Finished: The Pact (Bolton) Six best friends, the cream of the crop academically at their private school in Oxford, are about to receive their A-level scores, hopefully propelling them on to Oxford University and other similar institutions, when their lives are all upended due to a stupid and dangerous dare which ends in the death of a woman and her two young daughters. Felix, Xavier, Daniel, Talitha , Amber and Megan are all wealthy, entitled teenagers who give very little thought to anyone but themselves. Correction...all of them are wealthy but Megan. Megan, not wealthy and being raised by just her mother, is at the private school on scholarship because she's the smartest one of them all. The dare is for the last member of the six (yes, five of them have already done it before) to take the wheel of a car as they all pile in, and then drive the wrong way down the M40 motorway for two exits. Miraculously, in their first five joyrides, no one had been close to being hurt. In this one, with the meek, Daniel at the wheel, a tragic accident occurs which causes the mother of the two girls to drive off the road trying to avoid them, her car exploding into flames, killing all three of them inside. As the six friends panic and then regroup, they are trying to figure out what to do to save their own hides. Megan, who unbeknownst to the others, has actually failed her A-levels and is reeling anyway, says that she will take the blame and say she was driving and do whatever prison time is assigned if they will all stay in touch with her and each owe her a favor of her choosing when she gets out. She also makes them sign a note stating they all took equal responsibility in the accident and she takes a picture of them all holding it. They all thought she'd get just a few years for accidental manslaughter, and out on good behavior sooner than that. None of them expected Megan to be charged with murder and sentenced to life in prison, not getting out until twenty years had been served. Once out, twenty years later, Megan descends upon the lives of her five former friends, none of whom visited her or wrote back to her a single day in twenty years. She holds the old written confession and picture as a threat over their heads, demanding outrageous actions from them all as her "favors".  There are a couple of surprise twists at the end. This was an unputdownable book! I had to know what happened next after each chapter! :-)