by Mark Edwards
The police had also interviewed Nina about what had happened the day Izzy died. DS Ward had called Jessica afterwards to explain that, without any evidence to contradict Nina’s account, they were not going to charge her. The CPS had looked at it and decided there wasn’t a realistic prospect of proving that Nina’s actions were unlawful, especially as she claimed she was trying to protect Izzy when she attempted to grab her phone. The coroner’s ruling of accidental death would stand.
‘I know,’ Jessica said to Darpak. ‘But . . . I can’t have her around. Maybe one day, but not yet.’
‘I understand. I feel the same. Except . . . well, we’re blood, aren’t we? And if she’d told me everything from the start, I would have forgiven her.’
‘Would you, though?’
He stared into his glass of Coke, as if the answer was among the bubbles. ‘Probably. Maybe. I miss having her around, though.’ Another pause. ‘But not as much as I miss Izzy.’
‘Me too.’
‘It’s like . . . I know you probably don’t want to hear this after everything that happened, but I can’t help but feel Izzy’s with us on days like this. Joining in with the fun. Secretly trying to persuade Olivia’s friends’ mums and dads to come along to her classes.’ Darpak laughed. ‘I keep expecting to turn a corner and see her.’
She reached across and squeezed his hand. ‘I feel the same.’
‘I miss her,’ he said after a beat.
‘We all do. But Darpak, listen. Next time you come, you can bring Sunita.’ That was his new girlfriend. Finally, after five long years, he was moving on. ‘She’d be very welcome.’
‘Thank you, Jess.’
He got up from the table and muttered something about needing to find the loo, leaving Jessica thinking about Nina. She was happy that Nina hadn’t been charged with manslaughter, not least because it meant she’d been able to help with what happened next.
Jessica pulled the copy of The Herald towards her and opened it to pages four and five, drinking in the headline again.
GAVIN LAWSON: MORE WOMEN COME FORWARD.
Nina had been the first to accuse Gavin of sexual assault, back in the spring. Amber was her witness. They went to one of the more liberal newspapers, one where Gavin didn’t have any friends. Amber had already called a number of other women who she had seen suffer at Gavin’s hands, and several of them were willing to back up Nina’s story. A few years earlier they might have been reluctant, but now, after a series of high-profile revelations against numerous movie producers, actors and other public figures, they were emboldened.
The story was huge. Over the following week, every magazine publisher and brand Gavin worked with broke ties with him, each of them expressing great disappointment and disgust. The company that was meant to be publishing his next book cancelled his contract. Suddenly everyone was scrambling to disassociate themselves from him. Of course, they had all known what he was like. A lot of people had turned a blind eye over the years. But now his name was toxic.
And then a nineteen-year-old model had come forward, given courage by Gavin’s new pariah status, and reported that he had raped her a year earlier, on a photo shoot at his studio. And then more women came forward. Six in all. Two of them accused him of rape.
Yesterday, the day before Olivia’s birthday, Gavin had been arrested.
It didn’t make Jessica happy knowing how many women he had assaulted. Nor was she shocked to learn he had gone further, committing rape. He would deny it, of course. It would be his word against the women’s. Maybe he wouldn’t be found guilty of that crime, because rape was so sickeningly hard to prove. But his career was ruined, along with his reputation and his legacy.
It wouldn’t bring Izzy back, nor undo the damage he had done to all those women, and to Jessica and her family. But it was a form of justice. It was the best she could hope for.
Jessica got up from the table just as Olivia came running over. Mum and Pete came out of the goat pen behind her.
‘Mummy, can we get a goat?’
‘I don’t think so, sweetheart. You know goats eat everything?’
‘They’ll eat all the washing off the line,’ Mum said as she arrived.
She seemed faintly troubled, and Jessica asked her what was wrong.
‘I’ll tell you in a minute. Olivia, why don’t you go and play with your friends? Look, isn’t that Grace?’ Olivia whirled round, spotted her friend over by the fence, and skipped away to join her.
‘What is it?’ Jessica asked.
‘Just . . . something weird happened.’
Jessica rolled her eyes. ‘Don’t tell me. Izzy appeared in the goat shed. Or was it Larry?’
‘Don’t make fun of me, Jess.’
Pete had sat down at the trestle table and was mopping his head with a handkerchief. ‘Yes, listen to what your mother has to say.’
‘All right, now you’re scaring me. What is it?’
Mum sat down too. ‘Well, we were feeding the goats and Pete was talking to Livvy all about man’s relationship with them, and the long history of domestic animals . . .’
‘I don’t think she was really listening,’ Pete interjected.
Jessica smiled. Who could blame her?
Mum went on. ‘And Livvy was stroking this white nanny goat, feeding it out of her palm, really enjoying it. One of the attendants was in there, keeping an eye on things. A young woman. Anyway, Olivia put her hand on the goat’s head and said, “Poor thing.” Then she turned to me and said, “Do goats go to heaven?” And then she got tears in her eyes and started trying to hug this animal and she kept saying, “Poor old goat.”’
Pete spoke up. ‘Tell her what the attendant said, Mo.’
‘I’m coming to that.’ She tutted. ‘Olivia went off to the corner and the attendant came up to me and said, “Your granddaughter must be psychic.” Because guess what? That goat looked absolutely fine, the picture of health, but apparently it’s really sick. It’s got something wrong with its heart and they’re expecting it to die any day.’
‘Weird, isn’t it?’ said Pete.
Jessica stared at him, then at Mum. ‘Are you sure it didn’t look sick?’
‘Yes. Like I said, it looked completely healthy.’
A silence fell between them for a minute. In the distance, Jessica could hear Olivia shrieking with laughter. Over by the fence, Will was chatting with one of the other dads. The sky was just as blue and cloud-free as it had been ten minutes earlier. But now Jessica was cold.
‘You never got to the bottom of it, did you?’ Mum said, dropping her voice to a stage whisper.
She meant the predictions Olivia had made. Pete getting sick. The school catching fire. And the dinner lady, Pat Shelton, falling and dying at home.
‘No. Ryan still denies it. But he would, wouldn’t he? He’d be charged with murder and arson otherwise.’
‘It had to be him,’ Pete said. He was certain Ryan had slipped something into the food at the RAFA Club, making him ill. And Ryan didn’t have an alibi for when Pat had died, or when the school had caught fire. He said he’d been at home on his own.
Olivia refused to talk about it. Whenever anyone asked her if Mr Cameron had told her about Pat Shelton dying, along with the other things she had ‘predicted’, Olivia said she couldn’t remember. It was frustrating because Jessica knew the answer was in her daughter’s head somewhere. She had demonstrated almost total recall of her conversations with Ryan, after all. But Olivia had clearly decided she didn’t want to talk about it any more. She was done. And, really, Jessica couldn’t blame her.
Right now, Ryan was in prison for abducting and attacking Will, because the CPS had decided they were the only charges that would stick. He had pleaded guilty to them, in fact, and the police had told Jessica, and Pat’s family, that this was the best they could hope for. Plus, of course, he would never work with children again.
Jessica was sure Ryan was guilty of everything, even if they couldn’t prove it. Mum, on the other
hand, wasn’t so sure. Because even though she now knew Izzy had hoaxed them when she was a child, Mum still couldn’t let go of her long-held beliefs.
‘So how did Olivia know about the goat?’ she asked.
‘She couldn’t really know,’ Jessica replied. ‘It doesn’t mean anything.’
‘But what if Ryan unleashed something with all his antics? What if Izzy did actually come back and tell Olivia things that were going to happen? Or maybe it’s nothing to do with Izzy. Olivia could have a gift. Simon said—’
‘Mum. Stop it!’ Jessica couldn’t help but snap. ‘I don’t want to hear any more about it. It’s time we put all that nonsense behind us forever. Olivia’s moved on. We should too. Okay?’
‘But what—?’
‘Okay?’
Mum pressed her lips together. ‘Fine.’
Jessica nodded. ‘Good. Now I’m going to spend some time with my daughter on her birthday.’
But as she walked over to Olivia, shielding her eyes from the sun, she couldn’t shake it. The fear. No matter how much she told herself that Ryan was guilty of everything, and that it didn’t matter what Olivia had said about some silly goat, a niggling doubt remained. Because she had felt something up on that rooftop, when that chill, that unforgettable chill, had passed through her body. Sometimes she would wake up in the small hours, convinced it had been Isabel, stopping her from doing something she would regret forever.
It was only on days like this, when the sun was high in the sky, and ghosts and spirits and the idea of an afterlife seemed like nothing more than make-believe, that she was able to persuade herself otherwise.
It had been the wind, that was all. Just the wind.
Acknowledgments
First and foremost, thank you to my editors, Laura Deacon and Ian Pindar, for asking all those difficult questions and forcing me to raise my game. Where would we writers be without good editors?
Thanks too to my agent, Sam Copeland, and to everyone at Thomas & Mercer, including Hatty, Eoin, Nicole, Gracie and Sana.
For answering my questions and helping with research, thank you to Neil White, Nick Thompson and Elliott Finch.
Several readers volunteered their names for characters in this book: Suzanna Salter, Michelle Ward and Nichola Rose. I hope you like meeting your namesakes!
A couple of books were helpful when researching this novel: Paranormal Intruder by Caroline Mitchell (an account of a poltergeist visitation which I highly recommend); and This House is Haunted by Guy Lyon Playfair.
Thank you as always to my family, especially my wife, Sara, who helped me brainstorm ideas and who was, as always, my first reader. Thanks too to Ellie and Poppy, and my sons, Archie and Harry, who helped inspire this book in multiple ways!
I want to thank some members of the crime-writing community who do great things to bring writers and readers together: Tracy Mearns of Tequila Mockingbird; Tracy Fenton of THE Book Club; Wendy Clarke of The Fiction Café; Shell Baker of the Crime Book Club; and Anne Cater of Book Connectors.
Finally, a huge thank you to all my loyal readers, including the members of my Facebook page and all the readers on Twitter and Instagram. You make being an author a far from lonely occupation, and I love hearing from you. And if this is your first Mark Edwards book, thanks for giving it a go!
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About the Author
Photo © 2016 Tim Sturgess
Mark Edwards writes psychological thrillers in which scary things happen to ordinary people.
He has sold over 2 million books since his first novel, The Magpies, was published in 2013, and has topped the bestseller lists seven times. His other novels include Follow You Home, The Retreat, Because She Loves Me, The Devil’s Work and The Lucky Ones. He has also co-authored six books with Louise Voss.
Originally from Hastings in East Sussex, Mark now lives in Wolverhampton with his wife, their three children, two cats and a golden retriever.
Mark loves hearing from readers and can be contacted through his website, www.markedwardsauthor.com, or you can find him on Facebook (@markedwardsbooks), Twitter (@mredwards) and Instagram (@markedwardsauthor).
