Her Closest Friend

by Clare Boyd

Genres: General Fiction; Family Life; Literary Fiction; Women's Fiction; Noir; Thrillers; Crime Fiction; Psychological Thrillers; Suspense

Synopsis

Pop music blares from the radio. She sings drunkenly from the backseat. The thrash of windscreen wipers against the driving rain. The screech of tyres. A thud. Naomi and I are best friends. School runs, dog walks, a shoulder to cry on over a glass of wine, we’re inseparable. But now my husband has walked out, I need her more than ever. I know she will help me pick up the pieces. Because she knows about the lie I told to protect her. She knows how much I’ve sacrificed for this friendship. And she’d never let anyone hurt me. Would she? This extraordinary page-turner will suck you in from the very first page and keep you gripped until the breathtaking finale. Fans of The Wife Between Us, The Girl Before and Gone Girl will adore this twisted tale of toxic female friendship. What readers are saying about Her Closest Friend : ‘ Fabulous book!!!! Wow, Wow, Wow!! One of my favorite books ever, the characters were soooooo addicting. I needed to know what happened after each chapter. Loved it!!! Excellent.’ Goodreads reviewer, 5 stars ‘ What a read!... All too believable… left me with a bit of a creepy feeling… Riveting… kept my attention all way through… The ending… absolutely perfect. With a doubt, a five-star read! ’ Grace J Reviewerlady , 5 stars ‘ Well-written, fast-paced…with a final huge twist at the end… I couldn’t stop reading and was sitting on the edge of my seat until I reached the astonishing and mind-blowing conclusion. ’ Goodreads reviewer, 5 stars ‘ I have no words guys. I stayed up until 1 am finishing this book. It's engrossing.’ Obsidian Blue ‘ Chock full of twists and turns!... Talk about a thrill ride!! ’ A Bookish Way of Life, 5 stars ‘ A superb book dealing with toxic friendship, heart wrenching tragedies and misplaced loyalties. It will make you angry, it will make you sad but I guarantee it will keep you turning the pages.’ Sandie’s Book Shelves ‘ A brilliant psychological thriller!... a twisted plot that the reader will easily become enthralled in. Just when you think that you know what is coming next: you are blind-sided! A wonderful read that I would highly recommend!!!!!...A giant of a thriller!’ Goodreads reviewer, 5 stars ‘ Wow… The twist at the end had me disturbed for days... Superb.’ Mrs Roadley Reads, 5 stars ‘ Twisty, gripping and unsettling… Will hold you tight right until its terrible but maybe inevitable end… a true psychological thriller.’ The Bookwormery ‘ I loved every minute of it… I would absolutely recommend this dark and twisty book to any fans of psychological thrillers.’ Goodreads reviewer ‘Claire Boyd captivated m e with this truly unique opportunity to read about friendship that on the surface is extremely close but underneath is disturbingly toxic… Not to be missed. Great book. ’ Goodreads reviewer, 5 stars

Release date: March 5, 2019

Publisher: Bookouture

Print pages: 373

Sample

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 paper 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.’

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.’

‘Do you know her?’

Now I was confused. ‘Know who?’

‘The woman he’s been sleeping with,’ she whispered, her eyes watering.

‘What?’ I gasped, looking over my shoulder briefly. This was not what Charlie had told me about Adam. I dropped my voice. ‘I didn’t know anything about that. Are you serious? There’s another woman?’

‘She’s that young stylist he’s worked with on a few trips recently.’

‘On that job in Spain?’

‘That’s it.’

‘I swear I didn’t know. Charlie only told me that Adam was unhappy, and he’d asked him if he knew anyone with a flat in London to rent.’

Sophie’s face crumpled, and she stifled a sob behind her hand, ‘Apparently, he’s in love with her.’ Her tears splashed straight into the sink.

I wrapped my arm around her shoulder, smelling that familiar musty tang of incense in her hair, feeling protective and full of hate towards this young stylist. As I thought about what Sophie faced now, I feared for her. Deep down, she still loved Adam, in spite of how challenging their marriage had been recently. I imagined she might unravel without him. The terrible burden of responsibility hit me. Twelve years ago, Adam had taken her off my hands, supported her and looked after her, for better and for worse, and now he was abandoning her. She would be untethered.

‘What am I going to do, Naomi?’ she asked, begging me for help.

Guilt tumbled into my heart. Everything I had felt grateful for earlier had been a lucky throw of the dice. It seemed I had too much, while Sophie’s life was about to fall apart.

‘It’s going to be okay,’ I soothed, feeling that it wasn’t.

‘Maybe it’s just a midlife crisis,’ she added, under her breath.

‘It must be. He loves you. You’re beautiful and gorgeous and lovely in every way.’ I gave her hand a squeeze. ‘I’m here for you, don’t worry. You’re not on your own, okay?’

Sophie’s future spread out before me like a burnt-to-nothing dystopian landscape. The here-and-now became brittle, ready to disintegrate. If she suffered, I would – more. Every happy twist in my life would become a twist of unhappiness in hers. I couldn’t be content, I couldn’t be still, I couldn’t press the slow motion button unless I knew Sophie was happy. We were interlocked, like fingers holding hands; her needs were mine and mine were hers. It had always been the same.

I resolved to do everything in my power as her friend to help her through this. I would prioritise her and step in as her support, as I had done many times in the past, as she had done for me. That’s what best friends are for.

At the window, Sophie rolled the focus rings of her binoculars, watching Naomi and her family trudge away through the snow, fearing, as always – somewhat illogically – that it might be the last time she saw her.

Their snow clothes were matching, in navy blue. They were a close unit, an amorphous mass of love, walking side by side, hand in hand.

Sophie picked Naomi out, training the lenses on her, getting glimpses of her dimpled smile and full cheeks and spring of blonde curls as she turned her head every which way. Her small, bright eyes were darting about, checking her girls were safe, perhaps; her hands were jammed in her pockets, probably fiddling around with some trinket of Izzy or Diana’s left there. Her thoughts would be about others. About Sophie and Adam’s troubles.

As Sophie studied her, she imagined she was making upbeat suggestions to Charlie about how to solve the problem of Sophie and Adam. ‘She should tidy that house, for starters!’ ‘And make sure Dylan sleeps in his own bed!’ ‘They should definitely move into the cottage!’ As though she knew better. Positivity and optimism came easily to Naomi. The thought of her do-gooding chatter provoked a stab of anger. Sophie changed her mind about her lines of dialogue, and imagined her making crude, sexually explicit suggestions to Charlie. It gave Sophie a much-needed laugh.

She replaced the binoculars behind the line of cacti, holding on to the pretty images of her friend in her mind. Her fingers brushed over the tips of her arid pot plants. Some spines were left in her skin. Enjoying the prickles of pain, she plucked them out and mulled over the authenticity of Naomi’s promise to love and support her now that Adam was leaving, sceptical that she had been ignorant about Adam’s affair. Neither was she wholly convinced by Adam’s declaration of love for this stylist woman. None of it rang true. She wasn’t sure anyone was saying what they really meant.

‘Adam?’ Sophie called out to him in the galley.

Upstairs, in the galley office, Adam was sitting at his computer, ignoring her. She hoped that he was regretting his ill-timed confession as he moped at his screen, editing photographs from his latest shoots. She did not like to think that he might be emailing the stylist woman, looking online at rentals in London, wishing he could be with her, longing to be rid of this life with Sophie. Her insides twisted. He said he would stay until he had found somewhere suitable to live. She was no longer the focus of his love. It was unbelievable. Shocking even, like a blow to the head.

‘Adam!’ she bellowed.

Still no reply.

‘Dylan, will you tell your dad that I’m just going over to Grandad’s?’ Sophie said.

Dylan, who was engrossed in a film on the television, nose to screen, did not reply. She felt invisible, worthless to them both. But her son’s white-haired beauty struck her down, as it did every time she looked at him, and she forgave him in a way she would never forgive Adam. Before she put her boots on to go out, Sophie covered Dylan with kisses, aggressively demanding his love, overwhelmed, smothered, suffocated by a cloying, desperate, almost edible adoration for him.

‘Get off, Mum!’ he cried.

She laughed at Dylan and then, to Adam, she mumbled scornfully, ‘Bye, Adam!’

As she was closing the door, Adam piped up. ‘Sophie?’

‘Yeah?’

‘You’re not going out, are you?’

He still cared? She could climb the steps to him, rest a cup of tea by his hand, sit on his lap, become his beautiful distraction again. Change the course of today. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

‘I’m popping over to Grandad’s. Dylan’s pie will be ready in ten minutes. Don’t forget the peas.’

‘For fuck’s sake,’ he hissed.

‘You can’t handle taking the peas out of the freezer on your own?’ she said, darting outside into the cold, too rapidly to hear his retaliation.

She crunched across the snowy drive into her grandfather’s cottage, pulling her coat collar up, stewing about Adam, looking forward to some wisdom and advice from a real man, who would never lie to her.

‘Hi Deda!’

She slammed the door, which would wake him up if he was snoozing. The snow from her boots melted into a damp patch by the door and she padded into his kitchen in her socks.

‘The usual?’ she shouted through, twirling the duster around the glasses and plates on the shelf, spraying the bleach cleaner and rubbing away the grime.

‘Yes, Sophia!’

His bottle of vodka and their two special tumblers were there, as always, in the right-hand cupboard next to the teabags. In her grandfather’s eyes, vodka was no different to tea.

She checked in the fridge for his meat pasties. There was one left. Sophie sliced it in half and resolved to make some more for him later.

The glasses rattled on the melamine tray as she brought them through.

As always, he sat there in his winged chair, clean shirt, brown trousers, a paperback resting on the arm.

Sophie kissed his bare, liver-spotted head, turned the lamp on and drew the curtains closed. The room was cold. She turned up the bar heater in the fireplace.

‘I must have nodded off,’ he said, as though this were a surprise. ‘Thank you,’ he said, taking the glass she handed him.

His nose stretched as wide as his moustache when he smiled, either side of which there were grooves as deep as crevasses. Underneath the untrimmed mass of eyebrow hair, Sophie could see that the shine in his eyes was still there. Every day, she looked for it.

She pulled the stool close to his slippers and tapped the top of her glass with his. The warm liquid stung her throat, but soothed her mind. If the whole world, and all its ills, had melted away around her while she sat with her Dedushka, eating meat pasties and drinking vodka, she would not have cared.

‘Did Dylan have a good birthday party?’

‘Wonderful. I made Medovik, and we danced and sang. We missed you.’

‘You look so pale.’

‘I had some bad news today.’

‘Tell me.’

‘Adam wants to leave us.’

Dedushka leant forward and screwed up his eyes. ‘Why, my Sophia?’

‘He is in love with someone else.’

‘A man?’

Sophie laughed. ‘No. Not a man, Deda.’

‘You never know these days. He has long hair like a girl.’

‘She’s not pretty. I don’t know why he wants her and not me.’

She had looked up the stylist woman, Natalie, on her Instagram page. Or was she a girl? A girl-woman, whose body was exposed regularly in her Instagram posts, with her large hips and flat chest. She was no beauty. And Sophie wondered if it would have been easier if she had been. What man could resist a young, beautiful woman? Of course he would stray! But Natalie was plain and dull, judging from her posts: a photograph of her manicured wonky toes against a backdrop of a white, sandy beach; a series of selfies of her dull outfits in front of a mirror; a black Labrador running through the snow. Yawn. Yawn. Yawn.

Yet, Sophie had been gripped by her. Gripped by the concept of Adam’s love for her. Their relationship lurked in an alternate universe to the one Sophie and Adam had shared together for twelve years. She seemed to have that undefinable quality that men fell for, that marriageable ordinariness – or was it safeness? – that Naomi certainly had, that Sophie did not. Marriage had not suited Sophie. Their chaotic, last-minute wedding day in Marylebone register office had been their first mistake. Even then, she had known it, having forced the event, wanting to get married before Naomi, who had recently said ‘yes’ to Charlie’s proposal. When Naomi, as Sophie’s maid of honour, had stood next to Sophie in front of the registrar, Sophie remembered feeling like an impostor bride in her white trouser suit. In her mind, Naomi had been the real bride.

‘Boff!’ Deda raised his hands, spilling his drink. ‘He’s a pig.’

‘I have not been very nice to him.’

‘You are always nice.’

‘He thinks I’ve given up.’

‘He likes to tell you what is wrong with you.’

‘And maybe he’s right.’

‘Do you love him?’

Before Dylan had been born, before she had known how far love could take her, Sophie had loved Adam. Over the years, that love seemed to have been usurped by need. Needing Adam, as she did now, felt like the nasty cousin of true love. It was an impoverished form of love, leaving her vulnerable and unequal. She needed him to tell her she was more beautiful than any other woman; she needed him to pay the bills. She needed him to quell her paranoia; she needed him to share the school run. She needed him to satiate her in bed; she needed him to fix the shower curtain. She needed him, and she resented that need.

Perhaps this need of hers was where it had gone wrong between them. Perhaps this was why he had fallen for another woman, who wanted him more than Sophie did.

‘I don’t cook for him any more.’

‘You cook the best piroshki I ever tasted! Better than Baba. Shhh, but don’t tell her I said it.’ He put his hands together in prayer and looked to his small gold triptych of Jesus on the narrow inglenook mantel. He looked back at Sophie. ‘Do you love him?’ he repeated.

‘I’m not surprised he doesn’t love me any more. Look at me.’

‘Golden sunlight,’ he said, reaching to stroke his fingers through her straggles, which reached her waist. He pinched her chin. ‘But you’re skin and bone, just like Suzanne.’

Sophie picked at her nail varnish. ‘I don’t want to be like her.’

‘You’re stubborn like her, Sophia. Don’t be stubborn. If you love Adam, you have to fight for him.’

‘I wish I was more like Naomi,’ she sulked. ‘If I was more like her, t. . .