When We Were Young by Dawn Goodwin
Four best friends. One of them is dead. Are their secrets safe?
Uni friends Stacey, Paula, Bev and Valentina used to be inseparable until one weekend before graduation when nothing was ever the same again.
Thirty years later, reunited at Valentina's funeral, Stacey receives a letter written by her late friend asking for one last wish... that the three friends go back to where things fell apart and finally bury the hatchet.
As they revisit their old haunts of their uni days and follow a series of clues left by Valentina, their friend's death begins to look suspicious and it is up to them to find out what happened – but they all have secrets to hide.
They say good friends are hard to come by, but when there is so much at stake and someone is lurking in the shadows, how do you know who is a friend and who is a foe?
About the author
Dawn Goodwin’s twenty-year career has spanned PR, advertising and publishing, both in London and Johannesburg. A graduate of the Curtis Brown creative writing school, she loves to write about the personalities hiding behind the masks we wear every day, whether beautiful or ugly. Now a company director, what spare time she has is spent chasing good intentions, contemplating how to get away with various crimes and misdemeanours, and immersing herself in fictitious worlds. She lives in London with her husband, two teenage daughters and British bulldogs Geoffrey and Luna.
Social Media Links –
https://www.instagram.com/dgoodwinauthor/
https://twitter.com/dgoodwinauthor?lang=en-gb
https://www.facebook.com/DGoodwinAuthor
As part of the blog tour, I'm pleased to be able to share an extract of the book!
Valentina’s Facebook page could’ve been anyone’s for what little information there was. Stacey sat with a glass of the wine at her elbow, loose tracksuit bottoms on and her feet now bare. She’d taken off her bra and tied up her hair, then settled herself on the couch. The volume on the television was turned down low, just enough to keep her company but not enough to distract her.
The profile detailed the university Valentina attended, which she knew of course because she had been there too, but it didn’t detail the one she had gone to before joining them in their last year. It had seemed curious at the time that someone would choose to transfer in their final year or that someone with that much family money had chosen to flat-share, but they’d never pushed her on it. The profile then went on to say she had worked for a small PR company shortly after she graduated, but there was no other work information after that. Considering the PR agency had Mackenzie in its name, she assumed her father had owned it as part of his portfolio of companies and had given her a job.
There were a number of photos posted sporadically over the years of various places she had visited: Dubai, Bali, Singapore, Australia. All of the beautifully captured photos were of landscapes and famous landmarks or carefully placed cocktails; no faces and no names tagged.
On occasion, various men featured but rarely the same man twice. There was a Greg, Justin, Paul – all young and good-looking in a suntanned, sporty way. Then there were photos of her race numbers for various half and full marathons, which baffled Stacey, who couldn’t imagine Valentina doing anything sporty. She had never seemed the type – could dance for hours but wouldn’t run to catch a bus.
Still, people can change, can’t they?
Some more than others.
Thinking about Valentina now, Stacey realised what little they had known about her, how everything about her seemed to contradict itself, like she was one of those folded paper fortune-teller puzzles. If you lifted one corner, there would be a different answer to what was under the next.
After the last holiday in Australia some years ago, the photos on Facebook stopped. Not unusual – most people had stopped using Facebook and moved on to other social media platforms, their profiles left behind like memorials.
Then posts began again just after she died. Apparently grieving friends heartbroken by her passing, hoping that she was finally at rest, complete with angel emojis. If they were so heartbroken, why weren’t they at the funeral?
One post in particular caught Stacey’s eye. Someone called Tania Bennett had posted:
Valentina was a force of nature who will be missed by all of us. I hope whoever did this is found and punished. Rest in peace, angel.
Stacey looked at Tania Bennett’s profile, but it was private. The name seemed vaguely familiar though. Then she checked her phone and saw that Tania Bennett was the person who had sent her the details of the funeral. Still, there was something about the name that bothered her – a connection that was just out of reach like a forgotten song lyric. Stacey zoomed into the profile photo, but couldn’t see the face close enough to identify them. Valentina had had occasional friends from her classes, but not many. Her primary social group had been the three of them.
It was a weird thing to say though, wasn’t it?
What the hell had happened?
She thought about sending Tania a message, but didn’t know what to say.
Hello, you don’t know me but how did Valentina die? Seemed a bit blunt and upsetting if Tania had been a friend.
Valentina’s Instagram was more of the same nondescript posts – no selfies but a lot of photos of local scenery, a few shots of meals out and random items of interest, like a heart-shaped rock, a carrot that looked like it had a willy, that kind of thing. Valentina didn’t seem to have a Twitter account, unless she had a random username that Stacey couldn’t identify.
Stacey then did a quick Google search for Valentina Mackenzie, but nothing came up other than a short news post the year after they graduated about her father passing away. Her father had bankrolled everything – her education, her living costs, giving her an allowance. She could’ve afforded somewhere much nicer than their cramped and damp flat. She had thrown cash at them like sweets and they had gratefully accepted, especially Stacey who didn’t have the luxury of a rich daddy.
But all the money in the world won’t make someone genuinely like you. In the beginning they had actually liked Valentina for who she was, not because of her generosity with her father’s money, and by the end it wasn’t money that had caused their happy foursome to implode.
It was Valentina herself.
