Stolen

by Tess Stimson

  When they lose touch with those children, they feel they’ve lost everything.

  Exclusion

  Even in the happiest of families, the delicate mother-in-law/daughter-in-law relationship can be complex and sometimes competitive.

  If it comes to a fight, the younger woman will always win, armed with the ultimate weapon – exclusion.

  The sad fact is, in the event of a family breakdown, grandparents have no legal rights. Even if they can afford to hire a solicitor to take their case to Family Court, it’s a long and costly process.

  Little wonder many become so desperate they consider ending their lives. Some describe the estrangement from their grandchildren as a ‘living bereavement’.

  Elena Martini’s son, Luca, became Lottie’s primary carer following his divorce from her mother, in February 2018.

  He took his daughter to see her grandparents in Italy at least once a month, until his tragic death in the Genoa bridge collapse in August that year.

  No doubt struggling with her own grief, Alexa Martini then broke off all contact with Luca’s parents, driving Mrs Martini to take matters into her own hands.

  For the Martinis, it’s too late to call a truce, but for so many other families, surely it is not beyond hope that peace could be declared?

  After all, in these cruel family conflicts the victims, as they are in so many wars, are the children.

  six months later

  chapter 81

  quinn

  Quinn hates memorial services. She’s not a big fan of funerals or hospitals either, but at least you can be miserable at a fucking funeral. No one expects you to quote-unquote celebrate a life well-lived or, even worse, find closure.

  She avoids the journalists and photographers clustered near the church steps.

  She’s not here in a professional capacity today. She’s here as Alex’s friend.

  Alex’s sister, Harriet, hands her an order of service as she enters the nave. ‘It was good of you to come,’ she says automatically.

  Quinn glances at the smiling photograph on the pamphlet. It looks nothing like Alex.

  ‘How’s Lottie doing?’ she asks.

  ‘I know people say kids are resilient, but it’s amazing how quickly she’s bounced back,’ Harriet says. ‘And she seems to like the Shetlands – oh, Mrs Harris. It was good of you to come.’

  The service is moving but unsentimental and mercifully brief. A touching eulogy from Alex’s father, some uplifting readings, the usual Henry Scott Holland poem, death is nothing at all, and then ‘Jerusalem’. Quinn’s an atheist, but the faith of those gathered in the packed church is oddly touching and for a moment she wishes she shared it. And then she remembers what happened in Sicily and she’s glad she doesn’t believe in God.

  Afterwards, everyone adjourns to a nearby pub. Quinn hadn’t planned to go – she’s sober again, and her new six-month chip is burning a hole in her pocket – but she overhears Harriet say Lottie’s going to be there and Quinn wants to see the kid for herself. She needs to know the little girl is flourishing, despite everything that happened. She needs to know she did the right thing.

  Lottie’s all that matters. If something goes wrong, you don’t wait for me. You take Lottie and you leave.

  What kind of fucking psycho fakes his own death, for God’s sake? Quinn’s spidey senses had been telling her all along there was more to this story than met the eye, but she’d never have picked a zombie husband back from the dead.

  She hadn’t wanted to leave Alex alone in that courtyard with him, but she’d promised she’d take care of Lottie and she wasn’t going to let her down. You take Lottie and you leave.

  It was just dumb luck she’d spotted Lottie running away from the villa. The little girl must’ve been hiding somewhere: under a bed, maybe, or behind one of the massive bougainvillea planters in the courtyard. Quinn had caught sight of her from the car, a tiny figure scrambling down the rocky slope to the road.

  The poor kid had been terrified when Quinn finally caught up to her, clearly convinced she was about to be murdered. Quinn knows her eye patch can freak people out; the little girl thought Quinn was some sort of homicidal maniac who’d killed her mother. She’d never have got her in the car if the child hadn’t been so exhausted. The poor kid hadn’t even got any shoes on. She’d cut her bare feet to bloody ribbons.

  If Quinn had headed straight to the airport there and then, things would’ve ended very differently. She should have taken the little girl home, as Alex had told her to do. It’s why she’d called Quinn for help and not Jack Murtaugh.

  But she’d broken her promise.

  She’d gone back.

  Lottie had been semi-comatose in the back of the car. Quinn had pillowed the little girl’s head on her jacket and double-locked the doors, cracking the windows so the child had some fresh air.

  Then she’d slipped back into the villa the same way she’d left. She could hear shouting again, but this time it was in hectic Italian: Luca and his mother. She hadn’t heard Alex’s voice.

  And then she’d realised why.

  Even from across the courtyard, Quinn had been able to see the red bloom blossoming on Alex’s back.

  Luca hadn’t noticed Quinn’s approach because he was grappling with his lunatic mother, who’d somehow climbed onto the battlements. Something was flashing in her hand as she ranted at her son and it’d taken Quinn a few moments to realise it was the sun reflecting off a blade.

  Even as she’d watched, the crazy old woman had backed further along the low, wide wall, and Luca had climbed up after her. Stai attento, Mamma!

  Be careful!

  The villa was a mountaintop fortress, designed to keep the owners safe from invading Saracen hordes. Perched atop a crag, three sides of the villa held commanding views of the countryside. The fourth rose seamlessly from a sheer cliff that dropped hundreds of feet to the rocks below.

  Luca had suddenly seen Quinn. ‘She’s going to fall!’ he’d shouted. ‘Help me!’

  He’d lunged towards his mother, knocking the knife from her hand. It’d clattered onto the flagstones and skittered across the courtyard, coming to rest at Quinn’s feet.

  Red with Alex’s blood.

  Luca had managed to get one arm around Elena, but she was fighting him, spittle flecking her lips.

  He’d held out his free hand to Quinn. ‘Please! Help me get her down!’

  So Quinn had run towards them.

  And pushed.

  chapter 82

  alex

  I’m in the pub garden with Lottie, savouring the first really warm day of summer, when Quinn comes outside looking for us. I invited her to Mum’s memorial service weeks ago, but I didn’t think she’d actually show up.

  I wave her over. I haven’t seen her since I came out of hospital, nearly six months ago, and I’m surprised how much healthier she looks. Clearly giving up the booze and getting back into the field to be shot at and bombed has done her good. She’s still got the rakish eye patch, of course, but she no longer resembles a heroin addict searching for her next fix.

  ‘You’ve just made Lottie’s day,’ I say, making room on the wooden bench.

  ‘Other way round,’ Quinn says.

  Lottie clambers onto Quinn’s knee, unselfconsciously moving the reporter’s withered arm out of the way to make room. Anyone else watching them might be surprised by my daughter’s uncharacteristic affection, given they haven’t seen each other in six months, but they struck up an unlikely bond in Sicily: the hard-bitten, childless war correspondent and my difficult, awkward, immeasurably brave daughter.

  Or perhaps not that unlikely, after all.

  ‘So,’ I say. ‘How was Nagorno-Karabakh?’

  ‘Lively. The ceasefire’s broken down again, so I’ll probably be on my way back in a day or two. How are the Shetlands?’

  ‘Unbelievably dull. Thank God.’

  ‘When are you coming back to London?’ Quinn asks.

  I glance across t
he pub garden to where Jack is in deep conversation with my father. The two of them hit it off the first time they met, while I was convalescing at Harriet’s cottage. My sister has been my staunchest supporter over the last few months. I couldn’t have managed without her. I’m really going to miss her when we leave.

  ‘At the end of the summer,’ I say. ‘Lottie’s going back to school in London in September. She seems ready.’

  ‘I’m sure he’ll appreciate the shorter commute,’ Quinn says, dryly.

  My relationship with Jack is still under wraps, for now, but I know our secret’s safe with Quinn. I’d never have thought I’d say this, given the way we started, but I can literally trust this woman with my life.

  She was the one who saved it, after all.

  I don’t know exactly what happened that day at Elena Martini’s villa. I’ve got no memories of anything after she stabbed me. I nearly died: according to my medical records, my heart stopped twice on the helicopter to the hospital in the Sicilian capital, Palermo. So I don’t suppose I’ll ever know how Luca and his mother came to be lying at the bottom of the cliff. But I can guess.

  A tragic accident, the Sicilian police decided. It appears Signor Bonfiglio – a distant cousin of the old lady, apparently, although no one is quite sure of the relationship – was trying to save his elderly relative, who suffered from dementia, and the two fell to their deaths. No one else was home at the time.

  When I regained consciousness, six days later, I was in a private room at St George’s Hospital in London, the victim of an apparent mugging near my home. Jack must have called in quite a few favours to pull that off.

  We debated long and hard whether to tell the world Lottie had been found. After Quinn had spirited my daughter out of Sicily, she’d taken her to Harriet in the Shetlands, and when I was discharged ten days later I flew up to join them. Perhaps I could’ve passed Lottie off as a relative of my late husband, using the alias Luca had given our daughter, but I’d had enough of lies and deception. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder, waiting for the truth to come out. I wanted Lottie to know who she was.

  A simple press release was never going to work. There’d been too much interest in the story for too long to get away with that. So I finally gave Quinn her exclusive, and sat down for a ninety-minute TV interview.

  We stuck to the truth as much as we could. Quinn told the moving story of a bereaved grandmother, driven by the death of her beloved son to commit an unforgivable act. A woman who, when she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, returned Lottie to her mother and then took her life at her mountain home in Sicily a few days later. There was no mention of the unfortunate Signor Bonfiglio.

  Quinn knew how to sell the story. INN promoted the interview across its domestic and international channels, and followed it up with a series of scoops: the first pictures of Lottie, playing in the garden; access to the villa where she’d been kept; interviews with my dad and Harriet. INN sucked the life out of the story, and although the other networks and newspapers covered it, they’d lost the initiative and they knew it. In journalism, there’s no such thing as second place. Besides, the story had suddenly become a lot less interesting: instead of the dramatic, stranger-danger abduction that fed into every mother’s worst nightmare, the Lottie Martini kidnapping had turned out to be nothing more than a convoluted custody battle. A few commentators wrote opinion pieces about the rights of grandparents and then the news cycle moved on.

  Lottie spies a puppy playing with a family at a table a few feet away and abruptly wriggles off Quinn’s lap. ‘Posso andare a giocare con il cucciolo?’ she asks me, folding her hands in mock-prayer.

  ‘In English, Lottie.’

  She scowls. ‘Can I go and play with the puppy, Mummy?’

  I nod and she runs off.

  ‘Must be hard to let her go,’ Quinn says.

  ‘It was harder when she was too scared to leave my side,’ I say.

  When Quinn arrived in Brae with Lottie, my poor girl was so terrified and confused she wouldn’t speak. It was only when I finally came home to her she really believed I wasn’t dead, and for months she refused to let me out of her sight.

  It was the same for me. At night, I’d lie on the covers of her bed next to her, watching her as she slept. I couldn’t stop looking at her, the miracle of her. Stroking that white-blonde hair, still not able to quite take it in. Restored to me. My girl.

  It’s taking time for us to find our way back to each other. She’s changed in so many ways and I don’t know how much of that is part of the natural process of growing up, and how much is because of what she’s been through. And yet, despite her long absence, she seems so much like herself, the same stubborn girl who refused to let anyone help her tie her shoelaces, who ripped off her nappy when she was two and demanded to use the toilet. Lottie’s come through this, not unscathed, no; but intact, herself.

  And she remembers me. When I find myself filled with rage against Luca, I remind myself of that. He didn’t try to erase me. He told Lottie I’d gone away, but he kept my memory alive. Did he know, deep down, I’d find them one day? Was this his way of atoning for the terrible wrong he did me?

  I’ve forgiven him. I often remind myself of Helen Birch, the extraordinary compassion she showed me. You have to let the hatred and anger go. That’s the deal you’ve done with the universe.

  I don’t mourn Luca’s death, because for me he died years ago, but I do grieve the loss of the man he used to be; the man I married. That’s the father I want Lottie to remember. I’ll keep him alive for her, as he did for me.

  For Marc, there’s no such absolution. He’s in prison now, caught up in the Paul Harding paedophile sting. Jack saw to that. Marc may be innocent of the charges that landed him in jail, but I don’t feel guilty. He deserves to be there.

  Lottie comes running back to me now and grabs a swig of her lemonade, spilling a little on the table as she thumps the glass down, before racing off again. She looks like any happy, carefree six-year-old playing in the June sunshine.

  I knew we’d turned a corner two months ago, the first time she let me leave Harriet’s cottage in Brae without her. Until then, she’d always insisted on coming with me wherever I went, even if I was only popping out for a pint of milk.

  I’d got my shopping list together and gone into my sister’s art studio, where Lottie had been lying on her tummy, colouring a picture of three baby owls sitting on a branch.

  ‘Are you coming, darling?’ I asked.

  ‘Can I stay here with Auntie Harriet?’ Lottie had asked, without looking up. ‘I want to finish my picture.’

  Harriet’s paintbrush had frozen in mid-air.

  ‘Are you sure?’ I asked. ‘You don’t mind if I go out without you?’

  ‘I’m sure,’ she’d said, reaching for a different-coloured pencil. She’d glanced at the baby owls, an illustration from her favourite story book, and then looked back up at me, and smiled.

  ‘Mummies always come back,’ she said.

  Acknowledgements

  I am exceptionally lucky to have an inspired and committed team behind me at Avon and HarperCollins, which has worked tirelessly to champion my books in the most challenging of times. I could not wish for better publishers, and I thank all those who’ve laboured behind the scenes to make this novel a success.

  Special thanks to my editor, Rachel Faulkner-Willcocks, who has been a cheerleader for my writing from the first, and has made this book so much better in every way. It’s a joy to work with you.

  Thanks also to Rebecca Ritchie, for her thoughtful insights and passionate support, and for listening to my midnight terrors with endless patience.

  And thanks to my marvellous copy editor, Rhian McKay, for picking up all those loose threads I left hanging. I don’t know how you do what you do, but you saved me much embarrassment!

  I’m grateful to Juliette Wills and Two Magpies Media for designing and creating www.tessstimson.com, distilling m
y vague vision into a brilliantly simple website.

  Thanks to my wonderful stepmother, Barbi, for reading the manuscript at lightning speed and providing encouraging feedback.

  And thank you to my dear friends Linnie and Bamby (who kindly lent her name to one of my characters!). You provided a lifeline of sanity this tumultuous year.

  Thanks always to the NetGalley readers and bloggers and book lovers who take the time to review my novels. It is appreciated more than you know.

  And across the globe, thanks to all the readers and listeners, to all the buyers and sellers and lenders and givers of books who ensure that our stories find a home.

  Last, though never least, thanks to my husband Erik, my sons Henry and Matt, and my daughter Lily, who endured lockdown with her crazy mother with grace and good humour. Thank you all for ensuring that the life of a writer is never dull.

  Keep Reading …

  Don’t miss Tess Stimson’s other addictive suspense novels …

  ‘More chilling than Gone Girl and twistier than The Girl on the Train’ Jane Green

  Click here to find out more.

  Published in the US as A Mother’s Secret.

  Both of them loved him …

  One of them killed him.

  ‘Tense, twisty, and that ending – wow!’ Jackie Kabler

  UK readers, click here to find out more.

  US readers, click here to find out more.

  About the Author

  Tess Stimson is the author of thirteen novels, including top ten bestseller The Adultery Club, and two non-fiction books, which between them have been translated into dozens of languages.

  A former journalist and reporter, Stimson was appointed Professor of Creative Writing at the University of South Florida in 2002 and moved to the US. She now lives and works in Vermont with her husband Erik, their three children, and (at the last count) two cats, three fish, one gerbil and a large number of bats in the attic.