Her Deadly Secret: A gripping psychological thriller with twists that will take your breath away. Chris Curran

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СКАЧАТЬ made himself move. Reach for her as she began a broken chant, ‘No, oh no, no, no.’ He pulled her into his arms. She clung to him, and he closed his eyes pressing his face into her hair. Her heart thumped hard against his chest, echoing the rhythm of his own. If they could stay like this, just the two of them, they could hold back the nightmare.

      But then she pushed him away and, as he tried to touch her again, she beat at him, hitting his chest, his face, his eyes, her hands clenched into stones. He tried to speak but, as Philips dragged him back, Hannah shrieked so loudly Joe was sure the whole world could hear.

      ‘Don’t touch me, Joe. Don’t touch me. Keep away from me.’

       Rosie

      It didn’t help that it was Alice’s birthday today – what would have been Alice’s birthday. At ten o’clock Rosie switched to another news channel just in time to see the photo of the missing girl again. A slim face and light brown hair, held up at one side with a blue clip. She had already watched the whole of today’s appeal three times. And now there was a sentence of breaking news rolling along the bottom of the screen.

       Body found in search for missing teenager.

      The girl’s family must have heard already, and she could imagine all too easily what it would be like in that house now.

      She wrapped the soft throw more tightly around her legs on the big sofa, curling her bare feet under her. It crossed her mind to put the central heating on or move to the kitchen. The sitting room, which had seemed so elegant when they bought the place, always felt cavernous when Oliver wasn’t at home; the windows too large even with the curtains closed. She wished they hadn’t positioned the sofa in the middle of the room near the fireplace and TV, where you had to look behind you to see the door and the hallway.

      The kitchen was large too, and they’d extended it to make a dining area which was nearly all glass. She shivered at the thought of pulling the blinds in there, one by one, while the lights turned the garden into a black emptiness. She always had the feeling that someone was out there, staring in at her.

      Here was the news conference again, coming from Swindon. She’d never been there, but thought it was in Wiltshire, about a hundred and fifty miles away from their home in Hastings. The policeman in charge was explaining they were seriously concerned about Lily, because she was only 14 and she wasn’t the kind of girl to go off without letting her parents know. Unusually, the mother was absent and the dad looked very lonely up there, flanked by the row of uniforms, a bank of microphones in front of his face.

      He was coughing now, the father, as the police inspector said Mr Marsden had a message for his daughter and cameras clacked like a volley of gunshots in the man’s face.

      ‘Lily, love, if you can hear this we’re worried about you … sweetheart. So come home if you can. We won’t be cross with you if you’re in … I mean, if you’ve done something wrong.’ He stumbled to a halt, cleared his throat and glanced at the policeman, whose nod told him to go on. ‘Your mum’s beside herself with worry.’ He gulped at a glass of water. ‘We both are; so, please call us if you can. Just to say you’re all right.’

      The father stopped, looked up then flinched back into himself as the cameras flashed. He turned to the policeman. ‘That’s all.’ Looking down, his face red and voice gruff, suggesting tears held back, he muttered to the table, ‘We love you, Lily.’

      As the cameras clattered and flared at him again, Rosie wondered whether he knew that, if the body they’d found was his daughter’s, he would soon be the prime suspect.

      ‘Mummy, Muuum.’

      The cries must have been going on for some time, and she bounded across the hallway, the parquet floor cool under her feet.

      Fay’s room was warm, but she was sitting up in bed, eyes puffy with sleep and tears. ‘I had a dream and you didn’t come.’

      ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you.’ Rosie sat on the bed, holding her daughter and kissing her hair. It smelled musty with sleep.

      She tucked Fay in and passed her a doll from the pile of toys at the end of the bed.

      ‘No, I want Doogie Dog, not that.’

      Fay always reverted to the behaviour and toys of her babyhood after nightmares but, by morning, Rosie knew she would be an indomitable 6-going-on-15-year-old again. Now, with the green fleecy dog under her chin, she was nearly asleep, and Rosie sat watching her, filled with so much love she could barely breathe. She pulled a strand of pale hair away from Fay’s lips, but her daughter brushed sleepily at her hand, irritated by the touch.

      After watching for a few minutes Rosie stood, holding the rejected doll. In the past year or so everything had had to be on Fay’s terms, and Rosie found it more and more difficult to deal with her. ‘Maybe she needs a brother or sister to show her she isn’t the centre of the world,’ Oliver had said a couple of times recently but Rosie wasn’t sure how serious he was.

      And another baby wouldn’t change things. Fay was the centre of their world and always would be. No other child could take that special place: just as Rosie had never been able to replace her parents’ firstborn, Alice.

      It was difficult to believe it had been fifteen years since Alice was killed. (Rosie always found it difficult to use the word murdered even in her thoughts.) Rosie had been 14 at the time, like the missing girl; Alice, two years older. At times, it seemed like yesterday. Yet so much had happened since then. Sometimes, she went whole days without thinking of her sister. Sometimes, she was even able to remember the good things. Their childhood together, before everything went wrong. Able to show Fay the pictures of Auntie Alice and tell her funny stories about those days. To think about how, when she was little, she had adored her big sister and longed for her love and approval. It was when she saw news of missing or murdered teenagers that it became impossible to forget what came later. And how it all ended.

      The TV was still on in the living room and showing the father of the missing girl leaving the press conference. He looked nice enough: an ordinary dad, with a thatch of untidy brown hair streaked with a few strands of grey. His face was pleasant, the hint of stubble somehow making it more appealing, and when he looked up she saw eyes that might have been kind if they hadn’t been so haunted.

      But then, Rosie knew only too well how easily eyes can lie.

       Chapter Two

       Joe

      The thought that kept going around in Joe’s brain was that this didn’t happen to families like theirs. He knew that his little girl, his Lily, was gone. Murdered. He’d identified her body. But, no matter how many times he told himself it was true, his mind refused to understand.

      Once or twice in the past, a past that seemed so remote he’d begun to think of it as before, he had asked himself how people coped in a situation like this. He’d imagined the parents would cling together, support each other.

      But this was nothing like that.

      Hannah was pumped so full of tranquilizers and sleeping pills, she was either a hump in the bed he dared not touch, or a ragged-haired zombie, smelling of coffee and sweat. When СКАЧАТЬ