To My Best Friends

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

Chapter Forty-Nine

Chapter Fifty

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Praise

Also by Sam Baker

Copyright

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

Prologue

That navy Prada suit, the one with the nipped-in waist you wished you’d never bought? Trust me, get the skirt taken up two inches and wear it with my red Marc Jacobs mary-janes. The ones with the blue trim. They always fitted you better than they did me, anyway. You’ll look a million dollars . . .

Slipping the lid back on the cartridge pen, Nicci dropped it on the duvet beside her and let her head fall back onto plumped pillows. She closed her eyes and felt the bedroom spin. It was a familiar sensation now, almost comforting, in a sick sort of way.

Three and a half lines of writing. Five sentences. Fifty-five words. How could fifty-five measly words be so exhausting? They weren’t even the important words. Those were still to come. These were just the preamble, the housekeeping. Nicci risked opening her eyes and the room sped up.

Damn it, she thought, and let her lids drop, feeling the spinning recede. This wasn’t her. Illness didn’t suit her. Nicci Morrison didn’t do sick, just as she didn’t do sitting around at weekends, chilling or downtime. And she didn’t do lying in bed in the middle of the afternoon. At least not since she was twenty-one and had met David. Then they’d done nothing much other than lying in bed all afternoon when she should have been writing a ten-thousand-word dissertation on the way clothes reflect women’s place in society in nineteenth-century literature. Well, not so much lying, but bed had figured prominently. Bed, the floor, the bath . . .

Nicci smiled at the memory. Half sad, half glad they’d had that then, and the rest.

Come on, she urged herself. Get a grip. One down, three more letters to go.

The trick was catching her morphine at the right stage: long enough after her injection for the pain to have eased, but not so soon the opiates dulled her capacity to think straight. Pulling herself up, Nicci rummaged around her for the pen while trying to find her train of thought. Light shimmered at the edge of her vision, brighter than she could stand.

Jo wouldn’t refuse, Nicci was sure of that. Especially not when she opened the parcel containing the red mary-janes, which David would deliver with the letter. How could she – how could any of them – when Jo knew only too well what Nicci had been through in the past year? Biopsies, mastectomy, chemo and radio. None of which, ultimately, had worked. Wasn’t wearing an old navy-blue suit the least a girl could do for her best friend?’

Looking at the sheet of thick cream paper resting on a magazine on her knee, Nicci smiled. She would have the last laugh. And her business partner would thank her for it. In the weeks to come, the last thing her friend would want to think about – the last thing any of Nicci’s friends would want to think about – was what to wear.

Now, that’s the outfit sorted. And don’t argue, Jo. Remember, on the wardrobe front, Nicci knows best!!!

Just think of it as one less problem to worry about. After all, you’re going to have enough on your plate with Capsule Wardrobe once I’ve gone.

But that’s not the point of this letter. No, what I’m really writing about are my twin babies, my darling girls, my Charlie and Harrie, your goddaughters. And you’ve been such a good godmother, Jo, the very best. Which is why I want you to be more . . .

Chapter One

There were few things in life Nicci Morrison had not been able to control. But being buried on a dank, drizzly day in February was one of them.

It was not yet two o’clock, and the dirty grey cloud hung low over the church, obscuring the spire, making the hour seem closer to dusk.

‘There you are!’ Jo Clarke called out as a tall thin woman, hair frizzing from the bun at the nape of her neck, picked her way along the muddy path. She was clad head to toe in black – hardly unexpected at a funeral – but her spike-heeled ankle boots would have looked more at home in a bar.

‘Let me guess,’ Jo laughed, eyeing the Jimmy Choo boots. ‘The person responsible for you buying those in the first place is to blame for you wearing them now?’

Mona Thomas raised her eyebrows and looked pointedly at the red mary-janes on Jo’s feet. ‘Takes one to know one,’ she said.

‘Typical Nicci, huh?’ Jo hugged Mona hard to distract herself from her tears. Nicci had known outfit-planning would be the last thing on anyone’s mind, and so, unable to break the habit of a lifetime, she had done it for them.

‘Hello, Si.’ Mona reached over Jo’s shoulder to pat his cheek. ‘Am I the last?’

Shaking his head, Si moved aside to make way for a group of unfamiliar faces waiting impatiently in the mizzle behind his wife and her friend.

‘Lizzie and Gerry are inside. Well, Lizzie is. Gerry dropped her off at the gate and went to park the car. You on your own?’

‘Yep. I thought I’d spare Dan. I know he was fond of Nicci – and he adores David – but, y’know . . . kids and funerals . . .’ Mona’s voice trailed away, and Jo and Si nodded. They knew. Adults and funerals, too.

‘You guys go on in,’ Si said. ‘I’ll wait for Gerry. The, erm, the . . . hearse will . . . you know . . . be here soon.’

Jo nodded gratefully and took Mona’s arm. Si knew she wouldn’t want to see her best friend arrive that way.

‘So have you told Si yet?’

‘Told him what?’ Jo whispered, leaning across the pew so she could be heard by Lizzie and Mona, but not the random mixture of family members, customers and distant friends who had gathered to pay their respects.

‘About the letter, of course,’ Mona hissed.

Jo’s eyes bulged. ‘Of course I bl—’ she stopped herself, remembering where she was. Jo wasn’t religious, but even so. ‘Of course I haven’t! What was I supposed to say? “Hey, Si, after the last three years, all the money we’ve spent, all the . . .”’ she swallowed, focusing on her hands until Lizzie’s freckled arm reached over and squeezed one of them, “. . . all the disappointment, guess what. It doesn’t matter now if we can’t have kids because we’ve been left shares in someone else’s?” You can imagine how that would go down.’

Actually, now she thought of it, Jo didn’t have the first clue how that news would go down with Si. It was months, longer, since they had even talked about it.

‘You don’t have to put it quite like that,’ Lizzie whispered gently. ‘After all, it’s not as if it’s that straightforward.’

‘It’s not remotely straightforward.’

Closing her eyes, Jo leant back in the pew. Centuries-old oak dug uncomfortably into her vertebrae and the organ music was giving her a headache. Whatever Nicci’s instructions for the funeral, and, Nicci being Nicci, there would have been plenty – the flowers for a start; the church was awash with blue and yellow, not a lily in sight – Jo was sure they hadn’t included a wheezing, clunking rendition of ‘Dido’s Lament’, or anyone else’s lament come to that.