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

Not only I, but any of the foragers who were with us that day, would be able to testify to that. When it came out that you had done it before, that you had tried to harm the man and woman who had thwarted you in your desires, it all fell into place. Your shameless offer to make the curry for my reunion with Dan bore so many similarities to adulterating that box of chocolates that you had given to your boyfriend and his lover, the woman he preferred over you.

From the moment all this information was out in the open my plan, which had for a while been under such threat, fell back into place again. I had made sure to taste the curry when you brought it round, but to take only such a tiny amount that it couldn’t possibly have an adverse effects. That was important because at first I thought the allegation would be that you’d already poisoned it when you deposited it at my house. Miriam’s eye-witness account of seeing you outside later on, in the early evening, changed all that. You’d come back to do the dirty deed, so my earlier tasting became irrelevant. I could hardly believe the gift I’d been given – such stupidity on your part, such luck for me!

When I look back now, I can appreciate that there were more than a few delicate moments. On the night itself I didn’t bargain on the storm, nor on quite how much Dan would eat. But once a gambler, always a gambler – and this time, the risk paid off.

Now you’re in prison and Dan’s eternally grateful to me for what I did, driving through the relentless weather, the tree-felling storm, to get him to the hospital in time to save his life, even when my own was also in jeopardy. For snatching him away from your disingenuous clutches.

He’ll never stray again.

You didn’t ever really understand what kind of person I am, how far I’ll go to protect me and mine. Though you knew that, when it comes to my kids, I’m a mother bear defending her cubs to my last breath, you failed to see that this would extend to my husband, too. You thought I’d just give him up to you. That I’d let him go and wish him well. How could you be so foolish? Like Icarus, you flew too close to the sun on flimsy wings of lust and deceit and inevitably you crashed and burned.

If you’re feeling down, look at it this way. You haven’t done so badly. With the sentence you’ve been given, you’ll be out in under ten years, probably even less if you behave nicely. Don’t come back to the village, though. You won’t be welcome here, ever again.

Sorry-not-sorry, Susannah Carr – or should I call you Sue Birch? But nobody touches my husband, threatens my family, my lifestyle, my future and gets away with it.

I hope you know that now.

When I’ve finished reading, a smile of quiet and simple satisfaction upon my face, I tear the letter into tiny pieces, scrunch them up in my hand and put them back in my pocket. I leave them there until the afternoon, when we troop out to the green to take part in the first of the season’s paper chases. ‘We’, today, means me and Dan and Sam. Toby is still at school, the twins on their gap year in South America. They had to postpone it because of the court case but they’re back on track now and will be off to university in the autumn. It was hard for all of them to come to terms with the attempted assassination of their father, but over time we’ve helped them to understand and in the end it’s actually brought us all closer together, the Hegartys against the world, snug and safe in our – extremely well-heeled – little unit. Even my baby, Sam, is over the worst of it now and positively revelling in all the attention that comes to the last one left at home.

Your Jamie and Luke have moved back to London to live with their father for the duration. Poor kids. But it’s best for them to be away from your suffocating care; they were in danger of becoming terrible mummy’s boys. All women deny that they criticise other mothers’ parenting but they all do it. And with you, there is – was – a lot to criticise.

Leaving Dan and Sam talking strategies – it’s lovely to see how much greater a part Dan is playing in the boys’ lives these days – I wander a little way away, following the paper trail. I pull the remains of the letter out of my pocket and open my hand, allowing the wind to grab the pieces and disperse them into those already lying on the frost-hard ground. At first they seem conspicuous, so white amidst the colours of red, blue and green. But soon the eye becomes accustomed to differences and stops noticing them and so it is now. I pause for a moment, considering the irony of making my letter part of the very game that first brought us together, two years ago on Toby’s birthday.

That day was the start of the competition between us, the tussle to win the heart and mind of Dan. And I’ve ended up where I always knew I would.

The winner.

A gust of wind stirs the paper pieces and then subsides, leaving the trail intact, stretching into the distance. A whistle sounds and the race starts. The boys stream past. My husband, on the sidelines, cheers them on.

This time, my Sam is in the lead.

Acknowledgements

Like many authors, my writing takes place around the demands of an extremely taxing job so I must thank everyone who puts up with me taking notes, editing documents, and getting lost in thought in the middle of a conversation when an idea strikes me. My time to write is