked.

  ‘Of course,’ Sophie replied. ‘Off you go. Dylan can show you his new camp in the woods.’

  The three children charged out, while Sophie and Naomi sauntered to the door.

  ‘I’ve got a lot more to do, but I’m excited.’

  Now the children were gone, it was like a cord had been pulled on Naomi’s expression. All the muscles that had held up her features slackened. She rubbed at her upper arms.

  ‘It’s freezing in here,’ she snapped.

  ‘The fire’s on in the shack,’ Sophie said.

  ‘Let’s go and have a drink.’

  The gravel under their feet was loud as they walked in silence across to the shack, which was hot and stuffy inside.

  Before Naomi took her coat off, she put one bottle of sparkling wine in the fridge and popped the cork on the other.

  Sophie noticed how her hands shook slightly as she tipped each flute to pour.

  ‘Cheers to you,’ Naomi said in a flat tone, handing Sophie her glass, barely waiting for her to clink their rims before she took a large gulp.

  Sophie brought the drink up to her mouth, wres
tling with an inner voice. The bubbles tickled her nose. She pretended to take a sip. The alcohol wet her lips and she licked it off, swooning at the taste.

  ‘I’ll open these chocolates,’ Sophie suggested, craving distraction, placing her glass down to unwrap the cellophane.

  Naomi’s eyes were on her.

  Then, in a shallow, breathy voice that Sophie didn’t recognise or like, Naomi hissed, ‘How do you do this sober?’

  Sophie continued to open the chocolates. The waft of sweetness filled her head.

  ‘I haven’t, mostly,’ she said, and she stared baldly at Naomi, waiting for her to recognise her memory lapse.

  Naomi expelled an unhappy, dimple-free laugh. ‘No. I suppose not.’

  ‘But I’m telling you, from experience, it isn’t going to make it any easier,’ Sophie said.

  ‘I haven’t been overdoing it, you know,’ she frowned, redoing her greasy ponytail. ‘Just a few here and there to take the edge off.’

  ‘Has Charlie said anything?’

  ‘Why would he? I’ve just told you I haven’t been overdoing it.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘It’s a Saturday afternoon and we’re celebrating.’

  ‘Yes. Sorry.’

  Naomi poured herself another drink.

  ‘Do you want me to drive you home?’ Sophie asked.

  ‘This is only my second. I’m allowed two.’

  But as the afternoon wore on into evening, as they talked about anything and everything other than the night that bloomed in a nasty cloud between them, Naomi had finished the bottle and opened the next. After the children had finished their pizzas, Sophie again suggested she drive them home.

  ‘Might be a good idea!’ Naomi chuckled, tickling Diana in the ribs and kissing her until she wriggled away.

  She moved on to smother Izzy, who said, ‘Yuck! You smell of wine!’

  They piled into the car.

  ‘It’s dark, Mummy, and we’re not in bed yet!’ Diana cried.

  ‘It’s shockingly late, you girls. Straight into bed when you get home!’

  ‘It’s only eight thirty. Our bedtime is ten o’clock,’ Izzy said.