The Friend by Dorothy Koomson

Author:Dorothy Koomson
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2017-05-17T16:00:00+00:00

Anaya

3 a.m.

I’m sorry. I’m so sorry about the other week, Anaya. Truly. I’m just cracking up a little here. She was blackmailing you, wasn’t she? Please tell me. Let’s get together, you, me and Maxie. We can talk about it properly. But please, tell me if she was blackmailing you?!!! Hazel x

It’s no comfort that Hazel still isn’t sleeping either. Because Hazel is bad enough as it is – without sleep she will get even more unstable. Not that I’m much better. I wonder what she and Maxie would say if they knew I’ve been seeing Cece without them. She’s just so uncomplicated and she doesn’t know. I think that’s the most appealing thing about her. She doesn’t know. Which means she can’t ask me questions like: was she blackmailing you? Of course she was. That’s what Yvonne did.

April, 2017

I’d see Yvonne at the gates, at drop-off, and she’d wave at me, give me a cheery good morning and then would go back to talking to one of her Parents’ Council friends or another mother from Scarlett’s year group, and pretend we were strangers. I started to wonder if she hadn’t used my parents’ name to search for me after all. If she’d stopped being Yvonne for a while and was back to behaving like the real friend I knew she could be.

Yoga night gave me my answer. I was pushing aside the furniture in the back room and about to lay out the mats when there was the usual, quiet tap on the door. None of them came that early because they had children to put to bed and I had only just managed it. I thought for a minute or two as I hurried to the door that it would be a late delivery. But it was Yvonne. She was dressed up ready for yoga, but I could tell by the look on her face, the way she had set her lips, that she had other things on her mind.

In a way, she’d done me a favour having tea with Sanjay’s mother. That night, when I’d spoken to Sanjay on the phone, I had laid it on the line. I had told him that his mother had gone too far entertaining people in our home when I wasn’t there, and by telling other people things about me. I’d told him that was the last time that would happen, and he had better tell his mother his schedule in detail so she would know not to come round if he wasn’t going to be there. He’d listened and agreed, and I’d known he was just doing the verbal equivalent of a nodding dog to me and not really listening, but that was fine. I had been open, I had been clear; the next stage would shock him, but he couldn’t claim surprise because I had warned him.

‘You’re a bit early,’ I said to Yvonne. The first pricklings of fear crept up my neck, rushing towards my face. ‘I haven’t even finished moving the furniture.

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