The School Friend

by Alison James

Genres: Crime Fiction; Psychological Thrillers

Synopsis

I’m Lucy, and I have a secret.

I have a beautiful home, that I’m desperate to escape. I tell my friends I’ve never wanted children, when I always have. My husband is a celebrated surgeon, who tries to control me. But those aren’t my secrets…

Adele knows.

Once upon a time, I knew everything about her and she knew everything about me. Best friends forever. But now our secret is beginning to surface. I can trust her more than anyone. We made a pact. And she’d never do anything to hurt me. Would she?

This absolutely gripping psychological thriller will have you forgetting everything until the last shocking twist. Fans of Behind Closed Doors, Friend Request, and The Girl on the Train will be hooked.

 

Release date: July 3, 2019

Publisher: Bookouture

Print pages: 280

Sample

The movement is swift and vicious, like an assault. An arm hooked around her neck, half strangling her.

Lucinda Katherine Mary Gibson twists round to look at her assailant, who has hurtled up to her as she’s innocently walking through the school gates at the end of the day. She knows this girl is in the same class, but Lucy has only been at Redgate High School for two weeks and so hasn’t learned all her classmates’ names. Even so, she recognises this particular girl. She has ‘hard’ written all over her. She’s about the same height, but while Lucy still has the slight, knobbly body of a child, this girl is heavyset and well-developed. She has breasts. Her sandy-red hair is thick and straight, but instead of having the pinkish freckled skin of a redhead, her complexion is a sallow dark olive and her eyes slant in an unexpected way. There’s a distinct gap between her two top teeth and she wears her socks extra-long so that they cover her knees and end at mid-thigh. In an as yet unexplored area of her brain, Lucy understands that this is a provocative gesture, designed to draw attention to the girl’s body.

‘You’re the teacher’s pet,’ her assailant says accusingly.

In response, Lucy walks faster down the street, trying to get away. Wishing it was one of the days when her mother came to collect her in the car.

‘Oi, four eyes,’ the girl says, giving Lucy a slight shove with her elbow. The gesture is boisterous rather than malicious. ‘I said: you’re the teacher’s pet. Miss Gresham’s, I mean.’

‘I’m not,’ replies Lucy hotly. She can feel sweat breaking out along her hairline, underneath her straight, baby-fine blonde plait. It makes her glasses slip down her nose slightly, and she pushes them back up with a self-conscious little gesture. She reaches instinctively to fiddle with the end of her hair, which is something she does when she’s nervous.

‘You’re rich too, though,’ says the girl. She pronounces it ‘dough’.

It occurs to Lucy that, in her own clumsy fashion, the girl is trying to spark up a conversation, but Lucy doesn’t have any idea why or to what end, so she doesn’t know how to respond. She dips her head. ‘I’m not rich,’ she mumbles.

‘You are. I’ve seen your Mum’s car.’

Lucy’s heart sinks. Her mother drives an ostentatiously shiny 4x4 and is in the habit of parking it on the zigzag lines near the front gates, despite the school’s ban on this practice.

‘It’s that big black one, isn’t it?’ the girl goes on, with a knowing smile. ‘Must be nice being rich.’

Lucy opens her mouth to contradict her, but then shuts it again. Possibly, compared to some of the other pupils at Redgate, she is rich. Or at least well off. She is aware that she and her parents live in a large, comfortable house with a big garden, and that they have a cleaning lady, and go on foreign holidays at least twice a year.

‘Where d’you live?’ her tormentor goes on, with her uncanny ability to read Lucy’s mind.

When Lucy fails to answer, she grabs Lucy’s forearm and jostles her slightly. Lucy’s satchel slips off her shoulder and her new pencil case drops onto the pavement, spilling its contents.

‘Is that a protractor?’ the girl asks, snatching it off the ground before Lucy can reply. Their class has just been told they need to use a protractor for their maths homework, which involves measuring line segments and angles. Her eyes gleam. ‘Can I have a lend of it?’

‘You mean can you borrow it?’ Lucy corrects her primly.

‘Yeah, can I have a borrow? I haven’t got one.’

‘Sure.’ Anything to get her to go away. ‘But I’ll need it back.’

The fact is, Lucy isn’t too worried about the protractor. She has more geometry equipment at home, and if she can’t find a spare protractor her mother will be only too happy to pop out to the shops for one, or ask her father to get one on his way home from work.

‘Ask me for it tomorrow,’ the girl says. She turns on her heel to walk in the other direction, thrusting the protractor into her bag with the relish of an archaeologist discovering a rare treasure.

Is that all it took, Lucy wonders, taken aback. ‘What’s your name?’ she calls.

‘Adele.’ The girl shouts over her shoulder. ‘Adele Marie Watts.’

Adele homes in on Lucy during morning break the next day. She’s chewing on a rubber band, twirling it between her gapped white teeth.

‘Have you got my protractor?’ Lucy asks, although she has already completed her geometry homework using one she found in her father’s desk drawer.

‘It’s up my house,’ says Adele casually. She’s wearing a denim jacket over her uniform blouse, although the school rules are very clear that only blazers with the RHS badge are allowed. ‘Why don’t you come round to mine for your tea, then I can give it you back.’

‘What – today?’ Lucy’s pale grey eyes widen. She is not used to social arrangements being treated so casually. In the Gibson household, these things are always scheduled in advance, with full parental consultation.

‘Yeah, why not? You’re not scared, are you?’ Adele flicks her arm playfully.

Was Lucy scared? The truth was that she probably was, a bit. ‘I can’t really come today,’ she says, trying to sound unavailable rather than anxious. Her mother is picking her up in the car and they’re going straight to ballet, but she doesn’t tell Adele that. Ballet classes will provide further evidence that she’s rich. Even if today was a day when she was walking home, her mother would probably call the police if she didn’t show up by 4.30 p.m. She can’t just go round to someone else’s house.

‘Fine, tomorrow then,’ says Adele.

What Adele refers to as her ‘house’ turns out to be a council flat on the eastern edge of Redgate. Lucy, on the other hand, lives in a detached Edwardian villa in Haverleigh Park, a slice of stockbroker belt to the north-west of Redgate that enjoys a speedy thirty-minute service direct to Waterloo from Haverleigh Holt station. She’s never been inside a flat in her life, let alone a local authority one.

The Watts family are numerous, loud and frankly terrifying. In addition to Adele’s mother, who is as wide as she is tall and has Adele’s freckles, there’s her older half-brother Jamil, her younger siblings Tyler and Chelsee and assorted cousins. There’s also an older half-sister Janine, who has a baby and a flat of her own. Adele’s father puts in an appearance, standing in the kitchen, arguing with Adele’s mother and smoking a fat hand-rolled cigarette. He has dreadlocks and is, Adele informs Lucy proudly, ‘mixed race’.

Nobody sits at the table for tea. In fact, there is no table. People perch on the edge of armchairs and the sofa with crisp sandwiches and – ‘for afters’ – Pop Tarts. Lucy, who has never eaten a Pop Tart before, would have been thrilled by this menu if she weren’t so nervous. She discovers from the family’s exchanges while they’re eating – more argument than conversation – that Adele is twelve and a half, a whole year older than she is, but she has been held back at school and is repeating Year Seven.

‘Shall we go into your room and play?’ Lucy whispers, licking icing from her fingers in the absence of anything resembling a napkin. Adele looks at her blankly, then shows her the tiny room that she shares with Tyler and Chelsee. The two younger children sleep on bunk beds and Adele sleeps on a single mattress on the floor next to them, surrounded by a mess of toys and clothes.

‘Sometimes I sleep on the couch,’ she says, with a defensiveness that sounds almost like pride.

Jamil has the other single bedroom and her mother occupies the third bedroom.

There is no mention of the borrowed protractor or any offer to return it, and Lucy is reluctant to mention it, especially as she has no need of it. Whereas Adele clearly does.

Lucy’s mother wanted to come to collect her from the Watts’ flat, but Lucy persuaded her to agree to a less awkward compromise and meet her at the bus stop where Adele catches the bus to school. The two girls walk there together, and as they do so Adele slips her arm unselfconsciously through Lucy’s. Lucy is surprised but oddly pleased by this gesture of intimacy. The car is already parked opposite the bus stop, and Lucy sees her mother studying the interaction in the rear-view mirror.

‘Did you have a nice time, darling?’ she asks as the car pulls out into traffic, with Adele waving from the pavement.

‘Um, yes,’ says Lucy uncertainly. She’s still not entirely sure how she feels about the visit. ‘We had Pop Tarts.’

‘Goodness!’ Mrs Gibson forces a smile. ‘You’ll need to make sure you brush your teeth when we get back. And this girl, Adele… you like her?’

‘Yes,’ says Lucy, more with confusion than conviction. ‘I like her.’

‘So when am I coming to yours, Luce?’

Adele barrels up to Lucy in the playground the next day, slinging an arm round her shoulder with such vigour that Lucy almost falls over. Her glasses bounce to the end of her nose and she has to put up a hand to stop them falling onto the tarmac.

‘Coming to mine?’ Lucy asks stupidly, rearranging her fair plaits.

‘Yeah. You came to tea at mine, so now you need to invite me over to yours. That’s how it works, dummy! You know; being friends.’

‘I’ll have to ask my mum when you can come,’ Lucy prevaricates.

‘Ask her tonight,’ Adele instructs her impatiently. ‘And don’t forget, okay?’

Lucy knows that Adele certainly isn’t going to forget, much as she secretly hopes for such amnesia, so has no choice but to broach the topic with her mother after school.

‘I don’t know, darling,’ her mother says, stacking freshly ironed cotton sheets into the airing cupboard, ‘I’m not sure she’s the ideal friend for you.’

‘Why not?’ Now that her own reluctance is being mirrored, Lucy feels oddly defensive of Adele,

‘Well, didn’t you say that she’s a year older than you? She’s almost a teenager. So she’s bound to be more… mature than you are. Maybe it would be better to concentrate on making friends with the girls who were in your intake.’

Lucy would be only too happy for this to happen, but all those girls seem to know each other from primary school and have expressed no interest in her. And the boys do nothing but shout and pull her plaits. At the very least, Adele is a useful buffer between her and bullies.

‘But I want Adele to come,’ she says mulishly and, to her mother’s surprise, flounces out of the room.

Later that night she gets up to use the bathroom and pauses on the landing. She can hear her parents talking through the open kitchen door.

‘I mean, we know this was how it would be if we sent her to the local comp,’ her father says. ‘That’s why we did it, isn’t it? To expose her to a breadth of social experiences. Vital, with her being an only, we decided.’

‘I know, Jeffrey, but…’ Her mother says something she can’t quite catch, but it sounds as though it ends in ‘rough’.

‘It’ll burn itself out,’ her father says calmly. ‘These types of friendships always do. It’s just the thrill of the unfamiliar. Completely normal as developmental stages go.’

‘What if it doesn’t?’

‘It will. Just try and be a bit forbearing, for now.’

So Adele is formally invited to tea at the Gibsons’ house three days later, on a Friday. The table is set with a linen cloth, and there are napkins. They eat chicken casserole – ‘Euh, what even is this?’ Adele grumbles through a mouthful of food when Felicity is out of earshot – followed by apple crumble and custard. After the meal, the girls go up to the top floor of the house where Lucy has her bedroom, along with a playroom and her own bathroom.

‘You have three rooms?’ Adele is incredulous. ‘Three whole rooms just for you?’

‘Yes.’ Lucy nods.

‘What about your brother and sisters?’

‘I don’t have any.’

‘What – none at all? Not even half ones?’

Lucy shakes her head, while Adele spins round on the spot, taking in the heavy lined curtains in pink and white chintz, the thick carpet, the built-in bookshelves. On the wall is a large framed sampler embroidered with ‘Lucinda Katherine Mary, 13th March 1984’.

Adele points at it. ‘Who’s that?’

‘That’s me. I’m Lucy for short.’

‘Three names?’ scoffs Adele, as though this is sheer greed.

‘Katherine and Mary are my two grandmothers. I’m named after them.’

‘So what’s your mum called?’

‘Felicity.’

Adele scrunches her nose with distaste. ‘My mum’s called Dawn.’ Her eyes alight on the camcorder that Lucy was given for her eleventh birthday. ‘Oh wow… wicked! Shall we make a TV show with it?’

‘Like what?’ asks Lucy uncertainly. The sad fact is that she’s never really used the camcorder, because making videos is no fun on your own. A lot of the things in the playroom are more or less useless when there’s no one else to play with.

‘Let’s do something like Noel’s House Party. Except we can call it Dell and Lu’s House Party.’

‘What’s that?’

‘You know, on telly. Mr Blobby. Everyone watches Mr Blobby!’

Lucy doesn’t. Her parents think Saturday-night light entertainment shows rot the brain, and she reads a book or does a jigsaw puzzle instead.

‘He’s, like, a character. He’s pink and covered in big blobs and he talks like this – “Blobby, blobby, blobby”.’ She makes her eyes go big and googly and adopts a strange robotic voice. Lucy starts giggling, and finds that once she has started it’s difficult to stop. Adele giggles too, a hysterical yelping which just makes Lucy laugh harder. ‘You film me being Blobby and then we’ll make me go backwards,’ Adele suggests, showing Lucy how to rewind the footage and play it in reverse.

Adele’s Mr Blobby voice and the walk are even funnier this way, and they spend the rest of the evening falling around clutching their sides, until Felicity Gibson taps on the door and announces that it’s time to drive Adele home.

‘We’re best friends now,’ Adele announces, with an endearing mixture of solemnity and confidence, before they head downstairs. She crooks her little finger and links it through Lucy’s. ‘Pinky promise.’

‘Pinky promise,’ agrees Lucy happily. She’s had so much fun that she’s quite prepared to overlook the fact that she saw Adele taking one of the silver christening bracelets from her jewellery box and secreting it in her skirt pocket.

Later that evening, Lucy sits with the jewellery box on her lap, looking at the square tray of red velvet where the silver bracelet used to be. An empty space created by Adele taking something from her. She experiences a strange, haunting sense of premonition, although she has no idea what it could mean.

‘This is my wife, Lucinda.’

As Lucy has anticipated, necks crane discreetly to see exactly who has managed to bag the eminent Mr Marcus Wheedon FRCS, celebrated interventional cardiac surgeon. Saviour of at least one member of the cabinet and – it’s rumoured – a senior member of the royal family. The frank scrutiny of the assembled diners towards her make her feel like the painfully shy eleven-year-old who arrived at Redgate High with no friends and who shrank from the stares that her glasses, her height and her pale blonde hair attracted. Next to her, Marcus is like her shield, his confidence wrapping her in a protective cloak.

They are at a dinner party at the home of Marcus’s sister, Fiona, in her large detached house on the edge of Wandsworth Common. Lucy has known her sister-in-law since she and Marcus first married, and she remembers meeting one of the couples – Fiona’s friend Jane Standish and her husband Robin – at a Christmas drinks party, but the other people round the table are all strangers. The women wear jeans and casual tops, rendering her instantly overdone in her black figure-hugging Roland Mouret and teetering heels. But Marcus likes her to wear a dress when they go out.

‘Lord knows you slob around the house in your jeans and sweats far too much as it is,’ he chides her. ‘It’s not too much to ask to see you in something feminine is it, Lucinda? Every once in a while?’

That’s Marcus’s refrain if he ever senses the possibility of not getting his way – ‘Is it too much to ask?’ In doing so, he makes himself seem the reasonable one and Lucy, in wanting to dress for comfort rather than show, unreasonable.

‘Besides,’ he adds, because Marcus knows how to charm better than anybody, ‘You should show off your fabulous figure. I want everyone to know how lucky I am.’

He is such an admirer of Lucy’s willowy but curvy form that he cites it as one of many reasons for them not to have children: ‘Think what pregnancy and childbirth will do to your body. I know; I saw it on my obs and gynae rotation as a junior doctor. You don’t want that,’ he assures her, meaning he doesn’t want that.

They’re late arriving at the dinner, of course, because Marcus was operating. But Lucy has discovered that people are only too willing to forgive a late arrival if they think you’re saving a life, and everyone round the table beams when Marcus announces that he’s come straight from an emergency quadruple bypass.

‘Sorry… sorry!’ He holds his arms wide in exaggerated bonhomie.

‘Poor you,’ one woman with glossy dark hair murmurs. ‘You must be exhausted.’

‘Get that man a glass of champers, stat!’ one of the male guest chimes in. The Wheedons have missed their starter of crab cakes and arrived just as the boeuf bourguignon is being served. Marcus is seated next to the woman with the dark hair, who cups her hand and stares at him in frank awe. Lucy is next to Robin Standish, a quiet, serious academic with a weak chin and glasses. He, at least, doesn’t seem to be affected by the godlike aura of Marcus Wheedon.

‘Shame you had to miss the crab,’ he says equably, pouring her wine while everyone fusses over making sure Marcus is served the vegetables first. ‘Must be a pain, being permanently on the on-call surgeon’s diet.’ He raises an eyebrow and Lucy smiles back at him. She catches sight of Marcus watching her, and smooths a loose lock of creamy blonde hair behind her ear, pretending to examine the silver mark on her knife. Robin’s expression switches to one of combined pity and curiosity. She knows he’s pigeonholed her as a trophy wife and, sadly, he’s right. Mrs Lucinda Wheedon (Marcus never calls her Lucy) has always been pretty, stylish and elegant, and completely in the shadow of her overachieving husband.

As the plates are cleared and chocolate mousse is served, one of the women leans across the table to Lucy. ‘Do you and your husband have children?’

Lucy is about to shake her head, but before she has a chance, Marcus cuts across her.

‘Two,’ he says. ‘One of each.’

‘They’re my stepchildren,’ Lucy adds, as always feeling the need to explain this.

The woman doesn’t even try to hide her curiosity. ‘How long have you two been married?’

‘Five years,’ Lucy murmurs, dipping her head.

‘So… didn’t you want any of your own?’

Marcus is watching her over the rim of his claret glass. She shakes her head at her inquisitor, as she is expected to do. Because having had two children with his first wife, Amber, Marcus was adamant that further offspring were quite unnecessary. Surplus to requirements. ‘More than two will be too much work,’ he had said firmly. ‘Not to mention the expense.’

Lucy didn’t point out that plenty of doctors on a similar salary managed to provide for three or even four children more than adequately.

‘And, anyway, there isn’t the space,’ he had added. (This last reason despite their house having four bedrooms: one for them, one for each of his existing children and one for guests; rarely used).

As a result, alternate weekend visits from fourteen-year-old Tom and eleven-year-old Lydia are the extent of Lucy’s parenting experience, and likely to remain so.

‘You’re free to work full-time then,’ Robin says. ‘What is it you do for a living?’

The dreaded ‘What do you do?’ question. Lucy’s heart sinks. The truth is that her job is to make Marcus’s extremely pressured working life easier. By anticipating and dealing with any minor problems that can’t be allowed to disrupt his day.

‘At the moment I’m studying part-time,’ she tells him. ‘Social Anthropology.’ The part time structure of the course had been a compromise Marcus had insisted on: full time would have meant her being away from home too much in his opinion.

‘Ah. That sounds very interesting,’ he says kindly. ‘What sort of career will it lead to when you’ve finished?’

Before she can stop herself, Lucy has let out a bitter little laugh. ‘Sadly, there’s only room for one career in our household. And, according to my husband, Humanities degrees are pointless and “arty-farty”.’

Across the table, Marcus sets his wine glass down slowly. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse my wife.’ Even though the remark is addressed at the assembled guests, his gaze is directed straight at Lucy. ‘Jokes never were her forte.’

‘But, actually, there are lots of careers you can do with a master’s in Social Anthropology,’ Lucy has turned back to Robin but raises her voice slightly so that her husband can still hear her. ‘Human resources, charity work, NGOs, the criminal justice system…’

Fiona appears from the kitchen with a big tray of cups. ‘Coffee in the sitting room, I think. It’s a bit too chilly for the garden.’

Her husband, Jonathan, stands up and the other guests start to get to their feet too.

‘A word please, darling,’ Marcus says to Lucy, with a rictus smile. She follows him out into the hall, where he grabs her elbow and jerks it sharply upwards. ‘Why are you always so intent on making a scene?’

‘I was not making a scene!’ Luc. . .