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

A buzz at the intercom was followed by another two short sharp bursts; a voice calling my name urgently. ‘Maggie.’

Perhaps Seb couldn’t bear to leave after all. I pushed up from the sofa and limped over to the intercom, smiling to myself despite my sore foot, always most stiff in the mornings. ‘What have you forgotten, silly?’

‘You’d better come down here. Quickly.’ His tone was insistent enough to make me drag on my jeans and rush down the stairs, Digby barking behind me. I tore open the door to reveal a troubled-looking Seb standing on the pavement. He held a hand out to me. ‘Maggie.’

A man unpacking crates of flaming clementines from a van opposite glanced across and then stopped in his tracks. I turned. Violent red letters defaced the pale green door, the paint running like dried blood towards the floor. I had to step away to read what they spelled; to read the letters that spelled out the words: MEDDLING WHORE.

Unconsciously I stepped back in horror, knocking into something by my feet. I glanced down. There, propped against the wall by the front door, made out of hideous white chrysanthemums tightly knit together, was a large wreath. A funeral wreath that said: ‘DAUGHTER’.

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Sixteen

‘You can drop me here, thanks.’ I took a deep breath and swung down from the cab, squeezing through the gap between a silver Merc and the monstrous maroon Bentley parked outside the imperious Belgravia house. I stopped for a moment, gazing up at the glossy white pillars, the huge black number shiny in the glass above the solid oak door, the sash windows like unblinking eyes amid the russet creeper hanging shaggy as a beard. It was a house that screamed ‘old money’ but was lying; a house every bit as arrogant as its owner. I’d hoped I’d never set foot here again.

Turning the collar of my coat up in search of protection, I shot up the stairs before I lost my nerve. The wrought-iron gargoyle set into the enormous door-knocker sneered down at me.

‘And you can sod off,’ I muttered, before pounding him hard.

An hour ago I’d stood outside my flat staring at those bald words scrawled across my own front door, at that horrible wreath, utterly incongruous before the cosy cake-shop where iced confections in the luminous window proclaimed ‘Happy Birthday’ and ‘Congratulations’; the shop Alex had once commissioned to make me a ‘Can’t Get Enough of You’ cake on a weekend where we didn’t get out of bed. I had stared and stared at the wreath until Seb had taken my hand very gently, and slipped his arm around me.

‘All right?’ He kissed the top of my head.