Chapter 1

Grace Hedley, 30
Beth Hedley, 48, mother
Alison Rayland, 30
Chloe Larsson, 25
Freya Hart, 40

“What are you doing here?” asked Alyson Rayland as she got out of her car and stared at Chloe Larsson. Her gaze was far from welcoming.

“I could ask you the same thing,” said Chloe, standing next to her car. They were both parked on the street in front of Grace Hedley’s detached house on the edge of the town of Shefford in Bedfordshire. The house was somewhat secluded from the street, bushes and trees blocking the view.

“Letter,” said Alyson, producing a folded piece of paper from her handbag with a flourish. “In Grace’s own handwriting and with her house key taped to it.” Alyson was thirty, had been Grace’s roommate through four years of university. They kept in touch since college, getting together several times a year.

Chloe snorted and responded by holding up her own letter. “Snap,” she said. Chloe was twenty-five and had never went to university.

The pair of them were Grace’s friends, but in the nature of some friendships, they had never got on together very well. They both liked Grace, but less so of each other. Alyson looked at Chloe as uneducated and Chloe looked at Alyson as a stuck-up bitch. Where Alyson was tall and willowy, with a shock of red hair, dyed, as Chloe always said, Chloe was a little shorter with black hair that was long and nicely braided where it hung down her back. The sort of length that Alyson said would trip the dizzy bitch up one day. Hopefully.

“Well, as I have a key,” replied Alyson, “you can go home now, I’m here.”

“So do I.” Chloe unfolded the piece of paper, she held up the key taped to her letter. “Seems we are both invited.”

“I’d rather not be in there if you are,” said Alyson, curtly. “I remind you that I’ve known Grace for longer than you have. I’m not some Chloe-cum-lately.”

Before Chloe could reply that seeing Grace every day at work for the last five years counted for more, a third car drew up behind them. The girls watched as Freya Hart got out of her car.

“Is this pistols before dawn or can anyone join in?” the newcomer asked guardedly as she surveyed the two, recognizing their scowls.

Freya was in middle age, blonde verging on light brown. She still had the body of a lithe teenager, but she walked with a limp, sometimes using a cane. She was a retired police officer with twenty years of service, who was medically discharged following a shooting incident.

Grace and Freya met each other at a pub in Hitchin last year. They liked each others company and as a result, Freya had become Grace’s indispensable third friend and the only one who could tolerate both Alyson and Chloe.

‘Oil on water those two are.’ Grace had said more than once about her friends, but she was appreciative of Freya’s innate ability to handle the pair.

“As you both are holding pieces of paper with house keys taped to them, I presume you won’t mind me not showing you mine?” Freya asked with a smile.

The fact that three of Grace’s closest friends, probably her only friends if truth be known, were gathered in one place had to be for a reason.

“You got a letter, too?” asked Chloe.

“Afraid so,” responded the older woman. “I presume as you two both have them, our good friend Grace thought it was necessary for me to accompany you two into her house to stop you from ripping each other apart, and probably the furniture as well.”

“Okay,” grunted Alyson. “But why have we all got a key? Grace not trust us?”

“I would think,” sighed Freya, “Grace thinks it wise to have three of us for some reason. I can only assume it is some emergency that brings us all here.”

Freya looked at the house. There was no sign of any problem she could see. The place looked as neat and as serene as always. The front yard was kept up, flowers watered, the small patch of grass mowed, the hedges trimmed, Grace’s car parked in front of the two car garage. It was hard to imagine what the emergency might be. Surely a text or a telephone call or even an email, would have brought them all running, though as Freya remarked, it’s hard to send a key that way.

“But why write a letter for an emergency?” Asked Chloe. She looked at the envelope with its first class stamp and recorded delivery sticker. It was obvious the letter was intended to get to the three addresses at the same time, and the letter advised the recipient to be at Grace’s home at precisely midday today, Saturday.

Alyson snorted again. “Perhaps she has gone away and got a cat or something that needs feeding.”

“Wouldn’t take three to feed it,” said Chloe. “Unless it had kittens. Anyway, Grace didn’t say anything to me. I presume she didn’t say anything beforehand to both of you?”

“No, but now we are here, at what I imagine is a deliberately arranged time, we shouldn’t hang around. We’ll go in and see.” Freya said. “Your key or mine, girls?”

After a brief discussion between Chloe and Alyson failed to determine who was the better friend, Freya produced the key she had been sent and strode up the drive as fast as her stride would allow, carrying the cane in her hand. The other two followed. At the front door, Freya paused. She had been a detective until her shooting injury meant she couldn’t continue, but she knew the procedure in such situations.

“No touching anything until we know why we’re here. No turning on a light or anything until we know.”

“Know what?” asked Alyson.

“Gas,” remarked Chloe, who had seen a drama about this on television the other night.

“Fuck, she hasn’t gone and committed suicide has she?” The color drained from Alyson’s face.

“I doubt it,” replied Freya. “She isn’t as unstable as some people I know.” She let the inflection on the word ‘people’ soak into the other two, who both scowled as one in response. “But it’s wise to be cautious until we know. I doubt she sent a letter because there was a gas leak, and if she wanted to shock us there would be better ways of doing it. I’d better go first, I have been in these situations before,” she added, sliding her key into the door lock.