Home > The Silent Friend

The Silent Friend
Author: Diane Jeffrey

 


Prologue


I wonder how you knew. I keep replaying our whole conversation in my head, but I can’t pinpoint what gave it away. I’m glad you found out. Relieved. I should have told you the truth months ago, but I’ve grown fond of you and I was scared of losing you.

When you carry a shameful secret inside you, it becomes a heavy burden that weighs you down. The longer you put off telling the truth, the harder it gets. You try to paint as accurate a picture as possible, but in the end you add another coat of lies. And then another. Until you almost believe in the alternative reality you’ve depicted.

You know what it’s like. You were also hiding something. You tried to tell me your secret, but I was the last person you should have told. I reacted badly. I was unsympathetic. What I should have said was that none of what happened was your fault. I am culpable, but not you.

If I could go back, would I do things differently? I don’t think so. What choice did I have? If I’d been honest with you from the start, you would never have befriended me. Our friendship was important to me. I’m truly sorry that things turned out this way. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me.

 

 

Chapter 1


7 MONTHS BEFORE


Laura


As Laura entered the flat, her phone pinged with a text. She groaned. It was time to make up her mind. But after mulling things over for the last fortnight, she was still indecisive. Kicking the front door closed behind her, she dumped her handbag and shopping on the floor.

It was always dark and gloomy in her flat, even on sunny days like that Saturday. Although poky, it was her refuge, and at the end of a working day, she liked to shut herself off from the outside world and relax with a book or a film. She kept the place obsessively clean and tidy, although no amount of bleach and polish masked the smell of damp.

‘I’m home,’ she called out, shrugging out of her coat and slipping off her shoes. Harry barely acknowledged her from his usual place on the sofa.

‘Lazy cat,’ she muttered affectionately, picking up her bags and making her way into the kitchen.

She put away the shopping before fishing her mobile out of her handbag to read the message. Just as she’d thought. It was from Claire.

You have to come.

Please.

xoxo

 

Laura couldn’t go. How could she get out of it this time? Last year, Claire had found cheap flights from Belfast International to Alicante. She’d tried to talk Laura into going with her and the others. A whole week in August. It would be great craic, according to Claire, all that sea, sun and sangria.

Her mother had said something catty. She usually did. How her father had put up with her for so long was beyond Laura. She’d been like that even before he died, although she became worse afterwards, when he was no longer around to keep her in check. Laura remembered her mother’s words as if it were yesterday. ‘Better ditch the bikini,’ she’d said. ‘They’ll mistake you for a beached whale.’

Laura wasn’t nearly as fat as her mother liked to make out. A little overweight, yes, but she was surely of average build for a citizen of Northern Ireland. And she didn’t even own a bikini. Cursed with a ghoulishly white Celtic complexion, Laura tended to stay out of the sun. Which was one of the reasons she didn’t go to Spain.

Even so, she’d been flattered that her colleagues had asked her to go to Alicante with them and grateful that Claire included her all the time. They were poles apart, she and Claire. Laura had freckles, eyes the colour of seaweed and scraggly ginger hair whereas Claire was skinny with cobalt blue eyes and long shiny jet-black hair. She was beautiful. Popular, too. Everyone at the library adored her.

In the end, Laura had lied. She said she’d been invited to the wedding of one of her cousins. She had twelve cousins on her mother’s side, and they were all married except for one: Declan. Same-sex marriage would have to be legalized in Northern Ireland before Declan and his partner could get married. But Laura’s colleagues knew nothing about her family and so, as implausible as that excuse was, it got her out of the trip.

Afterwards, she’d listened to the suntanned girls reminiscing about their holiday in Spain. They talked about nothing else for a week. The weather was lovely! We were bladdered! The paella was cracker! Spanish men have such firm arses! It had all made Laura rather envious.

In turn, Laura told them a bit about the fictitious wedding. She’d spent hours during the holidays devouring novels. As the main characters tied the knot at the end of a few of her summer reads, she used that for inspiration.

She made herself a cup of tea now. Sitting next to Harry on the sofa and cradling the mug in her hands, Laura thought of all the reasons she couldn’t go this year. A week in France.

‘Who would look after you for a start?’ she said to Harry, stroking his soft fur.

Plus, she didn’t have a passport. Deep down she knew these were excuses rather than reasons not to go. She could easily apply for a passport and her neighbour, Mrs Doherty, would happily take in the cat.

She’d have to make up a story. Perhaps she could buy her flights – Claire said they were cheap – and then drop out at the last minute. One of her uncles could die or her mum could break her leg. Then it wouldn’t look like she hadn’t wanted to go in the first place.

Lyon. That was this year’s destination. There were direct flights from Dublin. Laura had never been to France. She’d never been abroad unless you counted their family holidays on the mainland. They’d taken the ferry to Scotland – from Larne to Stranraer – four or five times when she was little, when her dad was still alive. But she’d never taken the plane.

And this was the main reason Laura didn’t want to go. She had an irrational fear of flying. Her stomach pitched at the thought of boarding an aircraft. She couldn’t stand the idea of putting her life into the hands of a pilot she couldn’t see. She knew it was safer to travel by plane than by any other means of transport, but that didn’t help. She didn’t mind taking the boat. She could swim if the worst came to the worst, or at least stay afloat until help came. But if something went wrong in the plane, she couldn’t fly. Or hover. This was why she’d bottled out of going to Spain the previous year. Silly, but there it was.

But France tempted her more than Spain. A lot more. Laura was a Francophile. She’d taken French A-level and gone on to read French at Queen’s. She read novels in French, her favourite writers being Guy de Maupassant and Marcel Pagnol; she watched old French films, especially by New Wave cineastes; and listened to France Info every day on the radio. She’d always wanted to go to France. It was just that she’d imagined travelling there by boat as far as Scotland or England, then by train and on the Eurostar.

Lyon. What did she know about Lyon? Not a lot. Nothing whatsoever, come to think of it. It was quite far south, wasn’t it? She googled it on her smartphone and scrolled through the Wikipedia page. South-East France, foot of the Alps. The basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourvière … Silk weaving … Fête des Lumières festival … Frères Lumière cinema … Roman theatre … Interpol … gastronomy.

Claire wanted to go to Lyon simply because The Naturals were playing there in August. The local rock band was playing on their doorstep in March – in the SSE Arena in Belfast, which would have been a lot handier, but tickets had sold out in less than ten minutes when they’d gone on sale six months previously. The Naturals were performing at two venues in France – Paris and Lyon. Claire said hotel prices in Paris for August were astronomical. So Lyon it was.

Hot Books
» House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City #1)
» A Kingdom of Flesh and Fire
» From Blood and Ash (Blood And Ash #1)
» A Million Kisses in Your Lifetime
» Deviant King (Royal Elite #1)
» Den of Vipers
» House of Sky and Breath (Crescent City #2)
» Sweet Temptation
» The Sweetest Oblivion (Made #1)
» Chasing Cassandra (The Ravenels #6)
» Wreck & Ruin
» Steel Princess (Royal Elite #2)
» Twisted Hate (Twisted #3)
» The Play (Briar U Book 3)
» The War of Two Queens (Blood and Ash #4)