What We Did

by Natalie Chandler

Genres: Women's Fiction; Psychological Thrillers; Suspense

Synopsis

ONE SMALL SCRATCH AND THE SECRETS WILL COME POURING OUT . . .

Jenna has spent the last twenty-five years trying to forget what happened to her as a teenager. Trying to forget what they did.

But it has always been there - the mistake the four friends made.

Now it has taken another life, Jenna has the opportunity to make amends. But if she comes forward now, the truth could shatter her marriage, her family and the friendships she's held onto all these years.

And what if she's about to make the biggest mistake of all?

Addictive, chilling and twisting, WHAT WE DID is the brand-new psychological suspense from bestselling author of BELIEVE ME NOT. For fans of LUCKIEST GIRL ALIVE, THE LYING GAME and THE PROMISE.
_______

'An impressive debut with an original premise. I found it utterly compelling'
EMILY FREUD

'A gripping, frightening, knotty mystery'
ELLE CONNEL

'The unfolding twists kept me on the edge until the end'
STACEY THOMAS

(P) 2023 Headline Publishing Group Ltd

Release date: March 30, 2023

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 384

Sample

This morning is different to all the others. Today is the day Jenna’s fears breach daylight and begin to destroy the walls of her carefully constructed world.

The usual sounds of Loki’s cheerful panting, the percolator’s steady drip and rushing, heavy footsteps thumping against the upstairs floorboards, all of it has faded into the background. Their unwelcome replacements seem louder: blood pounding hard enough to burst an eardrum, the unsteady rasp of breathing not quite under control, the rhythmic drumming of fingers against the worktop.

It has been a long time since Jenna experienced a panic attack, but she is on the verge of one now, and the unexpected intruder has robbed her of competence. She tries to count, an old habit taught by a long-banished shrink, but all that does is remind her how late she is. She hates being late as much as she hates the well-concealed anxiety it inevitably causes.

Weekday mornings in the Taylor household run strictly to a schedule. There is much to be organised in the short time before their exodus and efficiency is a necessity. Procrastination is the enemy at all times for Jenna, but especially on a Monday.

‘Love? You OK?’ Zach’s voice is soft as always, heavy with sleep, but it’s enough to break through the intruding sounds.

Out of the corner of her eye, Jenna sees him survey the chaos of the kitchen-diner, the pristine pearl of their home, today cluttered with last night’s plates, unironed laundry, disorganised paperwork, dirty glasses.

‘Why are you tapping like that?’

She counts the words in her husband’s sentences. One, two, three . . . She hasn’t done so for years, not since the urge had gradually faded at university, but it comforts her now, as it did before.

‘Jenna?’ More insistent, Zach moves towards her. His expressive face shows concern for her, for her pallor, the dark circles swelling beneath her eyes, the sharp, frantic movements as she tries to collect herself. He is still damp from the shower, never bothering to make sure he is fully dried, and she skirts away before his moist skin can touch hers.

Loki launches himself joyously on his playmate, giving Jenna a chance to take control of her agitated movements. She manages to slow her breathing, forces herself to look at him.

‘Sorry. Miles away.’

Zach grabs the day’s crumpled newspaper from the dining table, oblivious to Jenna’s flinch as she glimpses the headline again. He flips straight to the sport, a careless scan of the pages.

The bold black print burns into Jenna’s eyes. The words feel contaminating, her skin crawling as if she needs to scrub it clean.

‘You don’t look well,’ Zach observes quietly.

‘Neither would you if you’d had no sleep.’

Zach blinks, taking a step back, allowing her personal space from his towering height looming above her. ‘I didn’t hear you tossing and turning.’

‘You wouldn’t hear a particularly localised tornado ripping through the bedroom,’ Jenna mutters to avoid the question, wincing internally when she sees Zach’s shoulders droop in response to her sharpness. She hates herself for the way her words so often hurt the only man who has ever been able to love her. She wishes she knew how to stop the cutting remarks, how to tell him just how deep her feelings run beneath her polished veneer. She means it when she tells Zach she loves him, but no one ever taught her the way to show it.

Unable to think of a way to apologise, she deals the percolator a sharp smack as it grinds to a premature halt.

Zach rallies himself, gently steering her aside, and takes the machine to task with a little more compassion. She offers him a conciliatory smile, as if it could ever be enough after everything he puts up with.

‘You should’ve woken me if you couldn’t sleep,’ he chides lightly. ‘I’d have kept you company.’

Jenna turns away, the smile sliding from her lips as they tense. How can she wake him, with her limbs paralysed by invisible bonds, the oxygen sapped from her lungs and her heart about to pound itself to arrest? She is forty years old and terrorised by the fear of a young child.

‘Want to talk about whatever’s keeping you awake?’

She shakes her head, not trusting herself to speak, eyes firmly focused on the ham-and-cheese sandwich before her as if she will make a terrible error if she dares look away from it.

Maybe she will never want to talk about it.

The open bottle of wine next to the hob calls to her, just to get her moving, and she nearly reaches for a glass before common sense intervenes.

No. She will not become like her mother.

‘Maybe you should make a GP appointment? Ask for some sleeping pills?’ Zach suggests, forming his words too carefully, so they sound rehearsed. Maybe they are. ‘You haven’t slept properly in far too long. Ever since Olivia’s funeral.’

‘Don’t!’ Jenna’s voice rises sharply.

She cannot have that conversation. She can’t acknowledge just what the death of beautiful, wild, brave Olivia, a friend whose loyalty knew no bounds, has caused.

Zach takes another step back, a chasm of distance between them.

‘Just leave it, Zach,’ she begs. ‘I’ve too much to do. I don’t have time for this.’

He absently scratches his pot belly, an unwanted fortieth-birthday present earlier in the year, and jerks his hand away as if shocked to find the small pouch of fat on his otherwise angular frame.

‘We’ll make time this evening, then.’

It is meant to be a comfort, but it feels like a threat. Jenna doesn’t reply, for Zach’s sake. She keeps her back turned until he has retreated upstairs, Loki bounding after him, to make sure neither of them glimpses the tears shining in her eyes.

She blinks them away.

She never cries. The past wasted too many tears.

The newspaper is abandoned once again on the worktop, and she finds herself reaching for it, a compulsion she can’t control. A small headshot of the journalist, Amy Donald, sits beneath the article, an attractive blonde with piercing eyes, arms folded, chin tilted just slightly upward. She looks effortlessly capable of achieving whatever she sets her sights on. She looks like the person Jenna tries so hard to be.

For just a moment the Sabatier in Jenna’s hand, wicked blade stalled above the block of Cheddar, is too tempting. She imagines herself running it gently along the velvety underbelly of her forearm, watching the skin part and swell with crimson as the release flows from her.

The old scars are mostly faded now. It would be easy to make new ones.

By the time her son erupts into the room, she has placed the paper and the knife beyond arm’s reach and is carrying on with her tasks. Lando throws his kit bag casually aside, not noticing that the thud of it landing makes Jenna jump. He attacks an apple as if it has offended him, crunching so hard little slivers fly into the air with each enormous bite. He is taller than her now, destined for Zach’s height, a presence that seizes both space and air.

She has no idea how her little boy has become this shaggy-haired savage, hands and feet too large for his body to coordinate, limbs constantly creeping out of the ends of shirts and trousers, his father’s walnut eyes prepared for mutiny. Their mutual love of sci-fi makes his chosen name rather more appropriate than it had felt when Zach had begged and Jenna had given up caring.

He is Zach, through and through. At a glance, or with more consideration, few would pair them as mother and son. Lando had been her slip-up baby. A careless night of drinking leading to the precious slip of tiny pills remaining snug in the bedside drawer and, before she knew it, a life was dependent on her. So dependent.

‘I heard you shouting last night,’ Lando says as he rifles through the fridge, as casually as if telling her it was raining.

Jenna angles her body so he can’t see her face. ‘I wasn’t shouting.’

‘It woke me. You kept saying “I don’t want to”.’

‘Must have been a nightmare, I don’t remember it.’ She should apologise for disturbing him, but the words don’t come.

Lando shrugs, massacring a brioche with slaps of a Nutella-loaded butter knife. ‘Will you write me a note saying why I haven’t done my maths homework?’

‘Why haven’t you done your maths homework?’

He rolls his eyes, the answer apparently obvious. ‘’Cos I was too tired from you waking me to get up early and do it!’

Jenna is about to argue, be a better parent and tell him he’d had plenty of time for homework the previous evening and he will have to accept the consequences of not having done it.

She can’t summon the energy for the rebuke. She doesn’t care about maths homework or teaching responsibility this morning. There is very little she cares about this morning.

She writes the note.

It is a manic dash through the Islington traffic to deliver Lando to the outstanding-rated state school they had finally selected for him, rising above the inner-city comprehensive jungle with its middle-class beacons of rugby and Latin.

Zach had clamoured for a private school, but Jenna had been immovable. The world had changed since their education; extortionate fees no longer equalled success. They lived in a good neighbourhood with decent schools – that’s why they had chosen the house, after all – and they should support their community.

None of those reasons are the real one, not even close, but they make her feel better, more in control. Lando won’t need to hide the sort of secrets she guards so closely.

‘Have a good day,’ she remembers to say before the passenger door is flung open. ‘Remember you have swimming after school.’

A dramatic eyeroll. ‘When do I ever forget swimming?’

Lando escapes the Audi without so much as a wave and disappears into the throng of grey blazers. Jenna lets the engine idle as she flips down the visor mirror and begins slapping on make-up, layering too much concealer and foundation in an attempt to hide her burdens. One eye streams furiously as the unsteady mascara wand jabs it, smudging the liquid eyeliner, and her lipstick breaks as she tries to trace the outline of lips too generous for her square face.

‘Fuck it!’ she shrieks, causing several passing kids to leap away from proximity to her car.

She hurls the make-up back into her tote, not bothering to zip it safely into its own bag. Her powder will leave perfumed crumbs all over the silk lining. She doesn’t care.

Her hair is usually sentenced to being perfectly straight, unruly waves banished by GHDs, but she has forgotten the daily ritual. She drags it into a messy bun she tells herself is deliberate, the honey hues that deny her natural mousy tones dull and brittle. She takes hold of the steering wheel, getting a grip both physically and mentally.

Work is just off Upper Street, a short drive too long to endure. Horns beep as she makes careless manoeuvres; cyclists yell curses when she strays into their assigned lane. Addison Residential has its own parking, awkward bays even on a good day. Eventually she abandons the car across two spaces.

‘Jenna! I need you!’ Of course Hugo would choose today to show his face. The self-titled chief exec prefers to spend his time haunting the newer Clapham branch these days, trusting Jenna to run the north London office in his absence.

‘Be right there,’ she calls, this time managing to bite back the less amenable words that rise to her lips. She finds it easier to control her sharpness at work, where her acting skills are used for influence rather than to conceal.

Hugo is safely behind his large desk, deliberately bigger than hers. He is the sort of attractive man who doesn’t need to try, but effort shines from his perfectly tailored suit and handmade loafers, matching his expensive haircut and gleaming smile, smooth skin bronzed as much from regular sunbed usage as his frequent jaunts to the Amalfi coast.

On the gleaming walnut surface, another daily paper glares up at her and, as hard as she tries not to look at it, the words leap out at her.

SEX, DRUGS AND SCANDAL AT TOP PRIVATE SCHOOL

‘Jenna!’ It appears Hugo has been speaking as she was attempting to read the article upside down.

‘Have you read that?’ she demands.

His expression tells her he hasn’t even looked at it.

‘It’s our school, Hugo.’ She grabs it, thrusting the headline into his face. ‘Halewood House is being exposed in a national campaign.’

‘Exposed for what?’ He snatches it but doesn’t even glance at the story before tossing it back on to his desk.

‘All the shit that went on.’

Hugo hisses a sigh between his perfect teeth, his broad shoulders straightening as he tenses. ‘Get a grip, Jenna. School was decades ago, and it’s the last thing I want to talk about. Can we keep our minds on more urgent matters? This is a bloody important day!’

She has no choice but to snap back to attention, pretend she is at the top of her game. Hugo has been her friend for more years than she cares to remember but, technically, he is her boss and it matters that she maintains her professional edge in front of him. He can’t be allowed to see what lurks beneath.

Addison Residential is a boutique estate agency, representing only the top echelons of the housing ladder, and multimillion-pound properties are as awkward to sell as their prospective owners are to assure. As senior partner, the pressure to close deals is intense, unyielding, but Jenna wields her reputation proudly, carrying the weight with a smile and a bounce in her step that fall away the moment she signs off for the day and the motivation of her career fades.

She is just wondering what makes today so important when Hugo coughs pointedly, flying hands creating words of their own as he indicates his own face. ‘Have you used a mirror this morning? You can’t greet a prince looking like that!’

She can’t let him see she has forgotten all about the minor Middle Eastern royal keen to snap up a Knightsbridge pied-á-terre for his summer jaunts. She never forgets.

‘Have you been out drinking all night?’ asks Hugo.

‘I’ve been having trouble sleeping,’ she sighs. ‘I’ll grab an espresso and redo my make-up, all right?’

‘A Xanax wouldn’t go amiss either.’ Hugo is a firm believer in the power of tranquillisers.

‘Can I take the paper?’

‘You can do whatever you want, as long as you sell that bloody flat.’

Jenna already knows it will take too much effort to shift the tired apartment at such an optimistic asking price. Another blow to her professional pride.

Dismissed, she shoves the paper into her capacious handbag and escapes to the Ladies to assess the damage. Worse than she’d thought. Lines that have appeared seemingly overnight battle for space, competing with swollen shadows almost meeting her high cheekbones. Usually, her forget-me-not eyes are her best feature, and she regularly exploits them to her full advantage to dazzle uncertain buyers, but today they are as dull and lifeless as her complexion.

Frantically chewing gum to rid her mouth of the bitter tang of fear, she attempts a rapid repair job, shaking hands hampering her progress until she finally gives up. She can claim illness, a sudden onset she is prepared to gamely battle through for her client.

Maybe she is ill. Would that explain the sweat-drenched pillow and the erratic heartbeat? Could illness be the cause of all this?

‘Jen?’ The door creaks open to reveal Hugo’s face. ‘Sure you’re OK?’

‘I’ll be fine.’

‘Sorry for snapping. And for saying you look like shit. Do you want me to take the appointment?’

Jenna makes herself smile in reply. She and Hugo are too similar to have an easy relationship, but they have steered Addison through turbulent waters since he persuaded Jenna to leave Foxtons. She can’t afford for them to fall out now.

‘As if I’d trust you with such a big sale.’ She forces lightness into her tone.

‘We can both have the rest of the day off if you get an offer.’

And what, exactly, would she do with a day of no distractions?

Usually, Jenna’s spirits lift as she drives down the wide avenue lined with handsome Edwardian terraces. They are uniformed by bay windows that glow with warm, welcoming light, white sashes and golden brickwork. Even the front paths of terracotta mosaic tiles meeting the pavements are identical, in upkeep as much as design. The avenue basks in its appearance, assuring each resident: you are safe here.

Except now she isn’t sure she is.

The silence as she closes the door is deafening. Jenna finds herself craving company and solitude with equal desperation. Loki’s ecstatic welcome would have been wonderful, but Zach’s trendy office is dog friendly, so Loki happily goes to work each day and plays with his friends, human and canine.

She shouts a greeting to Lando, receives no response, as usual. He returns home independently, either from school or swimming training, and shuts himself away for his gaming fix. She wonders if the pressure of competitive swimming is getting to him, but she doesn’t know how to ask him in a way that won’t result in another blazing row.

She moves swiftly about the ground floor, flicking on the TV, the kitchen radio, setting the washing machine off half full and loading the dishwasher without a thought for careful order. Anything for noise.

The wine hasn’t moved since morning. She had half hoped it would have tactfully shuffled off to a corner, but there it is, waiting for her. There is only a large glassful left; it would get her through the lonely hours until Zach returns and Lando emerges from his lair.

Turning on her heel, reminding herself how decisive she is, she leaves the kitchen and strides up the stairs. Admittedly, her resolve weakens as she tentatively enters her son’s room, forcing herself to knock but not waiting for an invitation.

She perches on the edge of Lando’s duvet, running her palm over the cartoon images he hasn’t yet grown out of in pretence of smoothing it down. She counts each character until her hands no longer shake quite so noticeably.

Lando spins in his gaming chair, brow knitted at the presence of his mother. He smells of chlorine and too much deodorant, his hair still damp and curling wildly. One hand clutches a controller while the other feeds mounds of popcorn into his mouth, his hunger insatiable.

His finger jabs a button, and his dual screens immediately go black as he snatches off his oversized headphones.

‘What?’ he asks after a moment.

How can she explain that she just wants to see him, to remind herself that this home is where she belongs, that she has everything she needs within these walls?

‘Just wondered how swimming went today.’

He shrugs, as if it is no big deal that he has been selected to train for the under-fourteens national championships. He doesn’t seem to mind the punishing schedule elite sport demands – three early-morning sessions, three afternoons, only Sundays off – but he doesn’t discuss his new-found passion with his mother. It is Zach who gets the details, the high and lows and the difficulty of tumble turns.

‘The head coach was there today. He said my times were good.’

‘And was school OK?’ she tries.

An impatient sigh, another jab at the game controller to silence the sounds coming from the headphones. They sound more like human conversation than video-game weapons.

‘I learned how to say “fuck” in Lithuanian.’ He is much less keen to be in a classroom than in a pool or on a pitch; it was a constant battle to keep his attendance acceptable.

‘Useful for the future, I’m sure.’ She curses herself the moment the words leave her and she sees her son’s face shut down instantly, his eyes flashing retaliation.

‘We were stuck in the hall most of the day doing a stupid workshop. This woman banging on about what we should do if someone asks for nudes or if we get touched up and all that shit.’ Lando’s cheeks colour, beyond his control.

‘That’s important.’

‘We’re not idiots.’

‘It happens more easily than you think.’

‘Like you would know.’ He rolls his eyes.

Jenna’s mouth opens to shoot back a response, but the words don’t come this time. Saliva catches in her throat, making her cough violently, inadvertently saving her from making another mistake.

‘Mum, what do you really want?’ Lando asks, a noticeable bite in his tone.

‘Who’s your next rugby match against?’ she gasps, eyes streaming from the coughing fit, or something more painful.

A shrug. He knows she is grasping at straws for a conversation topic. ‘School in Hackney. We’re on the Marshes. You coming?’

‘If you want me to.’

‘Not bothered either way.’ His walnut eyes study her and, for a moment, it seems he will ask what’s wrong.

Abruptly, he spins back to face the waiting screens.

‘What’s for dinner?’

That is her dismissal, and she has no option but to return downstairs, to turn the radio volume up further and close all the curtains against the menace of the dark. The bottle invites her again, a sly offering, but she fights the instinctive reaction just long enough to convince herself that she is in control. Only then does she allow herself to pour the glass.

She pulls Hugo’s newspaper from her bag, crumpled and stained with sprinkles of her face powder. The pages have been folded hurriedly and it is not Amy Donald’s revelations that look up at her but another article entirely.

‘Righting the Wrongs’ – Drew Merchant on education, tradition and the twenty-first century

Andrew Merchant ruffled a few feathers when he was appointed head of one of London’s most exclusive public schools, doing away with straw boaters and boarding-house initiations in favour of coeducation and international qualifications. A rising star in the world of education who gained recognition for turning around some of the UK’s worst comprehensives, Merchant always intended to return to the elite school system, and he continues to build his reputation at the helm of an institution where time has stood still for centuries. Rumours, however, are beginning to circulate of simmering political ambitions and the fiercely ambitious Merchant may not wait long to swap the classroom for the House of Commons.

Andrew Merchant. Jenna knows that name. Another ghost from too long ago. She looks at the accompanying colour picture. It has been taken in a cobbled quadrangle, surrounded by Georgian buildings every bit as handsome as the man smiling up at the camera, his features instantly recognisable.

He is surrounded by children of all ages, heights and races, all dressed in expensive uniforms and grinning cooperatively. Close by his side, the youngest child, a little girl with a serious face and a pixie haircut, seems about to slide her hand into his, a trusting acceptance of her headmaster.

Jenna holds the paper closer to her face, her heart jolting as she realises she knows the girl as well as the man. Her pulse continues to pound as she searches for an answer to why the picture makes her feel so uneasy, but nothing is forthcoming. She picks away at it, even after she banishes the newspaper to the recycling, but it remains beyond her reach, shrouded.

By evening, another bottle of Malbec is becoming harder to ignore. Dinner is a hasty pasta bake she slaps on to the table, not even accompanied by a salad. Lando pokes at a sliver of red pepper in disgust but stops short of complaining after seeing his mother’s clenched jaw. Even Loki has abandoned his usual post, sitting on Zach’s feet under the table, for the safety of his basket. Zach looks as puzzled by his dog’s wariness as he is by the slapdash meal.

‘Still tired, love?’ he asks, forking huge mouthfuls of tasteless penne, dropping tomato sauce on his white T-shirt. The daily race between father and son to see who can eat the fastest is not the source of tension this evening, but Jenna still catches herself waiting to deliver her usual rebuke, despite her best intentions.

She nods shortly, unwilling to voice a reply. She is counting the words in each sentence again, listening to the beat rather than the content, the old habit becoming stronger. She doesn’t stop herself.

‘I’ve lost my goggles,’ Lando declares, as if new ones will appear immediately.

It takes a moment to understand the statement is directed at her. ‘You haven’t lost them; they’re in the utility room, where they always are.’

‘I’ve looked, they’re not there.’

‘You’ll have man-looked, like your father when he can’t find his keys on the key hook.’

‘You’re not allowed to use gender-related generalisations now.’

Zach nearly chokes, laughing so hard his eyes well with tears of mirth. Jenna forces a smile. It’s funny, she knows it’s funny, to hear such words from the mouth of her thirteen-year-old, but she can’t summon a laugh.

‘Oh, mate, that was class,’ Zach declares when he finally calms down. ‘Wasn’t it, love?’

Jenna forces another smile in her son’s direction. He is too busy eating to notice. She doesn’t use terms of endearment, sticking rigidly to proper names. Zach peppers his speech with ‘loves’ and ‘pals’ that sounded warm and genuine alongside his flat vowels and insistence on calling rolls ‘breadcakes’, easy affection to m. . .