The Family Across the Street

by Trope, Nicole

  Katherine worries about him more than she worries about Sophie. Her daughter has nightmares about what happened, waking and shouting about a gun and her stuffed monkey, but she will talk to whomever will listen, describing her older brother as ‘mean’. She feels no connection to him and is able to dismiss him as a bad man, as she would a character on television, but George asked once, just whispering in her ear, ‘If he’s my brother, will I also try to hurt people when I’m big?’

  ‘You would never do that, my darling,’ she told him, even though the words hurt. She hates the idea that her older son is something that George fears he could become.

  ‘Right, kids, you need to take the flowers down to the kitchen so I can put them in a vase for Mum,’ says John, and the children trail him out of the bedroom as Katherine moves to get herself more comfortable.

  Today is John’s last day at home full-time before returning to work. From tomorrow morning, Gladys will have the children for a couple of hours in the morning and the new nanny, Abigail, will fetch them for afternoon playdates and summer holiday adventures. Katherine is itching to get out of her bed, but the doctors had to be persuaded to send her home as early as they did.

  ‘My children need me at home,’ she kept saying, knowing that John was struggling with two sleepless children sharing his bed. Sophie would wake from her nightmares and George would sit up for hours, listening for noises in the house. He checks all the doors now before he goes to bed, insists on making sure everything is locked, and John says he freezes when the doorbell rings, just stands completely still and waits. Katherine’s heart breaks for him. He is struggling with so much right now and every night she prays that he can find a way forward and that, eventually, the idea that he is safe at home will return.

  Once Katherine came home, things slowly got back to a certain amount of normality. Gladys has been a godsend and the whole school community has rallied around the children. Things will never be the same, and the twins will carry that hot summer’s day with them forever, but Katherine hopes that one day the memory will feel manageable. She cannot allow her two young children to be haunted by her older child – and by her failure to realise just how damaged he was.

  ‘You did everything you could for him,’ John keeps saying, but Katherine wishes she had done more. She could have insisted he stay with her after his father’s death, could have worked harder to make sure he had the right therapy. She should never have limited her contact as he asked her to, and at night, when she wakes from dreams of her older son as a boy that change into nightmares of him, his face changing into his father’s face and a gun in his hand, she knows that she should never have said yes to him living with Anthony. The guilt over not saving him when he was younger catches her in moments when she is not concentrating and then she will see only the little boy who liked to be sung to and loved adventure stories. When she thinks of him, she sees him at two and five and ten years old, his face bright with laughter. He used to sit next to her and stroke her hair as she read to him. Her heartbreak over the loss of her child is a physical thing that steals her breath and hurts her soul.

  Maybe if she had never remarried and had more children, Patrick would have been more likely to come back into her life, but she cannot be sure of this. Anthony did a lot of terrible damage. He turned a surly adolescent into a young man who was capable of hurting others, who wanted to hurt those he felt had hurt him.

  She has not spoken to Maddy, to Logan’s sister, but she is writing and rewriting an email to her. She is struggling to get the words right, trying to find a way to apologise for the man her little boy became. She will send it soon but she keeps rereading it, worried that the words will be all wrong.

  Katherine is also talking to a counsellor, but she is aware that no matter what she hears the truth will always be that her son is gone, and she believes that if she had tried harder, she could have saved him.

  On terrible nights when she cannot close her eyes to rest, she will take out a notebook and write a list of questions for her son.

  Did you really want to hurt me? Had you really stopped loving me? What could I have done better? How could I have helped you? What did you need that I didn’t give you? Were you ever happy? Who did you want to be? What did you want to do with your life?

  The notebook’s pages are filling up but she will never be able to ask Patrick everything she so wants to ask him.

  When she cries over her lost son, she tries to do it so the children and John don’t see. It’s hard for them to fathom the love she still holds for him after everything he did.

  Patrick couldn’t be saved. She was on an operating table herself when he died during surgery. That thought makes her touch her heart and have to cover her eyes with her hands, hoping the image of him alone in an operating room will go away. She never got to say goodbye, to tell him that she loved him no matter what, and if she had been given the choice, she would have thought the same thing she thought about her twins. My life for theirs. My life for his.

  John organised everything for the funeral, knowing that there was no one else to do it. It was an act of kindness, of generosity, on his part and it has changed the way she sees her husband. What has happened, the terrible shock of how easily Katherine and the children could have died, has helped them find their way back to each other step by step.

  ‘I thought you were dead,’ John repeats. ‘I saw you on that sofa and I thought you were gone and I understood that I had let so much petty bullshit stop me from being the husband and father I wanted to be. I prayed when they were operating on you, begged for another chance.’

  ‘I thought of you just before I closed my eyes,’ she has admitted to him, ‘and I think I was at peace because I knew you would love our children the way they needed to be loved. And I knew that you loved me. Nothing else mattered.’

  She feels they have both been gifted a second chance and not everyone gets a second chance.

  ‘Right, here you go,’ says John, returning to the bedroom, followed by the children, with a haphazard arrangement of the flowers they collected on their walk: purples and yellows, pinks and oranges.

  ‘Lovely,’ she says.

  ‘It’s time for you to read to us,’ says George.

  Every afternoon she reads for as long as her strength allows. They are reading Harry Potter and the children are enthralled. She hopes that one day they will remember these afternoons of comfort in the big bed as she recovered, rather than what put her there in the first place.

  ‘I spoke to Logan – he’s doing well and should be home soon,’ says John.

  Katherine feels a pang whenever she thinks of Logan. She is overwhelmingly grateful to him, for his instincts and for him being the kind of man who, while worrying about his own sister, still took the time to be concerned for a complete stranger. George writes letters to him, filling up the pages with pictures of superheroes, Captain America featuring more than most. George and John have been to visit him in the hospital and John says their son has decided that Logan’s new baby will be his cousin, even though they are not related. Katherine has a feeling that Logan and Debbie will become part of their lives and she’s happy about that, but whenever she looks at Logan, she wonders how it is that he went a different way. They have spoken on the phone, discussed Patrick and how he came to be who he was, and Logan has shared his own childhood stories. Whoever he was as a younger man he is not that man anymore, and Katherine mourns that Patrick never got a chance to change, to become someone like Logan. A man with a past but able to put it behind him.

  Patrick will forever be twenty-three and angry. Her tears are for the child he was and the man he will never be. She cannot hate him for what happened. It’s not possible. He was her son and now he’s gone and she wishes that at least she’d been able to comfort him at the end, to hold him as she had when he was a baby, to wrap him in her arms and keep him safe.

  ‘Come on, Mum,’ says George, ‘page thirty-two.’

  Katherine wipes at her eyes
quickly and begins.

  If The Family Across the Street had you glued to the pages and gasping at the twists, then don’t miss out on Nicole’s incredible international bestseller, The Boy in the Photo. Six years ago, her little boy was stolen. Now, he’s back.

  * * *

  Get it here!

  The Boy in the Photo

  She becomes aware of the silence at the other end of the line. A prickling sensation crawls up her arms. Her heart speeds up. ‘Found who?’ she asks, slowly, carefully, deliberately.

  ‘They found Daniel.’

  * * *

  Six years ago

  * * *

  Megan waits at the school gates for her six-year-old son, Daniel. As the playground empties, panic bubbles inside her. Daniel is nowhere to be found. Her darling son is missing.

  * * *

  Six years later

  * * *

  After years of sleepless nights and endless days of missing her son, Megan finally gets the call she has been dreaming about. Daniel has walked into a police station in a remote town just a few miles away.

  * * *

  Megan is overjoyed – her son is finally coming home. She has kept Daniel’s room, with his Cookie Monster poster on the wall and a stack of Lego under the bed, in perfect shape to welcome him back. But when he returns, there is something different about Daniel…

  * * *

  According to the police, Daniel was kidnapped by his father. After his dad died in a fire, Daniel was finally able to escape. Desperate to find out the truth, Megan tries to talk to her little boy – but he barely answers her questions. Longing to help him heal, Megan tries everything – his favourite chocolate milkshake, a reunion with his best friend, a present for every birthday missed – but still, Daniel is distant.

  * * *

  And as they struggle to connect, Megan begins to suspect that there is more to the story. Soon, she fears that her son is hiding a secret. A secret that could destroy her family…

  * * *

  A heartbreaking, emotional and poignant drama about a family in turmoil. Fans of Jodi Picoult, Liane Moriarty and Linda Green – this moving novel is for you.

  * * *

  Get it here!

  Hear More from Nicole

  If you can’t wait to read more emotional, gripping stories from Nicole Trope, sign up here to be the first to know when her next book is released. We promise never to share your email address and we’ll only contact you when a new book is out.

  Books by Nicole Trope

  The Family Across the Street

  Bring Him Home

  The Girl Who Never Came Home

  The Life She Left Behind

  The Nowhere Girl

  The Boy in the Photo

  My Daughter’s Secret

  Available in Audio

  Bring Him Home (Available in the UK and the US)

  The Girl Who Never Came Home (Available in the UK and the US)

  The Life She Left Behind (Available in the UK and the US)

  The Nowhere Girl (Available in the UK and the US)

  The Boy in the Photo (Available in the UK and the US)

  My Daughter’s Secret (Available in the UK and the US)

  A Letter from Nicole

  I would like to thank you for taking the time to read The Family Across the Street. If you did enjoy it, and want to keep up to date with all my latest releases, just sign up at the following link. Your email address will never be shared and you can unsubscribe at any time.

  Sign up here!

  One of the reasons I became a writer was because I was always fascinated by what was actually happening behind closed doors. It’s human nature to want to hide the parts of your life that you consider problematic. People do reveal themselves on the internet but anonymous threads are more popular than those where the person can be identified. I often look at my neighbours and wonder if the little I see and know of them is a true reflection of who they are. I have met people whose lives seemed perfect and found myself shocked when the truth was revealed.

  I’ve met a few people like Gladys, who long for days when neighbours really connected with each other. It feels harder to do that in a time when the internet rules our lives.

  The character of Logan was inspired by a short clip I saw on Facebook about a photographer who photoshopped the tattoos off the faces of ex-gang members to show them what they would have looked like if they had not covered their faces in ink. One man who tearfully said that he could have had a normal life has always stuck with me, reminding me that judging people by their appearance is always a mistake. I was so pleased to give Logan a second chance, to give everyone in that quiet street a second chance. Logan is going to be a wonderful father and Gladys is an excellent surrogate grandmother.

  If you have enjoyed this novel, it would be lovely if you could take the time to leave a review. I read them all and find it inspiring when readers connect with the characters I write about.

  I would also love to hear from you. You can find me on Facebook and Twitter and I’m always happy to connect with readers.

  * * *

  Thanks again for reading.

  * * *

  Nicole x

  The Girl Who Never Came Home

  They find her just as the sun is beginning to rise in the early morning mist. They had begun at dawn, the group of searchers keen to get going. A missing child spurred everyone on. In the end, it was a flash of colour, a bright neon pink that caught her eye. They had been looking for pink.

  * * *

  Nothing tests your faith like being a mother. The first time your children walk to school alone, their first sleepover, when they finally fly the nest. As a parent, you have to believe that everything will be OK.

  * * *

  It’s why, when Lydia’s sixteen-year-old daughter Zoe goes on a school camping trip, she has no idea of the horrors that will unfold. It’s why, when Lydia gets a call saying that her daughter has disappeared, she refuses to give up.

  * * *

  As she searches the mountains, her voice hoarse from calling Zoe’s name, she imagines finding her. She envisions being flooded with relief as she throws her arms around her child, saying, ‘you gave us such a scare’. She pictures her precious girl safely tucked in bed that evening.

  * * *

  It’s why, when they find Zoe’s body, Lydia can barely believe it. It is unthinkable. Her little girl has gone.

  * * *

  Something terrible happened, she is sure of it. Something made Zoe get out of her sleeping bag in the middle of the night, walk out of the warmth and safety of the cabin, into the darkness of the mountains. Driven by the memory of her youngest child, Lydia needs to find out the truth. What kind of mother would she be if she didn’t?

  * * *

  A total heartbreaker, bringing to life a mother’s worst nightmare. Fans of Jodi Picoult, Kerry Fisher and Liane Moriarty will be blown away by this gripping page-turner.

  The Life She Left Behind

  When I wake up in the middle of the night, it’s not a sound that disturbs me. It’s a feeling. Silently, I creep to my daughter’s room, breathing a sigh of relief when I see her sleeping, her night-light twirling, butterfly shapes moving their pink wings. Quickly, I lock the door. I won’t let anything happen to my little girl.

  * * *

  You tell him everything. The husband you adore, the father of your child, your best friend.

  * * *

  He knows, just by looking at your sage-green eyes, when something is wrong. The two of you can communicate with a glance, or a touch of the hand.

  * * *

  Except what if you can’t?

  * * *

  What if your happy marriage has plastered over one huge lie? A lie you have even started to believe yourself, in order to survive?

  * * *

  What if you have a secret, something you have hidden from your beloved husband and your strawberry-scented baby girl, to keep them safe? What if the guilt ha
s kept you up, night after night, for as long as you can remember?

  * * *

  Because, after twenty-eight years, that secret is refusing to stay buried. The past you have tried so desperately to outrun is catching up with you. A faded photograph, torn in half, threatens to expose the truth and everyone you love, everything you cherish, is in harm’s way…

  * * *

  An emotional, thought-provoking and beautifully written novel which examines the pieces of ourselves we are afraid of, and the impossible decisions we make when we are desperate. Fans of Jodi Picoult, Kerry Fisher and Liane Moriarty will be moved by this heartbreaking tale.