My Best Friend's Secret

by Emily Freud

Genres: Female Sleuths; Domestic Thrillers; Medical Thrillers; Psychological Thrillers; Suspense

Synopsis

How do you escape a past you can't remember? ' Had me gripped from the start' 5* reader review 'An outstanding debut' 5* reader review 'Such a mega page-turner' 5* reader review Kate Sullivan has a beautiful home, a job she loves and a handsome fiancé: all she'd ever dreamed of since getting sober and painstakingly piecing her life back together. But a chance encounter with her old best friend Becky threatens Kate's newfound and fragile happiness. Kate remembers nothing of their last drunken night out, the night Becky broke off their friendship without warning or explanation. With Becky back in her life, Kate is desperate to make amends for the past. For the closure she craves, Kate needs to know what she did that ruined everything. But what if the truth is worse than Kate could have imagined? 'A clever tale of how our demons shape our lives' ALEXANDRA SHULMAN 'Gut-wrenching and powerful' CHARLOTTE DUCKWORTH 'Beautiful writing and devastating twists' MIRANDA SMITH 'A real, clever page-turner. Dare I say addictive' TINA BAKER ***Previously published as Closure***

Release date: September 17, 2020

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 352

Sample

1

Several weeks earlier

‘Why didn’t I bring a coat? I’m freezing!’ Kate jumps up and down on the spot. Ben puts his arm around her and squeezes. It has been one of those spring days where you are fooled into thinking summer has started, but by 7 p.m. your bare arms have goosebumps, and your exposed ankles are chalky and white.

‘Come on, let’s get inside,’ he says, pulling her up onto the dip of the worn stone step.

Ben rings the bell and they wait. In front of them is a large panelled wooden door, which dwarfs them both. An irritated buzz summons Ben to push. Kate holds his hand, her other clasped around the top of his arm so she can observe the reception area safely from behind his shoulder. She watches as the haughty woman at the desk develops a smile and a warm inclusive tone as she takes his name and registers his reservation. It is as if, suddenly, she has met him many times before. Kate can’t help but notice the perfect wisps of hair which have escaped expertly from her loose bun and the neat pearls which sit exquisitely on her dainty lobes. Kate tucks a strand of hair behind her ear as Ben laughs along with something the woman has said.

She has been to his club before, but it always makes her feel on edge, as if everyone is watching her, wondering who she is and how she got in. They are whisked through, past the busy bar area, to a table by an imposing sash window which commands the attention of the whole room. Ben is well versed in getting the best. They sit down, she smooths her skirt over her legs as she takes it all in. Light ripples of laughter entwine with quiet rumbles of conversation. Everyone is wearing dark hues of block colour; the waiters wear long navy butchers’ aprons and crisp white shirts folded up to their elbows. Candles twinkle against large bulbous glasses on sparse tables. It feels edgy, in a conformed sort of way.

Ben is looking over the wine list, one finger poised over his bottom lip as he thinks. She gets a feeling of deep pleasure when she watches him just being. He readjusts his glasses and strokes her hand absent-mindedly as he turns the page. As he softly touches her that warm feeling spreads within, reminding her she’s here, now, in this lovely place with her wonderful fiancé. Everything really is OK in the end. This too shall pass, they said. And it did.

He looks over at her and touches her cheek. ‘Happy anniversary, darling. You look beautiful tonight,’ he says. Her stomach tingles. Ben is classically handsome; he’s got thick dark-brown hair and a roman nose. He wears tortoiseshell glasses that make him look smart, and he is, very. A friend once told her that nice guys don’t dress well, but Ben does. Tonight, he’s wearing a light-blue shirt that goes with his eyes. He has a dimple in the middle of his chin, which is so perfect that sometimes Kate runs her finger across it, just to check it’s real.

‘Thank you,’ she says smiling, blushing. She still finds it hard to accept a compliment; she spent half her life convinced she was worthless, and even now she can’t quite quit all those old feelings towards herself. The remnants hang in the air like particles of dust floating around her face, impossible to catch. She often has to remind herself that she never has to go back. She is safe now; she doesn’t need to hurt herself any more. She takes a deep breath and leans forward, kissing his cheek. He kisses her back, tenderly.

‘Soon we’ll have a new anniversary to celebrate,’ she murmurs into his ear.

He looks at her intently. ‘Then I can call you my wife.’

The wedding. Six years ago, she would never have thought a man like this would want to marry her. But, one day at a time, so much has changed. Like a flower in bloom, her petals have gently spread open, and now she feels as if her transformation is almost complete. A gentle smile of contentment dances on her lips as she looks out of the window, onto the street and the steady flow of people: couples walk arm in arm, groups of friends laugh jovially in clusters, holding up the solitary figures trying to dash ahead. Everyone is participating in life, and so is she. She is no longer cowering away, afraid of everyone and everything.

‘I’m just going to go to the bathroom,’ she says as she stands up. She wants to check her make-up. She had decided to wear red lipstick, but fears it may have smudged during the journey into town, or that an unsightly smear may have made its way onto her top teeth. She is sure the woman at the desk gave her a sympathetic look. Ben looks up and nods, and then goes back to studying the wine list.

Her shoes make obtrusively loud clicking noises as she walks towards the back of the building where the toilets are. Glamorous faces peer up, and then quickly down when they realize there is nothing there to see. She pushes the door into the quiet sanctuary of the bathroom.

On the far side of the dark room are five oval mirrors with brass light fittings hanging over the top of each. She walks through and moves her face under one, allowing the light to slowly cascade over her features. It is as if she is on a blacked-out stage, with only a spotlight hovering above her. She raises her hand to her lips and leans in. She stops before she touches them; there is nothing to amend. She crushes her top lip up to her nose to check her teeth, but pearly white is all that reflects back. She looks exactly how she did when she left the house. She gives herself a reassuring smile.

Then she hears the quiet thud of the door open and close. Footsteps walk up behind her. Quickly, her eyes fall towards the basin and she turns the tap on, washing her hands with expensive-smelling soap. The other person props their bag on the surface of the sink, and rummages around, removing a pouch. Kate concentrates on her hands, and the job of ensuring all the soapsuds make their way down the plughole.

‘Kate!’

She looks up and over at the head suspended in the next mirror along.

It takes her a moment to place who the person is. She definitely knows them somehow. She cocks her head to one side, pausing in the hope it will come to her quickly, to avoid any embarrassment.

‘It’s Becky,’ the woman says.

Kate almost gasps at the transformation. Becky’s fuzzy curls are sleek and tamed. She used to wear an overeager dab of blue eyeshadow, but in its place is a sexy slash of liner. Her brows were overplucked; now they are just the right amount of bushy and dark. She is wearing tailored trousers and a tight black halter vest that accentuates her slim figure and full breasts. Her handbag is designer and she has a Burberry trench coat over her forearm.

‘Becky,’ Kate chokes, coughing. ‘Becky,’ she says again, more confidently. She goes to hug her, but Becky kisses her impersonally on each cheek. A waft of perfume drifts away as they part. ‘How . . . how nice to see you,’ Kate breathes.

‘It must have been over ten years,’ Becky replies. The statement hangs in the air, like washing on the line on a windless day.

‘I thought you lived in America?’ Kate fiddles with her necklace, trying to smile politely.

‘I moved back a few weeks ago. Are you a member here?’

‘No, but my fiancé is.’ Kate smiles.

‘Fiancé?’ Becky’s eyebrows rise. ‘Congratulations,’ she says flatly. Kate isn’t sure that Becky sounds happy for her.

‘What are you doing here?’ Kate asks, wondering why her tone sounds accusatory.

‘I was just meeting an old colleague for a drink, bending his ear about a job. I’m on the hunt for something new.’ Becky turns back towards the mirror and sighs. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, was that there the whole time?’ she mutters before curtly wiping the side of her lip, where her make-up has smudged ever so slightly. She takes out a tube from the pouch and reapplies her lipstick.

‘Beck, I can’t believe . . .’ Kate starts.

Becky turns to face her. ‘How much I’ve changed? Well, living in New York will do that to someone. It slowly chips away at you and before you know it you’ve conformed.’

‘Ben, my fiancé, he’s from New York.’ Kate nods her head towards the door, towards where Ben is sitting at their table.

‘Really?’ Becky zips up her make-up bag and puts it back.

‘Yes.’ There is a pause Kate wants to fill. ‘Do you want to meet him?’ she finds herself asking.

Becky watches her as she thinks; she blots her lips together once more before she answers. ‘Yes. I’d like that.’ Kate wishes she could take it back; she should have just said it was nice to bump into each other and walked away. Now she has invited something into her evening she hasn’t prepared for.

Her heart quickens as they walk back into the busy atmosphere, thudding louder and louder the closer they get. She sees his face smile from across the room as he registers her return, and then a slightly confused look unfurls across it as he sees the woman following her.

They stop in front of him. ‘This is Ben,’ Kate says. He jumps up straight away and shakes Becky’s hand. He is looking at Becky, intrigued.

‘This is Becky . . . we . . . she . . .’

Becky interjects, ‘We used to be best friends.’

Kate’s lips part in surprise at the admission. She watches Becky, still shaking his hand, as if she has forgotten to let go.

Ben smiles, welcoming her. ‘You must join us for a drink.’ He breaks his hand away and ushers over a waiter.

Becky nods and accepts the extra chair produced for her. Kate still remembers the last time she saw Becky. They were about eighteen. Kate was hungover, as usual. She was trying to piece together the night before. Her hair was muddled, her mascara was halfway down her face, as if someone had wiped soot under each eye. She was shaking, too afraid of what she might have done to ask an angry Becky what happened. They hadn’t spoken since.

‘Kate said you’re from New York. Whereabouts did you grow up?’ Becky asks Ben.

‘I was born in Manhattan; my family have a brownstone on the Upper West Side.’

‘Slightly more glamorous than Camden Town,’ Becky says with a knowing smile.

Kate watches her old friend so confidently converse with a practical stranger. It used to take Becky some time to warm up around people she didn’t know; she’d always let Kate take the lead. The waiter approaches again, a pad and pen in hand.

‘Would you like to start with a drink?’ the waiter asks.

Ever the gentleman, Ben hands the wine list to Becky. ‘The Shiraz looks nice,’ he says. ‘I’ve had the Pinot before and found it a bit heavy.’ Kate watches Becky study the options. They used to like Blossom Hill or anything two-for-five-pounds. They would never have come to a place like this – why eat when you could drink?

Ben turns to Kate. ‘Kate, what would you like? They have a few mocktails here in the back,’ he says. Kate can’t help feeling excluded, like a patronized child allowed on the grown-up table as a treat.

‘I’m fine with sparkling water,’ she says. She can feel Becky watching her, confused.

A few minutes later the waiter returns and pours Ben an inch to try. Kate can imagine the taste in her mouth, the initial sting and the caustic tang, like poison. She takes a sip of her water.

‘I love your ring,’ Becky says, catching Kate’s hand between her fingers and staring at the large set diamond. ‘Congratulations,’ she says to them both.

Kate watches Becky study Ben’s face and wonders what she is thinking. Is she impressed? He is more than Kate ever wanted, more than anything they could have dreamt up back when they wrote lists of their perfect man and burnt them over the sink.

‘When is the wedding?’ Becky asks.

‘It’s next month. We’re just having a registry office do,’ says Kate, her cheeks tinged red. ‘We didn’t want a fuss, and Ben didn’t want everyone feeling like they had to travel from the States . . . It’s going to be intimate.’

Becky nods thoughtfully. Kate always wanted a big showstopper of a wedding; they used to discuss it for hours. She used to love the idea of the drama of an event like that. But now she just wants something simple. She wants it to be about them, not about fuss or stress or other people. She loves Ben. She wants the marriage, not the wedding.

‘Then over the summer we’ll go stay with my folks on Long Island. My mom’s threatening to throw us a party while we’re out there,’ Ben says.

‘You’ll never come back,’ Becky says with a knowing smile.

‘I can’t see that happening!’ he laughs.

Kate shrugs. ‘Ben is a complete anglophile, and besides, I’d never leave the kids.’ Becky looks at her quizzically. ‘I’m a teacher,’ she explains.

‘It’s like she doesn’t think every inner-city school is begging for talented teachers,’ Ben says.

‘What do you do?’ asks Kate.

‘I was working for a big pharmaceutical company. I’m looking for something new now I’m back,’ Becky says. ‘Staying at my parents is beyond demoralizing.’

‘Oh God! How are you coping?’ asks Kate. Memories of Becky’s parental home swim at her like hungry ducklings: dancing drunk in the living room, tidying up after another house party that got out of hand, lying half naked in Becky’s bed talking about boys they fancied who didn’t fancy them back. It feels like Kate’s adolescence is stored inside that house.

‘Fine, you know. I’m just too old for their bullshit.’

Becky’s father is what you would call eccentric. Kate was there almost every day after school and every weekend, and she barely saw him. Becky’s mother, Susanna, is another story. Part of Kate aches still when she thinks of her. The way she would put Kate’s hair behind her ear for her and smile, the way they would smoke around the kitchen table together, talking long after Becky had gone to bed.

‘How come you came back?’ Kate asks.

Becky pauses, and straightens her cutlery as she talks. ‘My mother . . . she isn’t very well, and Alexa thought it was time I helped out. Older sisters, do they ever stop bossing you around?’ she asks with an irritated shake of the head. Kate wonders what is wrong with Susanna. Becky changes the subject before she can ask.

‘So . . . how did you guys meet?’

Ben coughs. ‘I was on a business trip, a meeting about a job in Glasgow . . .’

‘He’s an engineer,’ Kate says, holding her hands a metre apart. ‘Big ships.’

Ben pushes her jovially for interrupting. ‘Anyway, I was flying through Heathrow and had one night in London. It was a chance meeting, really. I was lost . . .’ He smiles at Kate.

‘How romantic,’ says Becky, taking them in. Kate watches her give Ben another side glance, and she almost thinks Becky blushes.

‘I took the job once we met; I just knew.’ He looks over at Kate and smiles again, before kissing her cheek.

‘You’re so soppy.’ Kate shakes her head and pushes him away as if she is embarrassed. But really, she’s more than happy with the public display of affection in front of her old friend.

‘A toast,’ says Ben. They raise their glasses, ‘to old friends and new’. The glasses chink. They make a show of looking each other in the eye very seriously before they take a sip. It is painful to look Becky in the eye. It is as if Kate is looking directly into the sun. She quickly looks away and watches their red wine slosh and takes in a drink of her water.

‘God, this wine is heaven.’ Becky looks at Kate expectantly, and takes another sip.

‘I don’t drink any more,’ Kate says, feeling the moment requires an explanation.

‘Oh.’

‘I’ve been sober six years.’ She wants Becky to know that, after all the broken promises, she finally did it.

‘That’s amazing, Kate.’ Becky sets her glass down. ‘That really is amazing.’

 

Later, in the cab home, Kate puts her head on Ben’s shoulder and sighs. Seeing Becky again has exhausted her. Kate has tried hard not to think of her old friend much over the last few years. She has been focusing on the present and the future. It was one of the things she used to mull over, while she was drinking herself into oblivion: what really happened that night, why their relationship broke off like it did. Kate was incapable of being a good friend when she drank, she knows that now. Becky was completely justified in giving up on her.

She thinks about how different Becky is now. Not just the way she looks. She used to have an exuberant energy, a self-unaware buoyancy, like the way she would smile naively at someone giving her a dirty look. She is measured now, sophisticated. Kate found her intimidating, but maybe that is because of all that is unsaid.

‘I’ve never heard you talk about her,’ Ben muses.

‘We lost touch; I haven’t seen her for years.’

‘Well, I thought she was nice.’

‘She used to be very different,’ Kate says. ‘Not like that.’

‘Oh yeah, how so?’

‘You’ll think I’m being a bitch.’

‘Come on, dish the dirt.’ He tickles her. He has a glint in his eye, and she knows he’s tipsy. It doesn’t take much. He left his glass half full at the restaurant. She’s always amazed when he does that. She never left a drop.

‘She’s had some sort of body and personality airbrush. I swear her teeth were never that straight or white,’ Kate says.

‘Ha, Yanks don’t stand for your snaggly British teeth.’ He tickles her again.

‘Hey! Stop it. And I don’t have snaggly teeth.’ She sits up.

‘No, you have lovely teeth.’ He cups the side of her face and brings it towards him.

Their lips tease each other, gently pressing against each other before going in deep. Their tongues touch and she feels a familiar surge.

The car comes to a stop and they pull apart. She grins, her eyes shine, and her cheeks are mottled pink. Feeling happy when she hasn’t had a drop to drink is better than any high she had experienced drinking or using drugs. Because she knows it’s real. He is here, loving her, wanting to marry her. With Ben, it’s not the sort of one-sided toxic relationship of before.

He climbs out of the car and turns, holding his hand out to help. ‘Mademoiselle,’ he says in a fake French accent.

She takes his hand and allows him to pull her onto the kerb. ‘Why, thank you,’ she giggles. Arm in arm, the couple walk up the steps to their apartment. Kate turns as she hears a sort of bedraggled howl, like a fox in pain, or a cat. Her eyes look up and down the road, which is bathed in orderly pools of soft yellow light. A car goes past, and the noise stops.

She turns back just as Ben opens their door, guides her through and kisses her on the mouth, pushing her against the interior wall. He uses his foot to nudge the door shut and, giggling, they go upstairs.

2

Kate is enjoying watching him get ready for work. She is lying in bed, on her side, face plumped against her pillow, half a leg out of the duvet. She doesn’t move; her eyes travel with Ben as he ferrets around trying to find everything he needs. He is looking for his only clean shirt. It’s hanging on the back of the door.

‘Have you seen my shirt?’ he asks finally.

‘It’s on the back of the door,’ she says.

He looks up from tying his shoe and leaps forward, holding the hanger as he undoes the top button. He leaves the room as he pulls his arm through a sleeve. She rolls onto her back and looks up at the ceiling. There is a water stain she hasn’t seen before. She can’t work out where it’s come from. It bothers her that she spends a lot of time worrying about bad things happening, and they are never the things she should actually worry about.

She hears him shout, ‘Bye!’ and a moment later the front door bangs. She closes her eyes and repeats the words she has said every morning for the last six years: Just for today, I will try and live through this day only . . .

There is a sudden whirring noise from outside. Her eyes spark open. She gets out of bed and looks out of the window. There are two men with hi-vis jackets dangling precariously from the branches of the large tree across the road. It has always felt too big for their residential London street. Kate loves how much green it dashes across the view, how it reaches like children’s arms stretching as far as they can go, fingers splayed up to their very tips trying to reach the sky. She watches as a branch tumbles to the ground and sighs.

Since last night she’s felt uncomfortable, as though her skin isn’t on right. She feels lopsided. It is the unnameable feeling she dreads, as if everything is right and she is just wrong. It has taken her by surprise. Nowadays she’s contented the majority of the time, so when something like this pops up out of nowhere, it reminds her of what used to be a constant state. Her go-to impulse is to quickly change the way she feels. Before, the monkey on her shoulder used to scramble around looking for a way to blot out the unpleasant feeling. And then she would drink. Now, she has been given the tools to deal with this sort of unease. She decides to make a call, one she hasn’t felt the need for in a while because everything has been going so well. It rings three times.

‘Kate!’ Clare sounds relieved to hear from her. ‘I was hoping you’d call.’

‘Hi, Clare,’ Kate says. ‘Is this a good time?’

‘Let me just give the baby to Greg.’

Kate hears a commotion and a few murmurs before Clare comes back to the phone. ‘What’s been going on? It’s been months.’ She sounds breathless.

‘Sorry . . . I should have checked in. I’ve just been so busy with school and the wedding.’ Kate knows she’s making excuses.

‘Right,’ says Clare. ‘Have you been going to meetings?’

‘A few,’ Kate murmurs noncommittally.

‘Well, that’s the main thing,’ Clare says kindly. Instantly, Kate feels terrible that she lied. ‘How are you?’

‘I’m fine, I mean, there is loads going on with work and stuff. And the wedding is soon and . . . I bumped into Becky last night.’

‘Becky . . . your old friend?’

As her sponsor, Clare knows everything about Kate, her darkest secrets, her deepest worries, the thick gangrenous rot that swirls inside her brain at night and stops her from sleeping. That is because of Steps Four and Five, the two most feared and most transformative steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. It was only after she’d completed these that Kate really began to feel free from the chains of addiction.

The purpose of Step Four – Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves – is to uncover all one’s secrets, everything she was feverishly hoarding away. All the things she’d ever done to anyone else, because of her ego, or vanity, or self-pity. All the things she used to use to keep herself drunk, ‘because that happened to me’, or ‘because I’m like this’. All transferred from inside to outside.

She had dreaded Step Five, which is where she had to read the list she had created to her sponsor. But oddly, after she did it, Kate felt better. She felt as if she could let it all go, as if she’d removed the central point of a blockage and could watch the debris rush down a fast-flowing river. Not forgotten, but no longer clogging up her mind with useless worries and regrets.

This is why Clare knows everything about her relationship with Becky.

‘I thought she moved away?’ Clare asks.

‘She’s back.’

‘OK . . . and how did it go?’

‘Ben was with me, which kept it light.’

‘Kate, do you think she’s back in your life for a reason?’ Clare asks, leading her to the point. ‘You always said you didn’t want to do it over Skype.’

Kate stares at the tree across the road as it is cropped further and further back. The feeling of trepidation grows, like an old chest being opened, the dust blown off and a key rattling inside a sticky lock.

‘Maybe it’s better just to leave it,’ Kate says.

‘Right . . . and why do you think it’s a good idea to leave this unresolved?’ The kindness in Clare’s voice has been replaced with a no-nonsense tone. ‘Out of everyone you felt you had hurt during your drinking, Becky was near the top of your list. You’ve put it off, Kate, but she’s stepped back into your path for a reason. Don’t you think?’

Kate nods, but do. . .