The Best of Friends by Alex Day (accelerated reader books .txt) 📕

They both fell about laughing. This was the 1990s. As already noted during my sojourn in France, in the UK sexy underwear was polyester Ann Summers; everyone else wore sensible and practical cotton briefs from M&S. I looked on, stunned. Eventually, my lack of reaction of any kind caused them to abruptly shut up.

‘What’s the mat—’ began Simone, before petering out in a red flush of embarrassment. ‘Oh, oh, I see, I get it … sorry. Really sorry.’

The knickers had dropped from her hand during the fit of hysterics and now lay on the floor in a crumpled heap. Neither of them seemed to want to touch them.

I picked them up and screwed them into a tight ball in my fist. They scrunched up to nothing. It was what I wanted to do to her, to that bitch Josephine, and to Charlie, too, despite how much my heart still ached for him. One of them – perhaps both, conspiring together, determined to inflict maximum hurt on me – had planted them amongst my stuff. They couldn’t have known that Debs and Simone would be assisting me and would see them, too.

No, this pain was intended all for me.

I felt myself collapse then, from the inside out, slowly falling like the Jenga tower when the crucial brick is removed, sinking down and down to end up in a jumbled, chaotic heap, in my hand still clenched the interloper’s knickers.

Unlike Josephine, I have the capacity to feel guilt, remorse, regret. And for Charlotte, I do. The justification for my actions is that I thought Dan was serious. I thought he meant it. I thought he and Charlotte were over and there was nothing more to it than waiting for her to overcome the denials and accept the inevitable. Now, with a distance of over twenty years and my experience of being the other woman, I suddenly understand that this is probably exactly how Josephine saw things.

Oh, the irony. The terrible, truthful, irony of that.

The boys return from their holiday, brimming with health, tanned and fit after their wholesome, outdoors-in-all-weathers holiday, both an inch or so taller and more tousle-haired than ever. I try to focus on them, my children, keeping at the forefront of my mind how much they love me and depend on me, how much they need me. Their presence is a balm that almost – but not quite – makes up for the hurt and loneliness.

I can’t completely let go, can’t lose my mind the way I did after Charlie’s betrayal. The repercussions for Jamie and Luke if I trod that path again are too terrible to contemplate. Not just the legal and judicial consequences but the ramifications of all the publicity, too. A blonde in a scandal always attracts attention like crows to carrion; perhaps less when she’s forty than when she’s twenty, but attention nevertheless. The gutter press is no different now to what it was then, when the tabloids went wild for my story.

The story of how I poisoned Charlie and Josephine.

Chapter 27

Susannah

A flu virus seized hold of me, all those years ago, in my weakened state of not eating, not exercising, not working; heartbreak is a physical as much as an emotional ailment. The saintly Simone took my temperature and it was as she held the thermometer up to the light to read the mercury that the idea occurred to me. Perhaps it was the fever causing me to hallucinate. But whatever it was, the notion took root and, as I gradually recovered, began to shape up as an actual plan, a mission that, once accomplished, would cause Charlie and Josephine to suffer in the same way as they had inflicted such suffering on me.

There were any number of pharmacies dotted around the streets of London, more than one could ever imagine and I visited many of them and in each one, purchased a thermometer. Over time, I accumulated lots of them. They were inexpensive, just a few pounds each for the basic model. Whilst on my shopping spree, going from store to store to avoid suspicion, it was impossible to avoid the Valentine’s displays, the serried ranks of chocolate boxes, of hearts and flowers and teddy bears. Each one made my eyes brim with tears; no celebrations for me this year, no declarations of undying love, no partner at all. Equal measures of hatred, despair and hopelessness engulfed me.

At Deb and Simone’s flat, which I still could not think of as home, though I’d been there for over a month by then, I spread the carefully collected thermometers out on my bed and counted them. There were enough. Next to them, I placed the expensive box of designer chocolates I’d also purchased. It was closed with a cardboard sleeve and tied with a silky red ribbon, adding to the luxury it exuded. I sat and looked at my goodies for a long time, only clearing them away when I heard one of the girls’ keys in the front door.

Next day, my headache and my tiredness laid me low once more. It was Sunday; no need to get up so I didn’t. As I lay in bed, feeling the chill dankness of a February day emanate through the glass windowpane, I found it hard to think of any reason to get up ever again.

Opening the drawer of my bedside table to retrieve paracetamol, I heard the chink and clink of the thermometers as they moved around within the plastic bag in which I’d concealed them. Also in the drawer were the French knickers. They were no longer the tight ball I had stashed there; it had gradually unfurled as I imagined Charlie and Josephine’s liaison – I couldn’t bring myself to call it love, or even a relationship – had done during those sultry days in the Marseille apartment, and ever since they threw me out. Somehow, though I despised the knickers’ slutty beauty, I couldn’t bring myself to throw them