The Liars by Naomi Joy

Hi All!
Today is my stop on the blog tour for The Liars and I am here today to with an extract from the book!

Title: The Liars
Author: Naomi Joy
Publisher: Aria
Published: 16th April 2019
Format: ebook
Source:: N/A
Add It: Amazon UK Goodreads.
Summary:Two women. One deadly secret. A rivalry that could destroy them.

Ava Wells is perfect. She has the boyfriend, the career, the looks. One night changes everything and her life isn’t so seamless anymore.

Jade Fernleigh is ambitious. She’s worked hard to get where she is. And she’s not about to let Ava take the job she rightly deserves.

Both women share a secret that could destroy them, but who will crumble first?

Extract

I shot my eyes up from my monitor, nearly eleven o’clock. Well, well, well, guess what the cat dragged in: the usually perpetually early and perpetually perfect Ava. Late night, was it?
Others in the office had clocked her tardy arrival too and I watched my colleagues, Josh (6’3, Superman, the future Mr Jade) and Georgette (6’0, Essex, bitchy) eyeball her as she walked in, head bowed, and closed the glass door to her office. She didn’t often do that, not that the transparent panes afforded her any more privacy than usual. I strained my eyes, squinted, and read Georgette’s lips.

‘What do you think all that’s about? Olivia?’

I almost guffawed from my desk. Of course. If anyone could make an inquest into someone else’s death all about them, it was Ava. Clearly she was still milking Olivia’s passing for all it was worth. My see-through stockings stuck to my legs, clammy and irritated. Well, I’d managed to make it into work on time and I’d worked with Olivia for eight years compared to Ava’s paltry one. In fact, Olivia and I had been extremely close colleagues, we’d both joined W&SP around the same time and had spent the years working our way up the slippery ladders of power side-by-side. Ava had joined last year and, as Olivia and Ava had known each other at university, she’d slotted right into our clique – perhaps a little too well. Then Olivia passed away, turning our threesome into a double act, and it wasn’t long before everything turned into a competition between Ava and me: who’d known Olivia better, who’d been more affected by her death, who’d been best placed to take on her clients, who’d step up to try and fill her shoes. Looking back, I was even jealous that Ava had been with David the morning they’d found Olivia’s body; it had only brought Ava closer and pushed me further away.

‘Psst! George!’ I whispered sharply to Georgette, motioning for her to come over.

‘What?’ she mouthed at me from across the room.

‘Come here!’

She moved away from her conversation with Josh and back over to our shared desk. As she clip-clopped my way, I dismayed at her outfit: A T-shirt dress comprised entirely of aquamarine sequins. I decided not to comment on how inappropriate it was – mermaids should never inspire one’s office attire – and made a mental note to bring it up another time.

‘Wot?’ George cawed, her overly contoured face and the near-monobrow she’d created with a few overzealous licks of her brow brush appearing dead opposite me, inches away, like a full-size, full-on jack-in-the-box.

‘Pathetic!’ I exclaimed in a whisper, leaning over the desk so we were closer still. ‘Absolutely pathetic.’

Georgette didn’t exactly spring out of her box to agree. ‘Seeing your workmate the morning after an overdose is probably gonna mess you up for a while, right? The inquest will only have brought it all back.’

I refused to comment, keen to deflect from talking about Olivia’s death. It brought back awful memories for me too; it wasn’t just Ava.

Georgette covered my silence. ‘Josh was just saying he feels really bad for her too.’

My heart sank and my eyes turned a darker shade of green. ‘He said that?’

Josh was mine. Well, perhaps that was going a bit far. Josh would be mine, one day. I knew that sounded disgustingly desperate: a grown-up woman with a tragic crush. But I couldn’t help it. He’d always been mine. It should have been me he was feeling bad for. I’d known Olivia, and him, for years longer than Ava.

I was just about to dive into planning how I could turn the tide and make Josh feel sorry for me instead when I noticed someone unusual approaching in my peripheral vision. My expression clouded and my mouth bobbed open to form a perfectly round ‘o’. David Stein – company CEO who never came onto this floor, ever – had burst magnificently through the double doors and was striding across the office, his dark hair flecked with grey, his expression drawn and steely. Instinct told me exactly where he was headed: Ava.

Georgette followed my stare and swung her chair round to witness the scene unfolding behind her. I flicked my focus over to Ava, oblivious to who was coming her way, and watched, hypnotised, as she gathered the long twist of her hair in one hand, tying the thousands of shades of slightly different blonde tighter and tighter together. In one effortless motion she curled her hair up on top of her head and stuck a pen through it, then David knocked on her door and her pen-bun loosened and fell, as though in shock, each strand of her hair catching the spring light as it did so, rippling like a sandy avalanche as it came to rest against her back. Georgette spun back round, happy shock on her face. George loved office drama, in fact, I’d wager procuring office gossip and disseminating the information was her number one skill. And it wasn’t the worst thing to be good at, at a place like this: information was everything at W&SP.

About the Author

Naomi Joy is a pen name of a young PR professional who was formerly an account director at prestigious Storm Communications. Writing from experience, she draws the reader in the darker side of the uptown and glamorous, presenting realism that is life or death, unreliable and thrilling to page-turn.