PROLOGUEAlexa
Alexa Clarke didn’t feel her skull splinter at first.
Even the shudder-inducing crack of the initial impact took a few seconds to register with her.
Alexa’s momentary ignorance could suggest how unexpected an act of violence was in her life. Maybe the hostile beauty of the late November morning had captured her attention. Maybe she suddenly remembered something – an appointment she had to attend or that she hadn’t turned the iron off.
But the truth was, Alexa took a moment to acknowledge her attack because her mind was tangled in the thick forest of her darkest memories. Recalling them hurt more than a strike to the back of the head ever could.
In the moments before the hooded figure followed Alexa onto the field and inflicted their definitive blow, Alexa was in a trance. Barely one hundred metres from her home, but mentally a million miles away. Soaking in the silence that lulled her into believing everything would be okay.
Alexa was so absorbed that she didn’t notice the grass rustling behind her.
She didn’t hear the figure’s anticipatory breathing as they drew closer or feel the atmosphere shift as their hands raised a heavy, blunt object above her head.
But then the impact came, and everything changed.
The shock was so stunning that Alexa carried on walking for one, two, three steps before the scream of agony reverberated through her skull.
Then, Alexa stopped.
Then, she realised something was wrong.
By the time the second hit came, a shrill ringing vibrated through Alexa’s skull. Warm, sticky blood trickled down her forehead. Slowly at first, then faster, running past her eyebrows and mingling with her eyelashes until her vision turned red.
The last thing Alexa thought of as she crumpled to her knees was her husband handing her a pink polka dot mug. The first gift he’d ever bought her. So happy, so naive.
So blissfully unaware of what was to become of their story.
CHAPTER 1
The cursor flashes on and off, on and off. Its incessant blinking narrates the painful passing of each second I don’t type. A haughty reminder that the Word document, not to mention the rest of the world, is awaiting my words.
Calling its bluff, I raise my hands above the keyboard to fire out the most groundbreaking opening to a thriller ever written. When inspiration doesn’t strike, I lower them once more.
The cursor flickers.
At half past ten, I break from my desk to make a cup of tea, surprised it’s taken me so long to use this excuse to leave my home office. Usually by this time, I’m three cups deep.
In the peace of my kitchen, I spot the bread Kamal propped in the toaster for me before he left for work. I see the pill he laid out, too. It sits beside the toaster, small and innocuous, but with a presence so loud it might as well be screaming.
Picking up the tablet, I roll it between my fingers. I wonder how much strength I’d need to crush it. Not much, I imagine, but a vision of Kamal’s hope as I left the doctor’s office with my prescription stops me from doing so.
My eyes glaze as they linger on the pill, then the bread. Witnessing how much Kamal tries to help me get ‘back on track’, as the doctor said, would be laughable if it wasn’t so damned painful.
But Kamal doesn’t know that the pills don’t work. Or that as soon as the door closes behind him, the sadness comes for me anyway. It starts at my ankles, coiling up my body until it’s wrapped around my throat. It stays there all day, choking and oppressive. Its grip loosens slightly when Kamal is home, but never enough to let me be.
Plucking the bread from the toaster and enclosing the pill in my fist, I open the bin and drop the items in there. Once I cover them with remnants of last night’s dinner, I remember how to breathe. Marking that as a win, I select my favourite mug from the cupboard. Floral with a chip on the rim, it’s the one I was using when I signed my first book deal. The generous offer was the result of a bidding war that was, to quoteThe Guardian, ‘unheard of in recent years’. What luck the mug has brought me recently, though, I’m not so sure.
While the kettle boils, I look out across the garden, waiting for life outside to hit me with a distraction – or better still, a spark of inspiration. But what life outside? The neat garden, with its clipped grass glimmering thanks to a kiss of frost? The road to Bramblethorpe, which hasn’t had a car drive along it for almost an hour, or the field beyond it that goes on with no break in sight?
I’d first come across Bramblethorpe on an episode ofLocation, Location, Location. Taken by how idyllic it seemed, I convinced Kamal we should check it out. It was close enough to Manchester that Kamal could commute for work, and far enough away that I felt I could breathe.
I remember standing in this exact spot the day Kamal and I first inspected the house. It was even colder then. A ghostly white skythreatened us with the promise of snow, the trees in the distance exposing their skeletal branches. But even with harsh weather surrounding it, the house and the grounds it stood on sang with beauty. I thought it would make the perfect writing location.
‘Do you like it?’ Kamal had whispered to me, his thick beard tickling my cheek as he wrapped his arms around me from behind.
‘I love it.’