Page 84 of Friend of the Family

‘It’s hardly a smoking gun.’

Amy finished off her gingertini and summoned the waiter for another one; not because they were so good – although on any other occasion she would have found them deliciously smooth and spicy – but because she wanted to blot everything out and forget.

‘Can I ask you a question?’ Juliet asked. Amy nodded. ‘Is it Josie you don’t trust, or David? Is it her you feel threatened by, or is it David?’

‘I hope you’re not making excuses for her, Jules.’

‘All I’m saying is that sometimes, when we worry about something, we project it onto the wrong thing.’

‘She wants my life, Jules. My husband, my job, my house.’

‘Maybe. And do you blame her? David’s rich and handsome. You’re a magazine editor with an amazing home in Notting Hill. She’s hungry and ambitious – you were too, but she might just have fewer morals about what she has to do to get what she wants.’

Amy didn’t want to admit that her friend might be right. Increasingly these days, she was feeling old. Old when she came to New York, old when she talked about social media with Douglas, old when her hairdresser at the Charles Worthington salon suggested a colour, not as a playful change but to cover up the silvery grey at her temples. Her forty-second birthday was just a few weeks away, but sometimes she felt a decade older.

Her husband, on the other hand, looked in his prime. Success, maturity suited him. She’d been ready to believe that he was having an affair with a woman half his age because in her heart she’d been expecting someone like Josie Price to come along and seduce him, and for him to let it happen.

‘I thought you said David loved me,’ she said quietly.

‘He does. But plenty of marriages wobble because you don’t pay them enough attention. Forget Josie for one minute, and think about David. Why you’ve banished him to the spare room on a hunch. Why you were quick to think a bra in the bed meant he was having an affair.’

Amy looked at her friend incredulously. She had expected sympathy; instead she was getting tough love.

‘I can’t believe you somehow think this is my fault. I came all the way out to your cottage on Friday because I was so upset, upset because that girl is trying to wreck my life. And it’s working, too. My marriage, my job . . . it’s as if she’s there, everywhere, putting the boot in. And you think it’s just me being complacent . . .’

Her head was spinning now. That second gingertini had been a mistake.

‘Amy. I’m just saying you need to be more honest about why you’re upset. Why you’re so suspicious of David.’

‘Don’t lecture me about honesty and relationships, Juliet.’

Juliet flin

ched. ‘It sounds as if there’s a point in there.’

Amy bit her lip. ‘It’s nothing,’ she said quickly. ‘I’m just jet-lagged and drunk.’

‘What are you not telling me? At least we can be honest with each other after all these years.’

Amy took a deep breath. The thing that had been gnawing away at her for days was her need to know the truth. A confession from David that he had slept with Josie would crucify her, but at least she would know. She would know and she could move forward. It was the not knowing that was driving her mad; the constant sense of feeling so stupid that was grinding her into the ground. Would Juliet want the truth too?

‘Like I said, I went to the cottage on Friday. I needed to talk to you about my car-crash interview with Douglas and you weren’t answering your phone.’

‘I was at the Four Seasons spa.’

‘I didn’t know that. I just took a chance and drove down. I saw Peter. He was with a friend.’

‘A friend?’ said Juliet, the penny beginning to drop.

‘I didn’t recognise him.’

‘Him? What are you suggesting here, Amy? Just tell me.’

‘I saw them kiss.’

‘So what? You know what Peter’s like. He’s so fey with some of his school pals. They like to think they’re still twenty-three and in a college production of Brideshead Revisited.’

Amy knew this was the point at which she could pull back, but Juliet was no fool.