The Perfect Friend: A gripping psychological thriller

by Barbara Copperthwaite

  They agreed eagerly. ‘Tomorrow morning,’ I repeated. ‘I reckon he’ll be by the bins round the back at about ten, so be there from then. Ten sharp, yeah?’

  That night, waiting for Carrie to confess had been nerve-racking. Everything swirled round my head. Carrie didn’t have cancer. Carrie was somehow involved in her friend Joanne’s death. Carrie was sending herself weird messages, and even pretended to kill her cat.

  My former friend didn’t crack, though. Instead she used the fact that Andy hadn’t shown up to her advantage. As she’d cast her net of lies over me and I’d let myself be pulled in, in a strange way I’d been impressed by her audacity. One liar to another, I had to hand it to her.

  Still, hearing her say she was leaving, realising my worst suspicions were right, had hurt deeply. I’d loved and trusted that girl and had thought she loved me. So I held her hand, crying, begging her not to leave me. I wanted her to know what I was willing to do for her and hoped it might make her change her mind.

  Carrie had proved she was going to forge ahead with her nasty plan, though. When I’d offered her the bucket list cash, she’d shown her true colours.

  ‘If there were more money then I’d say yes,’ she’d said. ‘As it is, though, I think the donations should be refunded to everybody after I’m gone, because it just isn’t enough to make it worth taking.

  ‘It’s not that I’m being ungrateful – I really, really am blown away by everyone’s generosity – but although twenty thousand is a lot, it’s not enough to start a whole new life away from Andy. I don’t know how much would be, but tons more, that’s for sure. I’d have to go abroad, probably, to be sure of escaping him for ever.’

  It was a clever manipulation of a target by a con artist. Turn down the small prize in order to line yourself up for the big pay-off, which will be offered because you’re clearly such an honest person. I knew that because I’d seen a con man first-hand, although admittedly one of the heart. My own heart sank at that moment, along with all hope for her, as I gave her what she’d wanted from the start. Her reaction to my revelation about compensation had been well acted, but I was looking out for the signs – and know them well because I’m a phoney, too.

  Clearly she’d targeted me, somehow finding out about my money. The glaringly obvious thing to do, therefore, was offer it. The tangled web of Carrie’s subterfuge unknotted, and I could see all the threads. How despicable. How clever.

  I’d played my part until the end. Listening to fake plans for our future together, letting myself be manoeuvred and engineered by an expert, her arguing just enough to make me feel it was all my idea. If I hadn’t known better I’d have fallen for it hook, line and sinker.

  I knew I’d have to be careful – after all, I’d no idea what exactly Carrie had done to Joanne. Even if Carrie told me the truth, I wouldn’t believe her. Not now. The skilful way she’d reeled me in to get me to hand over willingly everything I owned made me convinced I wasn’t the first person she’d done this to. The cleverest part was that she’d done nothing legally wrong here. Morally, yes; legally, no.

  Carrie’s research may have revealed Owen’s death and the large compensation payout, but there was something it wouldn’t have shown, because I’d never told anyone apart from Rosie. Owen had been my real-life version of the fictional Andy, a chimera who swapped from charming to the devil in the blink of an eye. I’d got used to hiding my real feelings living with him, so slipping the mask on again hadn’t been too hard in front of Carrie. I’d been working on my idea of how to get rid of Carrie once and for all since meeting Leon, hoping I wouldn’t need to action it, but knowing I might. I’m a survivor. Even when I’ve tried to destroy myself, I’ve failed.

  So, with all legal options for me to bring Carrie to justice stymied, it was obvious how this was going to end. The blood on my hands seems to stare back at me. I wipe them on my trousers, smearing the scarlet, while telling myself to stay strong. I did what had to be done: I’d no choice.

  Fifty-Two

  Then

  For the better part of a year I had been a pathological and compulsive liar. It was my job, my life, my saviour. I was brilliant at it.

  My small-time cons were fine to get by on, but they meant that I was constantly living from hand to mouth still. I needed something with a bigger pay-off in order to get me more security. It occurred to me one day that the very best place to meet vulnerable marks was at self-help groups. There, I could sit back and learn all about their backstories, discover vulnerabilities, find ways to endear myself, and all with minimum effort, because they wanted to tell me.

  Like water, I had found the path of least resistance.

  After moving to affluent Buxton, Derbyshire, I found a support group and put the plan into action. Mum was my inspiration – when I spoke, her struggle against cancer became mine.

  The shock of discovering that the red rash on her breast was a form of breast cancer was what hit first and foremost. ‘I’d dismissed it for months because it wasn’t a lump. Cancer’s always a lump, right? I’d no idea a rash could kill me, that this form of breast cancer invades skin cells and lymph nodes and is so aggressive that survival rates are worse than usual,’ I cried. Many of the women looked shocked, unaware themselves of inflammatory breast cancer. At least by pretending, I was spreading the word. Mum would like that.

  How hard she’d cried when her hair started coming out in chunks in a matter of hours after treatment. ‘Seeing the visible effects of cancer and knowing they were there on show to everybody hammered home how little control I had over my body,’ I told the group.

  The positivity she’d found against all odds through her diagnosis. ‘I’ve learned to appreciate every single day I have. This is a beautiful world, if we allow it to be,’ I parroted Mum’s words into the room, and they were gobbled up by these strangers.

  Even after Dad set fire to her wig one night in revenge for not making him dinner, when she’d been too weak after chemo, she still talked about the beauty of life. Pretending those words were my own made me feel closer to her. Then I was reliving her terminal diagnosis. People dabbed at their eyes as I spoke, moved by the truth of my words.

  ‘Do you have a bucket list? You should make one,’ said one of the women, who introduced herself as Anne Dempsey.

  ‘Umm, I’ve never heard of the term, Anne,’ I frowned.

  She smiled at my innocence, explained it to me. Instinctively I saw an opportunity to profit.

  ‘That sounds like a wonderful idea!’ I gasped. A glance around at other members took in their nodding heads. Time for a spot of reverse psychology, to show what a lovely person I was. ‘Instead of funding a bucket list, though, I’d love to raise money for Cancer Research. This is my chance to give something back for all the help I’ve been given during treatment. We need to wipe out cancer for good.’

  Everybody was so enthusiastic and supportive. They came up with ideas for fundraising and made donations themselves. Soon I got a tidy little pot together. The problem was that people, particularly Anne, got suspicious about the fact that everything was in my name. In the end I actually had to hand the money over to charity. Clearly I needed to come up with a cleverer plan.

  * * *

  I moved to a new town, Reading, in Berkshire, and tried again. This time I put much more effort into it. I learned to draw convincing-looking radiation dots on my neck with a permanent marker, to mimic the tattoo doctors often give patients so they know where to line up the radiation machine every day. I rolled up a bath towel, stretching it between my hands and rubbing it back and forth against my neck as fast as I could to give myself ‘radiation burns’.

  From the Internet I bought oxygen tubes, bandages and a chemotherapy body port, so that I could send my new friends photographs of myself ‘getting treatment’.

  I shaved my head with a razor, plucked my eyebrows bald and made myself throw up from chemotherapy nausea when somebody was around to hear me.

  I took about eight thousan
d pounds from that group, and thought my ship had come in. Unlike in Buxton, the Reading group believed me when I ‘moved away to die at my parents’ home’. I even put an ‘in memoriam’ notice in the local paper, giving details of my funeral, but ensuring that it was placed after the date of my ‘burial’ so that no one could attend. It was all organised from Thailand, where I blew the cash on a holiday of a lifetime.

  As time went on, I got better at the big con, ironing out the crinkles. It financed so many dreams come true for me. I swam with wild dolphins in the warm waters of Bali; did a parachute jump over the Blue Mountains in Australia, as eucalyptus oil perfumed the air and gave it the blue haze the area’s named after; partied all night long in Belgrade to the brilliantly kitsch turbo-folk music, where it got seriously boisterous. If I’d had a bucket list, it was growing shorter item by item.

  The bulimia that I developed came in handy for my scams. Pretending to have chemotherapy gave me the perfect cover for my eating disorder, and my eating disorder really helped sell my story of having cancer. It certainly wasn’t all good news, though. Aside from the adverse health impacts that an eating disorder has, it also costs a small fortune. I’d sometimes spend £150 on shopping in a week, so that I could binge on 11,000 calories in one day – then vomit it back up. Then there was the cost of laxatives, diet teas and pills. I had to have clothes of different sizes as a result of weight fluctuations – but that, along with altering the style and colour of my hair, helped me maintain an ever-changing appearance, decreasing the chances of anybody I’d previously conned recognising me.

  The love that was poured out to me was worth more in some ways than the cash. It was almost like being a celebrity. People would give me money, insisting that ‘you can’t take it with you. Enjoy it now, while you can’. They sent me messages of positivity.

  So young.

  * * *

  So brave.

  * * *

  So beautiful.

  * * *

  You’re an inspiration.

  The adoration was addictive. When had I ever been an inspiration in my entire life? All right, so it was built on lies and fraud, but if they knew the real me they’d never like me. This way, though, I felt loved for the first time in years. Maybe ever.

  People actually wanted to be with me.

  They also wanted to hold my hand while I had treatment. That was always tricky, and sometimes making excuses for why they couldn’t be with me was exhausting. I often let them come as far as the hospital and ask them to wait in the café, while I would sit in the stairwell for several hours, reading a book, before returning with tales of my latest cancer treatment.

  People generally felt so sorry for me, too, buying me food and other bits and bobs, as well as donating to the fund. I had a good life.

  The weakness in my fraud was that it was always touch-and-go whether or not people would believe I was moving back in with my parents to die, taking my bucket list money with me. Buxton had proved that. There was always the fear at the back of my mind that someone might get suspicious and start researching me.

  That was when I came up with the really clever part of my fraud. The double bluff. Even I was impressed with it, because it set me head and shoulders above other rip-off merchants. By ensuring people discovered I didn’t have cancer, I’d actually make even more money as a result.

  The principle employed was identical to my first swindle on the streets of Birmingham, only on a bigger scale: don’t approach the mark yourself, make them come to you. All the best con artists know that the most effective way to get someone to offer what you want is to pretend you don’t want it. The skill is in knowing which buttons to push to manipulate them into it.

  So I let my target get to know me, showed them what a decent, reliable, positive person I was, then started a breadcrumb trail for them to follow. It couldn’t be too obvious; they had to feel they’d cleverly put the clues together themselves. Once they uncovered the fact that I didn’t have cancer, I unleashed my full sob story.

  ‘Woe is me, I’m on the run from a violent ex who wants to kill me.’

  Being backed into a corner before telling them this story made them all the more convinced it was the truth. The first time I did it was in Salisbury. There was a church group I joined. I was nervous, but had found a whale of a target, a woman with no kids, dying herself, and conveniently finding God at the same time. She’d spent all her money on flash holidays and designer clothes, and now she wanted to buy her way into heaven. Handing over £50,000 in cash to me did the trick. It never occurred to her that I might lie twice. It never occurred to anyone.

  The pure genius of the con was that people voluntarily handed over the bucket list money, knowing I would use it for my personal gain, and they were happy not to report me to the police. In fact, they were left with a warm, fuzzy feeling for helping someone in such dire need.

  I almost felt like thanking Andy and Dad for giving me such great material to work with. Almost, but not quite.

  Fifty-Three

  Then

  When I spotted Alex at my new support group, there was something about her which drew me. There was a twitchy vulnerability about her, like a bird poised to take flight. As she spoke to the semicircle of members, spilling her story for us, I sat forward.

  ‘I’m fighting to leave behind adult-onset anorexia, a condition that’s controlled my life for four years,’ she explained. ‘It was triggered by empty nest syndrome – and because of it, I’ve told so many lies over the years that I’ve alienated my twins, Edward and Elise. All I want is to be a mother to them. It’s – it’s like I’m one of those Russian dolls and I’ve been left empty. Missing them is like a physical pain inside me.’

  I liked her. Something about her desperate need for approval reminded me of my own mum. Her expression when she talked about her ex-husband, Owen, was like a step back in time. Mum’s big-eyed gaze, mouth slack but fingers twisting, seemed to hover tantalisingly in front of me as Alex spoke.

  There was something she was holding back, though. My instinct screamed it.

  ‘You haven’t been on any dates with anyone since Owen?’ I asked, when the floor was opened up for us all to speak. She shook her head. ‘Well, don’t worry, you’ll find someone. You need to move on.’ The way my mum had never managed to.

  As others from the group spoke, my eye kept being drawn to her, thinking of her backstory. Then it clicked. She was the one Simon had dumped me for. She fitted the description, the story my pathetic ex had spilled eagerly when he announced so melodramatically that he’d fallen for another woman. I ground my boot heel into the perfectly polished wooden floor, desperate for revenge, as I glared at her instead of listening to the other people’s stories.

  Simon was weak and pathetic and clearly led by his privates, so I’d never fallen for him – but he’d been convenient. He’d provided a free place to crash when I’d arrived in Tynemouth in March, while I’d sorted out a place to live for myself in this new town. He’d only been a hook-up, and he’d been quite generous, paying for food and nights out. After a month together, I was ready to move out and told him I’d been having treatment for cancer, to get rid of him. He went so pale! I’d thought my news would make him run for the hills, but instead he turned out to be one of those decent blokes who felt like he couldn’t possibly dump me in my hour of need. It had been quite fun watching him struggle for days, when he clearly wanted out as much as I did – enjoying his turmoil was the reason why I hadn’t been firmer kicking him into touch.

  The fun had ended when, days later, he split with me by announcing he’d fallen in love with someone else. Love? Stupid man. We’d only been together a month, and for a fortnight of that he’d been screwing some other woman.

  Just because I hadn’t wanted him didn’t mean I wasn’t put out that someone else did. He’d been mine, and someone had taken him from me.

  Now, there she was in front of me at a support group. What I couldn’t figure out was why she hadn’t
mentioned her new boyfriend. It must mean they weren’t together any more.

  Suddenly I realised the hall had gone silent. Everyone was looking at me.

  ‘Oh, it’s my turn?’ I checked. Thrown, I hesitated, unsure of whether to go for my usual story. Instinct kicked in, and I let it take the lead. It rarely steered me wrong.

  I spun my story of cancer – and added in heartbreak at the hands of a love rat. It felt right to rub salt into Alex’s wounds. She watched my every move, hung on my every word and almost cried. Guilt was clearly eating at her, making her susceptible to a tale of woe.

  ‘We weren’t together long, but I really thought he was the one, you know? I could see us getting married,’ I sniffled. ‘You know the old couples you see shuffling along side by side still holding hands? I was convinced that would be us. I’d just finished my treatment when suddenly it all got too much for him.

  ‘I can’t blame him. He probably only stayed with me out of pity, and as soon as he knew that I was well he did a runner. I suppose I should just be grateful he stuck with me during the chemo. When I lost my hair I felt so ugly, and he – he… ’ I hiccuped through tears, ‘he said I still looked beautiful to him.’

  The last word was a heartbreaking wail. Alex almost wet herself with horror. At the end of the meeting she made a beeline for me.

  ‘You’ve been through so much. Come over to mine sometime, I’ll cook us something nice,’ she offered. ‘I miss having someone to look after. I could get some of the others to come, make a bit of a do of it.’

  So eager to be my friend and get others to befriend me.

  I agreed instantly. A free meal was the very least she owed me after stealing my bloke. I wanted to take every penny she had there and then – but I knew better than to choose a target purely on emotional grounds. Instead, I spent the rest of the night and next day researching the other members of the group, using the information gained at the meeting to help me. There were a couple of interesting possibilities, but no one who seemed to be jumping up and down shouting ‘pick me, pick me!’.