Her Closest Friend (ARC)

  Her Closest Friend

  An absolutely gripping and heart-pounding psychological thriller

  Clare Boyd

  Books by Clare Boyd

  Little Liar

  Three Secrets

  Her Closest Friend

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Little Liar

  Clare’s Email Sign-Up

  Books by Clare Boyd

  A Letter from Clare

  Three Secrets

  Acknowledgements

  ‘A drunk mind speaks a sober heart.’

  Chapter One

  As we walked through the snow up the final hill to Sophie and Adam’s house for their son’s eighth birthday party, I took a moment to look around me, wanting to be present in the here and now. I tried to capture the scene playing out before me, to press pause, to set it into slow motion, to see every detail before it became the past. A reel of true beauty: the sun sparking from the snow-piped branches, the joy radiating from my daughters’ smiles, my husband’s laughter lines as he ducked and darted from the girls’ snowball attacks. Their shared glee resonated deep within me, as though I were laughing and playing too.

  Our dog skittered about at my feet, his shiny black coat speckled with snow. He tugged on the lead. I didn’t want to move on. If I zoomed out from that moment, millions of miles into the atmosphere, I could look down at me and I would be too small to be seen, insignificant in the grander scheme of things. The worries of tomorrow, or even a second into the future seemed far, far away. I thought, If I died today, I would have had the fullest, luckiest life I could ever have wished for.

  * * *

  Now, Sophie and I stood side by side at the kitchen counter, buttering white bread, chopping cheese slices and drinking Prosecco too quickly. As we chatted, I tried to savour this good moment, just as I had done in the woods earlier, but I couldn’t. I was agonising over whether or not I should relay to Sophie what my husband had told me about her husband.

  ‘When are the others getting here?’ I asked, already choked by incense smoke and overheated by the fire glowing in the wood burner.

  ‘They all cancelled.’

  I hid my surprise. ‘Very sensible of them. The roads are like ice rinks,’ I said, rapping my fingers on the countertop, tapping out a rhythm, relieved that we had made the effort to get here. Not for Dylan’s sake, so much, but for Sophie’s. If my information about Adam was true, Sophie would need me more than ever.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. All we need is you lot,’ she said, holding up her glass. ‘To us! Forever friends!’

  ‘Forever friends!’ I said.

  She grinned at me as she took another sip, adding, ‘This is yum. What’s the grape again?’

  ‘Incrocio Manzoni,’ I answered, raising my eyebrow at her, waiting for her to contradict me.

  ‘No, it’s not!’

  ‘You tell me then.’

  ‘Is it… Glera?’

  ‘Spot on. Top of the class.’

  She looked down to the floor, laughing. ‘Never.’

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ I said, chinking my glass again with hers. ‘Happy Birthday to little Dylan.’

  ‘I can’t believe I’ve kept him alive for eight whole years,’ she sighed, half serious.

  ‘It is quite miraculous.’

  We chuckled, but I had noted the ‘I’ve kept him alive’ rather than ‘we’, wondering if this was relevant. The information that was gnawing at me had the potential to pull Sophie’s life down on her head. I wanted to hold the happy times up for her, for one afternoon longer, to allow her to enjoy her son’s birthday party, to hold on to this present moment a little longer.

  My plate of sandwiches was growing bigger. The neat, crust-free squares were arranged in a chessboard pattern of brown and white, sensible and boring. Sophie’s plate was a hodgepodge of over-buttered doorsteps. I smiled to myself, amused as I watched my friend’s long fingers, decorated with a series of delicate gold rings, tearing holes in the bread. She was distracted in her task, as though her eyes were turned inwards to other mysterious thoughts. I decided to leave a few crusts on and mess up my plate a little to make the contrast less stark. We then cling-filmed them and put them in the fridge, where I noticed a supermarket caterpillar cake, more suitable for a four-year-old than an eight-year-old.

  ‘Candles! I knew I’d forgotten something! Shit,’ she cried, slamming the fridge shut.

  She began opening various kitchen cupboards in their tiny, jumbled kitchen, swearing under her breath as packets of tea or pasta fell on her head. ‘We must have some old ones somewhere.’

  ‘Do you want me to pop out to get some?’

  Sophie laughed at me. ‘You walked, remember?’

  ‘Oh. Yes. Ice rink roads.’

  The kitchen cupboards were rammed. One object removed would cause an avalanche of mess. ‘There’s bound to be one left over from some other birthday,’ I said, daring to pull out a saucepan to see underneath.

  A clash of pots cascaded onto the floor. ‘Whoops,’ I said.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ she cried, yanking open the top half of the stable door on to the garden. A freezing blast of air sent a shiver through me.

  ‘Adam!’ she called out, waving her long arms, flapping her billowing sleeves. ‘Adam!’

  Outside, Adam and Charlie sat at either end of an iced bench, wrapped in scarves, cradling cups of coffee. They looked formal, yet engaged with one another, like the famous bronze statue of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill on New Bond Street. If I hadn’t seen the plumes of condensed air as they talked, I would have thought they were frozen solid. Past them, a trail of welly boot and paw prints wove down the bank into the trees, from where I could hear playful yelps and screams.

  ‘Adam, do you know where there might be some cake candles?’

  Charlie immediately stood up, frowning. ‘Do you need some help, you two?’ His concern sent a rush of love up through me. I shook my head, shrugging, not sure whether two more bodies in the hot house would help.

  ‘Candles, Adam?’ Sophie repeated, pulling her white-blonde, waist-length straggles of hair around and down over one shoulder.

  ‘Why would I know?’ Adam snapped at her.

  ‘Er, because you live in this house, too?’

  Adam’s mouth straightened.

  Sophie slammed the door and screwed her face and fists up. ‘He’s driving me mad.’

  Behind her, through the window, I saw Adam bent over his knees with his head in his hands, while Charlie reached over to give his shoulder a squeeze. A brown patch of snow melted at the mouth of the flask, fallen from the bench.

  ‘How is it between you two?’ I asked, checking the drawers Sophie had already looked in.

  Sophie plonked herself down on the stool at the small kitchen island, knocking back the last of her drink, pouring us two more. She pushed away the Batman pape
r plates and napkins and played with a balloon at her toe, drawing it back and forth across the ball of her foot. I braced myself for the pop, but she then released it and kicked it into the air lightly. ‘Everything I do is wrong.’

  ‘Like what kind of thing?’

  ‘Like Dylan’s school shoes aren’t polished, or the car smells of old crisps, or the carrots are too rubbery or the house is too messy. It’s all my fault, apparently. I mean, why couldn’t he have thought about the bloody candles? He’s his son too! Why is it always my responsibility?’

  I looked around us, at their home, which Sophie affectionately called The Shack, wondering where else I could look for some candles. Pot plants and cacti crowded the high sill of the picture window, which stretched across the length of their tiny one-bedroom self-build. A pile of logs tumbled loosely from the wall next to the wood burner. Up each ladder-step to the galley room – where Adam had his office, where Dylan slept on a futon crowded by files – were stacks of books and toys, barely leaving enough space for a foot on each wooden plank. Torn wrapping paper took over the two-seater sofa that sat in the middle of the room, nose up to the oversized television. The door to the built-in wardrobe behind the sofa was wide open, revealing a clash of uses. Towels on the top shelf, muddy boots flopping out of the next, waxed jackets and 1970s maxi-dresses vying for space along the rail.

  I opened a small cabinet. ‘Could they be in here?’

  As though she hadn’t heard my question, Sophie stared out of the window across the driveway to her grandfather’s run-down cottage. The clearing of trees that encircled both the cottage and this little cabin was like a secret clearing, a hideaway protected by dense woodland that sloped down to the main road. But sometimes I sensed the trees were inching closer every day, encroaching on Sophie and her family, stealing back their space.

  ‘When do you think you’ll be moving into your grandad’s?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m still not sure I want to.’

  ‘I thought your grandad…’

  She cut me dead. ‘Naomi, Grandad’s savings won’t stretch to a new boiler, and Dylan’s skin will get much worse again if we live in a damp…’

  ‘Found some!’ I cried, holding an opened packet of red candles high in the air like a trophy.

  ‘Eight of them?’

  ‘He won’t notice that he’s only seven and a half, will he?’ I smiled, waving one snapped candle at her.

  ‘Don’t think so. Adam might, though,’ she tutted.

  In the early years of their marriage, Sophie could do no wrong in Adam’s eyes. He had loved her chaotic, hippy ways and her bijou shack in the forest which had promised a simple life of low overheads and cosy nights in front of the fire. Her flirtations with him in her cotton print dresses and wellies, soil dusted over one cheek, had persuaded him to reject his London upbringing in favour of chopping wood, picking mushrooms and taking photographs of her in the dappled light. I had been envious of their love affair. Charlie and I had been rather stiff and conventional by comparison.

  ‘Maybe you and Adam need a night out somewhere,’ I suggested, handing her the candles.

  She brought out the cake and began ripping open the packaging.

  ‘We don’t have the money for babysitting, let alone a restaurant.’

  ‘I’ll babysit, and I’ve got some vouchers for that pizza place in town. You can have them, if you like,’ I offered desperately, knowing how critical it might be for their relationship.

  ‘I don’t want to put you out,’ she said, and stabbed the blunt end of each candle into the cake, cracking the chocolate icing.

  ‘Honestly, I’d love to. I know you’d do the same for me.’

  She lifted her pale, cornflower-blue eyes up to mine and twirled a piece of her almost-white hair. ‘Yes, that’s true, I would.’

  ‘Go on, then. Let’s find a date,’ I said, reaching for my phone.

  She stared at me, scrutinising me for sincerity. ‘That’s really sweet of you, but we’re fine. We’re just going through a bad patch.’

  I bit my lip, wishing I could shake her into action, but deciding I did not have the power to save their marriage. For the same reason, it did not seem appropriate to pass on a second-hand conversation relayed through Charlie, whose ability to glean detail and nuance about important emotional situations was not good at the best of times. ‘Let me know if you change your mind.’

  ‘I will.’ She dropped the paper plates out, leaving the plastic wrapping in the middle of the table next to the cake box and the supermarket bags. I supposed the presentation shouldn’t matter, but somehow I minded that she wasn’t putting more effort into Dylan’s small party. Her lack of energy did not seem to come from a low mood; it struck me as belligerent and deliberate. While her back was turned, I began organising the tiny kitchen island by placing the flowers I had brought into the centre, folding the napkins into triangles and throwing some streamers across the plates.

  ‘I’ll call the others in,’ I said, suddenly wanting to go home. The sad red half-candle that drew the eye, in spite of its seven intact friends, seemed to warn of trouble ahead.

  A few minutes later, Izzy and Diana came traipsing in, rosy-cheeked and exhilarated, shaking off snow from their all-in-one waterproofs, mimicking Harley, who then trotted wet paws into the kitchen. Their eyes were wide for chocolate cake and they launched into Sophie for a cuddle.

  ‘Hello, girls. Here, have some of these, before Dylan sees,’ she whispered, stuffing a handful of chocolate buttons into their fists.

  ‘Thanks!’ they cried gleefully, giving her an extra cuddle.

  Adam and Charlie stomped their boots on the mat, and Dylan, the birthday boy, slipped through his father’s legs. His lips were wet, hanging open, and his round blue eyes were doleful, framed by white-blond lashes and black smears of exhaustion, looking hangdog at his mother as he lay down at her feet, snow and mud melting everywhere.

  ‘Oh, hello, Mischief, look at that handsome face,’ Sophie said, letting go of my two. ‘Did you have fun with the girls? You didn’t get cold, did you?’

  ‘I got snow down my neck,’ he replied in a baby voice, blinking his big eyes at Izzy and Diana.

  Sophie immediately lifted him up under his armpits and onto one hip, and stuck her hand inside his jumper. He looked too big to be carried.

  ‘You’re soaked through!’ she cried. ‘Adam, you were supposed to be watching them!’

  ‘He’s fine,’ Adam sighed, hanging both his and Charlie’s coats up in the packed closet.

  ‘Come on, Dylan, let’s go and get you changed, come on, love,’ Sophie said, as though he were an invalid. She put him down, adding, ‘I’m sure you didn’t mean it, girls, but Dylan’s skin has been very bad lately.’

  Dylan’s face was triumphant as he passed the girls, who had both snuggled into my middle, and he skipped out of the room at Sophie’s heels.

  ‘I’ll just get more wood,’ Adam said, taking his phone from the counter.

  I glanced at the huge pile by the wood burner.

  ‘Girls, get the sandwiches out of the fridge, will you, darlings?’ I said, pulling Charlie away, out of their earshot.

  ‘What did Adam tell you outside?’ I whispered urgently.

  ‘He wants to tell her this afternoon!’

  ‘Are you serious? On Dylan’s birthday? I hope you told him…’

  Before I had a chance to finish my sentence, Sophie returned, followed by Dylan, who sloped in, reclothed in a onesie. The children sat down to eat the sandwiches and Sophie lit the seven and a half candles. But Adam remained outside in the cold on his phone.

  ‘Happy Birthday to you! Happy Birthday to you!’ Sophie chimed, presenting the cake without waiting for Adam.

  ‘There are only seven and a half candles!’ Dylan wailed, waving a knife in his mother’s face, stabbing a finger into the side of the cake. The singing stopped.

  ‘Daddy forgot to get them, sweetie. But look, there are still eight flames.’

&nbs
p; His white eyelashes were covered in chocolate like mascara as he cried, ‘Where is Daddy?’

  Sophie stormed outside. We could hear shouting. I could see puffs of air shooting back and forth between them, but the words weren’t discernible. I had an urge to gather my family up and take them away from here. At the same time, I felt mean for thinking it.

  ‘I’ll cut you a slice, Dylan,’ I said, prizing the weapon out of Dylan’s sticky hands, handing out doorsteps of cake to keep them occupied for as long as possible.

  When their plates were licked clean, Sophie and Adam came back inside.

  They both looked sombre and wan, but they were holding hands, knuckles whitened. I exhaled, relieved for a moment that they had managed to talk without an explosion.

  Adam pulled his hand from Sophie’s. ‘Let’s play musical statues.’

  Charlie joined Adam by the iPod station and the children crowded round with requests.

  The music blasted out. While the two dads and three children danced, Sophie and I began clearing away the paper plates.

  ‘Everything okay?’ I whispered at the sink.

  ‘No.’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  Sophie clutched the washing-up brush and glared at me. ‘Don’t pretend you didn’t know.’

  I looked down at the cake-smeared Batman, with his black mask, and wished I could hide my blush behind it. ‘I didn’t know how to tell you.’

  ‘When did you find out?’

  ‘Adam rang Charlie last night.’