The Best of Friends Alex Day (best short novels .TXT) 📖

bedside table and reach out a hand to pick it up. It can’t have been very compelling if I’m not desperate to find out whodunit. But I feel a duty to the author to at least read the last few pages and see if I’m surprised by the outcome. The book isn’t on the table so I lean over and scrabble around under the bed in case it has fallen. Agnes is great in many ways, reliable and trustworthy, but she is very much of the ‘out of sight, out of mind’ school of cleaning. If the book has been knocked to the floor by a frenzy of the vigorous hovering at which she is particularly adept, she won’t have noticed it.

My hand makes contact with a block of paper and cardboard. But not just that. Next to it, I feel the cold solidity of metal, the slinky ridges of a chain. Ignoring the book, I pull what must be a piece of jewellery out from its hiding place and examine it closely. It is a silver chain with a collection of charms hanging from it: a die, an arrowhead, and a heart. I notice that the chain has not been undone but is broken. Easy enough to replace. I lay it carefully down on the bedside table, turn onto my back and lie completely still, staring at the ceiling.

The necklace is not mine.

But somehow it’s got into my house, into my room. Into my bed.

When Dan enters the room, I’m sitting up, the pillows propped behind me, my eyes fixed on him as he opens the door, smiling in anticipation. He’s wearing just a towel, his erection pushing it proudly forward. He must have showered in another bathroom so that, when he came to me, he’d be ready for action. He moves forward to stand beside the bed and lets the towel drop.

I say nothing, but just hold the necklace out towards him, the chain dangling from my fingers, the charms swaying to and fro. If I weren’t so upset, I’d think it was funny the way his erection disappears, dwindling away in a matter of seconds, leaving his penis flaccid and dropping. If I had a pair of scissors or a knife I’d cut it off.

And from his reaction, from the dismay that’s swept across his face like a thundercloud in the Corsican mountains, it’s obvious that he’s guilty. He must know this too, as he doesn’t even try to explain. Doesn’t give any feeble excuses and platitudes, no ‘I don’t know how it got there’, or ‘It must belong to the cleaner’. He just looks at the piece of jewellery as if he could murder it. And then bends down to pick up the towel and wrap it back around his waist.

‘Go,’ I say to him. ‘I don’t want to be near you anymore. I want you to leave.’

Dan sits on the bed beside me and instinctively I jerk my legs away. Even though I’ve got the duvet between me and him, the thought of touching any part of him nauseates me.

‘We should talk about this, Charlotte,’ he says, his voice hushed but insistent. ‘I can explain.’

That’s when I scream. I throw my head back and let the sound come out, as loud and terrible as I can manage, until my throat is sore and I have to stop.

The silence that follows is the most profound I’ve ever heard. I can’t believe I haven’t disturbed the boys but they’re probably in the basement still, or with earphones rammed so deep in their ears they’re incapable of hearing anything except whatever mind-destroying rubbish is emanating from their devices.

‘Just go, Dan,’ I say. ‘Just get out of my sight.’

He stands up, holding the towel to make sure it’s secure, as if he’s read my mind and knows what I’d like to do to him.

‘There’s only one thing I want to hear from you right now,’ I blurt out, unable to stop myself, much as I don’t want to engage in any dialogue with him. I take a deep breath and steel myself for the answer.

‘Is it hers?’

I force myself to meet Dan’s eyes.

‘Well, is it?’

Dan blanches visibly, a pallor I’ve never seen before engulfing his face. It’s the first time I’ve seen him utterly floored, so completely disquieted. He opens his mouth as if to reply and then closes it again and swallows so hard I see his Adam’s apple moving.

Impatient now, I ask for a third time.

‘Are you shagging Naomi?’

Even as I say it, I realise I don’t really believe that Naomi is the guilty party. But if it’s not her, who could it be? Dan wouldn’t bother bringing someone he works with in London all the way down here to the sticks, he’d just go to a hotel in town. And another reason against it being Naomi is that the necklace is far too tasteful, too understated and chic, to belong to her. She’s the type who wears enormous nickel hoops in her ears and fussy trinkets that are more Claire’s Accessories than Pandora. Plus I’m absolutely sure I recognise it, that I’ve seen someone wearing it or something similar, and though I can’t quite put my finger on who it is, I’m certain that it’s not Naomi.

‘Just tell me, Dan. Don’t prolong the agony.’

His expression completely transforms, his eyes that had been narrowed widening in astonishment, the anxiety in his tight lips melting away.

‘No, no absolutely not. Naomi?’ He starts to laugh and then, presumably realising the insensitivity of doing so, stops abruptly. ‘Not her, good God no,’ he concludes.

For some reason, though he’s clearly an even more untrustworthy bastard than I ever knew, I believe him.

‘OK.’ I pick up the book that had been the start of this episode, deliberately open its pages and hold it right in front of my face. ‘Now please do what I asked you to earlier and leave. Not just this room, this house. Immediately. And don’t come back.’

I listen