by Jane Green
Also Available by Jane Green
Jemima J
Mr. Maybe
Bookends
Babyville
Straight Talking
To Have and To Hold
The Other Woman
Swapping Lives
Second Chance
The Beach House
Dune Road
Promises to Keep
Another Piece of My Heart
Family Pictures
Tempting Fate
Saving Grace
Summer Secrets
Falling
The Sunshine Sisters
BERKLEY
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
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Copyright © 2019 by Jane Green
“Readers Guide” copyright © 2019 by Penguin Random House LLC
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Green, Jane, 1968– author.
Title: The friends we keep / Jane Green.
Description: First Edition. | New York: Berkley, 2019.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018055625 | ISBN 9780399583346 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780399583353 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Women—Fiction
Classification: LCC PR6057.R3443 F75 2019 | DDC 823/.914—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018055625
First Edition: June 2019
Jacket photos: women © Laura Franco / Trevillion Images; man by Lightfield Studios / Shutterstock Images
Jacket design by Rita Frangie
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
acknowledgments
My publishing team at Berkley, including Ivan Held, Claire Zion, Christine Ball, Craig Burke, Jeanne-Marie Hudson, Jin Yu, Diana Franco, and Heather Connor. Angelina Krahn for doing such a wonderful job copyediting, and Ryan Coleman at The Story Factory for excellent notes.
Thomas Dolby, Keith Armstrong, and Paddy McAloon.
My board of directors: Robert Cary, Lisa Lampanelli, Emily Friendship, Sophie Pollman, and Dani Shapiro; the usual suspects: Nicole, Dina, Fiona, Shaggy, Charlie, and Fishy; my soul mates from another time: Bill, Helen, Rachel, and Steve. And a thank-you to Jason and Rena Pilalas and Ian and Debbie O’Malley.
My husband, Ian, and our children, who are each the great loves of my life.
And finally my agent, Shane Salerno, who goes above and beyond every minute of every day.
contents
Also Available by Jane Green
Title Page
Copyright
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Part I: The BeginningChapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Part II: The In-Between YearsChapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Part III: Present DayChapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-one
Chapter Forty-two
Chapter Forty-three
Chapter Forty-four
Chapter Forty-five
Chapter Forty-six
Chapter Forty-seven
Chapter Forty-eight
Chapter Forty-nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-one
Chapter Fifty-two
Chapter Fifty-three
Chapter Fifty-four
Chapter Fifty-five
Readers Guide
About the Author
prologue
- 2016 -
BEN
I worry that it’s too late, that I should have done this years ago instead of burying my head in the sand and letting my marriage drift. My sobriety feels different this time, and these past few months I’ve been nostalgic. I’m praying it’s not too late to make amends for the hell I’ve put her through, to start again.
I’ve been thinking about how it used to be, when we were first married, on our honeymoon when we couldn’t keep our hands off each other. The hotel staff couldn’t help but smile when they saw us—we were so in love. Those early years were so good. Finding the house in Somerset, trying for a baby, convinced that life would go our way, that we would get everything we ever wanted.
I hope to God it’s not too late for us to get back on track. Let’s face it, I’m not an impulsive man. I’m a scientist. I don’t do anything impulsively, other than the years I was drinking. But I’m sober now. My doctor said one more drink would kill me. For the first time in my life, falling off the wagon isn’t an option. I’ve had nine months without a drink, and this time I feel great. The only thing that’s not working is my marriage, and I can’t blame her. I’ve put my poor wife through hell all these years. The drinking, the blackouts, the disappearing for days at a time. I can’t believe she’s stuck by me, although if I’m honest, it’s in name only. We’ve barely spoken since I started working in London. When I’m home on the weekends, we pass each other like ships in the night. I know she’s still checking the bins for empty bottles of vodka. I thought I had made my amends to her for the years of pain, but it wasn’t enough.
I can feel her slipping away, withdrawing so completely into herself that I don’t know if there’s a way to fix things. I need to do some
thing big to try to win my wife back; I need to surprise her, to remind her of what we used to have, if there’s any hope of making it through the next twenty-five years.
I lean my head against the window of the train, speeding past the London suburbs, racing past the terraced brick houses and weeds climbing over the embankment, but I’m not seeing it. Not today. Every few seconds I pull out my phone and look at the screen, at the two boarding passes for Heathrow Monday morning, British Airways to Nice, where we’ll pick up a Hertz rental and drive up to the Colombe d’Or, the hotel where we spent our honeymoon, almost twenty-five years ago.
I’d never been to the South of France before. My wife had, of course, but not to that hotel; her parents owned a house somewhere nearby, so this was special for both of us. The pair of us were such lovebirds, we barely left the room to explore. We spent our days getting up late and eating fresh croissants on the terrace under the huge Magritte mosaic wall, lounging by the swimming pool all day, our legs entwined, barely able to concentrate on the books we had brought. She teased me for bringing science journals, but she wasn’t any more interested in the novels she had packed. We only had eyes for each other.
Her skin was so pale it was almost translucent, and her hair so red it glowed, and hung thick and long, almost touching her waist. We would stand in the pool, my wife wrapped around me like a silky coiled octopus, covering me with kisses, only breaking off to look at the fourth finger of her left hand, laughing, because she said she could not quite believe we were married.
“Evil Ben,” she’d say. “I’m married to Evil Ben!”
I’d laugh along with her, partly at the ridiculous nickname, but also because I couldn’t believe it either. I was married to one of the most beautiful girls I had ever seen, a girl who seemed so out of my league when I first saw her at university, I didn’t think I would have a hope of having a conversation with her, let alone being married to her. Married! I couldn’t believe she was mine. I couldn’t believe she had chosen me.
It’s hard to believe we’re the same people as those two lovebirds from all those years ago. It’s almost impossible to believe how happy we once were. Perhaps things wouldn’t have gotten quite so bad if I hadn’t taken this job in London. It’s never good for me to be on my own, but it was too much money to turn down. Ten more years, I thought, and then I can retire. But can we make it through the next ten years? Stupidly—Christ, how stupid I was—I thought that absence might make the heart grow fonder.
But that’s what had happened the last time I commuted. We had just moved to the house in Somerset, and were thinking about trying for a baby soon, but there was no pressure. My wife was thrilled I’d landed a job with such a prestigious pharmaceutical firm. It was a big promotion, and a big salary increase. And honestly? It was the perfect balance, most of the week in London and the weekends in this idyllic manor house with my beautiful wife. She loved it, too, in the beginning. She told anyone who would listen that our relationship was so good because it was part-time. We never took each other for granted, we had time to miss each other, and we looked forward to seeing each other.
But of course, I was on my own too much, and the pub was right next to my flat. Before long, I was rolling out of the pub every night, last man down. The only good thing was that my wife wasn’t around to nag me about it. I’d always phone her at around nine, before I got plastered, and tell her I was going to bed. Not that she had such a problem with me drinking then, but neither of us knew what a problem it would become.
She was fine with me getting drunk on the weekends. Most of the time she’d drink with me. It was the nightly beers and a triple vodka before bed that she couldn’t stand. (I never considered it a triple vodka. It was my nightly nip.) Being on my own in a London flat during the week meant I didn’t have to worry about it. If I chose to have a triple vodka, or three, before bed, no one would kick me awake throughout the night because of snoring, or look at me across a table and mutter, within earshot of everyone, that I’d had enough.
After a while, I didn’t want to go home. Being on my own in London made it easier to party with my best friend: booze. Until my boss intervened, telling me there were complaints that I was smelling of alcohol, and that if I didn’t get myself sober, they would have to fire me. It worked. I got sober. One of many, many times.
This time around, I’ve been sober the whole time I’ve been working in London. If my colleagues invite me to the pub, I turn them down. They joke about my flat being the perfect bachelor pad, but it’s lonely as hell. What’s a man like me supposed to do with a high-rise luxury flat in Paddington when his wife is at home in Somerset? Yeah. Don’t answer that. That’s not my style. At least, it’s not my style when sober. I don’t want to think about all the mistakes I made while I was drinking, the betrayals I’ll never be able to forgive myself for.
Nowadays the worst thing I get up to is ordering a Peshwari naan with the Indian takeout, and watching Sky News while scrolling through my phone. I now text my wife every day to say good night, at around nine p.m., but there are two differences from all those years ago when I used to phone her. The first is that I’m actually home, and the second is that she doesn’t text back.
I know she knows I’m sober for real this time. I worry that she doesn’t care. I’m ready to make a fresh start with my marriage. If I knew how to reach her.
How do you reach someone who has withdrawn so completely she barely looks at you even when you are together? I understand her resentment. I know that apologizing isn’t enough. I have to show her I’ve changed. We have to find a way to start again, to stop being strangers, rattling around in an enormous country house that now feels like a prison, filled with nothing but disappointments.
Would it be different if we had been able to have children? Yeah. Of course, it would be. When I was a kid and people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I used to look at them very seriously and say, “A dad.” It was true. It was all I ever wanted. My sponsor thinks that’s why I started drinking, but I’m not so sure. My mum was a drinker. I think it’s in my blood. For years it was something I thought I could control, even before we got together. I’d get drunk on weekends only, and then the weekends stretched to include Thursdays, and then I stopped thinking about what day it was.
Now we’re settling into middle age, and I’m sober, and the past doesn’t matter anymore. Who do we have if we don’t have each other? I don’t want to divorce, I don’t want to be on my own, and I don’t want to start again with someone else.
I still love her, I just need to find a way to make her forgive me. You don’t spend half your life with someone and not love them. It’s just a bad patch, and I can’t blame her. I can prove to her how different I am, how much I’ve grown. Am I in love with her? No. Not anymore, neither of us is. But I think we could both learn to fall in love with each other again. I think we could learn to pay attention to each other, to make a decision that we’re not going to let this marriage fall apart, because right now, this marriage is falling apart.
So that’s why I’m surprising her with a second honeymoon. We haven’t had a holiday in years. We sit together at the kitchen table for meals, her scrolling through her phone, me reading a science journal. We barely communicate unless it’s transactional—cut the grass, trim the hedges, pay the bills.
This will change all that. I’m determined. I’ve even booked the same room we had. How can we not rediscover each other while walking down memory lane? I’m going to print out the boarding passes when I get home, and I’ll put them on the kitchen table for when she comes down tomorrow.
This is our fresh start. This is our second chance. I’m smiling as my phone buzzes, and I look down at the screen, seeing that she has texted me. This is a sign, I think, a sign that everything’s going to be okay.
I’m still smiling when I open up my messages to read her text:
I’ve seen a lawyer. I’ve had enough of thi
s sham of a marriage. I want a divorce.
PART I
the beginning
one
- 1986 -
Once upon a time Evvie would have been like these other students, she thought as she paid the taxi driver and wrestled the huge Louis Vuitton trunk out of the back of the car. Once upon a time she might have had a mother and a father just like all the ones around her now, who have driven their kids to universities, helping them decorate their rooms with colorful duvets and posters, running out to the hardware store for more picture hooks, or rods for curtains, or a kettle so they could make tea in their rooms.
Evvie no longer spoke to her father. Not since he hit her mother, knocking out two of her teeth. Two days later they were on a plane, heading to London, to her grandmother’s tiny terraced house in Stockwell. It was a far cry from their old life in Brooklyn, but her mother had had enough. She went back to the bosom of her family to get her teeth and her life fixed, and she retained a divorce attorney who handled everything from overseas.
Her mother would have come with her today—her only daughter at an English university! The daughter of a Jamaican immigrant who managed, by sheer force of will and hard work, to provide her family with a life she could only have dreamed of as a child. It was a long way from the streets of Kingston, but she did it! She married the son of a wealthy white banking family, unaware they would be cut off financially once he married someone so unsuitable. But the name alone had opened doors, allowed her to give her daughter a life of privilege and opportunity.
Evvie knew her mother wasn’t receiving the child support and alimony she was supposed to. She had tried to call her father herself, but those conversations never went well. Evvie knew her father was cold, but when she’d said, on their last call, that she wouldn’t speak to him again, he honestly didn’t seem to care. Even Evvie hadn’t thought he was that cold.
They struggled for a while, but now Evvie’s mom had a job at a large advertising agency. Two days off to get her daughter settled in to her university would be too much. Evvie didn’t mind, she’d heard her mother telling someone, and the truth was she hadn’t minded; she was so excited about going off to school that she hadn’t even thought about arriving alone. She hadn’t minded until she saw everyone else had their parents with them.
