Complicit by Nicci French Read Free Book Online Page B

tarmac track. The gates were locked and for a moment we nearly gave up – I nearly gave up, putting my head on the steering-wheel and saying over and over again, ‘It doesn’t matter, it’s all over.’ Sonia remained calm. She examined the map and directed me round to the other side where there was another entrance. Glinting black waters of the reservoir, sailing boats lined up on the shore, rattling and tinkling in the small breaths of wind.
    Before
    ‘I don’t know if it’s a good idea,’ I said to Amos.
    We were sitting outside one of those London pubs that used to be a down-at-heel dive, filled with smoke and the smell of stale beer, but had reinvented itself and was now a gastro-pub, serving things like seared scallops on a bed of lentils, or blue-cheese and poached-pear salad – which was what I was eating. Amos had a steak sandwich. The sun poured down from a clear blue sky. We’d done this so many times before – sat outside a pub talking, making plans.
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘Because.’ I made a vague gesture with my hands. If he didn’t know, I wasn’t going to say.
    ‘You mean because we used to go out together and now we’ve split up?’
    ‘We didn’t go out together. We lived together. For years.’
    He looked at me. I couldn’t make out his expression: it seemed both scrutinizing and beseeching. ‘It was fun, wasn’t it?’
    ‘Fun? You mean, living together?’
    ‘We had fun.’
    ‘Sometimes,’ I replied. Fun, fights, tears, regrets, and a slow, depressing ending. I looked at him: thin, with dark intense eyes and a beaky nose, a shock of dark brown hair. I used to tell him he looked like Bob Dylan – Bob Dylan circa 1966. That was when I still loved him.
    ‘We’re friends, aren’t we?’ He sounded like a small boy.
    ‘It’s not quite as easy as that.’
    ‘That’s up to us.’ He took my hand. I pulled it away. ‘Who else is going to play?’
    ‘Neal – remember him? Then a boy from school and his rich father. Don’t make that face. Oh, and Sonia,’ I added, as if she was an afterthought.
    ‘Sonia?’
    ‘Yes. She’s going to sing.’
    ‘I can imagine her voice,’ he said. ‘Velvety.’
    ‘Hmm. I don’t quite understand why you’re so keen to play in this band, Amos.’
    He shrugged. ‘It’ll be a hoot. And I’m at a loose end.’
    ‘No holiday plans, then?’
    ‘I’m too busy trying to pay off my mortgage to take a holiday this year,’ he said. ‘Or next.’
    Ten months ago, Amos and I had bought a flat together just off the Finchley Road. It was lovely, with tall rooms and big windows and white walls, a balcony for plants. The day we had moved in, a glorious late-September day, we had lain on the carpet together, in the unfurnished, echoing room, and held hands, staring up at the freshly painted ceiling and giggling with happiness and surprise at being so grown-up, so together as a couple because, after all, we weren’t really adults when we met, but footloose and penniless students. When I had left him, or he had left me, or maybe we really had left each other, he had had to buy me out, money I had used to put down as a deposit on my depressing hole in Camden.
    ‘You could always sell it,’ I said unsympathetically. ‘But OK, Amos. Come and play your guitar.’
    ‘It’ll be like the old days.’
    ‘It will not be like the old days.’
    At that moment, a stocky figure came up to us. ‘Bonnie?’
    I tried to place him.
    ‘It’s Frank. We studied music together years ago.’
    ‘Sorry. Wrong context, you know.’
    He took a seat beside us.
    ‘I’d have recognized you anywhere,’ he said. ‘You still look about twelve.’
    ‘Thank you.’
    ‘What are you up to nowadays?’
    ‘I teach music at a school near here,’ I said.
    He wrinkled his nose sympathetically. ‘A teacher?’
    ‘Yes.’ I looked at him with dislike, willing him to go away.
    ‘She’s got a band, though,’ Amos put in.
    ‘I haven’t!’
    ‘You’ve got a band? What kind of