I Invited Her In: The new domestic psychological thriller from Sunday Times bestselling author Adele Parks. Adele Parks

say—’

      She cut me off. ‘That means you are literally twice as clever as I am.’ If she believed this to be true, it didn’t seem to bother her; she took a sip from her wine glass, winced at it.

      ‘Or half as focused,’ I said. I thought a self-deprecating quip was obligatory. Where I came from, no one liked a show-off. Being too big for your boots was frowned upon; getting above yourself was a hanging offence. Abi pulled a funny face that said she didn’t believe me for a moment; more, that she was a bit irritated that I’d tried to be overly modest.

      ‘OK, that’s the bullshit out of the way,’ she said with a jaded sigh. She didn’t even bother to introduce herself to the geology students. I glanced at them apologetically as she scoured the bar. ‘Who do you fancy?’ she demanded.

      ‘Him,’ I replied with a grin, pointing to a hot, hip-looking guy.

      ‘Come on then, let’s go and talk to him.’

      ‘Just like that?’ I know my face showed my astonishment.

      ‘Yes. I promise you, he’ll be more than grateful.’

      She made me laugh. All the time. Her direct, irreverent tone never faltered, never flattened, not that evening or for the rest of the year. We did talk to the hot, hip guy; nothing came of it, I didn’t really want or expect it to, but it was fun. We spoke to him and maybe ten other people. It quickly became apparent that Abigail oozed cool self-belief; she thought the world was hers for the taking, and it was a fair assessment. She was charming and challenging, full of bonhomie and the sort of confidence that is doled out in private-school assemblies. The best bit was, she seemed happy for me to hitch along for the ride.

      It was Abi who persuaded me to join the debating society and she was the one who insisted we went to the clubs in town, rather than just limit ourselves to the parties that bloomed in the university common rooms. She did all the student things like three-legged pub crawls and endless themed parties but she also insisted we did surprising stuff, like visit the city’s museums and art galleries. Some people whispered that she was pretentious; they resented the fact that she only enjoyed listening to music on vinyl and was fussy about the strength of coffee beans; she refused to drink beer, sticking exclusively to French red wine; she rarely ate. She was, by far, the most interesting person I’d ever met.

      We became close. She wasn’t my only friend or even my best friend but she was my favourite. I sometimes found it a bit exhausting to keep up with her and while she signed up for the university’s dramatic society, I was content to sit in the audience and watch her play a shudderingly shocking Lady Macbeth. I joined her on the coach to London and protested outside Parliament over something or other – I forget what now – she waved her placard all day, whereas around noon, I slipped off to Oxford Street for a quick look around Topshop.

      She was the first person I told about my pregnancy. By the time we’d munched our way through almost the entire packet of Hobnobs, Abi commented, ‘Bizarre to think there’s an actual baby in there.’ She was staring at my still reasonably flat stomach.

      ‘I’m going to get so fat,’ I said, laughingly. Weirdly, this seemed a matter of mirth.

      ‘Yeah, you are,’ she asserted, sniggering too.

      ‘And no one is ever going to want to marry me.’ Suddenly, I wasn’t laughing anymore. I was, to my horror and shame, crying. The tears came in huge, uncontrollable waves. I gulped and gasped for air in pretty much the same way I had when I’d been laughing, so it took Abigail a moment to notice.

      ‘Oh no, don’t cry,’ she said, pulling me into a tight hug. She smoothed my hair and kissed the top of my head, the way a mother might comfort a child that had fallen over. Abigail was beautiful and sensuous – everyone wanted to touch her, all the time – but she generally chose when any contact would happen.

      ‘Who will want to marry me when I have a kid trailing around after me?’ I hadn’t actually given much thought to marriage up to that point in my life. I wasn’t one of those who’d forever dreamed about a long white dress and church bells, but I’d sort of assumed it would happen at some stage in the future. It frightened me that the undesignated point seemed considerably more distant and blurry, now that I was pregnant.

      ‘You’ll still get the fairy tale,’ Abi said with her usual cool confidence. ‘I mean Snow White had seven little fellas hanging off her apron and she still netted a prince.’

      This caused another round of near-hysterical laughter. I laughed so hard that snot came out of my nose. It was embarrassing at the time. A few months on, I became much more blasé about wayward bodily fluids. She hugged me a little tighter. ‘They will call you a slag, but it will be OK,’ she assured me.

      ‘Will it?’

      ‘Yeah, it really will,’ she said cheerfully. I felt a wave of something like love for Abi at that moment. I loved her and I believed her.

      That feeling has never completely gone away.

2

       Abigail

      From the moment Abigail saw Rob she found him completely irresistible. It wasn’t an exclusive club; he was to many. Bad boys often were. That had always been their problem.

      Irresistible. Such a silly word. It didn’t get near it.

      It tore at her. What she felt for him back then ripped a hole in her and she knew no one could plug it but him.

      There were several undergraduates vying for his attention in those early days. Nubile, brilliant, interesting, beautiful young women by the bus load. He’d flirted with a whole string of them. At least flirted.

      She wasn’t someone who was accustomed to being turned down, to being told no, and she wasn’t prepared to settle for what the others did: heady evenings at the pub, one night of fun and thank you, move on. She had to have him. Make him hers. For real. For ever. He was studying for his PhD when she was just an undergrad. He took tutorials. Taught and formed young, willing minds and yet, as he was still studying himself, he was somehow one of them at the same time. He drifted around the university, unique and glamorous, enigmatic and brilliant. There was an element of power, otherness; it was very attractive. Her body leaned into his when he walked into a room, like a compass pointing north. Her throat dried up; everything else was wet. She pulsed, beat like a huge heart. It sounded ridiculous now, so romantic. Too romantic. All these years on. But at the time she thought she’d been peeled back, stripped bare. That she wasn’t anything more than a huge, bloody, exposed heart. Beating for him.

      It was hard for Abigail to recall that now, that intensity, that certainty. It had been smothered. Years of living together had normalised them. Respectability and maturity had dampened the fire. Put it out. Layer after layer of ordinary things: shopping for groceries, one telling the other they had food stuck between teeth, listening to over-familiar stories, worrying about promotions, deadlines, accolades, choosing wallpapers and cars. Those things build layers around a pulsing heart – at once protecting it and smothering it.

      And the baby thing.

      And the other women.

      Combined, those factors meant it was impossible to recall the unadorned longing, the wanting.

      But back then, he was everything. She couldn’t see or think about anyone other. The boys that were buzzing around her, undergraduates, she swatted them away like flies. Rob was seven years older than she was. Enough of a gap to make him seem far more interesting than he probably was. He seemed more confident, knowledgeable, erudite. He was athletic and toned although not overly worked out. Tall. He took her to fancy restaurants, the theatre and arthouse cinemas. They talked about politics, novels, travelling. He was fiercely ambitious and focused. She couldn’t deny that ambition and focus had panned out for him. He was, undoubtedly, a success, as he’d always wanted to be, as he’d always said he would be. She