BooksBarbecue
Back Bad Friends
Chapters (59)
  1. Bad Friends
  2. Copyright
  3. Dedication
  4. Epigraph
  5. AFTER: DECEMBER
  6. BEFORE: JUNE
  7. Chapter One
  8. Chapter Two
  9. Chapter Three
  10. Chapter Four
  11. Chapter Five
  12. Chapter Six
  13. Chapter Seven
  14. Chapter Eight
  15. Chapter Nine
  16. Chapter Ten
  17. Chapter Eleven
  18. Chapter Twelve
  19. Chapter Thirteen
  20. Chapter Fourteen
  21. Chapter Fifteen
  22. Chapter Sixteen
  23. Chapter Seventeen
  24. Chapter Eighteen
  25. Chapter Nineteen
  26. Chapter Twenty
  27. Chapter Twenty-One
  28. Chapter Twenty-Two
  29. Chapter Twenty-Three
  30. Chapter Twenty-Four
  31. Chapter Twenty-Five
  32. Chapter Twenty-Six
  33. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  34. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  35. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  36. Chapter Thirty
  37. Chapter Thirty-One
  38. Chapter Thirty-Two
  39. Chapter Thirty-Three
  40. Chapter Thirty-Four
  41. Chapter Thirty-Five
  42. Chapter Thirty-Six
  43. Chapter Thirty-Seven
  44. Chapter Thirty-Eight
  45. Chapter Thirty-Nine
  46. Chapter Forty
  47. Chapter Forty-One
  48. Chapter Forty-Two
  49. Chapter Forty-Three
  50. Chapter Forty-Four
  51. Chapter Forty-Five
  52. Chapter Forty-Six
  53. Chapter Forty-Seven
  54. Chapter Forty-Eight
  55. A CONVERSATION WITH CLAIRE SEEBER
  56. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  57. About the Author
  58. By the same author:
  59. About the Publisher

But this morning I did at least know what they wanted from me and I had to give it to them. For me, it was a one-time, only-time thing, to be on this side with my make-up done and my mike tucked down my top, under my blue armchair the drink no one in the audience knew was there. I took a final swig and pushed it back with my good foot. I took a deep breath, and remembered Charlie’s promise. I remembered Charlie’s threats. I just had to ensure I didn’t reveal too much. I thought of being on the running track at school and my dad shouting on the touchline, ‘Keep going, Maggie, keep on’, as I drove myself forward, and I was ready. Whatever Renee threw at me, I was ready.

Renee was delivering her final droplets of wisdom and waving her final fickle wave before she left the floor. Kay gave my hand a final squeeze and Charlie stood behind the curtain and sleeked back his thick and greying hair before giving me an obsequious thumbs-up. Amanda was counting us down, the titles were up on the monitors and the tension that is a live show was zinging in the air, as palpable as the sweat that had started to run down my back. And then Renee was back on the floor, waving, the audience cheering and clapping and whistling until she snapped on the gravitas this subject would take, and hush fell.

And it was then that I noticed the girl for the first time. She was sitting two chairs away from me, on the other side of the eminent trauma psychologist Sally had wheeled on. She was stunning. A cloud of dark hair framed a little heart face and she held her arm, her plaster-casted arm, gingerly in her other hand. As if she felt my stare, she turned and blinked and smiled at me, a smile that filled those big violet eyes, eyes like bottomless buckets of emotion, and I felt very odd. Like – what do they say? Like a ghost had walked over my grave.

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

Fortunately for the show, Sally’s anti turned up just in time to go on air. Unfortunately for him, though. The poor man never had a hope in hell. He was just fodder, pure gladiatorial bait – thrown to the hungry audience who were ready for a mauling. Simeon Fernandez, his name was. He was some kind of new-age cognitive therapist wanting to expound his theories on post-traumatic stress being purely in the mind. More to the point, he had a new book to promote. And it was he who brought Fay and me together.