Читать книгу Mine: The hot new thriller of 2018 - sinister, gripping and dark with a breathtaking twist - J.L. Butler, J.L. Butler - Страница 15

I go way back with Clare Everett. Back to the day when I’d travelled down from Accrington to Birmingham with my lifetime’s possessions straining in a fifty-litre rucksack I’d bought from Millets in Manchester.

She had been assigned the room next to me in our hall of residence, and was unlike anyone I had ever met before; a Home Counties beauty who owned a horse and car, and had been to boarding school. Ours should have been a fleeting friendship, one of geography and convenience, that evaporated as soon as we located people in our halls, on our course, with whom we had more in common. She was a bit pony-club in those days, but I like to think I helped to make her cool. By Christmas she had swapped her Next dresses for jeans and Doc Martens. For her part, Clare helped me to fit in with the middle classes. Despite our differences, our unlikeliest of starts, we grew close and remained that way, even after she married her university sweetheart Dominic ten years ago.

Clare settled back into her bar stool in the Ham Yard hotel bar and picked at a tray of wasabi nuts. I didn’t usually come to places like this and although I was wearing a new dress that sucked me in in all the right places, I didn’t feel as if I belonged here. Clare, on the other hand, hadn’t lost her show-pony polish and fitted into this sophisticated scene like a slim hand slipping on an elegant leather glove. In fact, tonight, I thought she looked like a Hitchcock Blonde. Too much like a Hitchcock Blonde, suddenly nervous about where we were going and who we were meeting.

‘I’m starving. We should have gone for something to eat. Do you think there’s still time?’ she said, twisting her mid-length hair over one shoulder.

‘Party starts at seven thirty and it’s twenty past,’ I said, eager to go.

‘So tell me more about this party we’re going to.’

‘Some launch of an exhibition.’

I took the tickets Martin had given me out of my handbag and handed them to her.

‘Art,’ she said, glancing back at me archly. ‘Have you started collecting?’

‘As if. I was given some tickets, that’s all.’

‘Delauney Gallery,’ she read down the bridge of her nose as if she were developing short-sightedness. ‘Helen North. I haven’t heard of her. Although she must be good to have landed a show at the Delauney.’

She glanced over at me playfully.

‘At least there ought to be some interesting men there. Collecting art is the new golf, someone was telling me the other day.’

‘I thought cycling was the new golf.’

Clare laughed. ‘Whatever. I’m just glad you’re getting out a bit more. By the way, I hope you’re still coming to the opening of Dom’s restaurant. I’m rounding up all the single men we know for your benefit.’

I finished my drink and looked at her. Clare was the one person I could tell anything to. She knew all my stories, my dark corners. Not just because she was my friend, but because it was her job as a psychologist.

‘As a matter of fact, that’s why I wanted you to come out tonight,’ I said tentatively.

‘You’re not coming?’

‘Of course I’m coming to Dom’s launch. I meant tonight. I wanted to introduce you to someone.’

Clare stroked her ponytail. ‘I’m a happily married woman, darling.’

‘Me,’ I ventured carefully. ‘I’ve met someone. And he’s going to be there later.’

My friend perked up instantly. I knew how it worked with the happily marrieds. They relied on their single friends for gossip and salacious tales of life in the field, if only to remind themselves how grateful they were to be not still searching for ‘the one’. I was consistently a disappointment on that score, being the sort to keep my private life to myself, but now I was offering something.

‘Fuck,’ she said after a moment.

‘It’s not that shocking,’ I smiled as I finished my mocktail.

She fixed me with her most questioning psychotherapist stare.

‘So who is he?’

‘His name is Martin,’ I said vaguely.

‘Good solid name. Where did you meet? How long have you been seeing him? What does he do?’

‘I hate that,’ I winced, waving my hand. ‘It’s shorthand for “what are his prospects?”’

‘Too right. I’m vetting him. He has to be good enough for my best friend. I assume that’s why you want me to meet him.’

‘I’ve been seeing him for about six weeks. He works in finance,’ I said, ignoring the question of where we met.

‘Oh, Fran. Not a banker,’ she sighed, her shoulders slumping. ‘And it was all sounding so promising.’

I couldn’t tell if she was joking or not, but I decided that the best way to proceed was with a lightness of touch.

‘Banker-bashing is so predictable.’

‘It has nothing to do with the amount of money he makes. Bankers share quite a lot of traits with psychopaths,’ she said, crossing her legs. ‘Lack of empathy, huge ego, often quite charming. You’ll find the highest levels of psychopathy in bankers, CEOs and psychiatrists.’

‘You’re saying my new boyfriend is a psycho,’ I said, trying to laugh.

‘I’m saying, be careful with the rich alpha male.’

‘Anyway, he’s more of a businessman, than a banker. He’s got some sort of fund that predicts the market.’

She started to laugh. ‘So he’s the CEO of a finance company. Double Whammy.’

I wasn’t going to let her get away with it.

‘You say I have a problem, avoiding relationships because of my job, but you’re just as bad. You psychoanalyse people and make a judgement before they even have a chance to prove you wrong.’

‘Or right.’ She smiled. ‘Anyway, you’ve only got yourself to blame.’

‘Me?’ I frowned as I picked up my bag.

‘You were the reason I became a shrink,’ said Clare, and we got up and left the bar.