THE MISSING WIFE
Sam Carrington
Copyright
Published by AVON
A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019
Copyright © Sam Carrington 2019
Cover design © www.blacksheep-uk.com 2019
Cover photographs: Face © Marta Bevacqua / Trevillion Images; Candle © Shutterstock
Sam Carrington asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of 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 ebook 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.
Source ISBN: 9780008312954
Ebook Edition © June 2019 ISBN: 9780008259839
Version: 2019-06-14
PRAISE FOR SAM CARRINGTON
‘Expertly written … with plentiful twists and unforgettable characters. An insightful and unnerving read.’
Caroline Mitchell, no.1 bestselling author of Silent Victim
‘A kick-ass page turner … I was knocked senseless by the awesome twist.’
John Marrs, no.1 bestselling author of The One
‘Psychologist Connie Summers is a fascinatingly flesh-and-blood guide through this twisty thriller.’
Louise Candlish, Sunday Times bestselling author of Our House
‘Keeps you guessing right to the end.’
Sue Fortin, no.1 bestselling author of Sister Sister
‘This book is not only gripping, but it explores the mother/daughter relationship perfectly, and ends with a gasp-out-loud twist.’
Closer
‘I devoured this story in one sitting!’
Louise Jensen, no.1 bestselling author of The Sister
‘Sam Carrington has done it again. One Little Lie is a twisty, gripping read. I loved it.’
Cass Green, bestselling author of In a Cottage In a Wood
‘I LOVED Bad Sister. Tense, convincing and complex, it kept me guessing (wrongly!)’
Caz Frear, bestselling author of Sweet Little Lies
‘I read One Little Lie in one greedy gulp. A compelling thriller about the dark side of maternal instinct and love.’
Isabel Ashdown, bestselling author of Beautiful Liars
‘A gripping read which moved at a head-spinning pace … I simply couldn’t put this book down until I reached the dramatic and devastating conclusion.’
Claire Allan, USA Today bestselling author of Her Name Was Rose
‘Utterly original and thought provoking … This cries out to be made into a TV series.’
Amanda Robson, Sunday Times bestselling author of Guilt
‘Engrossing psychological suspense about the effect of a murder on the mother of a teenage killer. Sam Carrington had me hooked!’
Emma Curtis, bestselling author of One Little Mistake
Dedication
For Danika – my daughter, my friend, my inspiration.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Praise for Sam Carrington
Dedication
Chapter 1: The Burial
Chapter 2: The Signs
Chapter 3: The Text
Chapter 4: The Friend
Chapter 5: The Request
Chapter 6: The Offer
Chapter 7: The Decoy
Chapter 8: The Guest
Chapter 9: The Party
Chapter 10: The Hangover
Chapter 11: The Return
Chapter 12: The Message
Chapter 13: The Shock
Chapter 14: The Disappearance
Chapter 15: The Chat
Chapter 16: The Past
Chapter 17: The Visit
Chapter 18: The Favour
Chapter 19: The Appeal
Chapter 20: The Photos
Chapter 21: The List
Chapter 22: The Dream
Chapter 23: The Baby-Sitter
Chapter 24: The Drunk
Chapter 25: The Apology
Chapter 26: The Brush-Off
Chapter 27: The Lie
Chapter 28: The Secret
Chapter 29: The Accident
Chapter 30: The Search
Chapter 31: The Photo
Chapter 32: The Gift
Chapter 33: The Questions
Chapter 34: The Mistake
Chapter 35: The Update
Chapter 36: The Drone
Chapter 37: The Discovery
Chapter 38: The Aftershock
Chapter 39: The Gathering
Chapter 40: The Footage
Chapter 41: The Theory
Chapter 42: The House
Chapter 43: The Find
Chapter 44: The Darkness
Chapter 45: The Truth
Chapter 46: The Hypnosis
Chapter 47: The Ghost
Chapter 48: The Revelation
Chapter 49: The Trap
Chapter 50: The Forgiveness
Chapter 51: The Plan
Chapter 52: The Last Time
Chapter 53: The Funeral
The Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Keep Reading …
About the Author
By the Same Author
About the Publisher
1
THE BURIAL
I can still feel the mud embedded deep under my fingernails, taste the dirt on my lips. I can still see the eyes: shining like glass, open and staring, deep in their sockets. Dead.
In my mind I watch the earth piling onto the body, slowly blotting out what’s been done. Finally covering those eyes, so they can’t judge anymore.
I’m confident no trace can lead back to me.
Part of me feels regret; a sadness that it came to such a drastic act.
For the moment, my conscience is telling me I’m guilty.
But that can be buried too.
2
THE SIGNS
Tuesday p.m.
The quiet murmurings that stopped as Louisa walked in the room, the closely guarded messages on his iPhone, the way he flitted about when Tiff was around – those were the little things that gave him away. He’d never been able to keep secrets. It’d been something Louisa had found endearing when she’d first met him on Millennium Eve at the party she shouldn’t have been at. But nineteen years later, his inability to hide anything despite believing he could – and that he was good at it – had lost its appeal.
Noah screamed in her left ear. She shifted the small bundle from one shoulder to the other, dragging the damp, sickly-smelling muslin square along with him, and bounced him in a vain attempt to console his colicky cries. He’d been howling for three days straight, Louisa was certain. As certain as she could be in her ‘new mum’ catatonic state, where each day rolled into the next with no real context, no definition or concept of time. Instead of faffing about secretively on his phone, Brian would be better served taking Noah and giving her five minutes to herself. Even going to the loo was a luxury these days.
She wondered if Emily had been like this, but Emily’s early years were a blur now. The teenage issues had long replaced any other bad memories of her infancy. Louisa shouldn’t be dealing with a baby. In just over two weeks she was going to be forty. As far as she’d been concerned, Emily was their one and only. Becoming pregnant was neither planned, nor particularly welcomed.
Ultimately, Noah was a mistake. Perhaps that explained why she was struggling.
Louisa lowered her chin and nestled against Noah’s soft, creamy skin, breathing in the distinct smell of baby, blocking his cries from her tired mind. Even contemplating him as a mistake sent a stabbing pain through her womb. Of course she shouldn’t think that way. He was perfect, beautiful – there were women who’d kill to have what she did.
It was because she was almost forty. The thought of reaching the milestone was an overwhelming one. Her mind flooded with anxiety. She was too old to be doing all this again. Sleepless nights, endless days. Nursery, pre-school, junior school, comprehensive, college.
College.
For a moment, Louisa’s memory displayed a vision – but it was lost as quickly as it appeared. She didn’t like to think about the period of her life when she was seventeen and studying for her A levels. There were too many gaps during her second year, and mostly her mind refused to fill them – apart from the odd occasion when an image burst into her head. Random images; unrecognisable faces. Ones she knew she didn’t want to, or need to, grasp hold of. There was little point in trying to piece together a past that wanted to be forgotten.
Noah’s screams finally penetrated her thoughts again – her ability to block them only temporary. All the things she was going to have to experience again. All those ‘stages’ she’d assumed were long gone. But here she was beginning the journey all over again, and with such a big age gap. It petrified her.
Not only that, but she had the other end of the scale to deal with at the same time. Teenage angst, moodiness, rudeness, the pushing of boundaries. It was becoming too much. Even Brian: safe, dependable Brian, who’d been the doting dad when Emily was a baby, had shown less of an interest in Noah. He often came home from his shifts at the prison exhausted and irritable. Sometimes it was as though she had three children to look after, but no one to look after her.
Louisa strode up to him, thrusting Noah out towards his chest.
‘Hang on, Lou. Can’t you see I’m busy?’ he said as he whipped the phone screen away from her so she couldn’t see the display, his body turning away from their son.
‘Funnily enough, so am I. And I’ve had this constant screaming pounding my ears for eight hours. Give me a bloody break and take him! I assume you do want to eat tonight?’
‘Mum!’ Emily’s voice, loud to compete with her baby brother, burst into the lounge. ‘What’s for tea?’
Louisa closed her eyes, taking a moment before she offered an answer. Too soon and her response would come across brusque, unreasonable. Aggressiveness was not a quality she wished to show to her daughter.
‘When I get five minutes to look in the fridge, I’ll be able to tell you.’
‘Oh,’ Brian piped up, his phone finally in his pocket. ‘You don’t even know what we’re having?’
‘No, love. Why don’t you rustle something up? Or take Noah. Like I’ve been trying to get you to do.’ A pain shot through her jaw as she clenched it forcefully. She gave a tight smile, then held Noah out at arm’s length for a second attempt.
‘No problem,’ he said, taking the noisy creature from her outstretched arms as though he was contaminated. He squinted his eyes as the noise came in close contact with his ears.
See how he likes it.
Louisa turned away from them and quickly slipped into the kitchen to make the most of her reprieve, closing the door to block out as much of the noise as possible. She hunched over the granite worktop, hanging her head and closing her eyes tight. God, her head ached. It was like having a hangover twenty-four hours a day, every day. Louisa reluctantly opened her eyes again. She stared at her lank, brown hair, which had splayed on the dark granite – split ends upon split ends, like branches on a tree, reminding her she hadn’t been to the hairdresser for almost a year. Straightening, Louisa contemplated what she could rustle an evening meal out of. It would have to be something with chips. Until Brian took her shopping, there was very little in the fridge, and mainly bags of breast milk in the freezer.
That reminded her.
She pressed a hand to each breast. When had Noah last fed? Both breasts felt relatively soft, yet she couldn’t remember feeding him; that could account for his screaming. But if it had been too long ago, her breasts would’ve become engorged and she’d be desperate to empty them. She tried to think back over the day: she usually fed Noah while sitting in the armchair in the corner of the lounge – what was once her favourite reading chair, before it became the feeding chair – and she always put the TV on while he suckled because it helped take her mind off the stinging sensation of her cracked nipples. What had she been watching the last time she fed him?
Worryingly, nothing came to her. The night-time feeds were always hazy, but not usually the daytime ones. The pounding pain in her head worsened the more she forced herself to remember, the pressure threatening to rupture her brain. Yanking open the bottom drawer of the kitchen cupboard unit, Louisa reached in, pulling forward the tea towels to reveal the rectangular packet she stored at the back. She turned it over and over in her hands before popping two pills from the foil pack. She stared at the capsules as the fear gripped her insides. A fear she hadn’t experienced in a long time.
Was it happening again?
3
THE TEXT
Wednesday a.m.
‘What are you doing?’ Brian asked, his words slurred from tiredness. He threw the duvet off and sat on the edge of the bed, his head resting in his hands. The room was dark bar the illumination of the digital alarm clock’s blue glow.
‘Getting dressed.’ Louisa zipped her jeans and, using her phone light to see, pulled at the soft-pink jumper under the mountain of discarded clothes on the tub chair in the corner of their bedroom, sending the rest tumbling.
‘But it’s five past five, Louisa?’
‘Oh, is it? It feels later. I’ve been up half the night with Noah.’ She tutted as she absently piled the clothes back up on the chair. She banged her hip against the dressing table as she stumbled towards the door. ‘Sorry, I’m a bit on the clumsy side this morning, didn’t mean to disturb you. You’ve got another hour yet, so go back to sleep.’
‘You’re clumsy every morning lately,’ Brian mumbled as he sank back into the pillow.
Despite the strong urge to tell him he would be too if he’d been the one up every night for the last three months, Louisa said nothing and just closed the door quietly behind her.
Noah was sleeping now. Louisa crept past his nursery, barely daring to breathe in case she woke him. Emily’s room, with a poster of P!NK adorning the door, was silent too. She seemed to sleep through Noah’s cries. Just as well – she was moody enough without lack of sleep impacting on her. Her schoolwork was suffering. It had been prior to Noah’s arrival but Louisa didn’t want her daughter, who was as bright as a button, to go downhill further because an unexpected baby had disrupted the equilibrium. Louisa trod carefully on each stair, avoiding the edge of the squeaky middle one.
In the kitchen, she took her handbag from where it hung on the inside of the larder door and retrieved the packet of Marlboro and a disposable lighter. Standing at the open back door, Louisa dragged on the cigarette. Her head swam for a moment, a light airiness consuming it. After a few more puffs, she relaxed.
She had limited opportunities to smoke without being noticed. Early mornings were the best. As far as Brian was concerned, she gave up long ago. She had given up for four years. But yesterday triggered something. The compulsion to start again overtook her and she was relieved to find her secret packet was still in its original hiding place in the bottom drawer of her mother’s old sideboard in the garage. When Brian was otherwise engaged on his mobile, she’d got them and popped them in her handbag. It wasn’t as if Brian would ever go looking in that. He wasn’t nosy, didn’t check up on her; he’d never think to search through any of her things. He wasn’t like that.
Louisa reached around to the outside and scraped the cigarette along the wall to extinguish it; then she hid the butt in one of Emily’s discarded Coke cans. That girl was drinking far too much fizzy rubbish. She washed her hands in the kitchen sink, spread a liberal spray of Oust around and then closed and locked the back door.
Brian’s mobile was charging on the worktop near the bread bin. He never took it to bed, always fearing he’d get a late-night call from his sister Alison, who lived in Yorkshire with his mother, taking care of her following the death of Brian’s dad. She’d phoned several times in the middle of the night, worrying about their mother’s behaviour and her health. It’s not that Brian didn’t care – he did. He was a good son on the whole. But his sister was needy and felt it was her responsibility to tell Brian every little detail of what was going on up there, while he ‘lived life’ at the opposite end of the country. She’d been bitter ever since Brian chose to move to Devon, where Louisa had always lived. And when they’d married, her bitterness intensified. For some reason, Brian felt Alison had always wanted to punish him for that choice.
Louisa took the phone, pressing the button to bring up the home screen. It was password-protected, but she could see the first part of each of the last few notifications and texts. Her breath caught. Tiff’s message was the last one. She could only see the first line.
All good for meeting Friday still? I assume you’ve managed to keep it from
Louisa’s face grew hot. She tapped the screen even though she knew she wouldn’t be able to access the full message. She placed it back on the worktop in the same position she’d found it in. Her heart beat wildly; she could feel pressure in her chest. Friday was when he was supposedly going out with the lads; Louisa distinctly remembered him arranging it. To her knowledge, Brian had never lied to her.
She wondered why he would start now.
4
THE FRIEND
Wednesday a.m.
Noah enjoyed being pushed in his pram, as long as Louisa kept it moving. If she could spend every hour of each day treading the pavements of Little Penchurch, he’d be a quiet baby. Tiff only lived a few minutes from her house, so rather than take the direct route, she went the long way around, circumnavigating the village in the hope Noah may stay asleep once she stopped at her destination. It was unlikely, but nevertheless she had to try something – and she was determined that nothing would stop her seeing Tiff this morning.
Tiff’s house was stunning, like her. It was detached – which again, some would say was one of her traits – standing in its own grounds set back from the road. Inside it was modern, spotless – like a show home. No husband or children to mess it up. Louisa opened the heavy wooden gate, manoeuvred Noah’s pram through and closed it behind her before walking down the side of the house to the back entrance. It was easier to get the pram through the patio doors at the rear. She hadn’t called ahead, so she hoped Tiff hadn’t left yet – she couldn’t remember if it was her yoga day.
‘Well, this a lovely surprise,’ Tiff said as she slid the patio doors fully open. ‘A bit early for you.’ She smiled, her wide grin revealing perfectly whitened, straight teeth.
‘Yeah, hope you don’t mind. I just had to get out of the house for a bit, and walking seems to be the only thing that keeps Noah quiet.’
Tiff crouched down to peek inside the pram. ‘Aw, he’s getting bigger. It’s all that good milk he’s getting.’
‘Not sure he is getting enough milk, actually.’ Now Louisa was inside her best friend’s house, she let her guard down. Without even realising she felt sad, tears began to trickle down her face.
‘Oh, lovely. Come here.’ Tiff enveloped Louisa in a tight hug, rocking her gently. This only added to Louisa’s unexpected outpouring of tears and suddenly she was sobbing.
‘I don’t know what’s happening to me.’ Her voice was muffled in Tiff’s white T-shirt.
‘Baby blues, love. They’ll pass. Come on, let’s get you a coffee.’
Louisa left Noah, who was thankfully still asleep despite the movement of the pram ceasing, and followed Tiff into her huge kitchen, wiping her tears with her jumper sleeve as she walked.
‘Here.’ Tiff handed Louisa a small cube of coloured tissues. Louisa took a few sheets and swiped them across her nose, annoyed with herself for crying the second she’d walked in. She watched through tingling eyes as her friend of eight years filled the see-through kettle with bottled water – she didn’t trust tap water, convinced she’d get cancer from drinking it – and stared at the blue light radiating through the liquid.
‘So—’ Tiff turned to look at her ‘—I take it you’re not sleeping, looking at those bags.’
Louisa couldn’t help but laugh. ‘Hah! Thanks, I feel better already!’
‘Sorry. I’d be a total mess if I were you. If I don’t get at least eight hours a night I’m a total bitch and I’d look like something from a horror movie.’
‘I doubt that, Tiff.’ She looked down at the scrunched ball of soggy tissue in her hand.
‘It’s a good job it doesn’t happen often, I can tell you.’
The kettle clicked off, and Tiff busied herself making the two coffees. Louisa glanced around the kitchen. Her whole downstairs would fit in this space. Her thoughts turned to the text message, and how she could bring it up without making herself sound distrustful of her friend. Her only friend. Well, the only one that counted, anyway – she knew lots of people: colleagues from the accountancy firm she worked for, other mums of kids Emily’s age, and now some mums from her antenatal and baby groups. But she didn’t socialise with them. She wasn’t like Tiff, who had dozens of close friends and revelled in moving in different social circles. That would only stress Louisa. Keeping a single friend was difficult enough for her, always had been.
‘Any goss?’ Louisa asked. It was the best way of getting Tiff chatting, so that she could find an opportunity to slip in her question.
‘Ooh, well, yes, actually!’ Tiff planted the mugs on two glass coasters and flounced away, disappearing through the double doors that led to the lounge. She returned, laptop in her hands. ‘Did you see this?’ Tiff twisted the screen to face Louisa. Sarah Weaver’s Facebook profile was displayed.
