BooksBarbecue
Back The Favor Save as PDF
Chapters (78)
  1. Title Page
  2. Dedication
  3. Prologue
  4. One
  5. Two
  6. Three
  7. Four
  8. Five
  9. Six
  10. Seven
  11. Eight
  12. Nine
  13. Ten
  14. Eleven
  15. Twelve
  16. Thirteen
  17. Fourteen
  18. Fifteen
  19. Sixteen
  20. Seventeen
  21. Eighteen
  22. Nineteen
  23. Twenty
  24. Twenty-One
  25. Twenty-Two
  26. Twenty-Three
  27. Twenty-Four
  28. Twenty-Five
  29. Twenty-Six
  30. Twenty-Seven
  31. Twenty-Eight
  32. Twenty-Nine
  33. Thirty
  34. Thirty-One
  35. Thirty-Two
  36. Thirty-Three
  37. Thirty-Four
  38. Thirty-Five
  39. Thirty-Six
  40. Thirty-Seven
  41. Thirty-Eight
  42. Thirty-Nine
  43. Forty
  44. Forty-One
  45. Forty-Two
  46. Forty-Three
  47. Forty-Four
  48. Forty-Five
  49. Forty-Six
  50. Forty-Seven
  51. Forty-Eight
  52. Forty-Nine
  53. Fifty
  54. Fifty-One
  55. Fifty-Two
  56. Fifty-Three
  57. Fifty-Four
  58. Fifty-Five
  59. Fifty-Six
  60. Fifty-Seven
  61. Fifty-Eight
  62. Fifty-Nine
  63. Sixty
  64. Sixty-One
  65. Sixty-Two
  66. Sixty-Three
  67. Sixty-Four
  68. Sixty-Five
  69. Sixty-Six
  70. Sixty-Seven
  71. Sixty-Eight
  72. Sixty-Nine
  73. Seventy
  74. Acknowledgments
  75. About the Author
  76. Remarkable Praise for Nicci French
  77. Also by Nicci French
  78. About the Publisher

She looked over at him and he felt her looking and put his hand on her thigh, through the thin material of her dress. Liam Birch: not her type at all. Liam was not on track; Jude was. She had known she was going to be a doctor since she was at primary school and she had worked for years to get there, never letting up. She had a place at medical school and as long as her results were all right, and she was sure they would be, in six weeks she would be heading to Bristol.

Liam didn’t know what he was going to do next. He was good with his hands. He could fix almost anything and he could pick up a pencil and in a few strokes create something vivid, startling. Jude had said he should go to art school and he would shrug his shoulders and say he would see what happened—as if it wasn’t really his decision to make, as if life just rolled him over and carried him along. Maybe he would go traveling, he said; get away from this medium-sized town in the middle of England where he had lived all his life with his parents and his little brother. She looked down at the hand that lay warm and heavy on her thigh. What would happen when she went to university? They hadn’t talked about the future, just as they hadn’t talked much about the past. She didn’t know a great deal about Liam’s family, his childhood, his previous relationships. What mattered was now, and here, and the lovely loosening of her body when he touched her, when she thought of him touching her, and the way he looked at her and said her name.

They hadn’t been at the same school. Liam had gone to the large sixth-form college on the outskirts of the Shropshire town they both lived in, Jude to the comprehensive. But she had been aware of him, a tall lanky figure with dark hair that needed cutting and clothes that never looked new: ripped jeans, T-shirts with mysterious words on them, a weird green jacket that on someone else would have looked terrible but he carried it off. She had seen him over the past two years, walking along the streets in a group of other teenagers, smoking, swigging from cans, looking cool and impossibly worldly.