Perfect Strangers: an unputdownable read full of gripping secrets and twists

What a journey it has been for ERIN KNIGHT. In January 2013, she happened to see ITV’s Lorraine Kelly announce the search for the next big thing in contemporary women’s fiction. She sent in her 1,000 words and beat over 2,000 entries, winning the competition live on national TV on Valentine’s Day. Her books have since gone on to be published in fifteen countries worldwide.

Away from the ITV sofa, she is currently surviving a hefty Victorian renovation in Staffordshire with husband Jim, their three boys and badly-behaved Hungarian Vizsla.

Copyright

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018

Copyright © Anouska Knight 2018

Anouska Knight asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © March 2018 ISBN: 9780008180249

Version: 2018-02-26

For Sarah, Emma, Kirsty and Steph, who loved our girl too.

Contents

Cover

About the Author

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 30

CHAPTER 31

CHAPTER 32

CHAPTER 33

CHAPTER 34

CHAPTER 35

CHAPTER 36

CHAPTER 37

CHAPTER 38

CHAPTER 39

CHAPTER 40

CHAPTER 41

CHAPTER 42

CHAPTER 43

CHAPTER 44

CHAPTER 45

CHAPTER 46

CHAPTER 47

CHAPTER 48

CHAPTER 49

CHAPTER 50

CHAPTER 51

CHAPTER 52

CHAPTER 53

CHAPTER 54

CHAPTER 55

CHAPTER 56

CHAPTER 57

CHAPTER 58

CHAPTER 59

CHAPTER 60

CHAPTER 61

CHAPTER 62

CHAPTER 63

CHAPTER 64

CHAPTER 65

CHAPTER 66

CHAPTER 67

CHAPTER 68

CHAPTER 69

CHAPTER 70

CHAPTER 71

CHAPTER 72

CHAPTER 73

CHAPTER 74

CHAPTER 75

CHAPTER 76

CHAPTER 77

CHAPTER 78

CHAPTER 79

CHAPTER 80

CHAPTER 81

CHAPTER 82

CHAPTER 83

CHAPTER 84

CHAPTER 85

CHAPTER 86

CHAPTER 87

CHAPTER 88

CHAPTER 89

CHAPTER 90

CHAPTER 91

CHAPTER 92

CHAPTER 93

CHAPTER 94

CHAPTER 95

CHAPTER 96

CHAPTER 97

CHAPTER 98

CHAPTER 99

CHAPTER 100

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

About the Publisher

1

The first lie Isobel told her parents was that she was going away to forget it all.

She lifted her face to the sun beating down on the armchair in which she’d stationed herself in the corner of the café window, the worn leather warm and hospitable beneath her forearms. The tourist board’s website had promised hospitality. Other promises included a flourishing cosmopolitan atmosphere and some of the best surf and lobster in the British Isles! Fallenbay looked good in writing, but then Isobel knew better than to be suckered in by anything she read online. If she’d learnt nothing else, she’d learnt that much.

Fallenbay . . . Bay of the Fallen. Aptly named by the pirates who’d once besieged it. Now Isobel’s holiday destination. Her time out. A pretty distraction. She’d pitched it to her parents with those very words. They’d tripped right off her tongue and into her mother’s hopeful ears, easily as a damning rumour. Fallenbay was a just lucky hit. A random spot on the map Isobel had stuck her pin into. That was the second lie she told.

Isobel straightened her back and drained the last of the tea gone undrinkably cold while she’d been carefully observing the world passing by the windows of Coast, one of the harbour’s many eateries jostling for position beneath an intense blue sky. It was almost too bright to look outside, but still she watched.

Come back refreshed, Isobel. Renewed! Uncle Keith’s job offer will still be here waiting for you. You were wasted in teaching anyway, love. Her mum had jollied this encouraging prospect around a chewed lip while they’d all pretended that proofreading orders of services at Uncle Keith’s printers wasn’t a cataclysmic sidestep from Head of English at St Jude’s secondary. The bottom line was, Uncle Keith wouldn’t ask for references.

She took a breath and cleared her thoughts. A young mottled seagull bobbed along the pavement outside the café, eyes beady and accusatory. Isobel looked out over the ocean instead.

The aroma of newly warming pastries reached through Coast. Metal kitchen equipment clanked and rattled in the background. The coming summer would be glorious here, and Isobel could stay that long if she wanted to; she had time and money to burn now. The universe’s idea of a laugh. All that effort and hard work to save for their mortgage deposit. Months of overtime and cheap food. Nathan’s motivational speeches when all Isobel wanted was a half-term in Mexico. Renting is so temporary! Turned out, so were they. Isobel scratched Nathan’s name from her head and let her lungs fill and release. Okey-doke, Isobel . . . you’re here. Now what?

She didn’t have to go through with it. Home was only two hours away. Two hours and she could be back in her parents’ semi, penning hopeless red circles around job adverts, or filling the spot left by Uncle Keith’s last tea girl.

The growl of a flashy little coupé across the promenade knocked her thoughts nicely off course. The driver confidently nipped into the last parking space beside the ocean lookouts, interrupting the view she’d been sporadically enjoying of a lonely sailboat marooned from the world. The driver hopped out, rounding the meaty nose of his sports car, and Isobel watched the thirty-something casually stride towards the sandy, bleached decking running up to the café doors. Perhaps he was older. A youthful forty-something with a nice, stress-free existence and resulting unhaggard complexion. He might’ve held her attention in her former life – Nathan shared a similar blend of chiselled features and casual corporate composure – but she’d already lost interest, her pen retracing the same letters over the notepad lying expectantly on the table in front of her.

BASE CAMP 1

Her hands felt clammy. She could do this. She would do it. She just had to take her time, decide on her next step. Just like Jenny said.

Baby steps, Isobel. One at a time. You feel you’ve a mountain to climb, let’s break that big, horrible bugger down into base camps, shall we? Now, Isobel . . . what are your goals? What’s waiting for you at Base Camp 1?

Therapists loved analogies. Isobel could’ve pulled a great lesson plan together for her Year 7s just borrowing from Jenny’s endless repertoire of similes and metaphors, only she didn’t have any Year 7s now. Baby steps. Anything was possible long term – getting back to work was absolutely realistic. Isobel hadn’t believed that any more than Jenny had.

A sharp voice shattered her thoughts. ‘Evie! Put down that mobile phone and tell me what I’ve done to this nightmarish till again, it’s spitting receipts!’

The pretty teenager hovering behind the counter had the same sunkissed curls as her mother. They both smiled a greeting as the man with the coupé made it to the welcoming display of pastries and vintage-style coffee-grinding equipment at the counter. The woman who’d served Isobel, with the wide smile and violently swinging earrings, pulled a pencil from her own piled up curls. She jabbed at the till with it as if poking a dead animal for signs of life. ‘Morning, Jon! Give us a sec, I’ve flummoxed the only thing back here I absolutely cannot manage without.’

‘Thanks a lot, Mum.’

‘Sorry, Evie, but my mental arithmetic really is hideous. This flipping till!’

Isobel tuned out their conversation. She rubbed clammy hands over her jeans and tried blowing the tension away, the way Sophie had shown her two nights ago while she’d packed her holdall and committed to climbing that mountain. Listen to me, Is, I know what I’m talking about. I delivered Ella in the back of Mum’s Nissan, I’m the master of steady breathing. If you feel panicky, blow! Sophie had finished demonstrating the Lamaze technique before reverting to chewing her nails, recapping all the reasons Isobel shouldn’t leave.

Soph hated all this, but she’d like Coast at least. Sophie was into industrial light fittings and the beach-house look. She’d tried something similar at their parents’ semi. I want Sophie to feel at home, love, their mum had argued with Dad. Let her decorate the conservatory, this is our daughter and granddaughter’s home now too. Just while she worked off the store card balances that had seen her default on enough rent payments to trigger the eviction notice. Sophie would learn one day. Impulse cost.

Isobel traced the view stretching over the endless Atlantic and back down over the intimate clusters of gallerias and boutique bistros nearly enclaving the lobstermen working away on the trawlers. So far Fallenbay was living up to its online reputation. Like Sophie, their folks would love Coast too, would love Fallenbay. They would love it, but they would never know. Not that Ella could buy a four-scooper from the beach’s ice-cream hut or that Coast felt more like a cosy lookout point than an eatery (the universe having another laugh). They would never know because when the time came for truths, there would be nothing to tempt the Hedleys to visit this place, the bay of the fallen. Which was good. Because Fallenbay wasn’t a place to make memories. It was the place to bury them.

2

‘Ladies! Beautiful morning, isn’t it? Americano please. Woah, flapjack’s looking good, Cleo. Can I get a slice, for Sarah and Max too?’

Cleo hoped he didn’t mistake the flush in her cheeks for schoolgirl blushing. She always blushed a little for Jonathan Hildred. It was completely involuntary, like one of those hiccupping fits she sometimes suffered, or a flickery eyelid. She definitely didn’t fancy Jon – or no more than was acceptable for your best friend’s fiancé anyway. Jon just had that Daniel Craig thing going on, and a grin that could send grown women back to their teenage selves with little more than a compliment about a flapjack. He was going to look phenomenal in his wedding suit; Cleo could see him now, adjusting his cuffs at the altar, Bond style.

‘Sarah and Max on the beach?’ she trilled. Fancy schmancy. Of course she didn’t fancy Jon. Half the time she wondered if she was more excited about Sarah marrying Jon next summer than Sarah herself.

‘Nope, meeting them in half an hour at the . . .’ Jon dramatically fanned his hands, ‘. . . Marine Dinosaur Exhibition!’

‘Where?’

‘The aquarium. Max’s running an obsession with Godzilla. Sarah’s hoping to find something green and scaly in there to float his boat.’

‘I’ll get Mr Hildred’s Americano, Mum.’ Evie’s eyes were wide and lovely, and caked in too much bloody make-up again.

‘No! Don’t move from that spot until I can ring up an order, Eves. Kids are so techno-savvy nowadays, aren’t they, Jon?’ She banged the coffee grinds from the filter and a baby startled at the noise. Sam was always telling her she was too heavy-handed. This from an ex-boxer with knuckles like knees.

Evie made something bleep. ‘There,’ she declared. ‘I came, I saw, I conquered.’

‘Julius Caesar,’ nodded Jon. Cleo fought not to mirror his smile.

Evie offered her smile freely. She looked like Cleo’s little girl again when she smiled like that. Cleo felt a burst of pride then resumed mourning the daughter who’d moved aside so this tempestuous, sulky, make-up-abusing pain-in-the-bum could steal her spot at the dinner table. She gave Evie a quick shoulder squeeze. ‘Well done, trouble. Heading for a B in maths too next month, aren’t you, my brilliant girl? There you go, Jon. Americano. Godzilla, did you say? You know, if Max wants to meet a grouchy green reptilian, I have a lounge-lizard with a snotty nose at home he can try shifting off my sofa.’

‘Mum,’ Evie groaned. ‘Dad can’t help getting ill when he’s laying bricks in the rain.’

‘Oh, Evie, I’m only playing.’ She wasn’t. ‘But I could’ve done with him looking at that microwave before he caught the lurgy. Keep your eye on it today, I think the timer’s on the blink.’

Jon handed Evie his money. ‘Makes for a nice change hearing one of our young adults defending their parent, Cleo. Usually it’s the parents who won’t hear a bad word. Loyalty’s admirable, right, Evie? Shows maturity.’

‘Right, Mr Hildred,’ beamed Evie.

‘And a B in GCSE maths? Great stuff. You know there are extra evening revision classes if you fancied really stretching yourself? Maybe see about pushing for an A if you’re up for a challenge? Elodie Inman-Holt’s enrolled; you two are pals aren’t you, you could buddy-up?’

Cleo felt a mild stab of competition. On Evie’s behalf, obviously. Why would Elodie even need extra classes? She was fluent in everything already. Languages . . . music . . . Elodie was like her God-awful mother Juliette, fluent in bloody life. And just to make things worse – okay, probably the part that really got up Cleo’s nose – Juliette’s daughter was one of the few teenage girls at that high school who didn’t feel compelled to daub herself with those horrendous eyebrows Evie couldn’t slather on garishly enough. Harry had recently made the mistake of comparing his twin sister to Sam the Eagle from The Muppets. Evie had given him a dead leg for it.

‘Are you running revision classes, Mr H?’

Jon patted his hard, flat stomach. ‘Not a chance, Evie. I need my evenings to keep the middle-aged spread at bay.’ Cleo could vaguely remember Sam’s washboard stomach. Vaguely.

‘You look fine to me, Mr Hildred.’ Was Evie blushing?

‘Evie and some of the girls saw you surfing down at The Village a few weeks ago, Jon. I think you have a fan club,’ teased Cleo.

‘Muum, shut up!’

‘What was it again? Gorgeous . . . well fit . . .’

‘Oh my God, Mum, that was Cassie, not me! You are so embarrassing.’

Jon scratched his nose. ‘Well fit, huh? Good to know, Evie.’

Cleo chuckled under her breath. Crap. Lorna Brooks was heading for the counter wielding something green and organic-looking in a Tupperware tub, Marnie crying that hungry baby cry from her hip. The school mothers all adored Jonathan Hildred, and Lorna would stand here all day gushing over him while Marnie screamed the place down.

Cleo swung into action. ‘Your change, Jon. Say hi to Godzilla! Ooh, and tell Sarah I’ll call her later. I’ve seen some am-az-ing canapés in Beautiful Bride mag. Lorna! What can I get for you?’

Lorna jiggled in that way fraught new mothers on three hours’ sleep jiggle their babies. Except Marnie was closer to nine months and already sturdy enough that she made Lorna, with her skinny arms and delicate pale chest, look like a waify big sister. Lorna readjusted her floaty neck scarf and Cleo braced herself. The woman always seemed to be on the brink of asking something profound but difficult to follow about global warming or, worse, the exact ingredients of Coast’s ‘organic’ biscuits. (The oats were organic, the butter was not. It had given Cleo sleepless nights.)

‘Cleo, help! Any chance you could throw Marnie’s lunch in your microwave? She’s so hungry at the mo, I can’t fill her up.’

Marnie gnawed on her mother’s shoulder. Lunch? At 10am? ‘Have you tried steak and chips?’ She was joking, obviously. Lorna’s clearly wasn’t a meat and deep-fried-anything kind of household.

‘I daren’t try her on anything too challenging, Cleo. Is that brie and cranberry baguette vegetarian? No bacony bits or surprises?’ Lorna reached a pale freckled hand over the counter and presented Marnie’s pot.

Evie had already been sucked back into the beam of her smartphone. ‘Evie?’ Cleo jabbed her with Marnie’s lunch. ‘Completely meat-free, Lorna. Would you like it toasted?’

Lorna glanced towards Jon, talking to the blonde girl still sitting on her own near the window. ‘No thanks, Cleo. It’s a real sun trap in that window, don’t think I could manage a hot sandwich.’

Blinds. There was another job Sam hadn’t gotten around to. Marnie cooed at the sight of Lorna’s baguette. The little girl shared her mother’s pale skin, and it was hot in that window; maybe they’d be more comfortable if they sat over by—

A loud bang exploded behind them.

‘Evie! I told you to watch that thing today!’

‘I did! I only put it on for twenty seconds! Hotspots and babies . . . I know the twenty-second rule, Mum.’

Cleo launched towards the microwave. ‘If you would just stop goggling that flipping phone and concentrate!’

‘The timer counted up instead of down, Mum. I swear, look . . . ’

A green crime scene waited inside the microwave. Customers were craning necks. ‘Lorna, I’m so sorry. Marnie’s lunch . . .’

Lorna grimaced. ‘It’s fine, Cleo. That was the last of Mummy’s homemade pesto pasta, wasn’t it, Marnie-Moo? But it’s fine. I have milk, she can have milk, until we get home.’

‘I’m so sorry, but the microwave . . . I won’t be able to warm a bottle.’

Lorna was already weaving through the tables back to her own spot in the window. ‘We have it covered, Cleo.’ She settled herself into her chair and began fumbling at her blouse.

‘Oh. Sure.’ Cleo’s eyes left Lorna’s pale bosom and clocked a couple of the kids on the terrace outside stop inhaling their food just long enough to grin at each other. She glared through the glass. ‘Keep that up, you little sods, and you can clear off.’ Getting Harry and Evie to feed from her had been all kinds of awful. Hell hath no fury like a nipple with mastitis.

Evie tensed. ‘Uh-oh, geriatric storm brewing, table 4.’

Cleo recognised something in the posture of the man at the table neighbouring Lorna’s. That incensed-embarrassed-unreasonable look that Cleo had once seen in a lunching corporate’s face just before she’d been dispatched from the department store’s restaurant to the ladies’ changing rooms. The manager thinks you’ll be more comfortable somewhere private, madam. Her neck burned at the memory. Harry and Evie’s need for sustenance had got in the way of a grown man’s need to finish his jacket potato without having to wrestle any of life’s big questions, such as whether or not boobs really were just for groping.

The woman at table 4, face grey and puckered, twisted in her chair to face Lorna. ‘My brother doesn’t know where to look!’

‘Sorry?’ blinked Lorna.

Cleo bristled. ‘Right.’

Evie caught Cleo’s elbow ‘Mum! What are you doing?’

‘I’m going to offer Lorna a free drink and a seat out of that blazing sun. Then I’m going to inform table four that Coast welcomes breast-feeding mothers, even if they are members of Juliette Inman-Holt’s PFA cult.’

She stalked around the counter, her bottom accidentally clipping two chairs on the way, but she didn’t care. ‘Lorna? Sorry to interrupt, I was just wondering, would you and Marnie like to use the new sofas? It’s cooler over there, with no customers who—’

Lorna reared like a snake, eyes wide and wild. ‘No customers to watch my baby feeding, is that it? Consuming the food Mother Nature intended for her?’ Lorna’s breast yanked free of Marnie’s lips, Marnie’s protestation immediate.

Cleo opened her mouth but her voice abandoned her, Lorna’s boob staring straight at her, the gypsy blouse risen defiantly over the top of its fullness.

Lorna stood. ‘It’s alright my five-year-old son has to look at filthy girly mags every time I take him to the newsagents, isn’t it? Absolutely fine when he flicks a music channel on that hordes of disco bimbos shake their thonged backsides at him? But . . .’ Lorna cupped a hand to her mouth . . . ‘Good God! Someone call the modesty police if a mother nurses her child. Well I’ve got news for you, Cleo Roberts.’ Lorna’s face had gone quite red. ‘My daughter has a right to feed freely! I have a right to use my breasts!’

3

Isobel startled at the sound of the woman behind the counter banging away at the coffee machine. A baby began to cry over near the other window. She felt a wave of purpose wash through her, then noted the Free Wifi sign framed and hanging on the far brick wall like a gift waiting to be stolen. All those thoughts swelled somewhere at the bottom of her like a rising threat. The doubt. The ridiculousness of her goals.

She clasped her writing pad like a religious scripture.

Base Camp 1. Simple enough. Home. Home was Base Camp 1.

She scribbled the next few lines of writing as if indenting them into the page made them more achievable somehow.

2 - Job