Bad Friends Read Online Free

was still a young woman, I mustn’t give in to my weaknesses. I must believe in positive thought.
    ‘Come on, Maggie. Stress is all in the mind, I promise you.’ He looked at the audience hopefully. I looked at him mournfully. I tapped my bad leg sadly. And then I wasn’t acting any longer; I was transported briefly into the heart of my own pain.
    ‘This, though, Mr Fernandez, my damaged leg, I mean, this isn’t in the mind – is it?’ A bubble of misery, like an astronaut’s helmet, sealed snug around my head. I must shake it off. Showing real emotion on live TV was not my intention. ‘I might never walk properly again,’ I murmured. ‘I used to run, you know.’
    The audience went wild in their seats. They were sure of Mr Fernandez’s role now. He was the Wolf to my Red Riding Hood, the absolute villain on the floor, and they could rip into him as they’d been primed. I swallowed hard and milked it like I knew I must.
    ‘I can’t work. I need to have help at home,’ (sort of true) ‘I have nightmares.’ (Painfully true. I couldn’t continue on that tack.) I twisted the tissue that Renee had pressed into my hand; recovered myself just enough to go on. I cleared my throat.
    ‘I have a bad limp, I’ve had to have my foot put back in plaster again because –’
    A little voice chimed in. ‘It’s changed my life utterly too.’
    Renee turned to the voice, the epitome of eager concern. ‘Fay Carter, you too were on the coach that crashed that terrible night. Can you tell us exactly what happened? We can see Maggie is struggling to give us the painful facts.’
    A matronly woman in the front row actually said ‘Ah.’ I smiled weakly, the last lot of painkillers finally kicking in. But Fay was only too glad to join the fray – like a sleek little greyhound tensed against the starting-gate, she was off. I slumped with relief. Surely I’d done enough?
    I thought desperately of the drink tucked beneath my chair. I could see Amanda with her stopwatch. We must be nearing the break now, please God. I could feel myself beginning to sweat again as I flicked in and out of Fay’s words. The truth was – and how Renee would have loved this, should I have cared to share it with her – the truth was, the accident was too agonising to recall.
    ‘And I was travelling back to London to see my boyfriend, really excited, you know how it is when you haven’t seen them for a while.’ The audience ah-ed again. They loved a love story – though they definitely preferred a fistfight, given the choice.
    ‘I’d just walked up and down the coach to use the loo, too much tea, you know.’ She smiled up at the audience, the audience smiled fondly back. This girl knew how to work it. ‘I saw Maggie there when I passed, she was asleep.’ She turned her headlamp   eyes on me. ‘Sleeping like a baby, you know.’
    My skin prickled. I didn’t remember ever having seen this girl before. But I suppose I had been – absorbed. I looked down at my hands.
    ‘And I kind of knew then that she was my future.’
    My head snapped up in horror. What?
    ‘Call it intuition, if you like. Then I heard this woman scream, and we swerved violently. We – the coach, well, it started to tip, straight away, to go right over, you know. And that – that was it, really.’ There was a tiny catch in her sweet voice. I looked down, my stomach rolling with the memory. My tissue was in tiny bits over my good knee.
    ‘The coach just, you know, flipped, onto its back, you see, right into the other lane, you know, right into the oncoming traffic. And it wasn’t till – till after that we knew three horses had got out of a field next to the motorway, somehow the fence had come down and they were on the road, poor things.’
    The audience clucked with admiration at her benevolence. A little tear escaped from one thick-lashed eye and trickled slowlydown her porcelain skin. ‘The coach-driver didn’t have a chance, poor man.’
    Renee asked, very