THE BEST FRIEND an utterly addictive psychological suspense (Totally gripping psychological thrillers) by SUSANNA BEARD

Author:SUSANNA BEARD [BEARD, SUSANNA]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Joffe Books psychological thrillers
Published: 2023-08-23T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 42

Alice

I wake with a start, cursing. I can’t believe I slept, though I’m exhausted. I’ve been keeping myself awake every night, listening for Jason’s footsteps on the stairs, waiting to catch him creeping out in the hope that I can stop him. Tonight I was too far gone, and I fell into a daze of strange, frightening dreams in which dark figures ran through the garden, came into our sitting room, stood in corners on the street.

Something must have woken me — was it Jason? Cursing again, I scramble out of bed and throw a robe around me. I tiptoe across the landing to the spare room. The door’s closed. The handle squeaks as I turn it and I pause, listening. But when I push the door open, it’s clear he’s not there. Even though I was half-expecting it, it’s a shock.

I sink onto the bed, my hand on the space where he should be. It’s happening, right now, and there’s nothing I can do about it. My heart beats painfully in my chest, my mind reels. For a millisecond, I wonder if I should call the police. But I can’t do that to Jason. Even if I trusted the cops, I can’t do that to the man I love.

My mind flits back to my childhood, after my father went to prison. My mother tried so hard with the police. Every couple of weeks she went to the station to talk to them, to plead with them for my father’s sake — she was so convinced he was innocent. Sometimes we went with her on the way home from school, and we heard snatches of her conversation at the desk.

“But the evidence is there,” she’d say, her voice rising in anger. “Why can’t you see it? Just ask him, just question him about it.” I didn’t know what she was talking about at the time, but I know she thought the Nevilles were to blame. The police were dismissive, even contemptuous. She’d leave the station furious, muttering all the way home. In the end they told her she was being a nuisance and threatened to arrest her if she carried on.

Sometimes we eavesdropped when she called her sister. She’d close the kitchen door, but we were there, our ears glued to the painted wood, and we caught some of what she said. That’s how we learned how long he’d be away.

“Five years!” she said one day, her voice thick with emotion. “Five years, and that Jack Neville got nothing! It’s all wrong, so unfair . . .”

Then, “My husband has the evidence! I’ve told them a thousand times . . . I reckon they were bribed. Either that or they were just too lazy to bother. They wanted to charge someone, and it didn’t matter who. They picked on him and they wouldn’t listen to his side of it.

“He made a stupid mistake, but he was led to it by that — criminal — and his evil family . .

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