The Friendly Ones. Philip Hensher

      

      

       Copyright

      4th Estate

      An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

       www.4thEstate.co.uk

      This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2018

      Copyright © Philip Hensher 2018

      Cover photograph © Niall McDiarmid/Millennium Images

      Extract from ‘Second’ taken from Happiness by Jack Underwood (Faber & Faber). Copyright © Jack Underwood, 2015. Reproduced by permission of Faber & Faber Ltd.

      The right of Philip Hensher to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

      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, down-loaded, 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.

      Source ISBN: 9780008175658

      Ebook edition: March 2018 ISBN: 9780008175665

      Version: 2019-01-07

       Dedication

      For Zaved Mahmood, of course

       Epigraph

      If I lived in a cave and you were my only visitor,

      what would I tell you that the walls had told me?

      That people are unfinished and are made between

      each other …

      JACK UNDERWOOD, ‘Second’

      … amid the millions of this great city it is difficult to discover who these people are or what their object can be …

      ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE, The Hound of the Baskervilles

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

       Copyright

       Dedication

       Epigraph

       BOOK ONE: THE LITTLE SPINSTERS

       CHAPTER ONE

       CHAPTER TWO

MUMMY’S TIME WITH LAVINIA

CHAPTER THREE

MUMMY’S TIME WITH LEO

       CHAPTER FOUR

       MUMMY’S TIME WITH BLOSSOM

       CHAPTER FIVE

       MUMMY’S TIME WITH HUGH

       CHAPTER SIX

       CHAPTER SEVEN

       BOOK TWO: THE FRIENDLY ONES

       CHAPTER EIGHT

       CHAPTER NINE

       CHAPTER TEN

       CHAPTER ELEVEN

       CHAPTER TWELVE

       CHAPTER THIRTEEN

       CHAPTER FOURTEEN

       ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

       Also by Philip Hensher

       About the Author

       About the Publisher

       BOOK ONE

THE LITTLE SPINSTERS

       CHAPTER ONE

      1.

      Towards the end of the afternoon, Aisha got up and stood at the garden window. The arrangements for the party had been in place since the morning – the hired barbecue,