How well do you really know your best friend?
Kat Grant and Alice Campbell have a friendship forged in shared confidences and long lunches lubricated by expensive wine. Though they’re very different women—the artsy socialite and the struggling suburbanite—they’re each other’s rocks. But even rocks crumble under pressure. Like when Kat’s financier husband, Howard, plunges to his death from the second-floor balcony of their South Florida mansion.
Howard was a jerk, a drunk, a bully and, police say, a murder victim. The questions begin piling up. Like why Kat has suddenly gone dark: no calls, no texts and no chance her wealthy family will let Alice see her. Why investigators are looking so hard in Alice’s direction. Who stands to get hurt next. And who is the cool liar—the masterful manipulator behind it all.
MARGOT HUNT is the pseudonym of a bestselling writer of twelve previous novels. Her work has been praised by Publishers Weekly, Booklist and Kirkus Reviews. Best Friends Forever is her first psychological thriller.
www.MargotHunt.com
Best Friends Forever
Margot Hunt
Copyright
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018
Copyright © Whitney Gaskell 2018
Whitney Gaskell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
E-book Edition © January 2018 ISBN: 9781474074506
Praise for Best Friends Forever
Best Friends Forever is a clever thriller that asks how far we’ll go to protect our friends. Margot Hunt will keep you guessing until the final, satisfying twist.”
—Alafair Burke, New York Times bestselling author of The Ex
“Margot Hunt’s richly drawn women wrap their hands around your throat and don’t let go. A suspenseful page-turner that kept me puzzling over who did it until the last few pages. Fantastic!”
—Cate Holahan, author of The Widower’s Wife, a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2016
“Friends or husbands? Who do women tell more truth? Give more allegiance? Margot Hunt shocks and astounds as she explores these tugs of loyalty in Best Friends Forever, a psychological thriller that kept me off balance even after turning the last page.”
—Randy Susan Meyers, bestselling author of The Widow of Wall Street
“[Best Friends Forever] constantly pushes forward, asking readers to question every conclusion and warning them to never completely trust anyone.... The characters are well-drawn, speaking easily for themselves and standing out as unique people who feel real.”
—Kirkus Reviews
Friends have drifted in and out of my life over the years.
This book is dedicated to those special few that stuck around.
Imagine you’re shipwrecked on an island inhabited by only Knights and Knaves. Knights always tell the truth. Knaves always lie. There is no way to distinguish between the two just by looking at them. The only way to separate the liars from the truth-tellers is by asking them questions.
For example, suppose you encounter two islanders. Let’s call them A and B. You ask A, “Are you a Knight or a Knave?”
A responds by saying, “At least one of us is a Knave.”
B is silent.
Who is a Knight and who is a Knave?
The answer is easy. A cannot be a Knave, because if so, his statement would be truthful, and Knaves always lie. Therefore A must be a Knight, and telling the truth. Which would mean B is a Knave.
In real life, of course, there are no such things as Knights, those absolute keepers of the truth.
Everyone lies about something.
1
It was a perfectly normal school morning in the Campbell household—disorganized, chaotic and at least one of my children was running around half-naked—right up until the moment the police arrived at our front door to question me in connection with the death of Howard Grant.
Before the doorbell rang—before everything changed—my most pressing concern was not to overcook the eggs I was scrambling for our breakfast.