Poison Orchids: A darkly compelling psychological thriller

by Sarah A. Denzil

  She flexed her fingers then pulled a blanket tightly around herself, staring out at the yellow roselike flowers in the trees outside. This hospital is obsessed with yellow flowers. They grow them everywhere. I bet they think the colour yellow helps tame disordered minds.

  The ward held a grab bag of psychoses, schizophrenia, delusions, and depression. And it held her—everything that was Gemma.

  But who am I? I don’t know. I just don’t know.

  It wasn’t the first time she’d been in a psych ward. But this time was different. This time the staff feared her. Some of them treated her as if she were a devotee of a deadly cult, with horror in their eyes. Maybe she deserved that. She’d allowed herself to get swept up by Tate. He’d been so smooth, so assured, and at the same time making her feel like it was the farm against the world. He made her believe that sometimes people have to die in order to make a safe space.

  She knew what the hospital staff were thinking: What did she do? How many people did she recruit to that death cult? Did she kill people? Does she know how to hypnotise people and steal their memories away?

  The staff avoided her, mostly. They gave her pills and meals and slipped away.

  It wasn’t true that she didn’t know who she was. She did.

  She was a poison orchid. She was one of Tate’s many poison orchids—deadly little flowers who he’d grown in his garden and cultivated to do his bidding.

  She stepped across to the window, dragging the blanket with her.

  The one bright thing from the day of the poisonings was that all the farm workers had survived. And Eoin survived his gunshot wound. He was still recovering in a hospital—she didn’t know which one. They wouldn’t tell her, nor was she allowed to talk to him on the phone. They were both seen as possible criminals, and criminals weren’t allowed to chat.

  Dharma had gone into hiding somewhere and was refusing to talk to the media. The last Gemma had heard, she was on suicide watch, unable to accept that the farm she’d known had been a lie. She’d been one of Tate’s most prized poison orchids, only she hadn’t known it.

  Gemma had only been out of the psych ward twice since she’d arrived. Once to attend Megan’s funeral, at which she'd witnessed the raw outpouring of grief from Megan's parents and her boyfriend, Jacob. And she'd been out once for a police interview. Those police hadn’t been kind, unlike Detectives McKay and Kouros. They’d been trying to get her to admit to a love affair with Tate and involvement in the murders.

  It was true she’d loved Tate. She’d loved him with a burning passion. And she’d known about the murders. That was as good as being involved. She was bad. She should be convicted of everything the police wanted to throw at her.

  She felt cold, cold, cold. Dead cold. Frozen like the victims in the freezer room.

  A sheen of moisture covered her eyes. The yellow flowers in the trees outside seemed to turn into mangoes and the garden into an orchard. She could see Hayley and Ellie out there picking fruit, laughing together. But she couldn’t quite hear the music. And the farm wasn’t the farm without the music. Then Ellie vanished, and it was just Hayley. Gemma recoiled as Hayley turned to stare at her. Then Hayley, too, vanished.

  Hayley. Together, they’d been through nightmarish horrors. Worse, Gemma had lured Hayley into that world.

  It had been Gemma who’d had planted the fruit-picking leaflets in the Sydney bar where she and Hayley worked. Then she’d given just enough signals for sleazy Sam to take the bait and make a pass at her just before she knew Hayley would be entering his office. She’d known exactly how Hayley would react. She’d set everything up perfectly.

  Gemma had been good at what she did. Tate’s best recruiter.

  Tate’s favourite. For a time.

  But everything fell apart when she brought Hayley to the farm. In every possible way.

  In Gemma’s mind, she’d become Hayley, and Hayley had become herself. Hayley had been the bad one, the crazy one. Even before that first day Tate had sent them to the freezer room, her view of Hayley had twisted day by day. Hayley had been a friend, a sister, an adversary, a competitor in the race for Tate’s affections. She’d wanted to be Hayley, to have her innocence, to have an intact, loving family surrounding her. And to have grown up in the beautiful house Hayley had described, not in the mouldy old dumps that Gemma had.

  She turned sharply as someone entered the room.

  It was that detective, Bronwen. Her shoulder in plaster and her arm in a sling. “How are you, Gemma?”

  “I’m fine,” she said reflexively. Moving from the window, she went to sit on her bed.

  “Sure? You’re not feeling sick? You’ve got a blanket on, but it’s a stinking hot day out there. Whew!” Bronwen scraped back damp strands of hair from her flushed face, exhaling noisily.

  “I’m fine, really. The aircon must be up too high.”

  Bronwen’s eyes softened. “When I get time, I’d like to come and sit down and chat with you. Not as a police officer. As a friend. Joe and I have been taken off the case. We’re seen as having too much involvement in that last day at the farm to be impartial. Would that be okay? A little chat? Maybe on Sunday?”

  Gemma nodded hesitantly. Was it a trick? Why would Bronwen want to bother with her?

  “Great.” Bronwen smiled widely, showing her evenly-spaced teeth. “But for now, I tracked someone down that I think you might want to meet up with again.”

  “I don’t want to see anyone,” Gemma was quick to say. She was certain Bronwen had brought Hayley here. Seeing Hayley would hurt too much.

  The person Bronwen had brought didn’t wait for Gemma’s answer. He stepped around Bronwen and into the room.

  Gemma swallowed the stone that had lodged hard in her throat. She hadn’t expected this. She hadn’t expected the one person it would hurt the most to see. This was more painful than seeing Hayley, more painful than anything.

  “Hello, Gemina.” Her brother Ryan walked across the floor.

  A sad grin flickered on his face. Scruffy, sun-streaked hair hung across his blue eyes. A three-day-growth stubbled his chin. He looked so much older than when she’d last seen him, maybe eighteen months ago. Even his voice was deeper.

  Giving a brief wave, Bronwen left the room.

  Ryan sat beside Gemma on the bed. “Hell. I just heard. Everything. That cop found me in Central America. She traced me from place to place until she pinpointed me—using other people’s travel blogs. I’ve been living without internet, in a small village in Guatemala.” He paused. “Sorry for leaving you on your own, Gem. I shouldn’t have done that.”

  “You didn’t leave me on my own. I ran away,” she replied stiffly. “I was seventeen. I didn’t need a guardian anymore.”

  He shook his head. “You were still a kid. I should have come looking for you. I gave up on you and went off and did my own thing.”

  “I wanted you to give up on me. I never needed anyone, Ryan.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. You needed so much more than what you got.”

  Her childhood came rushing back to her. Her real childhood. The truth was that she was poison long before she ever met Tate. He just cultivated what was already there.

  For the first time, she told herself her own story. She heard it inside her head, loud and clear, a wash of painful memories flooding through with it:

  Mum vanished when I was six. I made her unhappy, and I know that because she never came back. We found her years later, shacked up in a caravan with a delivery guy from our town. She still didn’t want anything to do with me.

  Dad was already ill when Mum left. Lung cancer. One morning, when Dad was coughing up blood outside on the patio, Mum raged at me for spilling lime cordial on the kitchen floor. Fluoro-green liquid running into the cracks and grout of the floor tiles. She said I made everything a hundred times worse than it already was. Ryan was eleven—almost twelve—then. She’d always liked him better. She said she never should have had me.

  It was when she
left us that I started lying. Making my life sound bigger and better than what it was.

  I changed my story often. Sometimes I’d say my mother was travelling overseas for work. Sometimes I’d say my father was rich and other times he was an abusive alcoholic.

  None of it was true. But I discovered that I could make myself believe anything. My lies weren’t lies, exactly—because I could make them true in my mind. It was a little trick, a wonderful talent—something I nursed all to myself.

  Dad died when I was twelve. Ryan, aged eighteen, was appointed my legal guardian. I made his life hell, always running away from home and telling people he was hurting me.

  Eventually, I ended up on Tate’s farm. At Tate’s urging, I sent Ryan a brief text message to say that I was happy and not to come looking for me. I’d found my new home.

  “Ah, sis’,” said Ryan, his voice hitching sadly. “I think you might have got yourself into too much trouble this time. I don’t know if anyone can get you out of it.”

  He hugged her, and he sobbed.

  For a moment, she thought she was crying too. But then she realised she was just humming.

  Finally, she could hear the farm.

  A snippet of a song played in her head. One of the songs she always heard blasting over the farm’s loudspeakers. A song about summer days under the sun. She could really hear it. She could feel the warm, sultry air on her skin, and she wasn’t cold anymore.

  The air was always yellow at the farm.

  Golden yellow.

  Epilogue

  HAYLEY

  So, there it is, the final part. One long year later, and there’s the last image to complete her scrap book: the cutout of Tate Llewellyn in handcuffs on his way to prison. It had been a long trial, one that she’d aided with her witness testimony, and finally he’d been convicted of murder. The murder of Ellie, of Clay, and all the other backpackers who went to him in the hope of finding a new life. Who wanted happiness and love but instead ended up in the cold room. Hayley had once thought she’d found all the happiness she needed at Llewellyn Farm, but it had been a lie, of course.

  She skips back several pages to look at photographs from a happier time that had been printed in the newspaper during the trial. One of the boys had taken them. Maybe Freddy. There was Ellie sitting with her arm draped over Hayley’s shoulders, mouth smiling, eyes not. It seems obvious now that Ellie was haunted, but at the time Hayley hadn’t noticed anything. She’d been too wrapped up in her own problems to see the pain in someone else’s life.

  In a photograph on the opposite page, Hayley sees herself sitting on the grassy ground next to Eoin, the light of a campfire giving their faces an orange glow. She hadn’t seen him since that terrible day. Eoin had been so arrogant and cocky. He’d thought he was using the farm to his own advantage, but really, he’d been the used one. Chewed up. Spat out. Never the same again. She didn’t know where he was now. She liked to think he’d gone back to Ireland.

  And there was Gemma, cuddling up next to Clay, a wide grin on her pretty face. She remembered the day they’d flown to Katherine in the air ambulance. The helicopter had already made several trips with the injured backpackers after Sophie and Freddy forced them to eat the poisoned soup. Not enough of it, though, because they all survived. Sophie survived the soup, too, but inhaling it as she did caused her ongoing health problems. She went to jail alongside Tate, convicted of lesser charges.

  Hayley had held Gemma’s hand the entire journey in the helicopter. Their relationship had certainly been rocky, and even now she couldn’t help feeling a little betrayed by all the lies Gemma had told. But that seemed like a million years ago now.

  Forgiveness isn’t coming easily. Life is too short to hold onto negative feelings, but at the same time, forgiveness isn’t a quick fix. It's easier to forgive Gemma and Eoin, but when it comes to Tate, well… that's a lot harder. And then there's Rodney. Most nights she dreams about Rodney White's hands on her body. She hears the word orchids whispered to her like a caress.

  Since the mass-murder attempt at the farm, Hayley moved back to England, while Gemma was undergoing her criminal trials. The prosecutors tried to turn Gemma into more of a villain than she was. But nothing stuck. Gemma was young, vulnerable, and easily manipulated by Tate. After her time in the psychiatric hospital, Hayley found out from Detective McKay that Gemma was now studying to become a psychologist.

  In the media frenzy that followed, it emerged that Gemma’s father had died several years ago and that led to a downward spiral in her mental health. Perhaps that’s why she created so many different stories, to avoid the pain of that passing. While Hayley was rejecting her family, Gemma was trying to pretend she still had one. Hayley touches the photograph of Gemma and then closes the book.

  The detective still sends her emails every now and then, asking her if she’s doing okay. There are photographs of Bronwen in the scrapbook too. The woman who would not give up, who saved them in the end. And then Megan, of course, who made the ultimate sacrifice.

  Hayley gets up, stretches out her legs, moves over to the window and opens the curtains as wide as they’ll go. The sun hasn’t quite emerged from the horizon yet, but she can see the sky turning a pinkish blue. She raises her arms and stretches harder, releasing the tension in her arms and shoulders. Her skirt lifts from the cold wooden floor of the bedroom. Then she steps out into the hallway.

  They’ll be waiting for her, so she has to hurry. Her stomach rumbles with hunger, but she can’t eat yet. That’s for after.

  She loves this house. It creaks and complains with every step, but it’s theirs and theirs alone. They need to hire a roofer and replace the cracked toilet. There’s money to be spent, which she doesn’t have, but that doesn’t matter. What Hayley has instead is faith and hope. Her family is growing, and that means soon the work will be done.

  Her long skirt trails the floor as she hurries down the steps and out into the fresh air. Out here the stars are brighter because there are no street lamps. They abandon their mobile phones because there’s no signal. They plant seeds to grow food because the shops are so far away. The smells of nature are stronger. On a whim, she turns around to look at the old stone house from the little courtyard outside. One of the windows is cracked. The hinges on the front door are rusting. None of that matters. This old farm is where she’s supposed to be, and she’s happier now than she’s ever been before.

  But the sun is beginning to peek out from behind the distant hills which means she has to hurry. Now isn’t the time to bask in the natural beauty her home county of Yorkshire delivers on a daily basis; now is the time to skip up the tallest hill to a field that they acquired along with the farm. She’d bought it with savings and with help from her family. Her new family.

  “Good morning, Sister.”

  The chorus of voices greet her with joy and love. Despite a slight chill in the air, Hayley has never felt warmer. She smiles at the group of people before her, old and young, tall and short, racially diverse, and yet all her family. A small family for now, just fifteen of them, but all so loving and warm that she could smile with them all day.

  She takes her place within the circle, sits down and crosses her legs.

  “Another beautiful day on the farm.”

  They echo her.

  One day she’ll make sure that Gemma comes to join them. It’s only right; Gemma needs a family, she deserves one. Gemma would make this place whole.

  “We give blessings for our family.”

  As Hayley hears the words spoken back to her, she feels deeply loved.

  We hope you enjoyed our story,

  POISON ORCHIDS.

  The book was written over two years, in between our personal projects. It involved an enormous number of hours and plot wrangling.

  We loved the idea of the raw, wild beauty of Australia’s Northern Territory contrasted against the refined and ordered (but brutal) world of Tate Llewellyn and his hothouse orchid collection.

  It is
wonderful to finally share the story with our readers!

  We hope you’ll leave a review and share your thoughts with others.

  Sarah and Anni

  About Sarah A.Denzil

  Sarah A. Denzil is a Wall Street Journal bestselling suspense writer from Derbyshire. Her thrillers include the number one bestseller Silent Child. Sarah lives in Yorkshire with her husband, enjoying the scenic countryside and rather unpredictable weather.

  SAVING APRIL

  THE BROKEN ONES

  SILENT CHILD

  ONE FOR SORROW

  TWO FOR JOY

  ONLY DAUGHTER

  Find out more about my books here:

  sarahdenzil.com

  About Anni Taylor

  Anni Taylor lives on the Central Coast north of Sydney, Australia, with her wonderful partner, amazing sons and a little treats-wrangler named Wookie.

  Her first thriller, THE GAME YOU PLAYED, and her subsequent thrillers, have all been chart-toppers in their categories. Anni enjoys nothing more than diving into writing the next dark story!

  THE SIX

  THE GAME YOU PLAYED

  STRANGER IN THE WOODS

  Find out more about my books here:

  annitaylor.me

  Acknowledgements

  Huge thanks and appreciation to our first readers for your valued feedback:

  Linda Gonzales, Lena May, Jessica Printz and Declan from Writerful Books.

  Many thanks also to our ARC readers for reading our story before its release.