One of the themes I wanted to explore in my new novel, Before She Knew Him, was the idea of friendship. Not those long, impervious friendships—the ones that begin in childhood and stretch through the years—but those friendships that start late in life. And in particular, I was interested in the couple friendship.
Making friends as an adult is hard. If you happen to be part of a couple, then making couple friends can be doubly hard. Everyone needs to get along. Inevitably, such relationships can become fraught with tension—who doesn’t like whom, or, worse, does someone like someone else too much?
The opening scene of my book depicts a neighbourhood block party in a suburb west of Boston. Hen, the main protagonist, an artist with a history of mental health issues, is reluctant to go, even though they are new to the neighbourhood. Lloyd, her husband, convinces her. Of course, if he hadn’t managed to get her to attend, the rest of the novel wouldn’t happen. At this party, Hen and Lloyd meet their neighbours, Matthew and Mira, and after a dinner party with the four of them, Hen becomes convinced that her new neighbour is a murderer.
What interested me in writing this book wasn’t exploring the idea of whether Hen was imagining things, or if her neighbour is really the killer. It’s not a spoiler alert to say that Matthew Dolamore is a killer. The reader is told this at the beginning of chapter two. What interested me in writing this book was that Hen and Matthew ultimately form a relationship, one actually based on a strong, if twisted, bond.
After Hen becomes convinced that Matthew has killed someone named Dustin Miller, a former student of his, two years earlier, she shares her suspicions with both her husband and with a homicide detective. But because of Hen’s past, including a time in college when she falsely accused a fellow freshman of attempted murder, she is, understandably, an unreliable witness. And because she is such an unreliable witness, it provides an opening for Matthew, once he learns that she knows the truth. He can tell her anything, because she is powerless to turn around and repeat what he has said. No one will believe her. Most importantly, he can tell her the truth.
In a strange way, Hen gets something from Matthew, as well. When the two talk, it’s not just that he can confess to her what he’s done, he is also the only person who actually believes her, who knows that she’s not crazy. If that’s not the basis for some sort of friendship, I don’t know what is.
I love these kinds of relationships in thrillers. There’s the relationship between Guy and Bruno in Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train. There’s Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling from Thomas Harris’s The Silence of the Lambs. And my absolute favourite part of the recent TV series Luther, starring Idris Elba, was Luther’s relationship with the killer, Alice Morgan, played by the always brilliant Ruth Wilson. I have to say I lost a little interest when she disappeared from the show.
Strangers are scary, and sometimes friends are, as well. We never know what’s really in someone’s heart, and I think that’s a good basis for a thriller. It’s possible that my book is one long cautionary tale about attending neighbourhood block parties, but it’s also about putting yourself out there, getting to know people. Strangers are just friends we haven’t met. Or friends we wish we had never met.
Before She Knew Him by Peter Swanson is out now (Faber & Faber, £12.99)
When Hen and Lloyd move into their new house in West Dartford, Mass., they’re relieved to meet, at their first block party, the only other seemingly-childless couple in their neighbourhood, Matthew and Mira Dolamore. Turns out they live in the Dutch Colonial immediately next door. When they’re invited over for dinner, however, things take a sinister turn when Hen thinks she sees something suspicious in Matthew’s study. Could this charming, mild-mannered College Professor really be hiding a dark secret, one that only Hen, whose been battling her own problems with depression and medication, could know about? Lloyd certainly doesn’t seem to believe her, and so, forced together, Hen and Matthew start to form an unlikely bond. But who, if anyone, is really in danger?
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