Friends Like These

by Sarah Alderson

Genres: Crime Fiction; Suspense; Mystery

Synopsis

A gripping thriller about fake friendships and the truth that lies behind the Facebook page, for fans of The Girlfriend and Friend Request.

We all know someone like Becca.

She has the job everyone wants, a designer wardrobe, a hot-shot lawyer boyfriend, holidays to exotic locations. And she flaunts her perfect life all over social media.

It drove her colleague Lizzie mad, but she couldn't stop looking. They were never really friends - and yet Lizzie knew everything about her.

Or did she?

When chance and a terrible mistake pull Lizzie back into Becca's orbit years after they lost touch, she'll realise that you can't always believe what you see online...and that finding out the truth might be the worst thing you can do.

There's no such thing as a perfect life. Only a perfect lie.

Release date: December 13, 2018

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 320

Sample

Acknowledgements

Writing a novel is always an undertaking, not least when you have six weeks in which to do it. I’m grateful above all to my own besthusbandever John, my partner in crime. We’ve had quite the journey together travelling the world, following our dreams, (re)making our lives over and over, and his support of my chosen career is something I can’t adequately express thanks for. Being the partner of a writer isn’t fun. It requires a lot of morale boosting and wine pouring and tear wiping and a lot of listening patiently to stories that start ‘Imagine if . . .’ and end with something about serial killers or the zombie apocalypse. John does it all and more without complaint and has never wavered in his love, or belief in me or us and in extraordinary potential. I love you!

 

And Alula my darling love, a brilliant writer and creative spirit, there are no words to describe the absolute joy of being your mamma, even when you interrupt me when I’m in the middle of a sentence to ask if I’ve seen your leotard / book / hairbrush.

 

I also have to thank my dad and Carol, the best nonno and nonna, for enduring something I could never, something far harder than writing a book: a whole week at Disneyworld with Alula – all so I could work on this book edit. You guys are the best.

 

My amazing agent Amanda, who I’ve been with for almost ten years and who has helped me publish a dozen books – I am so grateful that you fell in love with Lila all those years ago and hope our partnership continues until I’m an old lady and it’s no longer appropriate for me to write ‘erotica’ (as my dad puts it), or YA, but I am still going strong in the psychological thriller territory.

 

Ruth at Hodder, whose editing really was extraordinary and who helped me hone the novel into exactly the shape I didn’t even know it needed to be – thank you. It’s a gift and you have it and I have loved working with you.

 

And finally, as I move through life (crossing continents) the thing I always wish I could take with me in my suitcase are the friends I’ve made along the way. I am far prouder of my friendships than of any book or movie I have written. So thank you, Nichola, Vic, Rachel, Sara, Lauren, Asa, Claire, Clarissa and Becky – the best girlfriends on the planet, who lift me up, inspire me and make me laugh every single day. And not to forget the boys in my life too: Alby, Laurie (I stole your last name for my detective!) and my brother Tom.

 

With friends like these . . . I am #blessed beyond measure. ;)

Becca

Friday, 8 December

Afternoon

 

One doctor told me to find a hobby. He told me that would help me feel better, as though depression were something that could be fixed by stamp collecting or making crocheted owls to sell on Etsy (something he said his wife did).

Lots of doctors have told me lots of things. None of it anything I wanted to hear.

My lawyer told me that I at least had money, offering it to me like the winning prize rather than the loser’s consolation that it actually was.

He handed me the cheque as I sat in a wheelchair with seventeen broken bones, some of which were still knitting back together, some of which had been surgically fused, some of which had been replaced entirely with metal plates, which James joked made me half human, half cyborg.

That was the state of my body, but don’t forget the face. My face. I was used to getting second glances, and now I was getting second, third and fourth glances, but not ones of appreciation. My face looked like a Halloween pumpkin that had been carved by an angry person wearing a blindfold. It was unfortunate, I was told. I’d smashed face first into the bronze statue in the lobby before the back of my skull shattered against the marble floor.

People try to make you feel better by telling you that it could be worse. I have been told I could be a Syrian refugee, or a vegetable, or dead. At least you got compensation, they say, as though you can put a figure on a life.

Though apparently you can. Two million is what a life is worth, according to a judge. And I would give it all back in a heartbeat to have that life back. I’m not talking about my own life. I’m talking about Lucette’s.

Damn. Now I’ve started thinking about her I won’t be able to stop. Lucette. I roll her name on my tongue, say it over and over like a prayer. Or a mantra. Lucette. My little Light. Named after my sister. Lucette. The only truly good thing that ever happened to me. That ever will happen to me. I think maybe I’m cursed; everything I love is taken from me.

I never did take up crocheting owls. Instead, in that same doctor’s surgery, waiting for a prescription for stronger painkillers, I picked up a magazine and read an article about these kids in China and Japan who spend hundreds of thousands of hours online playing games, often fantasy role-playing ones. They’re so addicted that when their parents take away their computers they commit suicide. It’s an epidemic, they said. I read about one boy who, after playing video games for twenty hours straight in a cyber-cafe, tried to stand up to go to the toilet and discovered he was paralysed from the waist down. As the paramedics carried him off in a stretcher, he begged his friends to keep playing his unfinished game.

A psychologist in the same article explained that spending too much time in an online fantasy world can ‘jeopardise jobs, relationships, interfere in the ability to make friends and sustain a healthy social life and play sports’. I remember laughing about that. I didn’t have a job or a relationship. I didn’t have friends or a social life and I couldn’t play sport, so what did I have to lose?

I wonder if that article was what first gave me the idea. I didn’t want to battle orcs and dragons, because, well, orcs and dragons. But the idea of creating another self did appeal; someone who could walk without a prison swagger and bend at the waist and didn’t have a scar that they had to spend forty-five minutes covering with concealer before they could leave the house. So, I guess I did find a hobby, and though I imagine my doctor would complain that it’s not a very healthy one, it had the desired effect of improving my mental wellbeing.

When I was paralysed by grief Becca Bridges was the friend who picked up the joystick and kept playing my unfinished game.

Her first post on Instagram took only a moment to compose.

 

Starting over is the beautiful moment where you choose yourself.

 

After I hit publish on that first post I remember thinking that it felt like spring had arrived finally after a relentlessly bitter winter.

It’s a big undertaking, creating a life online, almost as big an undertaking as creating a new life offline. There’s Instagram and Twitter and Facebook and then, of course, Pinterest and a website, as well as all the parenting forums and chatrooms I spend time on, commenting on posts about breastfeeding and weaning and toddler tantrums. I’m starting to become something of an expert on the topic of teething because I’ve been through it with Sadie.

My website was easiest to let go of. I was already contemplating a career change anyway. I borrowed the content from a Dutch design company. The photo on the bio page – the one of me leaning against a desk – I took from the website of an architecture firm in Finland.

I photoshopped my head onto it using an old photo of me taken before the accident. It took a while to get it right, to line up her neck with my head, like trying to piece together two parts of an executed woman. I liked the image. It felt like Becca Bridges, mother and professional business owner, would wear what she was wearing. But I also liked the way she was leaning, bent forward at the waist. In real life, because my spine is fused, I can’t bend beyond ten degrees.

I like posting photographs on Instagram the most. I find photographs on stock image libraries and use those: a child arranging colourful fridge magnets into the word ‘mummy’; a chubby toddler hand dunking a carrot in hummus; a mum and her baby with faces obscured by the fairy-tale book they’re reading. I get a thrill when I see the likes flooding in, the little red heart glowing.

I had been planning on announcing my next pregnancy soon. It was going to be another girl, due in the summer. I was going to call her Lucette, after my sister. I couldn’t do it with my first one, name her after the real Lucette, it was still too raw, but I was ready for her to be born.

I was so excited for all the likes and comments that I’d get. I had already started collecting images of my growing bump – tasteful black-and-whites cropped just so, that first image of her little foot cradled in Zac’s hand. I had started thinking about what romantic gestures and comments Zac would make as I blossomed before his eyes, carrying his child.

I’m the love of his life. He worships me.

I met Zac and Maddie when I first came to look at the house, before I bought it. They were getting into their car, going out somewhere. He had his hand on her lower back and was ushering her into the passenger seat. It reminded me of James, that gesture, and so it made me a little sad. They smiled and waved and asked me whether I was there to look at the house.

I needed a stick to walk back then, and I’d only had one operation on my face so the scar was still livid, even with make-up plastered over it. I also talked with a slight slur. I’d seen the way James looked at me – even though he tried to hide it, I knew I was hideous. I didn’t want to make conversation so I just nodded yes, and then hurried as fast as I could up to the door to meet the estate agent who was waiting for me.

I turned around, halfway up the drive, and watched the two of them getting in their car. I saw the way they exchanged a look, wondering what was wrong with me. And I saw, as she bent to get in the car, pressing her coat closer to her mid-section, that Maddie was pregnant.

‘I’ll take the house,’ I told the estate agent before she’d even had a chance to pull out the keys.

I was there when they brought the baby home. Watching from the window. I went over with a gift the next day, some Babygros that I’d originally bought for Lucette and hadn’t had the heart or will to throw away or donate to Oxfam. They were the one and only thing I’d bought for her, the day I found out I was pregnant. They were Ralph Lauren and covered in pale yellow polka dots.

Zac opened the door. He seemed surprised to see me standing there. We hadn’t really interacted much since I’d moved in a few months before. And now I was walking without a stick and my scar had mended well, as the doctors kept telling me, and I’d found a new make-up that was better at concealing the scar and had cut my hair so it covered more of my face. He didn’t recognise me at first and when he did I saw the way his eyes widened, maybe not with appreciation, but at least not with horror. It made me happy. But then Maddie appeared behind him with the baby in her arms and I made my excuses to leave. It hurt a lot more than I had thought it would.

Lucette would have been born around the same time as Sadie.

I think the alternative life I’ve curated for Zac as Becca’s husband is better than the real deal.

But now I’ve lost it. Another life gone. And all because of that bitch.

My heart is beating wildly, like a bird of prey is trapped in my chest, pecking at my ribs. Lizzie’s over there now. Talking to them. Telling them everything.

How did she find me? It’s partly my fault. The Sméagol comment gave it away. I thought she would be too stupid to get it. That was a mistake. I was stung by what she said about Sadie and the news about her and James going on a date also hurt, made my heart feel like someone had given it a savage pinch, but I should have let it slide. I should have ignored it.

I gaze around at the refuge I’ve created, that I barely ever leave. The thought of stepping foot outside is hard enough, let alone having to go looking for a new place to live. It takes me days to work up the energy and determination to visit the doctor. Walking Peanut is the best I can manage, and even that isn’t every day.

I hear Zac and Maddie’s front door open and I peek between the curtains. I watch her leaving, scurrying out like a termite that’s burrowed into the foundations, done its damage and is now running away before disaster strikes and the house collapses. I imagine a giant boot coming down out of the sky to crush her. It’s what she deserves.

Zac stands behind her on the doorstep, scowling. He looks up at my house and it’s almost as if I feel a physical shove backwards. I duck down out of sight and crane to hear what’s happening. Zac’s front door closes but I don’t hear a door opening or an engine start. I wait a beat and risk another peek out the window. Lizzie is standing beside her car, looking up at the house.

Lizzie Crowley. I would never have recognised her if I hadn’t seen her Facebook profile. She’s tanned and blonde and thin now, almost unrecognisable from the girl that I knew. Back then she had frizzy hair, a faint moustache and always looked like she’d got dressed in the dark. Her transformation is even greater than my online one. She transformed herself in real life. It’s astonishing. I don’t know how she did it.

She keeps staring up at the house and I am overwhelmed with hate; a rage so great I feel like I could tear her limb from limb.

Does she realise what she’s done?

She’s ruined everything.

Becca

It’s dark when Maddie comes knocking. There’s a furious pounding on the door as though she means to break it down with her fists. I stay glued to the wall by the window. I haven’t moved an inch since Lizzie left.

Maddie’s angry banging goes on for five minutes. I barely breathe during all that time. I’m a prisoner in my home. I’ve already made myself one but now I really am one.

‘I know you’re in there!’ she yells. ‘Bloody well show your face!’

I close my eyes and count to ten. What would happen if I did show my face? How could I explain it? And if I tried, would she even listen? Zac might, but not Maddie.

‘Becca?’

I inhale sharply at the sound of Zac’s voice. It’s as if I’ve conjured him. For a moment I imagine he’s come to rescue me, to take me in his arms and tell me it’s all OK. I imagine him bringing Sadie with him and giving Maddie her marching orders, telling her it’s over between them, that he’s finally come to his senses. I imagine him turning to me and telling me he loves me, that he wants to start a new life with me.

‘Becca, open up!’ he shouts and I smile. When I hear his voice shout my name, even though he’s angry, it makes me feel alive, wanted, necessary.

I can hear them on the doorstep arguing now with each other. It sounds like Zac is trying to convince her to leave it. Where’s Sadie? I wonder. Did they leave her at home? They shouldn’t have. That’s dangerous. She’s a baby. Anything could happen.

I will them to go away, but what then? They’ll only be back in the morning. I can’t avoid them forever. I will have to leave. Tonight even. But how? I stare around at all my things. How can I pack a car and leave in the dead of night never to return? The thought of going is almost as bad as the thought of saying goodbye to Becca Bridges.

I tell myself it’s time for an upgrade. It’s just like deleting an avatar in a game. I get to reinvent myself again. And this time I’ll do it better. But no matter how hard I try to sell that story, it doesn’t work. I don’t want to have to reinvent myself again.

If I were a spy, my spymasters would be telling me to ditch everything, leave the past behind and start over with a new identity in a new place. I’m exhausted at the thought. I put so much time into Becca Bridges and into this house to just give it all up. I think of all the chatrooms I’m in, talking about Sadie and teething and the virtue of cloth nappies over disposables. I’ll need to delete those accounts too. They’re tainted now.

I feel exposed. A burn victim whose dressings have been ripped off, taking with them a layer of new skin and leaving behind raw nerves and bloody sinew exposed to freezing air.

I understand now why all those kids in China were so addicted to online gaming, and why they wanted to kill themselves when their online lives (which were more real to them than their actual lives) were taken from them.

They had nothing left to live for.

Becca

So many lives have been stolen from me. Now I think about it I wonder how I have never noticed the pattern before. The first time it happened I was a child and my parents took us off to live in a hippy commune where everything was shared, not just the dishes, and where they worshipped an Indian guru who preached spiritual wealth over material wealth but who nonetheless lived in a marble palace in India and flew first class, living off the life savings of his followers.

One day my sister and I were immersed in playschool, the park, swimming lessons and ballet, and the next we were living in a cold and draughty ex-farmhouse, being forced to meditate and chant nonsense. We were told that we no longer owned anything, even our clothes and toys. I think that’s why as an adult I’ve never liked sharing. Or following rules. Maybe it’s also why I don’t trust people easily. I think most people are liars. I’d go as far as to say everyone is a liar, and most certainly everyone lies to themselves.

After my father donated his entire LED invention fortune to the guru, he got wise and we finally escaped back into the real world. We left with only the clothes on our back – clothes my mother had dyed marigold orange. You can imagine the stir we caused on the street. The four of us were like alien visitors. That third age of Becca was the happiest. We had nothing, no TV, no clothes that weren’t from the charity shop, but we were happy; the euphoria of our escape buoyed us for a time and my sister and I were thrilled we were back in school and didn’t have to spend our days cross-legged chanting any more. It didn’t last long because then the fire came. It killed my whole family and left me untouched, and I’ve never understood why.

The fourth new start came when I was sent to Scotland to live with my great aunt – a woman who smelled of cigarettes and cherry-flavoured cough syrup and whose entire house was covered in cat hair so all my clothes looked like they were made of mohair. She had no use for a child. I stuck it out as long as I could, before I quit school, stole some money out of her purse (OK, all her money out of her purse) and hopped on a bus to London.

I lied about my age and got a job working the door of a club in Kensington – the kind of place where royalty hobnob with boy bands. That was the start of my fifth existence. I blagged the job using charm and bald-faced lies. Lies came easy to me. I’d had to learn very early on how to deflect questions about my past, how to fake signatures on the bottom of absence notes, how to convince newsagents I really was of legal age, how to find people online who could make me a fake ID. The list was endless.

And then I met James. I was twenty by then, though I told him I was twenty-five. He was an entertainment lawyer. He’d chatted me up to try to get entry to the club.

James had a certain way of being in the world, like it owed him something, like everyone would and should just kneel before him. In some senses, I suppose, he was a bit like the guru and maybe I drank the Kool-Aid. I learned my lesson there in the end.

I wanted to impress him and more than that, I wanted to keep him. I didn’t believe that a man like James, whose father was an actual real life lord, would ever think of me in serious relationship terms unless I was something more than a door girl at a club, so when another regular visitor to the club told me he knew of a job at PKW, I jumped at the chance.

The clients were the same wealthy, privileged alpha types I was used to dealing with, but the pay was better and the hours more reasonable. And, for the first time in my life, I was doing a job that required using my brain, not just looking pretty and waving people past a velvet rope. I was surprised just how much I loved it. I was so used to being judged on what I looked like that I never realised how good it would feel to be judged on my abilities instead. I was good at the job too because I’ve always been good with people – at reading them and knowing what they want, usually before they even know themselves what that is. I guess that’s the result of having to fend for myself since I was a child.

When I got the job working for the CEO I knew there were whispers, rumours that I’d slept my way to the top, but that’s all they were, rumours.

I met Lizzie my first day on the job.

If only I had known back then that she’d be my downfall now. I would have tried harder to avoid her.

It’s silent outside now. Maddie and Zac have given up and gone away. I can hear Peanut whining at the kitchen door to be let out. Gathering my courage, I crawl to the top of the stairs and then tiptoe down them before darting across the hall and into the kitchen. I shut the door behind me and turn on the light. Peanut bounces up and down like he’s on a spring, yip-yapping incessantly. I pour food into his bowl and as he gobbles it up I contemplate my options one more time.

I came here to hide. I thought I’d be safe. That no one would ever find me. And now I have to leave and start over again. I have no choice. What if she tells James where I am?

Anger wells up inside me. It feels like there’s a tornado in my chest, spiralling around and around, gathering up all the pent-up rage that I’ve squashed inside for all of my life – anger towards my parents, the smiling guru, towards James, and doctors and towards life, and now towards Lizzie – and that if I open my mouth, it will erupt out of me like a stream of red hot lava, destroying everything in its path.

How dare she? She has no idea what she’s done. I can’t – I won’t – let her get away with this.

Becca

He pulled me into a dark office, as yet undecorated and unclaimed.

‘Whose desk is this?’ he asked, leaning against it.

‘I don’t know,’ I told him. The offices had. . .