The Friend: An emotional psychological thriller with a twist

by Teresa Driscoll

I hit him again then, so hard that it makes his face turn. I am shocked at the violence. How much I would like to hit him over and over and over, and because I don’t want to be a part of that, allow him to reduce me to that, I head towards the barrier as quickly as I can, fumbling in my bag for the ticket. In a seat finally, heart pounding, I put my head between my knees in a bid to ease the dizziness. To get the blood flowing better.

  Cake. They will be eating cake. It will be fine. I am trying to push away another picture. Water. Ben in the water. Calling out for me. Mummy, Mummy . . . No. He was mistaken. A misunderstanding. No swimming. Emma said so. Why would they? They’re probably at a theme park right now. Playing.

  I try Emma’s mobile again. The number you are calling is not available. Please leave a message . . .

  Only now do I realise that I am rocking gently. Unable to still myself. I try Heather’s number. A new idea. I could get Heather to pop round, see if they have left yet. Make up some excuse. But the number just rings out.

  I close my eyes, and for some reason I am remembering again when we bought that jacket. The brown corduroy jacket that Mark is wearing today. He had looked so handsome in it in the shop that I stroked his cheek with the back of my hand. Really tenderly. And the memory of that moment – the intimacy of it and knowing now that it was not how I thought – is so unbearable that I can feel tears streaming down my face. My eyes close until I have that feeling of being watched again. Mark standing right there – again – this time in the aisle, his face grey and awful – inexplicably with two train tickets in his hand.

  ‘I’ve bought us two first-class seats. For some privacy,’ he is whispering.

  ‘Go away.’ Again I close my eyes.

  ‘Please. For Ben. Please, Sophie. Five minutes.’

  Reluctantly I open my eyes, this time to catch a glimpse of a young girl kneeling up on her seat in the section behind us, her mother grabbing her pink coat to turn her around.

  ‘Five minutes.’

  He finds us an empty section of a first-class carriage near the front of the train. Sits down opposite, face still grey.

  ‘It’s really not what you think.’

  ‘Stop it.’

  DI Melanie Sanders is standing outside Gill Hartley’s hospital room. Gill has been conscious for two hours – the news Melanie had all but given up on.

  Just as the consultant appears at the door to signal she may at last go in, Melanie’s mobile rings. Matthew. Damn. The timing. She silences it to whisper to the doctor the question burning inside her. ‘Does she remember?’

  ‘Unfortunately for her – yes, she does. Don’t be long.’

  Inside the room, Gill’s mother is clutching her daughter’s hand. ‘It wasn’t her fault. She didn’t mean to; she was wound up. Goaded . . .’

  Gill looks across at Melanie, her expression one of sorrow and resignation. Tears drip down her face as she tells how Emma Hartley told her in the tent at the fair that her husband was having a baby with a younger woman. That he had stolen motherhood from Gill . . . and didn’t care.

  I am sorry, but you have a right to know this, Gill. He is laughing at you . . .

  What happened afterwards was a terrible blur, but Antony had not denied it or even said sorry; he had simply raged about Emma. That bitch has been trying to blackmail me . . .

  ‘Once I realised what I’d done, I just wanted to die myself.’ Gill closes her eyes. ‘I wish now that I had.’

  In her pocket, Melanie’s phone is vibrating with text after text. She signals for a pause, apologising, to check the screen. Four texts from Matthew.

  ANSWER. URGENT!

  Mark’s face is still grey. Eyes tortured.

  ‘Emma was the worst mistake of my life, Sophie, and there is nothing I can say to make it OK. But it was years back. That crazy, terrible time. When Ben was a baby. When things between us were so bad and I thought you didn’t love me any more.’

  And now a new sensation creeping up within me. A horrible confirmation of the pictures pressing themselves on to me. Limbs and tongues and Emma’s cute pixie hair. Mark’s lips on her neck. That thing he likes to do which I thought was a secret.

  Our secret.

  ‘I can’t listen to this. Please, Mark. I just need to get home. To get Ben. I just need you to leave me alone now. Please.’

  ‘I wanted to tell you, Sophie. Back then. More than anything . . . and when we finally realised it was depression, I felt so ashamed of myself, I knew you would leave me if I told you. That you would never forgive me.’

  ‘I hate you.’

  ‘Sophie. I’m so, so sorry but you have to listen to me. I slept with her twice. No more. A mad, stupid blip when I thought you didn’t love me. Before we knew you were ill. That’s not an excuse. I’m just telling you how it felt. The truth. But I was the one who ended it, I promise you.’ He is speaking very, very quickly now – his voice rising. ‘She left the company. I never saw her again until she turned up in Tedbury, I swear.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’ There are little patches of black on the periphery of my vision.

  ‘It’s the truth, Sophie. The God’s honest truth. It was the biggest shock of my life when you invited her to dinner that night.’

  ‘And you expect me to believe that?’

  Outside Gill’s room now, Melanie accepts his next call, raking her hand through her hair.

  ‘Matthew?’

  ‘Listen, Mel. You need to do something about the child. Emma’s boy.’

  ‘Speak up, Matthew. I can’t hear you.’

  ‘I haven’t got long, Mel. I need to try to make the next ferry home.’

  ‘What child? I can’t hear you very well, Matthew.’

  ‘It’s bad, Mel. I found the nurse who was treating the mother for her cancer. She’s in a right state. Floods of tears; been in agony about not going to the police before but she didn’t think anyone would believe her.’

  ‘Believe her about what?’

  ‘Look – she says the mother confided in her. Was afraid of Emma – a nightmare right from childhood, apparently. Compulsive lying. Shoplifting. Drugs. The works.’

  ‘Christ – but there’s nothing on file. You think I wouldn’t have checked the files?’

  ‘Yeah, well, she’s very clever, this one. She fooled me, remember. Moves about. Changes her name. And the mother didn’t help matters. She was always hoping Emma would change, so covered her tracks. But in the end the mother got fed up with people turning up, looking for Emma. Seems there was some run-in with social services when Theo was small but Emma latched on to some wealthy guy in Manchester. He got a nanny in to look after the boy but they eventually fell out. Emma turned nasty, stalked the poor guy and then tried to steal his sister’s identity. Then she just disappeared. He’s got a profile – political ambitions – so stupidly didn’t report it either.’

  ‘Christ.’

  ‘So when the mother gets cancer, Emma suddenly turns up in France all worried about the inheritance.’

  ‘So why the hell didn’t this nurse say anything of this before? To the police?’

  ‘Emma sacked her and threatened to report her for theft. To get her struck off. Emma reported some jewellery missing to the police to scare her.’

  ‘Dear God.’ Melanie would like to tell Matthew about Gill’s confession but knows she should not; not yet. Christ.

  ‘The nurse says Theo sees more than he should but the poor little lamb is loyal. Emma can get very nasty. Smashes things up and then blames it on the kid. Sugar – I really am going to have to go, Mel. Get myself a ticket . . .’

  His voice is now really starting to break up again, despite Melanie pressing her phone tight to her ear. ‘Look, I’m at the hospital. Bad reception here. You really need to speak up, Matthew. Can you get a better line? A landline?’

  ‘No time. I’ve called in the local police, Mel. The nurse is giving a full statement right now. There was no post-mortem but the mother was expected to live at least another six months. T
hen suddenly Aveline is sacked and the mother’s dead. Emma was alone with her mother. And she didn’t even hang around for the funeral.’

  ‘You seriously saying she may have killed her own mother?’ Melanie glances back through the glass, Gill’s mother stroking her daughter’s hair.

  ‘And there’s more, Mel. This nurse reckons the mother changed her will; has left everything to Theo.’

  ‘Oh – Lord. Right. And does Emma know this?’

  ‘She will by now.’

  ‘She wants money, Sophie.’ Mark is running his hand through his hair, face white and his body jolting as the train picks up speed.

  A new wave passing through my body now. More cold dread. More black spots.

  ‘Money?’

  ‘Yes. She phoned me at work a few weeks before she turned up in Devon. Right out of the blue. Said Theo was my child, that there was some hitch with her inheritance and she needed to make a fresh start. I didn’t believe her about the child. She wanted money . . . a lot of money, Sophie. She said that if I didn’t pay, she would tell you everything. I told her to piss off or I would phone the police . . . and then suddenly she’s in the village.’

  ‘Theo’s yours?’

  ‘I don’t know . . . I don’t know. She says so. But I had no idea she was pregnant.’

  ‘You didn’t even use protection? You slept with her without protection . . .’ My fists are clenched so tightly that the nails are driving deep into my palms. ‘You had another baby with her.’

  The shape of the train carriage changes somehow as if it is being sucked longer, and I am shrinking smaller and smaller in the middle of it.

  Mark . . . has . . . another child? I look to the left and then to the right. A second child?

  We are completely silent for a time, black dots still forming and flickering on the edge of my vision, so that as I stand, I have to steady myself by holding on to the top of the seats.

  ‘You need to leave me alone now. I’m moving to the other end of the train and I’m going to phone the police.’

  ‘Look – I was just trying to buy some time, Sophie. To get some money out of the business. To work out what to do for the best.’

  ‘For the best? Jesus Christ, Mark. She is with . . . our . . . son.’

  ‘I needed more time. I told her that. She told me she was nearly out of money. She was getting really pissy but you can’t just take big money out of a business overnight. And she wouldn’t hurt anyone, Sophie. Why would she hurt anyone?’ He is speaking very fast now – his arm craned over his head, his forehead deeply etched. ‘She’s a mother herself. You think I wouldn’t have said something, gone to the police, if I thought for one second she was capable of—’

  ‘Ben told me she was taking them swimming.’

  And now his face changes completely. The colour draining instantly away – looking down at the ground as if a new picture is suddenly emerging there.

  ‘She made some excuse – fobbed me off – said it was a misunderstanding, but I don’t know what to believe now. What she’s capable of. Oh my God, Mark. I think I’m going to be sick.’ I close my mouth against the first retch. Hold it in and stagger into the aisle. Mark supports my arm as I flee along the gap, through the automatic doors to the toilet. Only just making it.

  Inside I throw up into the tiny stainless-steel sink first. Then again into the toilet bowl. For a moment I stand there gasping for breath. Wait until I am sure there is no more, then try to press the rubber flush with my foot, just as the train begins to move off, bumping me against the back of the door.

  ‘Are you all right, Sophie?’

  I don’t reply, just stand for a moment, pushing my feet slightly wider apart to steady myself – running the tap and trying the flush again to clear up the mess. And then I hear Mark’s ringtone just outside the door – his voice strained and confused.

  ‘Yes. I’m on a train, Nathan. Just leaving Paddington now. Sophie’s with me.’

  There is a long pause, during which I open the door to find Mark leaning against the wall of the corridor, one arm craned once more over his head, brow pressed to the inside of his elbow. His posture of panic.

  ‘When?’

  I can feel my head moving involuntarily, twitching from side to side like a tic. And then the word no repeating over and over in my head.

  No.

  Please, dear God, no.

  ‘Durndale Hospital? Right, Nathan. We won’t be there for hours. Jesus. At least’ – he looks at his watch – ‘seven o’clock. Can you ring me as soon as you get there? OK. For God’s sake, try to find out what’s happening and ring me straight back.’

  He hangs up and looks at the floor. A long pause. And then, looking up to me, his eyes terrible and his skin grey.

  ‘The boys . . . There’s been some kind of accident, Sophie.’

  TODAY – NOW

  So – yes. I remember this journey only in parts. As if it happened through some kind of fog. As if I was drifting in and out of consciousness, and now as the fog clears different pictures emerge.

  All those phone calls . . . Nathan. The hospital. The police.

  At first I refused to sit with Mark, so that later, when I was overwhelmed and in a panic got off the train, I had to go along with his cover story. To explain why we weren’t together.

  And then, when the doctor was asked to watch out for me, we had to sit opposite each other. Pretending. Mark fetching sweet tea and water which I could not drink, sitting instead immobile as different pictures moved in and out of the fog. That picture of Ben with his crooked fringe. The first day we took the stabilisers off his bike and he was shouting, Watch me, Mummy. Watch me.

  A million stupid pictures over the hours as the rain dripped down the train windows and we sat there opposite each other, me and Mark. Strangers suddenly. Unable to offer each other any comfort at all.

  And when the calls came through, piecing together the truth of what had happened, it was good news. Bad news. Good news. Bad news.

  At one point I made this terrible mistake and googled drowning on Mark’s phone. Some say it is the worst way to die, and so I sat there on the train, imagining it. Holding my breath and counting. Seeing how long before the lungs felt as if they were going to burst, tears dripping down my cheeks.

  Until finally we got a phone call which made no sense.

  Not swimming. Not water after all . . .

  Another lorry on that goddamn hill. A witness said Emma had been leading the boys to her car parked on the village square. They were dawdling – playing up. The boys had towels stuffed under their arms. Ben was crying and Emma had seemed cross, shouting at them to hurry up. There was a screech then. Later, much later, we will learn that the lorry’s brakes failed.

  All three of them ran, according to the witness, but there was not enough time. The tall garden wall alongside Heather’s cottage collapsed, huge stones cascading down. Like thunder, the witness said.

  Emma took the worst of the impact. The boys were further along the wall but were trapped and crushed by the falling stones. I had imagined drowning, that one of the boys had crushed his chest, his spleen, on a rock as he was pushed into a pool, maybe on Dartmoor? But – no. Now I think instead of the awful noise of the stones. The shock. The pain . . .

  At first Nathan was told the children were fine. But that was a mix-up. Two children brought in at the same time from a different accident. The corrected news spoke of internal injuries. Surgery. They still could not say for sure which child was more seriously hurt . . .

  By the time we finally make it to the hospital, Ben and Theo are both ‘stable’ but heavily sedated – their beds side by side with machines bleeping and flashing all about them. Tiny, pathetic little bodies – too small for the beds, their faces bruised and patched, with horrid little tubes trailing across the sheets.

  I hold Ben’s hand for a very long time, stroking the backs of his fingers and whispering in his ear and telling him over and over that everything is going to be just fi
ne now. He had a collapsed lung – fixed in theatre – but is still in pain. And then I look across at little Theo, whose eyes flicker open occasionally, and he looks so fragile too. They have saved his spleen but he has pins in his left leg. Broken ribs. He looks so afraid, poor love, so I whisper to him too – Mummy will be with you soon, Theo. Everything is going to be OK. I promise.

  And then I see the bag – hanging on the corner of Theo’s bed. The nurse tells me that the paramedics brought it in. A dark blue child’s rucksack – full swimming kit inside. Two sets of trunks. Two pairs of goggles.

  No armbands.

  And right then, I look through the window to the cubicles next door where Emma is being wheeled past, and something snaps inside of me so that I am across the room, through the door and lunging towards the trolley bed before I am even aware of this intention.

  ‘You stay away from my family!’

  Not my voice. Some other Sophie who almost makes it right up to Emma’s bed before someone is grabbing my arms, pulling me back as Emma opens her eyes momentarily – the male nurse then holding on to me so very tightly.

  ‘Come on, this isn’t helping.’

  ‘You stay away from my family or I swear to God, I will kill you. You hear me, Emma? You go near Ben one more time . . .’

  ‘That’s it. Call security. Will someone for Christ’s sake call security.’

  EPILOGUE

  Some people see music as colours. Synaesthesia, it’s called. I read somewhere that it plays right in front of their eyes like a rainbow. A different colour for every note they hear. I have been thinking about that a lot just now, because I have started to see things lately in geometric shapes – triangles especially.

  I wonder if there is a name for that too – turning the complex detail and layering of pictures into basic geometric shapes. Like simplifying the views all around into abstract paintings.

  Take now. As I look across past the swimming pool (rectangle) all I see are large triangles (the mountains) and two small triangles (Theo and Ben).