Her Best Friend

by Sarah Wray

Genres: Psychological Thrillers

Synopsis

You couldn’t have done anything to save her... Or could you? Overwhelmed by grief after losing her mother, Sylvie Armstrong tries to block out the memories in her childhood home – but then someone leaves a gift on her doorstep: a gold necklace with a heart-shaped locket. The locket belonged to Sylvie’s best friend, Victoria Preston – and she was wearing it the night she died. Now it’s back in Sylvie’s life... and it soon becomes clear that somebody knows what really happened to Victoria. Sylvie has to know the truth. But is she in terrible danger? A gripping, page-turning psychological thriller with a final twist that will leave you open-mouthed. Fans of Sophie Hannah, The Girl on the Train and Gone Girl will be hooked. Readers are raving about Her Best Friend : ‘ Had my jaw dropping by at least 6 foot…such an addictive read…I ended the book with my jaw on the floor and the words, 'what the f.....' spilling out of my mouth before I could even stop them.’ The Writing Garnet ‘Love, love, love this book!... But I guarantee you won't figure it out and the truth took my breath away! Shockingly good!’ (5 stars) Goodreads reviewer ‘ Gripping and utterly unputdownable…I couldn't stop thinking about it… a truly compelling and engrossing read…You will not be able to put this one down.’ Novel Deelights ‘The ending was something I just wasn’t expecting…at all! If you love a tense thriller then this is definitely the one for you!’ Stardust Book Reviews ‘I thoroughly enjoyed the thrill of the ride, the slow building pace creeping up to the rollercoaster high… Wow what a psychological thriller!’ Sweet Little Book Blog ‘A wonderful and thrilling page-turner with an unexpected ending…Exhilarating and engaging plot. I could not put the book down.’ Alina’s Reading Corner ‘ Tense, dark and twisty. It will grab hold of you until the very last page…and what an ending it is!’ Rae Reads ‘ I was racing through the pages to find out the ending and also didn’t want it to end… highly recommended!’ Donna’s Book Blog ‘Prepare to have your jaw hit the floor… That ending…seriously?!! ’ Orchard Book Club ‘A great psychological thriller which will keep you hooked from start to finish.’ Jen Med’s Book Reviews ‘It kept me so involved that I could barely put it down…The twist was amazing.’ (5 stars) Goodreads reviewer ‘ Grabbed me from the very first [page] and didn't let go…The story is very cleverly written.’ (5 stars) Goodreads reviewer ‘This book definitely kept me hooked right up until the end…intricately plotted, taut and suspenseful. ’ The Roaring Bookworm ‘A gripping, intriguing thriller…The truth about Victoria’s death was totally unexpected… Highly recommended.’ (5 stars) Nicki’s Life of Crime ‘This is my first book by this author and I thoroughly enjoyed it! Well written and suspenseful.’ (5 stars) Goodreads reviewer ‘ Absolutely stunning! I literally couldn't leave this book alone and read it in just 2 sittings.’ (5 stars) Goodreads reviewer ‘Full of suspense and twists...I totally didn't see this ending coming…A really good read.’ Bonnies Book Talk ‘A wonderful read that had me guessing the whole way through.’ Sean’s Book Reviews ‘ Twists, turns and a lake full of red herrings as it expertly teases out the answers for the reader…’ Chapter In My Life ‘I was gripped, never once predicting how it would end…Clever and original.’ Goodreads reviewer ‘Fantastic read. Chilling - full of twists and turns, could not put down.’ Consumer reviewer ‘A brilliant thriller with a shocking end.’ Consumer reviewer

Release date: November 28, 2017

Publisher: Bookouture

Print pages: 308

Sample

Summer, 1995

The sun had held out for as long as it could. Thank goodness for that at least, everyone kept saying over and over; a mantra, just to fill the space. But it was getting dark, panic was setting in. She’d been missing for a whole day.

The adults all sat around the kitchen table – Peter and Michael had been out searching for hours along the canal, in the parks. They had come in, everyone’s eyes on them straight away. But they shook their heads.

Michael looked grey and he steadied himself, gripping a chair. ‘She’ll come in any minute,’ he said before Judith could ask anything or presume the worst. ‘You’ll tell her off and in a few days, it will be all forgotten. You’ll see. You know what they’re like.’

Judith put her head back in her hands.

Sylvie wasn’t allowed to stay in the room with them any longer. She had been interrogated all evening – her brain felt scrubbed and numb from it, bleached out. She watched everyone’s eyes locking wordlessly as she spoke, but she couldn’t decode the messages they were sending each other. She went and sat in the living room, pretending to watch TV, the sound down as low as it would go, ears straining for the murmurs coming from the kitchen, for something she could latch on to.

The brightly coloured balloons from the party the day before still bobbed, ghost-like, around the house, on the gatepost at the end of the garden. Shiny, metallic streamers hung on the doorways and across the ceiling, fluttering of their own accord every now and then. Some had already fallen down and trailed along the carpet. The chairs and furniture were pushed back, the party food drying out, turning rotten on the trestle table Sylvie’s dad had once used for wallpaper pasting.

Sylvie shoved a stale yellow party ring into her mouth, swallowing without tasting. Grabbing at the tray, she picked up one of each colour and pushed them in at the same time. Bad luck would ensue if she missed one out, a little voice in her head said.

The buffet was starting to smell – gloopy egg mayonnaise, greasy cocktail sausages, the air thickening with it. No one knew what to do with all the food: inappropriate to spend time clearing it away, grotesque to leave it there. Sylvie glanced back over her shoulder then crammed one thing from each plate into her mouth, breathing heavily through her nose, trying not to be sick. Her jaw was stretched, hardly any space left in her mouth free to chew, and it made her gag. Cold, fatty sausage churned in with gone-off cream. She retched, her eyes straining, then swallowed hard. A big ball of food stuck in her chest, pressing down painfully.

Did they really think she could just switch off and watch Beverly Hills, 90210 like nothing had happened? Did they think she was stupid enough to believe them just because they said it would all be fine? She sat back on the sofa, hugging a cushion to her distended stomach. All she could hear from the kitchen was mumbles, the words and voices all blurring and running together.

A uniformed police officer waited in the hall. Her radio crackled and the dreaded words squawked out of it, loud and clear.

‘Found her. Up at the lake,’ the robotic voice said, followed by more interference.

‘Got you. Yes, sir,’ she heard the officer reply.

Sylvie froze on the sofa. No, please, no. She held her breath.

She couldn’t make out what the voice said next. The police officer muttered ‘Shit’ under her breath, missing the ‘i’ sound out altogether.

Sylvie went to the hall, saw the police officer’s back, heard the handle of the door to the kitchen turn. A long silence, then Judith’s scream. Sylvie couldn’t take it in. She couldn’t fathom that Victoria had been here yesterday, right in front of her, here in this house, and now she was gone. She had to see for herself, to believe it was really true, not just a bad dream. She slipped quietly out of the front door.

Alternating between walking and running as much as her breathlessness and the recurring stitch in her side would allow, Sylvie felt like she was floating somehow; sounds were distant. All that food was jiggling around in her stomach. Vomit threatened in the back of her throat. She drifted over the road and a car horn blared but it was remote, removed.

It was still warm, even though it was late, and people sat on doorsteps and in deckchairs in the yards in front of their houses, talking and drinking. Windows were open, people watching TV, folding ironing. Preparing for their holidays maybe. The houses went past as if they were moving and Sylvie was standing still watching them.

Beyond the housing estates, past the school, the road emptied out, becoming just fields, no one around. Two police cars whizzed by, sirens blaring and echoing. Sylvie turned inwards, closed her eyes and clung to the dry-stone wall until they passed.

When she finally reached the lake, she was sweating, wheezy; her chest tight and painful, cheeks burning. But she couldn’t stop. Instead of following the road all the way up to the lake, which would have been faster, Sylvie climbed over a gate and approached via the fields. The lake was floodlit – like a stadium. More lights than usual. The police must have brought their own. That wasn’t a good sign, Sylvie thought.

Police cars were parked at the road entrance and tape sealed it off. She could see officers mingling around in the distance, like ants. The dry grass came up above Sylvie’s knees, scratching her legs, creating criss-crossed red lines that turned to swollen welts. Something had drawn blood. She looked ahead and kept going, as if sleepwalking.

Closer to the lake, the sounds solidified, the blur cleared. Light breeze through the grass, chatter from police radios, birds, the odd shout between the officers. As she got nearer, Sylvie could see they were pulling something from the lake.

Someone, of course.

She imagined herself turning back, running through the grass the way she came, jumping into bed, pulling the covers over her head. But she found she was still powering ahead as they lifted the body out and onto the path at the side of the lake. The police at the lake entrance had become aware of her approaching; they put their hands up to their brows, squinting into the distance to work out who she was. They waved their arms but Sylvie ignored them, woozy, just shapes in the corner of her field of vision.

A female officer ran towards her, holding her hat to prevent it falling off. The policewoman’s arms shot out in front of her and she shouted towards the officers at the lakeside. They screwed up their faces, didn’t know what she was saying. The officer pointed towards Sylvie, but her running had slowed down. She was too out of breath, she was too late. Sylvie weaved in between two officers by the lakeside, ducking under their arms.

‘Oi, you can’t be here! Oi!’

Everything stopped. Victoria was there, out on the ground; a strange, grey, waxy quality to her skin. Her red hoody and clothes sodden and sticking to her, rushes in her hair and across her face. Some kind of foam or goo around her mouth and nose. She looked like a crash-test dummy, a shop mannequin.

‘Aren’t you going to try and revive her?’ Sylvie heard herself say, the words swirling in the air around them. ‘You need to do mouth-to-mouth. I’ve seen it on TV.’

‘Can you get her out of here, someone, please? Jesus Christ! Is this amateur hour or what?’

Someone grabbed her elbow. The next thing Sylvie knew she was sitting in the back of a police car with a blanket around her. Her teeth wouldn’t stop chattering. A disembodied arm passed her some water and her hand shook as she tried to drink it.

‘You’re Victoria’s friend Sylvie, aren’t you?’ The female officer smiled at her, speaking softly, craning her head round from the front seat of the car.

Sylvie was confused. ‘How do you know my name?’ She tried the car door but it was locked and they were already moving, the lake and Victoria getting further and further away.

‘Officer saw you bolt from your house. Just had her on the radio. We better get you home, sweetheart. You look like you could do with your mum.’

Sylvie put her forehead against the cool glass all the way, watching the grey of the road whizz by.

‘She’ll have been worried something had happened to you too,’ the woman said, a strong Irish accent. ‘You shouldn’t have your mum worrying as well with all this going on.’

The male police officer in the driver’s seat didn’t turn at all so Sylvie couldn’t see his face.

The female officer eyed him sideways and spoke quietly as if Sylvie couldn’t hear, as if she wasn’t really there. ‘Whole town’s going to be on high alert after this, that’s for sure,’ she said.

Sylvie stared down at her legs, scratched and smeared with bright red blood.

Sylvie

I clear a spot in the condensation on the window of the café to watch the storm. People gather under the striped canopies and in the doorways of the shops, waiting. Yet more squeeze in, shrieking and scowling at the sudden ferocity of the downpour. The sky is heavy and dark, the rain is falling in sheets.

The café door keeps swinging open and the bell rings, people looking for somewhere to sit to wait it out, shaking umbrellas all over the floor. Each time, the waitress, a teenage girl in a pink cropped mohair sweater, runs over with a mop and metal bucket, wipes most of the grey water up and repositions the yellow caution sign.

Looking through the porthole I’ve created, it feels like I have my own private view of a film. They have barely changed the shopping centre in the twenty years I have been away. A few different shops, but some of the original ones are still here too. The main shopping area is in a square over two levels, a balcony running right round it. The stonework is even more blackened than I remember it. There’s something about the drabness of the shops that makes my stomach feel heavy. Davidson’s Family Butchers is directly opposite.

‘Family Butchers’ always made me think of massacres when I was younger: cannibalism. Dad would shake his head at me. ‘I don’t know what goes on in there, where you get these ideas from,’ he’d say, tapping on the side of my head.

But that image has been replaced by another one now. Seeing the dead meat sitting in the window, some bearing no resemblance to the animal it’s from, some gruesomely retaining the shape. A pig’s head gaudy on the green felt at the front of the window. I am back in the maternity ward in the stillness after the noise and violence of the birth. The nurse said it was a ‘bit of a bloodbath down there, but you’ll live’, and she sewed me up, chattering about Strictly Come Dancing while I stared at the white strip lighting. She might just as well have been doing a cross stitch in front of the TV.

Mother and baby doing well, the word went out.

Outside, a man sticks his hand out under the canopy and looks up at the sky but rushes back in again. It’s showing no signs of stopping yet. I force in a mouthful of the iced custard slice. I’m not hungry really, it’s too sweet, but comforting too. Me and Mum used to come to this café every Saturday with Grandma. I’d have a prawn mayonnaise sandwich with an ice-cream float, followed by a custard slice. Mum and Grandma would have black coffee, and Mum would smoke and watch me, occasionally stealing the smallest nibble of my food.

‘Excuse me. This seat taken?’

I look up and do a double-take at the woman looming over me, her hand still on my shoulder. Her face is blooming into a new expression too: recognition. She narrows her eyes and zooms in.

‘Sylvie? Is that you? I never saw you come in.’

Judith looks as neat as ever. Slim, well-fitting clothes. Her bouncy, rollered hair is wilting in the weather. Faint mascara smudges under her eyes.

‘Judith! God, I didn’t… Please, sit down.’

‘Oh, well I need to get home really, but this weather!’

She scrapes a chair out, setting my teeth on edge, and sits down.

‘And who is this?’ She touches the handle of the pram next to me. ‘They’ve a fine pair of little lungs on ’em, eh? I remember what that’s like.’ She pushes her lips together and looks out across the shopping centre.

A crack of wind lashes rain against the window so hard it sounds like gravel, setting the whole café chattering. It looks like night-time outside now.

‘This will be punishment for the two sunny days we got back in the summer, eh?’ Judith says. ‘Mind you, even then we got those terrible floods a few days later. It’s hardly worth it, is it?’

‘I heard that on the news.’

‘I didn’t know you were back, Sylvie. You should have come to see me or let me know.’ She smooths down her coat and tries to rearrange her hair.

‘I just got back very recently actually. I need to sort things out at my mum’s, you know. I was going to get in touch.’

Judith looks down at the shopping bags of baby things by my feet. I couldn’t carry everything with me on the train.

‘I’m sorry I didn’t go to the funeral, love. I don’t do very well with them, I’m afraid. After, well… you know. I sent her my wishes privately.’

Judith taps the side of her head. ‘Will you come round to the house?’ she says. ‘I know Peter would love to see you and it would be so lovely to catch up and hear all your news. You’ve obviously plenty to tell us all about.’

She’s looking at the baby the whole time, as if she’s talking to her, not me. People often do.

‘OK, I’ll come round. You still in the same place or…?’

‘Oh yes, same place. That’s us now, that house. We’ll not move from there. Do come round… I’ve been trying to contact you, actually. There’s something I need to talk to you about.’

‘Oh, really? What’s that?’

‘Can you come tomorrow?’ Judith says.

A cry distracts us both. Judith reaches out her hand. ‘What’s her name, pet? She’s absolutely gorgeous.’

I take a swig from what’s left of the sugary remnants of my coffee. ‘It’s Victoria. Her name is Victoria.’

Judith tenses and her eyes start to glitter.

‘I’m sorry, Judith… I…’

‘Don’t be, dear. That’s lovely. It’s absolutely lovely. It means a lot to me. Really. She’s just gorgeous.’

I want to ask Judith again what she wanted to talk to me about, but she’s already standing up to leave the café. ‘Anyway, the weather looks to be lifting now.’ She pulls the belt of her coat tightly around her waist and leaves, clattering into a couple of chairs along the way, accidentally dragging them a short way across the floor.

Outside, it’s still pouring with rain.

Sylvie

The house is finally starting to be inhabitable again. I might be able to think about putting it on the market soon, making a fresh start. I could use the money to go somewhere. Anywhere. All those places I’ve always said I wanted to see. With a baby, though?

Today’s dreaded job is to finally clear the fridge out – the warm stench that comes out makes hot vomit squirt up my throat again. Is it even switched on? I throw the kitchen windows open and breathe in the cool air.

On one of the shelves, a rotting tomato is slowly morphing into browny-green sludge; the milk has turned solid and yellow, the bottle bloating out, threatening to explode. A tin of anchovies is peeled open, a thick layer of furry mould gathered on the top.

Anchovies were one of my cravings when I was pregnant with Victoria, although I’m vegetarian and I don’t recall ever eating them before. They give me the creeps, little grey hairy things, but I couldn’t get enough of them. Anchovies, macaroni cheese and this sour cherry pop drink, and sometimes together. I throw the tin of anchovies into the open bin liner and it releases a fresh cloud of the putrid smell.

I throw the rubbish bag in the bin outside and close the kitchen door. I’ve spent almost every minute the last week cleaning this place – when I’m not feeding or changing Victoria, or sleeping. My stomach churns when I remember what it was like when I got here. It’s not just remembering, though. It’s more of a living memory, and it’s not the only one.

I experience it again in nauseating detail when I least want to – smell it and taste it even: the dead flies cluttered up against the windowsill, the shellac-like brown sticky coating on everything. Even now, every so often in certain areas of the house I suddenly catch that overpowering, sickly-sweet smell that makes me gag, and then it’s gone again.

It’s not even so much the disgusting mess itself that turns my stomach. You can wipe that off. More the shame that someone lived like this – my own mother at that. Lived here alone for the last twenty years and died here alone, in her own filth.

I go into the living room, making sure to close the kitchen door, and lift Victoria out of the Moses basket, instinctively pulling her close to me, breathing in the clean, cool smell of her, that gorgeous scent that babies have.

‘We’ll think of something, won’t we, you and me?’ I hug her small, soft body close to me and rock her gently from side to side, kissing the top of her head. I concentrate on how warm she feels against me.

I hadn’t thought about home, about Victoria and that summer, in a while, when they rang me about Mum, to tell me what had happened, that she’d died. I’d been wrapped up in my own world, my own Victoria.

They said mine was the only name and number in Mum’s phone. But I had been thinking about her that week, more than usual. I’d been thinking about how she was, what her life was like now. I’d dreamed about her, vividly. I even thought I’d seen her in the street a couple of times.

I shudder, thinking of Mum found at the bottom of these stairs, in only her nighty, alone. Been there for days. Dying, dead.

Everything downstairs is now much cleaner than it was, but it still looks grubby – dirt ground in; it will never come completely off. Three skips’ worth of stuff has already been taken away; the rest stored, crammed into the rooms upstairs. But I still keep finding it… old mobile phones, flip-flops, second-hand board games with bits missing, VHS tapes, bulk-buy toilet rolls to join the family packs already stacked up – things Mum must have ordered on the Internet, all this stuff she could never use, to add to all the other junk.

My phone buzzes and I take it out of my pocket. It’s Nathan. I look at the screen and take a deep breath. Ignore. It starts up again, insistent. I throw it onto the sofa and it bounces. Eventually, he gives up. I picture our flat in Glasgow. Neat, tidy, white walls, clean lines. Nathan likes it that way; it’s ‘a designer thing’, he says. He couldn’t cope with all this clutter. He has a one-in, one-out rule – for books, CDs, kitchen stuff. His desk immaculate in the spare room.

Not long after we met, Nathan came back early and surprised me when he’d been working away. I’d have tidied up if I’d known he was coming. He tried to laugh it off, but his disgust at the state of my flat was obvious; my natural state, when I didn’t expect anybody to be looking.

Back in the kitchen, I throw the window open wider to let the fresh air in, and my thoughts about Glasgow and Nathan out. Looking out over the garden, something is off. There are colours that shouldn’t be there amongst the long grass and overgrown weeds – solid yellows and bright blues. Something’s moving. Someone. My insides flutter. The boy with the camera again?

I look closer and bang on the window. A small head pops up, then another, followed by one more. Children, but they make me think of little rabbits.

I tap on the glass again. ‘Hey, what are you doing?’

One of them screams and they all run to the gate, barging each other out of the way to be the first out. I didn’t mean to scare them away. I wonder then if they used to mock Mum, call her a crazy old lady. And despite how things ended up between us, the idea of her being unhappy still hurts. I pull the window to again and lock it.

In the living room, the corner of something peeps out of one of the open drawers and catches my eye. An old photo album. I pull it out and hold it closed for a long time before forcing myself to open it. It feels like looking at someone else’s life, not my own. The photos are neatly glued in; the pages well-thumbed, their corners turned up.

A picture of me in a paddling pool as a baby, food smeared proudly around my face. In my Brownie uniform, scowling. Another in front of the house on roller skates in a hand-knitted cardigan, gaudy colours. It was the day we moved into this house. Dad is in the background, caught unawares, carrying a box up the stairs.

There’s one at a theme park. Victoria and me in stupid matching baseball caps. We went with the Prestons, all six of us, just before Dad got ill. We are all smiling in the photo – me, Mum, Dad. Victoria and her parents too.

Mum and Victoria’s dad, Peter, wouldn’t go on the ride. I sat with Victoria, and Dad sat with Judith and we all dangled our legs and wiggled our feet as we waited in the cars for the ride to get going. Dad didn’t want to go on either, at first, but I begged him and eventually his face cracked into a smile and he threw up his hands.

As the ride slowly lifted, the hydraulics spitting and hissing, Mum and Peter were on the ground getting smaller and smaller until I couldn’t make them out in the crowd any more. The ride spun and twisted high in the air. Everything was a blur. I kept trying to catch a glimpse of Mum. It made me panic not to be able to see where she was, for some reason. Instead I could only catch distorted flashes of people’s faces as their car whizzed in front of ours. Dad’s teeth, Judith’s cheeks stretched and pushed back, her hair whipping her face… Now, to think of Judith doing something like that is out of place and jarring – she was always so controlled and prim. And I start to question whether the memory is right, if it was in fact Judith on the ground and Mum on the ride. All the time, I could hear Victoria screaming in my ear.

One of the pictures sets a memory playing of a holiday I’d almost forgotten about. We’re all sitting outside a caravan – Mum, Judith and Peter, and me and Victoria in matching blonde ponytails. We would have been around ten. Dad must be behind the camera. It was Bridlington. Victoria and I cried on the way home because we didn’t want the holiday to be over; no more days splashing in the outdoor pool. Flashes of the week come back to me. Mum and Judith dancing to ‘Wig-Wam Bam’ with me and Victoria on the dance floor. Dad and Peter taking us to crazy golf. Mum getting pulled up on stage with a magician. Fried egg sandwiches back at the caravan.

I flip further through the album: Flower Fairies dolls peeping out, hidden between the plants in the garden, like the children I saw earlier. Dad helped me recreate the Cottingley Fairies pictures and take the photos. The memory is pastel-coloured. It’s soft focus and false-looking. It was to cheer me up because I was upset when I found out the original pictures were faked. I was so angry at the woman for owning up and breaking the magic.

Earlier in the book are pictures of Mum and Dad’s wedding: so many bridesmaids. There’s a picture of Mum and Judith holding me and Victoria when we were tiny babies. In the photos of Mum when she was younger, she seems like a different person from the one I grew up with: she was thin, even thinner than when I was a child, and her hair was cropped into a pixie cut. People called her Mags then, she said, but it was always Margaret when I was young.

In one of the shots, Mum and Judith sit on the beach in Spain, surrounded by men, Mum in a bright red bikini, the colours bleached out. In the next one they’re sitting on a balcony drinking sangria. They grew up together, like me and Victoria.

I slam the book shut, dust clouding out, and shove it back in the drawer, making everything in the cabinet rattle.

I decide to take a bath; it’s a good opportunity to make the most of all my cleaning work yesterday. My stomach lurches again to think of the state of the bathroom: the toilet hadn’t seen any bleach in years, baked-on mess clinging to the bowl.

The bath is old and ceramic, chipped and rough-looking. I bathed in it many times when I was younger. It’s about as clean as it will get for now. I wonder if I will have to replace it in order to sell the house. I don’t know how to do any of this: no one tells you. I keep w. . .