The Favour Read online

  ‘There was a smug satisfaction in the knowledge that her friend’s picture-perfect life was tainted by a dirty secret. Quinn may be far from perfect, but she’d always have that over Hannah.’

  Old friends Hannah and Quinn have grown apart over the years as their lives take them in opposite directions. Hannah cares for her three young children, her career on hold, while Quinn has a successful job in advertising, where she works hard and plays harder. But their friendship hangs together because of a terrible secret they share from their university days – a debt Hannah owes Quinn that they can never discuss.

  Quinn has always kept her professional and personal lives separate, but these worlds collide when a colleague assaults her. As her life starts falling apart, Quinn decides to take revenge on her attacker – and she expects her old friend Hannah to help. But when things begin to unravel, Hannah must decide how much she’s willing to risk in order to return the favour.

  A gripping examination of the darker side of friendship, power and loyalty. How far would you go to repay a debt?

  THE FAVOUR

  REBECCA FREEBORN

  For Nic,

  my lady soulmate

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Acknowledgements

  Book Club Questions

  Author bio

  The Girl She Was – Sample Chapter

  PROLOGUE

  Quinn rang while Hannah was serving dinner. She felt a pang of guilt as she rejected the call. Quinn was going through a terrible time, but Hannah’s two younger kids were fighting and Sam had begun that high-pitched whine, the one that signalled an oncoming meltdown, and she didn’t have time for Quinn’s drama right now.

  She placed her phone face down on the bench and juggled the three plates over to the dining table where the kids were waiting. As soon as Sam saw the food on his plate, he tipped his head back with a theatrical wail.

  ‘What’s wrong with it?’ Hannah said wearily.

  ‘The sauce is all over the carrots!’

  She sighed. ‘It’s not all over them. There’s a tiny bit of sauce on this carrot. Look, I’ll eat that one.’ She stuck his fork into the carrot round and put it in her mouth. ‘All fixed.’

  Sam slapped both hands down on the table. ‘But now your germs are all over my fork!’

  There was an edge of hysteria in his voice as he teetered closer to emotional collapse. Hannah knew the signs. If she didn’t bring him back now, he’d pass the point of no return and the screaming could last an hour or more. She forced herself to take a long, deep breath before she spoke, the exasperation that seemed to live inside her trying to swim to the surface. ‘If you calm down, I’ll get you another fork.’

  Wrong response.

  Sam gave a guttural scream and threw the fork onto the floor. The other two kids went on eating as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening … which it wasn’t, really, because mealtimes had always been one of Sam’s trigger points. Despite all the therapy he’d had since being diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder two years ago, it was often food that set him off.

  Back when she’d been a lawyer, prosecuting criminal cases, Hannah had treated each client’s situation as a puzzle to be solved. It suited her analytical mind to reduce the complexities of the legal system to a series of individual parts that she could rearrange and fit together until she arrived at the answer. The certainty was comforting.

  But no one had prepared her for the fact that there were no such certainties in parenting. She’d been lost, rudderless, her dog-eared copy of Baby Love no match for a baby who didn’t do the things that babies were supposed to do. And now, years later, she longed to return to the days when she could arrive at an answer in a gold-embossed legal manual or over coffee with a colleague.

  She sat down beside Sam and put a comforting hand on his back, but he shrank away from her and leapt out of his chair, sending it crashing onto the floor. His face was red, his eyes wild, his whole body vibrating as he went on screaming and screaming and screaming.

  Hannah stood up too. She knew she had to be the calm constant in his life, help him through this until he emerged from the other side, be the nurturing role model he needed, and everything else the books told her she had to be.

  She’d wrestled on this role like an ill-fitting suit, and while it had softened and become more comfortable over the years, it still chafed at her. Ethan was always too stressed with work to be able to help her decipher the enigma that was their eldest son. And while she and Quinn had been through so much together since they’d met at university, parenthood was a journey her friend didn’t want to follow her on.

  ‘What do you need, Sam?’ she asked her son.

  But he couldn’t answer her; not yet.

  Jet and Grace were still eating, their eyes trained on the television. Hannah’s thoughts turned back to the missed call from Quinn. Her friend was living the kind of nightmare Hannah couldn’t even imagine, and she couldn’t let her face it alone. Quinn had been there for her when she’d gone through her own nightmare; had done something for her that Hannah could never hope to repay … If it hadn’t been for Quinn, Hannah may never have been able to build this life, with all its joys and imperfections, safety and security.

  She crouched in front of Sam so her eyes were level with his. His screams had softened to loud crying, and he made eye contact with her for a microsecond. He was coming out of it. ‘I need to make a quick phone call, and when I’m done we’re going to sort out the sauce problem, OK?’

  He nodded, his face wet with tears.

  ‘Why don’t you sit on the couch and watch TV for a few minutes and I’ll be with you before you know it.’

  Hannah paused for a moment as Sam sat down on the couch, drew his knees up to his chest and rocked gently, his eyes fixed on the TV. He began keening as he shifted from anguish to self-soothing. Then she took her phone down the hallway to her bedroom.

  Sitting on the bed, Hannah saw that Quinn had called again, and her stomach clenched. They were the kind of friends who could go months without seeing each other and automatically pick up where they’d left off. But that was before Quinn’s life had shattered around her, transforming her into this clawing, needy creature who reminded Hannah so acutely of who she’d once been that she wanted to go outside and hurl her phone over the back fence rather than face her.

  Quinn answered on the first ring. ‘Thanks for calling back.’

  The tension went out of Hannah at the sound of her friend’s voice. ‘How are you doing?’

  ‘I got fired today.’ Her words were strangled, forced out from between clenched teeth.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Hannah said.

  ‘You should see the comments on Facebook.’ Quinn’s voice cracked. ‘The things they’re saying about me.’

  ‘Those people … they don’t know you, Quinn. It’s
not personal.’

  But Hannah had read the comments, had flinched at each one. They had been personal.

  There was a rasping breath from the other end of the line, and Hannah realised that Quinn was crying.

  ‘Do you want me to come around after Ethan gets home?’ she offered. ‘We can talk through a strategy, work out how to get your job back.’

  Quinn sniffed. ‘It’s too late for that now. He’s taken everything from me.’

  ‘So let’s go back to the police. They have to believe you.’

  ‘Hannah, they’re never going to believe me! No one can help me now. I think … we’re going to have to deal with this on our own.’

  Hannah clutched the phone tighter at Quinn’s pointed use of our. A sickening feeling filled her belly at where this was going. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Aren’t you sick and tired of it?’

  ‘Of course I am. But there are channels for dealing with this kind of thing—’

  ‘Channels? You mean like the ones you went through back at uni.’

  The memory clogged in Hannah’s throat like toffee. She couldn’t speak.

  ‘You know better than anyone those channels weren’t created for us, Hannah.’ Quinn’s voice was softer now. ‘Do you remember how it felt, knowing that if anyone found out you’d been there that night, he’d come out the respected family man, not the one called names, like I am now?’

  The news reports; his wife’s desperate eyes, imploring the public for any scrap of information about what had happened to her husband … Hannah closed her eyes on the memories. ‘Yes.’

  ‘And do you remember how I was there for you? How I made it go away, how I never said a word to anyone, not a soul?’

  ‘Yes.’ A tear slipped down Hannah’s cheek.

  ‘Well, now I need you, Hannah.’ Her voice grew stronger.

  Hannah had always known, deep inside, that it would one day come to this; had always known that when it did, it would be impossible for her to refuse. And though the walls around her safe, stable life shuddered, her voice, when she spoke, was steady.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘I want you to help me kill him.’

  SIX WEEKS AGO

  CHAPTER ONE

  QUINN

  It was almost nine o’clock when Hannah finally reappeared. Quinn had been sitting at the dining table alone for close to an hour, scrolling through her socials and masking her irritation every time Hannah popped back into the kitchen for a drink bottle or a teddy or some other bloody thing the kids needed. She couldn’t understand why Hannah hadn’t told her to come over later.

  Hannah flashed her an apologetic smile. ‘Sorry about that. They’re usually settled by eight.’

  ‘Ethan working late again?’ Quinn poured her a glass of wine and pushed it across the table.

  ‘He’s always working late.’ Hannah sighed. ‘He pretty much never sees the kids at night.’

  ‘That’s a lot of pressure on you.’ Quinn chose her words carefully. ‘Have you thought about going back to work and letting him deal with it for a while?’

  Hannah grimaced. ‘We decided that I’d stay home with the kids until they’re all at school. It’s not that much time, really.’

  ‘It’s been eight years, Hannah.’ Quinn could hear the exasperation creeping into her voice, but she knew it suited Ethan’s image to be seen as the provider, and it made her seethe.

  ‘Well, there’s only another two to go.’ Hannah took a sip of her wine. ‘What have you been up to, anyway? Let me live vicariously through your way more interesting life.’

  Quinn leant back in her chair with a laugh. ‘Well, I hooked up with a guy last night, if that qualifies as interesting.’

  Hannah choked on her mouthful of wine. ‘On a Monday? Who was it?’

  Quinn made a vague gesture. ‘Just some guy I met at the Historian.’

  ‘You can’t remember his name, can you?’ Hannah looked amused. ‘Will you see him again?’

  ‘Fuck no! The sex was pretty freaky, though.’ As soon as the words left her mouth, Quinn felt foolish. She didn’t know why she always had this ridiculous urge to make her hook-ups sound so much more exciting than they actually were. The sex had not been at all freaky: in fact, it had been rather underwhelming. And there’d been an additional element of embarrassment that she hadn’t yet shaken off – just as she’d been leaving the pub, the guy’s arm slung over her shoulders, she’d spied her boss across the room. She and Simon had begun at Big Sky Public Relations around the same time ten years ago, and she considered him both a friend and a rival. They shared the same kind of flirty humour, but there’d always been a mutual respect between them. Although they’d been far outside the bounds of work last night, it had been humiliating when he’d raised his pint to her with a sardonic smile.

  Hannah chuckled. ‘Half your luck.’

  Quinn took a gulp of wine and swallowed it down along with the desire to make a snarky comment about Ethan’s sexual prowess. Hannah was too discreet to speak about her sex life, of course, but Quinn had slept with enough Ethan types to know that he wouldn’t be a generous lover. Fucking Ethan, she thought savagely.

  ‘Fucking Ethan,’ she said accidentally.

  Hannah looked startled. ‘What’s he done this time?’

  ‘Well.’ Quinn was flustered. She tried – well, she usually tried – to keep a lid on her dislike of her friend’s husband. ‘You deserve some freaky sex every now and then, too. Preferably more than every now and then.’

  ‘What makes you think I don’t get it on a regular basis?’ Hannah smirked.

  ‘I meant with him, not a vibrator.’

  ‘What’s a vibrator?’

  Sam’s appearance in the doorway caused Quinn to almost drop her wine glass. The kid was a fucking ninja.

  ‘It’s like a toy for mums,’ she said, throwing a desperate glance at Hannah, whose face had flushed a deep red.

  Sam considered this for a moment, then nodded. ‘OK.’

  ‘What are you doing out of bed, Sam?’ Hannah asked him, her voice shrill with embarrassment.

  ‘Today at school, Adrian kept singing this song about his little sister doing a poo in the pool and the teacher told him off but he kept singing it all through recess and lunch and when the bell went and it was so funny.’

  Hannah raised her eyebrows. ‘But why are you out of bed?’

  Sam sighed. ‘Jet keeps singing and it’s so annoying.’

  ‘If you ignore him, he’ll get bored and stop.’

  ‘But he’s being a fucking idiot.’

  ‘Sam!’

  ‘My little sisters used to be fucking idiots all the time,’ Quinn told him.

  Hannah frowned at her. ‘I wish you wouldn’t encourage his swearing.’

  ‘Apparently people who swear are more intelligent.’ Quinn shrugged. ‘Can’t argue with science.’

  Sam looked at Quinn with renewed interest. ‘Science is the answer to everything.’

  ‘Sure is, bro.’

  Before Hannah could intervene, Sam had sat down in the chair beside Quinn and launched into an enthusiastic explanation of the standard model of physics in one very long run-on sentence. Quinn liked her friend’s son, but sometimes his fierce intelligence freaked her out. She’d never wanted kids, but sometimes she thought it would be nice to have a smart child who could participate in adult conversations and impress her friends … provided said child appeared at her front door fully toilet-trained and not from her vagina.

  ‘OK, Sam, back to bed, please,’ Hannah jumped in when he paused to take a breath.

  ‘But I’m not tired.’ His voice took on a whinging tone and Quinn’s brief fantasy of having her very own genius child withered.

  ‘Tough,’ Hannah said. ‘It’s bedtime.’

  ‘Can you lie with me?’ he pleaded.

  ‘I’m talking to Quinn. You can go to bed by yourself.’

  ‘Pleeeeaaase,’ he wheedled.

  Quinn ga
ve a flick of her hand. ‘Go. I’ll be fine here with my wine.’

  Sorry, Hannah mouthed as she rose from her chair to follow her son to his bedroom.

  They’d just disappeared when the gravel crunched outside and Ethan’s car pulled into the driveway. Quinn sighed, preparing herself to swallow her irritation towards Hannah’s husband. It wasn’t that he was a bad person … he was just so mediocre; the kind of man you slept with in your twenties then dumped because they were bad in bed, not the type you married and bred with.

  Several minutes slid by and Ethan still hadn’t come inside. The only sound was Hannah’s soft murmuring from Sam’s room. After another minute, Quinn got up and went into the lounge room. Behind the blind, the dark shape of Ethan’s sleek car crouched like a panther in the driveway. Through the window, Ethan’s face was the only thing visible, lit from below by the blue light of his phone’s screen. He looked relaxed, as if it were perfectly normal for him to come home from work then sit in the driveway catching up on social media while his wife cared for his children.

  Fucking Ethan.

  Then there were footsteps from behind her and Quinn withdrew from the window guiltily.

  ‘What are you looking at?’ Hannah said.

  ‘You know he’s just sitting out there looking at his phone?’ Quinn jerked a thumb over her shoulder.

  ‘He does that every night,’ Hannah said. ‘He thinks I don’t notice. Come and have another wine.’

  ‘Doesn’t it annoy you, though?’ Quinn said as she followed Hannah back to the dining room. ‘Him sitting out there while you’re doing everything in here?’

  Hannah’s mouth was tight as she poured more wine into their glasses. ‘He works hard all day. The last thing he needs is to walk into a house of chaos.’

  Weak. The word flashed through Quinn’s body; a visceral, angry thing. How had this happened? Hannah had once been unharnessed, carefree, wilder even than Quinn. But somewhere along the way she’d become this meek, man-pleasing doormat who did whatever it took to smooth things over – or worse, who absorbed all the turbulence so Ethan didn’t have to feel any of it. Sometimes, Quinn hated Hannah for this weakness more than she hated Ethan for taking advantage of it.