Exquisite
Page 25
By the time we left, snow was falling heavily, and the walk home was long and hard and cold. Winter had begun its slow descent down the mountains and I knew that, by January, everywhere would be bitter and dark.
I held each girl’s hand in mine as we trudged steadily on.
At home, I made vegetable soup, which we ate with crusty rolls I’d baked myself.
I bathed the girls and afterwards said, ‘Come and sleep in my bed tonight.’
So they did and we sat up late, the three of us, reading old storybooks and poems. And when the girls laid down to sleep, I kissed each one and looked at them for as long as I could, and thought that, if I gazed at them hard enough, then a picture of me would be painted on their memories. I smiled tenderly.
While they were sleeping, I went downstairs and started cooking. Mini baguettes, tomato soup, cheese scones, meringues. I filled the fridge and the cupboards with all the things they loved.
At midnight, I went to bed but I didn’t sleep. Before they woke, I got up and took myself for a walk round Grasmere’s mountain edges, where frost lit the morning and the lake lay hard as mirrors. I shivered. The sky sagged, burdened with snow and I knew I wouldn’t see it again for a long time.
They were still sleeping when I went home.
Dear Lola and Maggie,
1. Know that you are loved.
2. Make mistakes. It’s OK.
3. Eat well.
4. Be kind. Always
Mum xx
Part Six
RENEWAL
Exquisite
Alice
The judge sentenced her to eighteen months in prison. She put forwards her plea for mitigating circumstances. I sat and listened to her, and had no idea what to think.
Anna watched the trial from the public gallery. Afterwards, she said, ‘That woman is a manipulator.’
‘You’re probably right.’
‘Don’t believe a word of it, Alice. Not a word. She’s dangerous. Deeply, dangerously manipulative. I saw her working the judge there, trying to present herself as the victim in all this. It’s horseshit.’
But she was so convincing. I wondered if she believed it herself.
My book was published nine months after the trial. I had a launch party at a bookshop in Brighton. Friends, students and tutors from my MA all came, and the local press. For that night, I allowed myself to be proud. I’d made something good spring out of the awful, mind-wrecking experience of loving Bo Luxton.
I could only imagine, when I wrote her chapters, what had been going on in her head. I based her story on things she said at the trial and things she said to me; but really, there was no knowing whether anything I wrote was real. Bo Luxton was an enigma, impossible to grasp.
At the launch, we all drank champagne and ate book-shaped cakes. Afterwards, I stood and read the first chapter out loud, then everyone bought copies and I sat at a table and signed them.
I sat there for half an hour, scrawling my name in fifteen, twenty, thirty books. I took no notice of the door, where ordinary customers came and went. I didn’t watch who was going in and out. I didn’t notice anything at all, not until a familiar voice said sweetly, ‘Congratulations, darling. I can’t believe the lengths you have gone to, the lies you’ve told, just for a book deal.’
I looked up.
She was there, smiling at me, as if nothing bad had ever passed between us.
Acknowledgements
Thank you first of all to my nine brilliant beauties: Susannah Rickards, Essie Fox, Caroline Green, Geraldine Ryan, Emma Darwin, Julie-Anne Griffiths, Ruth Warburton, Rosy Thornton and Emma Haughton – for reading, feedback, advice and all the meaningful and frivolous chatter I couldn’t live without.
Thank you to my Hexham friends for reading drafts, having my children over for tea during the writing of crucial chapters and for making the school yard a uniquely cool place to hang out: Fi White, Hannah Reynolds, Emma Haynes, Genevieve Crosby, Jo Allan, Ruth Smith-Berry, Katherine Calder, Deb Copland and Nichola Palmer.
Thank you to Muzna Rahman for reading and encouraging from the start, and to Catherine Redpath for enthusiasm.
Thank you to Claudia Cruttwell, who read the Novel that Never Was with diligence and commitment, and didn’t tell me I was an idiot when I announced my new direction.
Thank you to my agent, Hattie Grunewald, and everyone at Blake Friedmann who has worked on this book with passion and excitement. And to my editor, the wonder that is Karen Sullivan.
Finally, thank you to Clay, Bonnie and Sam, who force the writing life into second place, where it belongs.
You are all forces for good in a wicked world.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sarah Stovell was born in 1977 and spent most of her life in the Home Counties before a season working in a remote North Yorkshire youth hostel made her realise she was a northerner at heart. She now lives in Northumberland with her partner and two children and is a lecturer in Creative Writing at Lincoln University. Her debut psychological thriller, Exquisite, is set in the Lake District.
Copyright
Orenda Books
16 Carson Road
West Dulwich
London SE21 8HU
www.orendabooks.co.uk
First published by Orenda Books 2017
Copyright © Sarah Stovell 2017
Sarah Stovell has asserted her moral right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publishers.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978–1–910633–74–8
eISBN 978–1–910633–75–5
Typeset in Garamond by MacGuru Ltd
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.