Save Her, Abigail Osborne [ebook reader for surface pro txt] 📗

‘Oh, Alistair, you’re so pathetic.’ Sophie turned her face slightly, so her voice was directed at Flora. ‘Flora, don’t listen to anything he says, he’s just trying to drive a wedge between us. It’s his classic business strategy. Divide and conquer.’ Sophie turned to look back at Alistair. ‘But he doesn’t know that we cannot be divided. Nothing he can say can tear us apart.’

‘Oh really?’ Alistair looked like all his Christmases had come at once. He stepped forward and stared straight at Flora. ‘Not even the knowledge that Sophie’s mother was the drunk driver that killed your parents? That Sophie was there when your mother and father died. She watched their car explode and did nothing to save them. That she has known all along that her mother is the reason that you have no parents. Not even that could destroy your friendship?’ His smile was as wide as that of the Cheshire cat.

62

‘It was Sophie’s mother who killed your parents. It was her mother’s car that ran them off the road.’ The secret she had kept from Flora for so long was finally voiced. It was both a relief but also terrifying. Memories rose unbidden of Flora’s mother’s screams as the flames licked her body and burnt her alive. This wasn’t how it should have come out. Flora wouldn’t understand unless she explained it to her.

Sophie lowered the gun and turned to face Flora, terrified by what she was going to see on her best friend’s face. Her mother had betrayed her once more. She was foolish to think the threat of prison would stop Lily from spilling her darkest secrets for the promise of alcohol. She should have known better. All this time she had had plenty of opportunity to silence her, but she had been foolish.

Flora’s eyes were wide, and her skin was ashen. It looked like her spine had been removed and she was going to collapse any minute. She stared at Sophie, waiting for her friend to deny it.

But the fight had left Sophie. This secret had taken up a whole shelf in her mind and there was no going back. She would have to explain everything. They had been best friends for so long. She knew if she could just get Flora to understand then it would be fine. ‘You’ve got to understand, Flora. It wasn’t my fault. I couldn’t save them.’

Alistair’s smile lit up his face. Having thrown the grenade, he was now watching the devastation with fascination and enjoying every splinter of pain that he had caused.

‘Flora, I’m so sorry. You have to let me explain everything. You’ll understand everything if you just let me explain.’

Flora wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and looked at Sophie with fury and pain in her eyes. ‘You knew.’ Flora’s voice was eerily calm. ‘All this time, you knew it was your mother.’ Her face contorted in pain. ‘You comforted me, helped me grieve, knowing all along it was your mother’s fault I had no parents.’ Flora spat the words at her. The look of revulsion on her face was like a physical wound to Sophie’s heart.

‘How could you be my friend all these years? Knowing what you knew? How could you not tell me something like that?’ Disgust flushed across Flora’s face and she looked like she was about to launch at Sophie and attack her.

‘I was doing what your mother asked me to do.’

The words rang out, silencing the room.

‘Everything I’ve ever done, I did it because your mother asked me to.’

63

Flora felt like she was looking through a kaleidoscope, seeing both Alistair and Sophie but also a montage of her parents dying in a car with Sophie and Lily watching from above. Bile rose in her throat, but her stomach was already empty. She could not wrap her mind around this. Her mother. Sophie.

The front door banged open. Sam strode into the room, closely followed by Greg. Sam’s eyes were on Flora. He strode over to her, covering the distance in seconds and wrapped her in his arms. Before she could appreciate his warmth, he pulled away, taking her face in his hands. ‘Thank god you are okay. Are you all right? Has she hurt you?’

Tears poured down Flora’s face in response. Her whole world was disintegrating before her. Nothing made sense anymore.

‘What have you done to her?’ he spat at Sophie. He didn’t appear to notice the gun in Sophie’s hand. She was leaning against the wall, seeming to need it for support. Alistair had moved so he was sitting on the windowsill, a spectator at the cinema. He just needed snacks.

‘I haven’t done anything. All I’ve ever done is look after her and try to make her happy. You have to let me explain, Flora.’

‘Explain what? How you let my parents die?’

‘I was still a child, fourteen. I tried to get them out.’ Tears coursed down Sophie’s anguished face. ‘She was begging me to help her, but the door wouldn’t open. The car was upside down and on fire. Then my mother dragged me away. She forced me into the car and made me leave with her. I loved your mother. I would never have let her die. You have to believe me. There was nothing I could do.’

Flora had tried to block out images of her parents’ final moments. It was bad enough they were gone. When she was younger, she would torment herself with wondering what the last thing they saw was. Wondering what the last thing they thought before they died. Were they thinking about her? Flora felt faint. Sam’s arm came around her, holding her up. Greg looked sick, still staring at the gun in Sophie’s hand.

‘She was talking to me through the window. She told me to leave her and make sure I looked after you. The last thing…’ Sophie choked on her tears, then wiped her face and tried to compose herself. ‘The last thing she said to me