The Friend Read online

  Contents

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Part 1

  Monday

  Tuesday

  Wednesday

  Part 2

  Thursday

  Saturday

  Monday

  Tuesday

  Friday

  Part 3

  Monday

  Friday

  Part 4

  Monday

  Part 5

  Tuesday

  Wednesday

  Friday

  Saturday

  Part 6

  Monday

  Tuesday

  Part 7

  Saturday

  Sunday

  Monday

  Part 8

  Monday

  Part 9

  Tuesday

  Part 10

  Monday

  Tuesday

  Part 11

  Wednesday

  Thursday

  Friday

  Part 12

  Monday

  Wednesday

  Thursday

  Part 13

  Monday

  Wednesday

  Part 14

  Thursday

  Part 15

  Thursday

  Friday

  Monday (Two Weeks Later)

  Tuesday

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  About the Book

  After her husband’s big promotion, Cece Solarin arrives in Brighton with their three children, ready to start afresh. But their new neighbourhood has a deadly secret.

  Three weeks earlier, Yvonne, a very popular parent, was almost murdered in the grounds of the local school – the same school where Cece has unwittingly enrolled her children.

  Already anxious about making friends when the parents seem so cliquey, Cece is now also worried about her children’s safety. By chance she meets Maxie, Anaya and Hazel, three very different school mothers who make her feel welcome and reassure her about her new life.

  That is until Cece discovers the police believe one of her new friends tried to kill Yvonne. Reluctant to spy on her friends but determined to discover the truth, Cece must uncover the potential murderer before they strike again …

  About the Author

  Dorothy Koomson, the knitty-gritty …

  Dorothy Koomson is the author of twelve novels including That Girl From Nowhere, The Chocolate Run, The Woman He Loved Before, The Ice Cream Girls and My Best Friend’s Girl. While writing The Friend she took up, in the name of research, knitting and cocktail mixing – two things that are oddly compatible. Give it a try.

  For more information on Dorothy Koomson and her novels, including The Friend, visit www.dorothykoomson.co.uk

  To my friends, near and far.

  MOTHER-OF-TWO IN COMA

  AFTER BRUTAL ATTACK AT SCHOOL

  A popular mother-of-two is in a coma after being found on the premises of a local Brighton school after a vicious attack the police are investigating as attempted murder.

  Yvonne Whidmore, 42, was found in the early hours of Saturday in the front playground of Plummer Preparatory School, New Hillingdon Road, having been brutally assaulted and, according to police sources, ‘left for dead’. It is still not clear how Mrs Whidmore came to be at the school, which is still on summer holidays.

  A close friend of the family revealed that Trevor Whidmore, 43, and their children, aged eight and 10, have not left her hospital bedside since Mrs Whidmore was admitted.

  Friends of the blonde housewife, pictured here in a gold ball gown at a recent school event, which she organised for Plummer Prep’s Parents’ Council, took to the school’s social media site to express their shock and upset.

  ‘Can’t believe this has happened. Yvonne is one of the nicest people on Earth. Big hugs to Trev and the girls.’

  ‘Get well soon, Yvonne, Plummer Prep needs you.’

  ‘Thought this area was safe! Urgh. This is just horrible.’

  ‘Who would want to hurt Yvonne???!!!! She’s the soul of this place. She’s everyone’s friend. Get better soon, honey.’

  Mrs Carpenter, the head teacher of Plummer Prep, told us she and other members of the senior management team at the £15,000-per-year private school were cooperating with the police in every way they could but this incident would not prevent them from continuing to run the institution at its current, outstanding level.

  Police are appealing for anyone who was near or passing the school between the hours of 10 p.m. on Friday, 18 August and 5 a.m. on Saturday, 19 August to contact them as soon as possible.

  Daily News Chronicle, August 2017

  Part 1

  MONDAY

  Cece

  6:15 a.m. ‘This is like the start of a TV drama,’ Sol calls to me from the bedroom. ‘Husband in suit, getting ready for work, kids downstairs having breakfast, and wife in her underwear rushing around trying to get everything organised.’

  ‘Hmm,’ I reply. ‘I suppose it is.’

  I rinse my toothbrush under running water before slotting it back into the plastic pot on the glass shelf. I take my time doing this because I like being in the bathroom. It’s calm in here, it’s unpacked in here. In fact, the only places in our three-storey new home that are ‘fully useable’ as averse to ‘technically habitable’ are the bathrooms.

  I linger in the bathroom, enjoying the calm finishedness, and avoiding the oppressive chaos that is the bedroom. There’s a bed, there are sheets and a duvet … and a huge pile of my clothes on the floor in front of the bay window, nicely flanked by boxes of ‘stuff’. Not Sol’s ‘stuff’ though. He has somehow managed to sort out his ‘stuff’ – it is hanging up in the walk-in cupboard/wardrobe (something that sold the house to both of us), his shoes are lined up, his ties are on a special tie hanger, his underwear is folded into the drawers. He’s been living down here in Brighton in a hotel for the last three months and seems to have had no problems settling into our new place.

  June, 2003

  ‘Can I ask you something?’

  The good-looking man came up to me as we were leaving the library. The last few months we’d seen each other almost every day and had progressed from smiling to actually saying hello. Now he, who I’d named Library Man, was speaking to me properly.

  ‘Yes, of course. I may or may not answer depending on how intrusive the question is,’ I replied.

  ‘Why do you come to the library every day? I mean, I’m here every day because I’m studying, but I don’t see you get any books out or anything.’

  A little shiver of excitement ran through me that someone had noticed me and hadn’t dismissed me as another single mother to be ignored and vilified in equal measure. ‘It’s a two-mile walk here from where I live, and the only way I can get my child to sleep during the day is to walk with her in the pram. After mile one she nods off, wakes up when we get here, and then half a mile back she falls asleep again and then stays asleep for a good couple of hours so I can do some work.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘What about you? Why are you always here? I mean, you’ve just said you’re studying but surely that can’t mean going to the library every day.’

  ‘It’s a good place to come to keep warm and be around people.’

  ‘You do know of these things called pubs, don’t you?’ I said to him. ‘They’re warm and dry and they have people. There might even be people in there that you know from your course.’

  ‘Ah, maybe. But I’m twenty-five, most of them on my course are eighteen, away from home for the first time and enjoying every second of it. I feel positively ancient compared to them.’

  ‘What about going to
a café every now and then?’ I replied. ‘You know, mix it up a bit.’

  ‘I might be tempted to try out one of these so-called “cafés” if you – and your daughter, of course – will come with me.’

  ‘I’ll come with you if it’s not a date.’

  ‘What have you got against dating? Are you with someone?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  I indicated to Harmony, my one-year-old with beautifully frizzy hair, almost-black eyes, pale brown skin and huge smile. She blew a raspberry and clapped her hands at the brilliantness of this. ‘Everything is dictated by the demands, stability and well-being of this little one. I’m not planning on dating until she’s eighteen and I don’t have to worry about her any more.’

  ‘All right, it’s not a date,’ he said with a grin. ‘But I feel it only fair to warn you, from everything my friends and family have told me, you never stop worrying about your kids, no matter what their age.’

  6:17 a.m. Sol comes up behind me in the bathroom, slips an arm around my waist and tugs me close to him. He’s had a summer of going to the gym and running along the beach, so I can feel every exercise-devoted second of his muscles as my eyes slip shut and I almost melt against him. It’s so long since we’ve been this close. I haven’t missed the sex as much as I’ve missed having him next to me. Holding him, being held by him … He kisses my neck, holds me closer. I relax some more and the scent of him fills my senses. He’s started wearing a different aftershave, but I can still detect his natural scent: slightly salty, musky, a touch of sweetness under there. I haven’t seen him properly in a while, but he’s still Sol. His grip on me tightens and his fingers creep down over my stomach and slide into the waistband of my black knickers.

  ‘Yeah, I don’t think so, TV drama boy,’ I say, removing his hand. He certainly killed that moment. I step away from him and cross the corridor, heading for the bedroom and my ‘wardrobe’. ‘Didn’t you say something about the children downstairs and the mother running around, trying to organise things?’

  He follows me into the bedroom and stands beside me in front of the wardrobe pile. ‘It was mostly the underwear bit I was focusing on … Tee. Bee. Haitch.’

  I face my husband. ‘Did you just sound out “to be honest”?’ I ask him. ‘Seriously? How old are you to be using that? When did you even hear that to start using it?’

  Sol stares very hard at my clothes mound. I know his heart will be racing right now, little beads of sweat will be prickling along his forehead, he’ll be praying I’m too distracted by the move to still be the person who would pick up on such an obvious ‘tell’. One of the reasons I was so good at my previous job was because I picked up on things that most people ignored as irrelevant. For example, Sol has just ‘told’ me that he’s been spending a lot of time with someone much younger than him (and me) and certainly more female than him, who uses that expression enough for it to have rubbed off on him. Sol makes a big show of looking at his watch.

  ‘Wow, I didn’t realise the time. Shouldn’t we all be getting a move on? Especially me,’ Sol says.

  I study my husband, observe him as he avoids looking at me while he mentally kicks himself. When he does risk a glance in my direction I cock an eyebrow at him. ‘T. B.H.?’ that eyebrow says to him. ‘Really?’

  He whips his gaze away. ‘I really need to be heading off. See ya.’ He disappears out of the door with that.

  ‘Yeah, see ya,’ I reply. ‘And T. B.C.,’ I whisper. ‘T. B.C.’

  July, 2004

  ‘So, are you still waiting until Harmony is eighteen to go on a date? Just, you know, asking for a friend.’ Sol asked this in a pub.

  Our daytime coffees had segued to afternoons with the three of us going for walks and plays in the park, days out at play centres and safari parks. And, more recently, my mum babysitting so we could go out in the evenings. I was still fitting my home-based data entry job around Harmony’s sleeping patterns, and he was still a student, so we were both skint and whenever we went to the pub, we didn’t simply nurse our beers, we coddled them until the very last drop.

  I gazed at Sol. I did a lot of gazing at Sol, because he was very easy to, well, gaze at. He had dark brown skin that was smooth and dewy-soft, he regularly shaved his head, which exposed its beautiful shape while emphasising his huge, black-brown eyes and amazing lips. Sol was also extremely easy to be with and every time I gazed at him I was reminded that he had been single and celibate for nearly a year because he liked me. He made no secret of it, either, hugging me, stroking my hair, giving me lingering kisses on my cheeks, staring into my eyes when we spoke. Although this was the first time he had come out and said something.

  ‘This friend, anyone I know?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. It’s me. Look, this is driving me crazy. I like you so much and I’ve never waited this long for a woman before. Can I kiss you? Will you turn me down if I do?’

  I gazed at him some more. ‘You can kiss me, but only if you listen to the story about how I came to be a lone parent.’

  ‘Not a problem,’ he replied, staring at my lips. He wasn’t listening, not properly. He was thinking of the bit afterwards, when he’d get to kiss me. ‘Although, I feel it only fair to point out to you that I know the biology bits so you can skip them.’

  ‘I’m serious, Solomon. I’m going to tell you the story and you must only kiss me if you can handle what I’ve told you and what it means about me. And if you promise never to use it against me. If you can’t, no hard feelings, but I need you to be honest with me and yourself.’

  ‘I’m a bit scared now.’

  ‘You should be.’

  ‘All right. All right.’ He inhaled and exhaled rapidly like a boxer about to enter the ring then visibly braced himself. ‘Tell me.’

  I told him: the unvarnished truth about my life before I became a mother, how my daughter was conceived, what happened next. I was honest, in a brutal way that I had never needed to be before. No one had needed to know this about me. My parents just accepted (and rejoiced at) having another grandchild to coo over and love, my siblings added another name to their Christmas lists and my friends drifted away once I became all about the baby instead of all about the partying. My story was a strictly need-to-know type of tale, and Solomon definitely needed to know. At the end of it, he had stopped gazing adoringly at me and instead he stared into the mid-distance, shell-shocked by what he’d heard. After a minute or two of silence, he could arrange his features enough to face me. I held my breath, tried to freeze time so it would be the moment before he told me he couldn’t handle it for as long as possible.

  He smiled at me, then very carefully, very slowly, kissed me.

  6:25 a.m. I’ve parked Sol’s ‘tell’ that he’s been spending a lot of non-work time with someone else recently, and stare at the pile of clothes in the window bay. I had gone to sort and hang them up on Saturday morning, then I realised that sorting clothes was an indulgence when I had to unpack the kitchen so I could cook something, as well as organising the children’s rooms as much as possible and getting the remaining uniform bits. After a weekend of organising everything else, I am left with this mound of clothes and no idea what to wear.

  I want to run back to the calm of the bathroom and forget about this whole getting dressed to take my children to school business. Forget this need to find the perfect outfit that won’t be too showy and won’t be too anonymous and will say to every other parent at the gates: ‘I’m nice, please be my friend.’

  I hear Sol’s footsteps on the stairs and I smile with relief and gratitude. I was being silly, he doesn’t have anything to hide.

  ‘Oh, Cee, I completely forgot,’ he says when he dashes into the bedroom. ‘My good suits will be ready to collect from the dry cleaner’s today. The shop’s not far from here. You just have to head in the opposite direction of the boys’ school for a bit on the main road. The tickets are on the noticeboard and you can pick them up any time after eleven.
’

  With a deep frown grooving my forehead and narrowing my eyes, I rotate very slowly to look at my husband. I stare very, very hard at him.

  ‘What?’ he says after I have not spoken for two whole minutes. (I know because I counted them in my head.) ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’

  ‘Oh, Sol.’ I sigh. ‘Look, I know you’re really busy with work and all, but would it kill you to acknowledge the sacrifice we’ve all made for you? Even a little?

  ‘I mean, our children have moved away from their friends and a life they loved because of your job and you haven’t once acknowledged that over the weekend or this morning. Not only that – this is the first time we’ve all been together for three months but we’ve hardly seen you these past few days. You’ve not helped to unpack their stuff, you’ve not helped me with putting up their furniture, you didn’t come to the uniform shop. Sometimes you’ve had meals with us.

  ‘You know, they’re starting at new schools this morning, and Harmony has changed schools at the start of her GCSEs. Would it have been the end of the world if you’d gone into work a bit later this morning so Harmony doesn’t have to walk into school all on her own? I feel sick that I have to take the twins so I can’t go with her. It never even occurred to you that she might need someone with her, did it? But you leave the house with barely a goodbye to any of us and then you come all the way back from your car, I presume, to order me to collect your dry cleaning like I’m your personal assistant. It’s just …’ I run out of words. Well, nice words. Instead, I flop my arms up and down in frustration and despair.

  Sol, in response, physically draws back, as though someone has shown him his version of a Dorian Gray portrait and he is horrified by how unpleasant and downright inconsiderate he looks. ‘I didn’t think,’ he says, shame and regret coating every letter. ‘About any of it. I just didn’t think.’

  ‘No, I guess you didn’t,’ I reply.

  ‘I’ve got a meeting, I can’t cancel, it’s really important.’ He rubs his fingertips over his eyes, pinches the bridge of his nose. ‘Not that you lot aren’t important, but I can’t cancel it last minute. I’m sorry. If I could cancel, I would.’