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

these youths to do, no club, no sport, no activities. The devil finds work for idle hands, as Marjorie would say and, much as I hate to agree with her, it’s true.

I pull the door closed behind Jamie and go back to trying to locate Luke’s coat which has not been hung on the peg in the hallway as it should have been. I try to suppress my annoyance at his carelessness, whilst at the same time gently reminding him that it’s his responsibility to look after his stuff and to know where it is for when it’s needed.

The knock on the door comes as Luke is whining, ‘Well, it’s not my fault,’ and I am saying, in that voice of barely hidden irritation that all mothers will recognise, ‘Well, whose fault is it then?’ Telling him he needs to go and look again in his bedroom, the bathroom, the sitting room – in every room in the house, essentially – I go to answer the knock. I’m not even looking at who is on the doorstep as I open the door, but back at him to check he is actually following my instruction and not ducking back into the kitchen to retrieve his phone and play some more of whatever mindless game he’s currently wasting his time on.

When I turn my head and see them, my heart skips a beat and my pulse starts racing.

‘What … what’s the matter?’

Police officers on the door always spark terror. It reminds me of that time they came in answer to Charlie’s accusations, but they’re not just frightening for that reason. Immediately, I think the worst, that someone is harmed, that something awful has happened. It can’t be Jamie, as he only just left. Justin? Has he done something stupid? No, he wouldn’t; he’d never leave the boys without a father. But perhaps he’s been knocked off his bike, injured, killed even? I’m probably still the person listed as next of kin on his documents …

But it’s not that. They’re not here because of Justin, or Jamie.

‘Ms Carr,’ says the burly, tall one. ‘We are arresting you for the attempted murder of Mr Daniel Hegarty and Mrs Charlotte Hegarty. You do not have to say anything …’

Gradually, it dawns on me, the terrible, irrefutable, cataclysmic truth of what is happening.

That the person replacing Charlotte in the dock is me.

Chapter 48

Charlotte

I can’t work out whether it’s ironic that Miriam is the one I have to thank for how things changed. If it were, the irony would come from the fact that Miriam has been gossiping about me for years. Not in a bad way, you understand. Just that kind of tittle-tattle about someone that sets the tattler up as a friend and confidante, as someone special, someone with privileged access to the sanctified inner circle. With Miriam, it’s all about her serf-like obsession with those richer, more beautiful, and infinitely higher in status than her.

The way she’s always tried to inveigle herself into my good books through sheer, blatant sycophancy ended up being my saviour. The story, as I understand it, goes like this. Miriam is in the pub one night, after the parish council meeting. A young man joins the councillors at their table and says he’s looking for someone, an old friend, who he believes lives in the village. Her name is Sue Birch, though she may have a married surname these days.

Miriam thinks there’s something familiar about the name but she can’t quite place it, so she takes the young man’s number and promises to call him if anything occurs to her. A day or so later, it does. She remembers exactly where she has come across the name Sue Birch. Written inside a book she’d seen in your living room, a tome on toxicology that you’ve kept all the years since university. You must have called yourself Sue rather than Susannah back in those days, and Birch is presumably your maiden name.

Miriam phones the young man and passes on the information. But the idea that he is a friend has started to seem strange. Surely he’d have looked online or on social media to find you if this were the case? Or enquired through mutual acquaintances?

Anyhow, armed with the address and phone number he needs, the young man clearly feels able to divulge more than he has before. He turns out to be a TV researcher, working on a documentary on female poisoners. Which, so it seems, is what you are. You once tried to kill your ex-boyfriend and his new partner with chocolates contaminated with mercury. Who would have thought that dear, sweet, unassuming Susannah could contain such evil intent within her? Truly, it’s astonishing.

With that revelation, darling Miriam, always loyal, always on my side, endlessly held in thrall to my exalted position, my power of patronage in this small village, contacts my defence team. It’s the spur they need to insist that the CPS pass on all of your phone and laptop records. The police have taken everything but not gone through it all, and not put any of your many incriminating internet searches, downloaded documents and phone calls forwards as evidence.

Once my lawyers discover your numerous delvings into foraging websites, asking questions about how much hemlock would be required to kill, how long it would take, if there is an antidote, your fate is sealed. You use the paedophile’s excuse that it’s all just research for your ‘book’ (the idea for which you scammed off me in the first place) but fortunately not even the police are stupid enough to fall for that one.

Interviewed under caution for the first time, Miriam comes up with her second gem. She had seen you, in the late afternoon, approaching my house via the back gate that leads to a path between the stable block and the walled garden, and thence to the kitchen door. Miriam herself had been in the lane searching for blackberries, which grow there in