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

I ran towards the music, gasping and breathless as I took the stairs two at a time to reach the fluid climbing notes, but when I flung the study door wide open, the room that no one ever visited, empty except for my mother’s piano looming large and obsolete, it was only Jenny sitting there, playing a jolly waltz. Jenny beamed up from the piano-stool, her fringe very shiny, her rosy cheeks as round as apples – but when she saw my face, she trailed off.

‘I’m sorry, love,’ she said a little nervously, ‘you don’t mind, do you? You did say it was all right.’

But it wasn’t all right. Had I really said that?

‘It just – it seems like such a waste.’

It hadn’t been played for years; even I couldn’t bear to any more, although I had tried.

‘I couldn’t resist any more.’

I knew it would be wrong to yell don’t touch. I bit my lip hard. ‘You carry on.’ Managing a feeble smile, I shut the door carefully behind me. Alone on the landing I put my hand to my mouth and brought away blood. Bemused, I wiped it on my coat. Then I went to the kitchen to make some lunch. There was half a bottle of Shiraz open on the side. I shoved a pan of parsnip soup onto the hob and stood there clutching a glass of the dark red wine and I felt stupid and bereft again, like I had when I was thirteen. How stupid I was: I’d forgotten Jenny taught music, of course she did – that’s how she’d met my father, teaching at his school. Of course she’d bloody play. Although I put the radio on loudly to drown the music out, I could hear how out of tune my mother’s piano really was. As I slathered bread with thick yellow butter, I realised it was finally time to leave.

I took a deep breath and rang my ex-boyfriend.

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Twelve

My dad and Jenny came for Sunday lunch on the weekend I moved back into the flat in Borough Market. My dad said it was a sort of housewarming, but I knew really it was to check up on me, to make sure I was coping.

It felt extremely odd and rather uncomfortable to be there again, but I had little choice it seemed. Alex had just accepted a huge job in Glasgow, so our old flat above the cake shop in the market was sitting empty for the time being. I couldn’t afford to rent a new place as well as pay my half of the existing mortgage. In a series of terse and cursory emails and messages to one another, Alex and I eventually established I’d move back in alone while I worked out what to do next.