Copyright © 2017 Jenny Blackhurst
The right of Jenny Blackhurst to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
First published as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2017
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library
eISBN: 978 1 4722 3528 2
Cover photograph © Deborah Pendell/Arcangel Images
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
About Jenny Blackhurst
Praise for Jenny Blackhurst
Also by Jenny Blackhurst
About the Book
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1: Ellie
Chapter 2: Imogen
Chapter 3: Ellie
Chapter 4: Imogen
Chapter 5: Imogen
Chapter 6
Chapter 7: Imogen
Chapter 8
Chapter 9: Imogen
Chapter 10
Chapter 11: Imogen
Chapter 12
Chapter 13: Imogen
Chapter 14: Ellie
Chapter 15: Imogen
Chapter 16: Imogen
Chapter 17: Ellie
Chapter 18: Imogen
Chapter 19: Ellie
Chapter 20: Imogen
Chapter 21: Ellie
Chapter 22: Imogen
Chapter 23: Imogen
Chapter 24: Ellie
Chapter 25: Imogen
Chapter 26: Imogen
Chapter 27: Ellie
Chapter 28: Imogen
Chapter 29: Ellie
Chapter 30: Imogen
Chapter 31: Imogen
Chapter 32: Imogen
Chapter 33: Ellie
Chapter 34: Imogen
Chapter 35: Imogen
Chapter 36: Ellie
Chapter 37
Chapter 38: Imogen
Chapter 39: Ellie
Chapter 40: Imogen
Chapter 41: Imogen
Chapter 42: Imogen
Chapter 43: Imogen
Chapter 44: Ellie
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47: Imogen
Chapter 48
Chapter 49: Imogen
Chapter 50: Ellie
Chapter 51: Imogen
Chapter 52: Ellie
Chapter 53: Imogen
Chapter 54: Imogen
Chapter 55: Ellie
Chapter 56: Imogen
Chapter 57: Imogen
Chapter 58: Imogen
Chapter 59: Ellie
Chapter 60: Imogen
Chapter 61: Ellie
Chapter 62: Ellie
Chapter 63: Ellie
Chapter 64: Ellie
Chapter 65: Imogen
Chapter 66: Ellie
Chapter 67: Imogen
Chapter 68: Ellie
Chapter 69: Imogen
Chapter 70: Imogen
Chapter 71: Imogen
Chapter 72: Ellie
Chapter 73: Ellie
Chapter 74: Imogen
Chapter 75: Imogen
Chapter 76: Imogen
Chapter 77
Chapter 78: Imogen
Chapter 79: Ellie
Chapter 80: Imogen
Chapter 81: Imogen
Chapter 82: Imogen
Chapter 83: Ellie
Chapter 84: Imogen
Chapter 85: Imogen
Chapter 86: Ellie
Chapter 87: Imogen
Chapter 88
Chapter 89: Imogen
Chapter 90: Imogen
Chapter 91: Imogen
Chapter 92: Ellie
Chapter 93: Imogen
Chapter 94: Imogen
Chapter 95: Ellie
Chapter 96: Imogen
Chapter 97: Imogen
Chapter 98: Imogen
Chapter 99: Imogen
Chapter 100
Epilogue: Six months later
Acknowledgements
Keep Reading . . .
About Jenny Blackhurst
Jenny Blackhurst was born in Shropshire where she still lives with her husband and children. Growing up she spent hours reading and talking about crime novels – writing her own seemed like natural progression. The Foster Child is her third novel. Follow her on Twitter @JennyBlackhurst.
Praise for Before I Let You In:
‘An unnerving psychological thriller with a stonking final twist’ Sunday Mirror
‘Compelling, disturbing and thoroughly enjoyable’ Sharon Bolton, author of Little Black Lies
‘I loved it. Jenny is an evil genius’ Lisa Hall, author of Between You and Me
‘An outstanding and original thriller with . . . an explosive conclusion’ B A Paris, author of Behind Closed Doors
‘[A] captivating, twisty and satisfying tale . . . I can’t wait to see what Blackhurst comes up with next’ S.J.I. Holliday, author of The Damsel Fly
‘Gripping and relatable. I loved it’ Helen Fitzgerald, author of The Cry
‘A gripping clever book. I loved it and didn’t want it to end’ Claire Douglas, author of Local Girl Missing
‘Such a clever twist, I really enjoyed it’ Claire McGowan, author of Blood Tide
‘A superb thriller. Compelling and thoroughly gripping. Highly recommended’ Luca Veste, author of Dead Gone
‘Brilliant. A dark psychological thriller that will have you looking suspiciously at your own friends’ Mason Cross, author of The Killing Season
‘A fantastic, twisted story’ Adam Hamdy, author of Pendulum
Praise for How I Lost You:
‘Utterly gripping – brilliant debut!’ Clare Mackintosh, author of I Let You Go
‘As twisted as a mountain road, Blackhurst’s fast-moving and unputdownable debut will keep you glued to your seat’ Alex Marwood
‘Amazing read that I couldn’t put down, gripping storyline, brilliant debut’ Helen M Jones, Amazon, 5*
‘Loved this book! Once I got started I couldn’t put it down desperate to know the next twist or turn’ E Webster, Amazon, 5*
‘This is the best book that I’ve read in a long time . . . I was completely hooked’ Tried and Tested, Amazon, 5*
‘Haunting, moving and wonderful! A gripping interpretation of post-natal emotions and the roller coaster that follows’ Sarah Morris, Amazon, 5*
Also by Jenny Blackhurst and available from Headline:
How I Lost You
Before I Let You In
About the Book
The brilliant new novel from Jenny Blackhurst, the #1 eBook bestselling author of How I Lost You, which Clare Mackintosh called ‘utterly gripping’, and Before I Let You In. If you love Louise Jensen’s The Gift or SK Tremayne’s The Ice Twins, you will love this.
When child psychologist Imogen Reid takes on the case of 11-year-old Ellie Atkinson, she refuses to listen to warnings that the girl is dangerous.
Ellie was the only survivor of a fire t
hat killed her family. Imogen is convinced she’s just a sad and angry child struggling to cope with her loss.
But Ellie’s foster parents and teachers are starting to fear her. When she gets upset, bad things seem to happen. And as Imogen gets closer to Ellie, she may be putting herself in danger . . .
To Mum and Dad. I couldn’t ask for more.
Prologue
‘Imogen? Is that you?’ The voice on the other end of the phone is breathless, frantic and instantly recognisable.
‘Sarah, calm down,’ I instruct. ‘What is it?’
‘It’s Ellie.’ I hear Sarah Jefferson’s voice tremble. ‘She left school at lunchtime. I don’t know where she is.’
I sigh. Repeat after me, I tell myself. Not your circus, not your monkeys.
‘I’m not Ellie’s case worker any more, Sarah. I was removed. Her truancy isn’t really my remit any longer.’
‘You don’t understand.’ Sarah’s voice is urgent now. ‘It’s not Ellie I’m worried about. It’s Lily.’
My hand automatically flies to my stomach before I remember that the baby is no longer there.
‘What about Lily, Sarah?’
Sarah lets out a noise somewhere between a sob and a wail. ‘She’s missing. Ellie has taken the baby.’
1
Ellie
Ellie lies on the bed that isn’t hers, in the room that belongs to no one, listening to someone else’s family watching TV downstairs. Her thumb grinds against the sharp flint of the cigarette lighter in her hand. Orange flames spring up, then disappear as she lets go.
Flick, flame.
Flick, flame.
Flick, flame.
She runs her fingertips through the top of the flame, surprised to find that it doesn’t hurt. She tries again, letting her fingers linger a little longer. It feels hot this time, but it still doesn’t hurt. She pushes her finger into the blue of the flame and holds it there until pain sears through it, but it doesn’t feel bad. It feels glorious. Is this how her family felt? This pain, this release? She does it again, this time holding the flame under the heel of her hand, keeping it steady, waiting for the pain. When it comes, it’s more intense, and she lets go of the flint in shock. Her heart races, but she does it again . . . flick, flame.
Just as the smell of burning flesh licks at her nostrils, the bedroom door opens. Her foster sister, Mary, stands in the doorway. Her eyes widen and her mouth drops open like a cartoon cat when she sees what Ellie is doing.
‘Ellie! What the hell are you playing at?’ Mary grabs her hand roughly and pulls it away from the flame. ‘Are you crazy? You’ll hurt yourself.’
All of a sudden her hand burns white-hot with pain and she looks down to see pus-filled blisters forming on her skin.
‘I . . . I don’t know what I was doing. I was just playing. It didn’t even hurt.’ She looks down at her palm with mild interest. ‘It does now.’
Mary places her own hand gently on Ellie’s arm.
‘Come on, I’ll get you sorted out. Put some cream on it, wrap it in a bandage, and we’ll tell Mum you cut yourself helping me with lunch.’
Ellie stares at the blistered flesh, pictures it spreading up her arm, covering her shoulders and neck.
Mary shakes her head as though she can’t believe what she’s seeing. ‘I’ll keep an eye on it for you and change your bandages every day, and if it looks like it’s getting worse, we might have to make up a new story.’ She looks at Ellie kindly. ‘Why would you want to do this to yourself, Ellie? Do you think your mum would be happy if she saw you hurting yourself?’
‘But my mum can’t see anything, can she? My mum is dead.’
Ellie’s insides feel as though they’re full of pulsating green slime, like when an orange rots from the inside out, the peel still intact and the flesh toxic. She isn’t like Mary, she isn’t like anyone here. Some of them can tell – she sees it in people’s eyes when they spot her out in the street; they cross the road, hold their children’s hands a bit tighter without really knowing why. Ellie knows why, though. She knows what they can see inside her.
‘But she’s watching you, you know that, don’t you?’ Mary pushes. ‘In heaven your mum is watching everything you do. And she wants you to be happy, and she wants you to look after yourself, and she wants you to grow old and have a family of your own. That’s what she’d have wanted if she was here, and that’s what she would still want now. You have to try and fit in, Ellie. I know it’s difficult, I know we’re not your family, but you really need to try.’
‘And what if I don’t want to try? What if I don’t care about being part of your family?’
‘I know how hard this must be for you. I’ve seen a lot of children come and go in this house, a lot of angry children who have never known love. But you’re different. You know what it’s like to be loved and you know what it’s like to live in a home full of compassion and warmth. It might not feel like it now, but one day you will have that again. What you have to remember is that none of this is your fault. You mustn’t blame yourself, Ellie, whatever anyone else tells you.’
Ellie nods, but she knows inside that Mary is wrong. She may be older, and she may think she knows everything, but she doesn’t – she doesn’t know Ellie at all. No one does.
2
Imogen
A canopy of trees lines the road into the town of Gaunt, dappling the tarmac with sunlight where it breaks through the leaves, making me squint. It feels as though we’re driving through a tunnel of beauty to the last destination we will ever reach. The end of the road.
Thomas Wolfe said you can’t go home again, and maybe I should have remembered that before pressing send on my CV and setting in motion the chain of events that is leading me back to my home town after fifteen years. Maybe I should have known better.
Gaunt stretches out ahead of us as bleak and uninviting as its name suggests, hollowed out and emaciated. The place brings to mind a hall of mirrors, every angle skewed and off centre so that it doesn’t matter which perspective you look at it from, something always feels wrong. Grey-fronted houses sit abandoned and desolate. Population: dwindling.
To outsiders, Gaunt could have been great once upon a time; the odd glimpse of a stately home or a striking sculpture hints that someone at some time had plans for this strange place – plans that were abandoned a long time ago. Even as a child I felt fascination and revulsion for my town in equal measure. The same magnetic pull that lured the builders and property developers and the same uneasy, inexplicable air of dread and foreboding that drove them away telling tales of unusable land and untenable planning rules . . . because who wants to admit that they abandoned a development opportunity because of a feeling, sometimes losing tens of thousands in the process?
It’s a feeling I’ve almost forgotten. I’ve spent so long wrapped safely in the mundane haze of the city, actively forgetting my life here, that I can hardly bring to mind any parts of my former existence, even when I screw my eyes shut and the effort of remembering gives me a headache.
Despite the dazzling sunlight, a bitter chill hangs in the air. A fresh day for a fresh start, Dan said this morning. A good omen, a sign we were doing the right thing.
‘I don’t believe in signs and omens.’ I smiled. My face must have betrayed me though, because my husband put a hand gently on my elbow and said, ‘It’s going to be great. Like a holiday in the country. We’ll both have time and space to breathe.’ He didn’t mention what he was really thinking about – a family – and for that I was grateful.
‘Holiday? I didn’t think writers got a holiday. And I certainly don’t. I start a new job in four days.’
‘You know what I mean. A holiday from all of this.’ He gestured to the window, at the street heaving with people moving smartly past one another without looking up from their smartphones, a man in a multi-coloured patchwork cape handing out empty envelopes that I knew from experience contained ‘good vibes’, and drivers slamming the heels of their hands onto their ho
rns if the speed of the car in front dropped below thirty-five miles an hour. ‘From people. And pressure. The daily grind. Just what we need after the crap you’ve been through.’ The crap I’ve been through. Like what happened in London can just be dismissed as bad luck.
The first houses come into view, the barn conversions and new-builds that sprung up when the building trade found its feet again and were nothing more than fields when I last saw this part of the country. It looks like someone wanted to give Gaunt a second chance. Dan nudges me and points.
‘See those? When we sell your mum’s house, we could buy something like that. Or build one.’
I grin. ‘What do you know about building houses? Apart from in your imaginary worlds. It’s not quite as easy as just writing them into existence.’
‘Spoken like someone who has never tried to describe a castle in the desert from the point of view of an Orc.’ Dan pretends to look stung, then grins back at me. ‘Okay, maybe we stick to buying for now. Something open-plan. And big.’
‘With a swimming pool and our initials embedded in a marble floor in the entrance hall,’ I laugh. ‘I’m not sure how much you think old Nanny Tandy’s house is worth. Not enough for my mother to ever bother selling it, anyway.’ The word ‘mother’ pulls at my insides. She’s gone, Imogen.
There is no swirling grey mist enveloping the approach to the town, no wizened old woman holding out a gnarled arthritic finger and warning us to go no further, no jet-black raven perched on the sign that pronounces Welcome to Gaunt muttering, ‘Nevermore,’ and yet I feel icy fingers of dread grasp my lungs, leaving me momentarily struggling for breath. The sign, weathered and rotting – letters so faded that welcome is the furthest feeling from your mind – seems to blacken in front of my eyes, like a spawn of mould is spreading over it as I watch. The turning to my mother’s house is just metres to the left. My chest tightens and the road ahead swims in and out of focus. I reach out a hand and grasp at Dan’s arm.
‘Don’t go down there.’
My voice comes out in a barely recognisable rasp. Dan glances sideways at me, concern shadowing his face, and he slows the car to a crawl.
The Foster Child Page 1
