Author: Alison James
Category: Thriller
Go to read content：https://onlinereadfreenovel.com/alison-james/page,17,480702-the_friendship_pact.html
Lucy’s blood chills and her legs go soft underneath her. She clutches the back of the settle.
‘I like the way that silky skirt shows off your legs. Very tasty.’
He was watching her. Following her. She pulls aside the curtain at the hall window and peers out into the street. It’s almost dark, with the leaves of the plane trees casting shadows in the orange glow of the street light. Something moves into her peripheral vision, but it’s just a neighbour walking her dog. Narrowing her eyes, she thinks she can make out the blurred outline of someone on the opposite pavement, but a supermarket delivery van pulls up, obscuring her view.
‘Going to go upstairs to undress now, are you?’ Denny asks in a low, leering voice. ‘Make sure you draw the curtains; you never know when someone might be looking in.’
Lucy steps back from the window as though she’s been scalded. ‘Was it you?’ she demands.
‘Was what me?’
‘Were you in my house? The other night.’
‘I don’t know what on earth you’re talking about.’ He sounds as though he’s suppressing laughter. ‘How can you accuse me of that? That would be a crime, wouldn’t it?’
‘I’m changing the locks, anyway, if you’ve got hold of a key somehow,’ Lucy tells him defiantly.
‘You want to be careful though… any lock can be picked; new or old. You were glad of my skills in that department once, remember? You wanted me to come in to your lovely house.’
‘And now I want you to just leave me alone!’ Lucy feels angry tears burn the back of her eyes. ‘I can give you more money, if you’ll just stop this. I can give you fifty thousand, but it will have to be on condition that you don’t contact me again.’
For a few seconds all she can hear is his breathing. Then he gives an exaggerated sigh. ‘We’ve been over this, Mrs Wheedon. You’re going to have to do a lot better than that. I’m looking at seven figures, not five.’
‘I’m sorry, but that’s not possible. Be reasonable.’
‘It’s you that’s not being reasonable. Why shouldn’t you share some of your old man’s wealth around. Especially as you’re not on your own any longer.’
Lucy was about to cut the call, but this makes her stop in her tracks. ‘What do you mean?’
‘What do you mean?’ He mimics her voice, making it high and girlish. ‘I mean, you’ve got yourself a lovely new boyfriend. Or is he new? Maybe you had him all along, which is why you wanted rid of the crazy doctor.’
Noah. He knows about Noah.
‘So, I’ll give you forty-eight hours to better your offer. If you want to keep lover boy out of this.’
Twenty-Six
Forty-eight hours come and go, and Lucy ignores Denny’s ultimatum. But then so does he. She hears nothing further from him.
Maybe he’s come to his senses and realises that, legally, he’s playing with fire, Lucy reflects. That he stands to get into far worse trouble with the authorities than she does. Even so, her uneasiness persists for a while, and although she has changed the locks and installed pick-proof and bump-proof German steel deadbolts, she still checks the house frequently during the night, glances over her shoulder when she heads out on foot and is wary when she unlocks the front door and comes in from the inside.
Her non-dates with Noah continue, though Lucy tries to space them several days apart and keep overnight stays to a minimum. Although they are growing closer and she trusts him, she still tells him nothing about Denny’s campaign of intimidation or his blackmail attempt. Of course, she’s confident that Noah would be supportive – protective even – but to pull on that particular thread would mean delving back into the dysfunction and the ugliness of her marriage to Marcus. It would reveal a side of herself she’s not proud of. One she wants to leave behind. In order to do this, she resolves to put the Barnes house on the market at the end of the summer, once the schools are back. The target demographic of buyers for a property like hers are all about to depart to Salcombe, or Rock, or the Dordogne for the summer.
She desperately wishes there was someone she could confide in about all the events of the past two months, but there is no one. Jane knows some of it, but Lucy baulks at telling her about Denny’s stalking. If there were someone she could talk to, they could speculate jointly about whether he is gone for good, or whether he’s just biding his time. In the wakeful small hours, she even wonders if Denny has pushed some other victim too far, and ended up meeting a fitting end.
Eventually she phones Adele again.
‘I was wondering if you found anything out,’ she says.
‘What? What do you mean?’ There are muffled voices in the background and Adele sounds distracted.
‘Denny Renard. Did you find out anything?’
‘Oh. That.’ Her voice is flat. ‘No, not really,’ she goes on vaguely. ‘Look, sorry, but Paige has been poorly. She’s been in the Royal Surrey with her asthma, so…’
‘Oh. Okay. Never mind then. Hope she’s better now.’
There’s a taut silence, then Adele says, ‘If you really want my advice, Luce, you’ll forget it. Just leave well alone, eh?’
On the first of July, Lucy starts her job at Pink Square.
She struggles, at first, to get used to the physical and mental tiredness of a cross-London commute on top of an eight-hour day in an office, returning to Barnes exhausted for the first couple of weeks. She struggles, too, to master the in-house communications systems: the intranet and the diary management software and the billing. But gradually she adapts and starts to relax a little. She gets to know her colleagues, who are universally warm and friendly to her, and joins them for Friday night drinks at a pub in Clerkenwell; an outing she starts to look forward to. And her wardrobe adapts well enough to the Pink Square ethos. It’s an advantage, being able to wear jeans and trainers every day rather than skirts and heels. She cuts her hair shorter and copies the bold red lipstick the girls in the office favour, contrasting with their fresh faces. Most of them are a decade younger than she is.
‘Goodness,’ Jane exclaims, when they finally get round to meeting for coffee one Saturday morning. ‘Aren’t you quite the working girl? You look great though.’
‘Thanks.’ Lucy touches her bobbed hair self-consciously.
‘You’re moving on,’ Jane is approving. ‘Putting the whole Marcus… debacle behind you. Which is exactly what you need to be doing.’
Buoyed up by this positive encounter, Lucy goes to the farmers’ market to buy cheeses and a big bunch of flowers, before she returns home to complete traditional weekend tasks. It’s a warm sunny day, and the garden is inviting. Changing into T-shirt and shorts, she decides to tackle the weeding, taking the radio outside with her. She’s singing along to 90s hits and feeling lighter of heart than she has done in months, when she gets a text.
U didn’t think I’d forgotten did you
Her palms grow clammy as she stares at it. The trowel slips from her fingers and clatters onto the path at her feet. Ignore it, she tells herself. That’s proven to be the best way to deal with Denny Renard. Call his bluff.
There’s nothing more from him, but that evening Lucy notices a missed call from Noah. Half an hour later, she sees with dismay that it’s not one missed call, but seven. At first she wonders if she’s forgotten about an arrangement to meet. As far as she’s aware, they are not due to see one another again until the following Thursday.
As she’s about to call him back, the doorbell rings. She slots the chain into place before opening the door a crack. But it’s not Denny, it’s Noah.
‘Can I come in? I think we need to talk.’ His easy smile has vanished.
Lucy’s hand instinctively goes to her mouth. She has never seen him like this before.
‘What is it?’ she asks, alarmed, as she removes the chain.
Noah steps inside and closes the front door behind him. ‘Let’s go through to the kitchen.’
He sits down at the kitchen table, but Lucy hovers. ‘Can I get you an
ything?’ she asks weakly.
He shakes his head and indicates the chair opposite him. She sinks in to it, heat thumping.
‘I had a visit from a friend of yours.’
‘Who?’ Lucy asks, although she knows.
‘He didn’t give his name,’ Noah says, looking down at his fingernails. ‘Big guy: bit of a muscle Mary. Tatts everywhere.’
‘He’s not a friend of mine,’ Lucy says quickly. ‘I can assure you of that.’
‘Associate then.’ There’s distaste in his voice, and the way he’s now looking at Lucy makes her heart pound even harder.
She runs a quick visual scan of Noah’s body, but can’t see any cuts or bruises. ‘He didn’t hurt you?’
Noah shakes his head. ‘No. But he did have some very interesting things to say.’
Lucy breathes out hard. ‘Go on.’
‘This thug… does he have a name?’
‘Denny.’
‘Denny told me that while your husband was still alive, he’d helped you out with changing your identity. New name, new life.’
There’s no point in denying this, so Lucy simply nods. Behind her, the kitchen tap is dripping like a metronome. It’s the only sound in the room.
‘So who are you exactly? Only, I’m confused.’ Noah can’t keep the bitterness out of his voice. ‘Are you Lucy Wheedon, or are you “Joanne”?’
Drip-drip, drip-drip.
She jumps to her feet, marches over to the tap and wrenches it closed. ‘Of course I’m Lucy.’ She has to consciously prevent her voice from rising hysterically. ‘Marcus was controlling, abusive. I ran away from him, and yes – I paid Denny to help me.’
‘How would you even know how to find someone like him?’
‘I’ve got this childhood friend… a school friend… She was in prison for a while. She put me on to him.’
Noah is staring at Lucy as though she’s a stranger, his expression bleak.
She grabs a bottle of water from the door of the fridge and gulps some down, slaking her thirst. The afternoon has become baking hot and the sun is beating in through the west-facing windows. With the water still in her hand, she comes back to the table and sits down again. ‘I went away, but only for a very short time. Marcus found me. So I ended up coming back.’
Noah looks up at the ceiling, rubbing his hands over his bearded chin, then down at the floor. Anywhere but at her face. When he does look up, his hazel eyes are as hard as pebbles.
‘So you came back and changed your plan. You decided that instead of divorcing your husband, like any normal person would, you’d kill him.’
‘No!’ Lucy slams her palms on the table, knocking over the water bottle. The contents drain out, leaving a dark stain on the wooden table top, and trickle onto the floor. There’s a fraught silence as they stare at one another. ‘That’s not what happened. Is that what Denny told you?’
Stupid question. Of course he did.
‘He told me you’d drugged your husband deliberately on a night when you knew he was planning to drive. So that he’d crash his car. Which he did.’ Noah’s face is stony. ‘I checked the news reports.’
‘Noah, for Christ’s sake!’ Lucy can’t help but raise her voice. ‘That never happened. Are you going to believe him over me? Seriously?’
‘Your jailbird buddy – one of several you have, it seems – played me a recording of you saying that’s what you were going to do. And he showed me texts where you plead for help in killing Marcus.’
‘Denny faked those,’ Lucy is aware how weak this sounds. ‘Marcus’s death was ruled an accident by the coroner. It was investigated properly.’ Lucy feels heat burning in her neck and face, as though she’s been caught in a shameful deception. ‘Yes, he took sleeping tablets and alcohol, but of his own free will.’
Noah presses his fingers against his closed eyes for a second. ‘So you weren’t questioned by the police?’ he says, when he opens his eyes again.
‘Well, yes, I was, but that was a routine part of their enquiry. They talked to several of his colleagues too, and their account of his last days corroborated what happened. That Marcus was suffering from stress and behaving erratically. That his focus had gone and a couple of times he seemed drunk.’
‘So you didn’t take some of his temazepam tablets from the bottle and hide them then?’ Noah asks, almost hopeful.
Lucy’s cheeks burn. ‘Okay… yes, I did. Three of them. But I didn’t really know why I was doing it. And I never used them, I swear. Wait…’
She runs upstairs and comes down again with the pills, which were at the back of the spare room dresser drawer where she’d left them.
‘Look,’ she says, holding them out on her palm. ‘I’ve still got them.’
Noah nods, letting out his breath as though he’s been holding it.
‘Trust me, Denny Renard is a real operator. An opportunist. He knows I’ve been left comfortably off.’ She despises herself for the middle-class euphemism. ‘And he’s trying to extort money from me. It never occurred to me he would go to these lengths, but it’s all part of his plan to wear me down. He’s been stalking me, following me. And I’m so sorry you got involved. I really am.’
Noah stares back at her, clearly thinking this through. ‘So was it him that was in your house that night?’
‘I don’t know. Probably, yes.’
‘Why on earth didn’t you tell me? You’ve never so much as mentioned any of this. Lucy, can’t you see how odd it looks?’
She lets her head drop forward. ‘I’d only just met you, and it was so soon after… it was only a couple of weeks after the funeral. It just seemed wrong, somehow.’
‘Surely it’s never wrong to share something as serious as this.’ Noah lets out a long sigh. The hard glint has left his eyes now. He just looks sad.
‘You can’t honestly think I’m a murderer?’ Lucy makes a feeble attempt at a smile. ‘Me? I even put spiders out into the garden alive.’
He doesn’t return her smile. ‘Right now I really don’t know what to think. This is a proper headfuck.’
‘Are you breaking up with me?’
Noah runs his fingers through his hair, avoiding her eyes. ‘Lucy. I think you’re great, you know I do. But you’ve got to understand, this isn’t the sort of thing you expect to hear about someone you’re seeing.’ He reaches out and covers her hand with his fingers briefly. ‘I think perhaps for the moment we should cool things. Take a bit of a breather.’
She looks at him mutely, tears welling in her eyes as he repeats back to her the words she used to him on the night they met.
‘I just need some time.’
Twenty-Seven
August 2000
Lucy checks the screen on her brand new phone, even though she knows that this is a pointless exercise. She is one of the first girls in Year 11 to get a mobile phone of her own, but most of the others don’t own one, including Holly Paterson, who she is meeting this evening. Supposed to be meeting this evening.
She’s outside The Back Room, a rock music venue on the outskirts of Redgate, waiting to go and see Hot Box. The band has been hailed in the press as the UK’s answer to Green Day, and are only appearing at such an unstarry venue because their pin-up of a lead singer, Travis Heyter, grew up in the area. Lucy, like thousands of girls her age, has posters of Travis Heyter on her bedroom wall. Tickets for the Redgate concert sold out within a couple of hours, but Jeffrey Gibson has managed to secure a couple through a corporate hospitality contact at work. Lucy could have found at least a dozen classmates keen to take the second ticket off her hands, but she gave first refusal to Holly, who is the nearest thing she currently has to a best friend.
It took several terms, but she eventually settled in at St Theresa’s and started to thrive academically. As her confidence grew and contact lenses replaced her glasses, she began to take part in drama and sport and debating society. She has become one of the popular girls, and the Gibsons are congratulating themselves on having made the ri
ght decision over her schooling.
The gig is supposed to start at seven thirty, and at seven twenty-five there is still no sign of Holly, despite them having agreed to meet outside at seven fifteen. Lucy considers going to check the other side of the building, but what if she does so and Holly then arrives and assumes Lucy is not there? She would go into the venue and wait in her seat, except that she has Holly’s ticket. The truth is, Lucy has no idea what to do. She has never been to a live music event before. Her parents would no doubt know and their numbers are programmed into her mobile phone, but they were a little reluctant to let her and Holly go out unchaperoned, so Lucy is not going to prove herself too immature by calling home for advice.
The street outside the Back Room is thronged with people; ticket holders queuing to go in, touts selling tickets, people trying to buy tickets and others – like Lucy – waiting to meet up with friends.
‘Hey, sexy!’
A thickset man of about twenty spots Lucy, who is dressed in her trendiest outfit of crop top, low-slung combat trousers and wedge-heeled sandals, her pale blonde hair twisted up into a high ponytail. He’s holding a bottle of lager, and is already so drunk that the contents are dribbling onto the pavement without him even noticing.
‘All right, gorgeous?’ says one of his friends. ‘All on yer own, are you?’ He nudges the first man, who stumbles towards Lucy, splashing lager onto her trouser legs. He grabs at her ponytail, and she has to step quickly backwards to avoid him pulling it.
‘Give us a kiss,’ says another. There are five or six in the group in total. Lucy tries to move away to another area of the pavement, but they follow her.
‘Please,’ she says, in a low voice. ‘Just leave me alone.’
‘Shouldn’t go all tarted up like that if you don’t want the attention,’ one of them complains.
‘Begging for it, if you ask me,’ says another, sticking a stubby finger into her exposed navel.