Friendship will always come first.
There's only one way out from rock bottom and that's up, and Teri Meyer is finally crawling out from the worst time of her life - no thanks to her best friend Lee. But no matter, she's finally found love - real love with a real man, a successful man, a man who accepts all her flaws. Teri's never felt like this before, and yet it's changing her in ways she doesn't understand.
And there's only one person who can help, one person who truly understands Teri.
It seems that no matter how hard Lee Harper tries, there's a battle awaiting her at every turn these days, and she's tired. And as if she needs the extra stress, Teri continues to create constant and unnecessary drama. But Lee's the only one who really knows what's going on under Teri's hard, convoluted exterior, and that's why she's always been there for her.
But the question is: will Teri be there when Lee needs her most?
The brilliant and entertaining final book in the unique FRIENDS trilogy dishes out another dose of rib-tickling mayhem for our favourite thirty-something professional women.
I'm delighted to host today's slot on the Blog Tour for
A Forgiven Friend: Lies, Loss, and Love, But Always Friendship by Sue Featherstone and Susan Pape.
My thanks to Rachel from Rachel's Random Resources who invited me to take part.
I'm thrilled to share an extract from the book here on Random Things today
There are two sides to
every friendship – and, in the case of best friends Lee Harper and Teri Meyer,
sometimes several shades of grey.
Teri is impulsive,
charming, a teeny bit self-centred and has fallen in love more times than most
people have had hot dinners. Lee, on the other hand, is reliable, level-headed,
and, sometimes, where Teri is concerned, a little too much of a pushover.
But she puts her foot down
when Teri gossips about something Lee had specifically asked her to keep secret
and tells Teri she never wants to speak to her again.
Teri knows she must
apologise – and thinks she’s found the perfect way to do it.
Extract:
Lee:
I should never have allowed Teri to talk me into
joining her in a pamper session at the ridiculously-named Gentle
Slopes Women’s Retreat & Sanctuary. Perhaps, it was the after-effect of
opening the door to a stupendously-sized bouquet of seasonal blooms,
ludicrously mounted on what appeared to be Teri’s stockinged legs and her
second best pair of red Louboutins (the first pair having been ruined at the
funeral.) ‘What the hell!’ I exclaimed, brushing away a stray head of purple
liatri, which was tickling my nose.
‘Only me,’ Teri said, popping her face around a
swarth of Mexican daisies and pink-tinged water lilies.
I was dubious about the spa trip. For one thing,
the advertising bumph Teri had picked up in Portly & Groops had a
distinctly amateurish feel: the language was too mushy for words: ‘…immerse
yourself in our haven of grace and kindness… luxuriate in the sheer bliss of
our heavenly scented sanctuary…release your inner Goddess…’
Didn’t buy a word of it.
And the prices! They were almost too good to be
true, which is generally the strongest of strong hints to go through the
minutiae of the small print with a fine-tooth comb, something Teri’d clearly
neglected to do.
But her enthusiasm was infectious. She was
convinced Gentle Slopes would do us a world of good – ‘it’ll give us time to
talk through our issues’, which was not the inducement she might have intended
– but, only an idiot looks a gift horse in the mouth, and, besides, how bad
could the place be? So, casting caution to the four winds, I capitulated and
went to throw a few things into an overnight bag.
I’d have preferred to have done the packing on
my own, but Teri came trotting upstairs to supervise. Pants and bras flew
through the air as she rifled through the drawers trying to find something that
passed muster. ‘Darling,’ she drawled, ‘whatever you do, don’t fall under a bus
until I’ve had a chance to take you to Agent Provocateur to buy something a
little more tasteful.’
It was good to know I
had someone like Teri watching my backside.
Teri:
I could tell, even before
Kalisterenia Kostanechi had finished welcoming us to the Gentle Slopes
sanctuary that I’d made a mistake – and not just with the calendar. This was
definitely not Lee’s sort of thing. For a start, the air was thick with the
scent of jasmine and roasted rose petals, and goodness knows what that would be
doing to the poor girl’s asthma.
Lee might have approved of
Ms Kostanechi’s dress sense – lots of delicate scarves wafting around a
multi-coloured floor-length dress, tinkling with tiny mirrors and beads sewn
into the material – but she gave off some impatient tutting when Ms Kostanechi
told us we were booked in for next
week.
Seeing my disappointment,
and hearing Lee’s ‘Huh! Typical…’ the therapist rightly assumed we were in need
of some serious stress busting.
‘Why don’t you join us
anyway?’ she offered. ‘We have a couple of vacancies for our tribal gathering
today. We’ll be forming a rejuvenating soul-searching circle – then later, when
you’re more relaxed and calm, you can enjoy our vegan tofu and
buckwheat-inspired evening meal, and retire to the tranquillity resting house
for the night. How about that?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Lee
said, doubtfully.
‘It’ll be lovely,’ I said,
doubtfully.
‘It will,’ Ms Kostanechi
agreed. ‘Today, we’ll be working with the moon, taking energy from its vital
flow to restore health, wellbeing and harmony.’
‘Come on, Lee,’ I said,
nudging her with my elbow. ‘What harm can a bit of moon energy do?’
She glared at me.
Given half a chance, Lee
would have said no to the idea of sitting in the Women’s Sacred Stone Circle, revealing
innermost thoughts and fears and communing with the moon in the hope of finding
the Wave of Light and Purity with which to Heal our Sorrows.
To be honest, I would have
said no to that, too. I thought I’d booked for Lee and me to have a facial and
back massage, and an overnight stay in an ‘exclusive well-being sanctuary
retreat’ by way of my apologising yet again for yet again letting the stifled
cat out of the bulging bag.
But having got the date
wrong, I thought we might as well make the best of it.
Unfortunately, Lee’s mood
didn’t improve as we gathered with a small group of women to sit in a circle
around a collection of brightly painted stones.
‘Take one in your right
hand,’ Ms Kostanechi said, nodding towards the pile, ‘pull it into your tummy
and place your left hand – gently – over the top. Welcome the stone. Embrace
the stone. Let it become …’ she let the instruction hang dreamily in the air.
Let it become what? I
wondered, bending my head ever so slightly to squint through half-closed eyes
at Lee, sitting cross-legged, uncomfortable – and no doubt cross – next to me.
Sue Featherstone and Susan Pape are
both former newspaper journalists with extensive experience of working for
national and regional papers and magazines, and in public relations.
More recently they have worked in
higher education, teaching journalism – Sue at Sheffield Hallam and Susan at
Leeds Trinity University.
The pair, who have been friends for
almost 30 years, wrote two successful journalism text books together – Newspaper Journalism: A Practical
Introduction and Feature Writing: A
Practical Introduction (both published by Sage), before deciding to turn
their hands to fiction.
The first novel in their Friends
series, A Falling Friend, was released in 2016. A Forsaken Friend followed
two years later, and the final book in the trilogy, A Forgiven Friend,
published on November 19.
Sue, who is married with two grown-up
daughters, and the most ‘gorgeous granddaughter in the whole world’, loves
reading, writing and Nordic walking in the beautiful countryside near her
Yorkshire home.
Susan is married and lives in a
village near Leeds, and, when not writing, loves walking and cycling in the
Yorkshire Dales. She is also a member of a local ukulele orchestra.
Journalist Robert Mulhern has spent three years investigating claims Kieran Kelly, a two-time convicted killer, has in fact murdered many more people - 31 to be exact. Kelly's claims first emerged in 1983 after he killed his cellmate in London's Clapham Police Station, having been arrested for being drunk and disorderly. Under questioning, the labourer from Ireland candidly confessed to strangling the prisoner - and then stunned officers by confessing to dozens of unreported and unsolved murders over the previous 30 years. Kelly's victims died from stabbing, strangulation and blunt force trauma. Others survived being thrown in the path of trains on the London Underground. Detectives believed they were in the presence of Britain's most prolific serial killer, yet Kelly's claims escaped public scrutiny for three decades. Then in 2015, a former police officer alleged the murders had been covered up by the British Government. A sense of urgency gathered around the case; a new investigation begged to be undertaken. Especially after it emerged that remains, thought to be human, had been discovered on the site of Kelly's one-time home in Ireland. Against the backdrop of intense international media interest, London's then Metropolitan Police chief, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, committed to revisiting the case. In this thrilling new book we cross two countries and three police forces in search of the truth. Using new eye-witness testimonies, the case of Kieran Kelly has been methodically rebuilt, with new evidence gathered from a range of sources in Britain and Ireland. Fighting a fog of contradictory claims, the narrative pursuit of _The Secret Serial Killer_ negotiates a series of curious twists before culminating in a bizarre showdown on the commons that Kelly himself once stalked. Could Kieran Kelly have murdered 31 times?
Robert Mulhern is a multi-award winning journalist.
