Buch lesen: «Love Me, Love Me Not: An addictive psychological suspense with a twist you won’t see coming»

CHAPTER ONE
Stargazer Lily: Ambition, encouragement when facing a difficult challenge

Surrey, England, present day

Today isn’t the first time I’ve thought about killing my best friend, but it is the first time I’ve done something about it.

I didn’t mean to; at least, it must have been a subliminal thought because I never intended to pick up the wrong bottle from the back of the fridge. Honest mistake, given I was preoccupied with the sight of her at the edge of the lawn, arm outstretched as she leant over to pick one of my Passiflora before holding it up to her dainty little nose.

It was all I could do not to smack my hand against the windowpane and shout at her to leave it alone, to get her hands off that which didn’t belong to her.

Instead I offered up a shaky wave as she caught me watching, a guilty smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

She’s sitting on the other side of the garden table now, bare legs tucked up underneath her skirt, palms wrapped around the mug of chamomile tea I made to help with her nerves. I sit down opposite, stirring a teaspoon of honey into my single caffeinated drink of the day.

‘Are you allowed honey?’ She sips her tea and fixes me with a doe-eyed stare. The innocence doesn’t penetrate the way it would with someone who didn’t know her as intimately as I do.

‘You’re getting confused with babies,’ I say, handing over a plate of scones, my mother’s homemade strawberry jam oozing from their middles. Her hand hesitates, as if deciding which one to choose, but I know it’s more about the ever-tightening waistband; a waistband that used to hang on hipbones but now strains against the result of comfort eating. ‘Besides, it’s as organic as it’s ever going to get. The hive’s in next door’s garden.’

‘Of course.’ Her eyes close as she bites down on the crumbling patisserie, the sweet fruit intermingling with thick, Cornish cream.

I know her weaknesses. I know everything about Elle.

A sigh, a stroke of hair as she wipes a crumb from her lips and gazes across the lawn.

‘What’s the matter?’ I ask, not needing to follow her line of sight to see the picture of my garden. At this time of year it is particularly resplendent; the wisteria has bloomed, the alliums are starting to show and there is a constant chatter of visiting birds and wildlife who come to feast on nature’s wares.

I should be fumigating the greenhouse and planting out my tomatoes instead of placating a drama queen.

‘I’m sorry for barging in on you like this,’ she says, but I know the words are empty. Elle has never needed to apologise for anything in her life; there has never been a moment when she has had to understand how it feels to be contrite, to ache with regret over a decision made.

She always left that to me.

‘Don’t be silly,’ I say, sliding the plateful of temptation a little closer. ‘I’m glad you came.’

She pulls another scone in two, red leaking into white and spoiling the perfect, clean lines. I feel my jaw clench and have to look away.

‘So how are you feeling?’ she says, an unexpected moment of concern, the only one offered since she arrived on my doorstep, cheeks wet with distress, and at the very moment I had finished wiping down the work surfaces.

‘A little tired, but otherwise fine. What about you?’

Tears brim from between dark lashes and tumble down her face, faint blush marks only adding to her beauty.

I give her hand a gentle squeeze, not trusting my tongue to control itself. There’s a hole at the cuff of her cardigan and the cashmere has begun to bobble. A crack in the otherwise polished veneer and I wonder how much of this has been noticed by Patrick, or whether he needs another prod.

‘Is he still travelling a lot?’ No harm in throwing another log on that fire.

Elle sniffs, patting underneath her eyes with a manicured hand. Her skin still holds the sun from a Caribbean break little more than a month ago. A last-minute attempt to fill the caverns of her womb with her husband’s seed.

‘It’s because of the promotion,’ she replies, ever ready to defend his absence. ‘He says all the brown-nosing is necessary to make sure he’s a frontrunner. Once he makes partner he’ll have more time.’

‘For what?’

‘For us, of course. For the baby.’

‘Still, it’s a shame he’s not coming to the scan.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’ A twitch of shoulder, fingers turning diamonds round and round the bone. ‘He’ll be at the next one.’

‘Of course.’ I swallow my sweetened cup of Lady Grey tea, breathing in its comforting scent to try and forget the perfumed lilies Elle thrust upon me earlier.

I’d presumed she meant them as an apology for coming here so early, and unannounced at that, but really, lilies? I could have told her they were a funeral flower, gifted at a time of mourning, but instead I freed them from their plastic prison, snipping off the pollenated stems and placing them in an aquamarine vase that now sits on the console table in the hallway. They will act as a reminder of her every time I pass by over the coming days, watching their petals tumble to the floor, crumpled and beginning to rot.

‘I thought I was meeting you at the hospital after your yoga class,’ I say. That would make this the third class in a row she’s skipped. Too many prying eyes and unwanted questions about her attempts to conceive from women whose own children fill the gym’s crèche while they try to shed the excess weight. Because, clearly, the imprinted memory of a life that grew inside of them is a burden their bodies need to be rid of.

‘I didn’t know what to do with myself,’ Elle says. ‘The house feels so empty when he’s not there.’

Elle doesn’t do alone. She isn’t used to filling the silence that comes with living by yourself. It was a silence I used to look forward to at the end of the working week, but is one she runs from, always needing someone to provide her with the reassurance she craves.

So here she is, in my house, all self-complacent and full of faux concern for the one person who has always been there for her, no matter what.

We all have our weaknesses and Elle is mine. She has this uncanny ability to make people do her bidding, albeit unconsciously. One of those creatures who just demands attention, even if all she’s doing is standing at a bus stop or queuing up to pay for milk in the supermarket. It’s as if she has this aura about her that is impossible for other humans to resist. Especially men. Especially Patrick.

Then there’s me, Jane, as if my parents named me knowing I would always be dull. Dark, bulbous eyes set a little too far apart, pallid skin and hair too wily to tame. Like Snow White, but without the beauty. I am the shadow to Elle’s glory and have followed her for nearly half of my life, desperately hoping some of her shine would fall onto my skin and seep through my pores rather than rushing off like rainwater on plastic.

Except now I have something she does not. A baby. Her husband’s baby no less. Patrick’s baby. My baby, if the plan works.

I may only be the surrogate, but if Elle isn’t around any longer then it’s only logical that I take her place.

Murder. So absolute, so final. It’s been a secret longing of mine, one I’ve wrapped around me in the night when I think of everything that could have been. But I never dared to make it anything more than an indulgent fantasy, accepting that my place in life would always be second to Elle.

Until I was able to give her what she wanted more than anything else in the world. The one thing she craved with every ounce of her being. The one thing she was unable to do for herself.

Every second of every day we make a choice. We have the ability to control so much more than we think. It is something I am adept at, noticing the opportunities, the moments when others are caught off-guard and I can choose which way to go.

Which is perhaps why my fingers sought out the second bottle on the left of the top shelf of the fridge instead of the third. It’s the only reason I can think of that I didn’t stop myself, despite registering the bitter scent that curled into my nose as I squeezed the dropper and released half a dozen globes into her tea. It was supposed to be an extra something to help her sleep.

Only belladonna might make it harder for her to wake up in the morning. Eventually. Because although this poison can kill, I have learnt, when administered in the right dosage, death isn’t certain and, instead, all sorts of other, peculiar symptoms can occur. Symptoms that will not only make Elle suffer both physically and emotionally, but suggest to all those who adore her that she isn’t so perfect after all.

Here’s hoping.

‘More tea?’ I rise from my chair, resting a hand on the curve of my stomach, watching as her eye follows, envy always so tricky to conceal.

I understand that knot in your throat, the taste that refuses to go away. It burrows deep within you, gnawing away at everything else until it becomes like some yapping little dog that follows wherever you go.

I know what it is to want that which someone else has. I’ve known it from the very first second I encountered Eleanor Hart. Fifteen years ago, my first day at a new school, when the door of a 4x4 arced wide, gleaming metal reflecting sunlight onto my sallow skin. The silhouetted figure of a girl emerging from its leather interior accompanied by the animated barks of two chocolate-brown Labradors held captive in the boot. She wore a fitted Barbour jacket, over-the-knee socks wrapped around gazelle-like legs, and the hem of her skirt was several inches higher than was stipulated in the school handbook.

A flick of hair, followed by the scent of rosewater and something else, something I knew all too well by its absence in my own home. Money. It was unique and untouchable; barely noticeable yet a protective cloak to those that owned it. Even before she turned her head, even before I was presented with the sight of her exquisite face, I knew I was in love.

‘Do you remember Miss Patterson?’ I place a fresh mug of tea in Elle’s outstretched hand.

‘Frizzy hair and a permanent smell of fish?’ Elle’s nose wrinkles at the memory. ‘She hated me almost as much as she loved you. Did everything she could to fail me that first year of GCSEs, do you remember?’

I remember. The way the corridors throbbed with incessant conversation, the squeak of new shoes and the musky scent of hormones. Designer backpacks jostling for position with oversized watches and sunglasses perched on hair slick with gel.

I felt the full weight of each glance, the passage of eyes up and down my skinny frame as they took stock of my financial status, and I was easy prey with my cheap glasses and second-hand blazer. Just one look placed me in the camp of nerd, my position firmly fixed on the bottom rung of the ladder before I’d even stepped across the threshold.

‘Do you ever wonder what would have happened?’ Elle looks over at me with more than just this question behind her eyes.

‘If you hadn’t sat next to me in maths?’ Of course I do. It’s what changed everything. I’ve always wondered if the two of us were paired up on purpose, the more able children sat beside those whose parents had lined the headmaster’s pockets in order to get their offspring past the first hurdle. For everyone has their price, even the leader of an esteemed private school in the middle of the Surrey countryside.

Or was it simply a twist of fate? I may have been a shrew sat next to a peacock, but to me it was the only thing I needed. Every great journey starts with the first step, and I was given an opportunity I knew not to squander.

‘I loved the fact you were so different.’ She’s staring across the lawn now to where a squirrel is busy burying its winter wares.

‘By different you mean poor.’ I take a sip of my tea and resist the urge to throw something at the vermin. Hopefully it will get snared in the trap I have set so I can drown its rancid body in the river once Elle has gone.

‘No make-up, hair scraped back and the most enormous, incredible eyes. I loved how you didn’t care what anyone thought of you.’

‘I was the freak, the outsider, Elle. The only reason anyone ever talked to me was because of you.’

Every school has a system, a hierarchy of sorts, and the trick was to choose your position within it with care. For once you’re in, once your camp has been chosen, it is nigh on impossible to break ranks.

At my previous school I had gratefully accepted the camp of geek. Not only did it keep me away from the glue-sniffers, the vagabonds, the dregs that linger at the outskirts of social decency, but I also managed to set up a side business in what I liked to refer to as ‘homework assistance’. Which basically meant that for the right price I was willing to do the work for you.

But I had arrived that fateful morning at an altogether different kind of establishment. Too much gloss, the air thick with boasts about where Tobias and Grace and Elijah had spent their summers. A constant battle of one-upmanship as teenagers compared the size of their parents’ bank balance. The only reason I was there was because of a scholarship my mother took great pleasure in reminding me could be rescinded if I weren’t able to live up to my potential.

I knew I had potential. Just not the kind she was hoping for.

‘They were jealous of us,’ Elle says as her lips begin to tremble. ‘Of how close we were.’

I wonder which part of our history is making her react in this way.

‘They thought I was in love with you.’

She nods her agreement. ‘Until France.’

Until the summer we spent in a house overlooking the Côte d’Azur. The summer when Elle was getting over a breakup by wrapping her legs around a local boy called Jean-Pierre who rode a Lambretta and had skin as dark as a conker.

The summer she found someone willing to rid me of my virginity, my innocence camouflaged by red wine and teenage lust. A diminishing experience that took place in an iron-framed bed with white cotton sheets, the complaint of springs drifting down to where Elle sat smoking in the garden below. A night she embellished when we returned to school, thereby putting to rest the rumours about my sexuality, but never quite erasing the sting that came with being poor.

Years were spent acquiring Elle’s friendship, her trust. Each and every time I stepped aside, edging her ever closer to the light, it was done for my benefit as much as hers.

Until she took something that belonged to me, something I now want back.

‘You’ve always been there, no matter what.’

The ‘what’ being my first love. My one and only. The man I thought I was going to marry, spend the rest of my life with. But she knew even this wouldn’t be enough to break the love I had for her. She knew that I, along with everyone else, would always, always put her first.

It’s a privilege reserved for the impossibly beautiful, the ones who are so used to adoration, to the heads that turn whenever they enter a room. I wouldn’t even call it an assumption, because if something has always been there, if you have forever been placed on a higher rung of the ladder, does it not simply become part of you?

‘It’s what best friends are for,’ I say, and she looks at me with such a pathetic look of gratitude on her face I have to stop myself from picking up the vase of flowers and hurling it at her irritatingly perfect features.

‘But now I’m not so sure,’ she says. ‘Perhaps it’s too much. Perhaps we’ve asked too much of you, especially when…’ She hesitates, uncertainty no doubt a novel experience for her.

‘What is it?’

Sitting forward on my chair, I bite back the temptation to push her answer. Could this be it? Have I done enough to make her question that which she holds most true?

‘I think Patrick’s having an affair.’ She avoids my eyes, the bottom half of her face obscured by the grinning picture of a Cheshire cat on her mug as she continues to drink. I picture the warm liquid travelling down her throat and into her stomach. Little by little the poison administered will unfurl into her bloodstream. But as with everything else already set in motion, such an outcome will take time.

I allow myself a moment to inhale the words she has finally spoken, to let them settle inside of me in the shape of a smile. Patience is a virtue, my mother always said, and I have it in droves.

So it begins.