The Promise: The twisty new thriller from the Sunday Times bestseller, guaranteed to keep you up all night

‘Don’t you walk away from me!’

Connor fell onto his hands as Jacob pushed him with full force; the second step jarred against his shin, the bare wood clashing against bone, his leg instantly throbbing. He quickly shielded his head, knowing the places his father liked to punch, and curled into the smallest ball possible, protecting his ribs, throat, face and stomach. Right on cue, Connor felt the full weight of Jacob’s trainer as it hit him in the thigh. Connor’s eyes closed tight and he hoped that Jacob would keep kicking the same spot as it didn’t hurt so much there and it was easy to hide. His father was unhealthy with a bad leg, so the kicking part didn’t usually last very long.

Connor heard a metal clinking sound; the sound of Jacob’s belt unbuckling and being pulled quickly from his waist. He knew what came next. The hard edges on the side of the belt cut into his skin as it connected with his shoulder. Jacob had wrapped the belt around his fist, either to protect his hands, or to cause maximum damage – the buckle always left the biggest mark.

‘Dad, please … Please, I’m sorry!’ He hated to beg, he wasn’t even convinced he meant it.

‘I’ll make you fucking sorry!’

He hit him a few more times, each time slightly harder than the last, until Jacob ran out of steam. Finally, Connor heard the familiar sound of Jacob’s foot dragging as he walked away. He got worse beatings when his dad was sober; at least when he was drunk he ran out of energy faster.

Connor waited until he knew his father was gone before uncurling from his self-imposed cocoon. It didn’t really hurt yet, but that was because of the shock. At least he hadn’t had a seizure this time. Getting beaten up by his dad was bad enough without the added humiliation of losing control of his faculties altogether.

Pulling himself up, Connor peered into the lounge and saw his father sitting in front of the TV with a beer in hand. As though this interaction had never occurred, as if it were all just a dream. Connor trudged up the stairs and flopped onto his bed, wanting to fall asleep before the pain really started.

As he lay there, he heard mutterings through the wall, coming from the house next door. It was a low sound, an almost drone-like murmur. He realised that any kind of volume would most definitely have been heard through the walls. He exhaled deeply, embarrassed that his neighbours might know what kind of a man his father was, what kind of a coward he was. He couldn’t think about it right now.

He closed his eyes and thought instead about the home he had left behind. The home that wasn’t really a home anymore, not to him anyway. He thought about his old friends and how he wished he was back there with them. Occasionally, on nights like this, he would try and remember to feel fortunate. He had been told time and time again how lucky he was. He thought about a girl in his old class called Marianne; they had been in school together for seven years. He remembered the last time he saw her vividly – she had been hanging a banner for the end of year summer prom. Standing on a ladder in the cafeteria, obscuring the clock with it. The thing he remembered most about Marianne was that she had always worn yellow shoes in all the time he had known her. He tried to push her out of his mind as he recalled the image of one yellow shoe in the school gym … He didn’t want to think about Marianne anymore. Sleep. He wanted to sleep and forget, wake up in a new day and deal with that rather than with this.

Chapter 12

It was a long time before he kissed me again, but I wanted it every single day. Whenever I went out to the bins I half expected him to be there but he wasn’t. I could tell he was taunting me with it, trying to make me want him even more. It was working; I wanted him more than anything. He was playing a long game and winning.

On my nineteenth birthday I was offered the day off work but I said no – I wanted to go in, I wanted to see him. On that day he came in late, and he was alone. He was holding a bunch of flowers and he told me that Caroline, the girl who worked with me behind the counter, had told him that it was my birthday. That was when he asked me out. A week later we had our first date.

He took me to an Indian restaurant, the nicest one in town, and after we finished our meal he walked me home. The route took us through an alleyway and before I knew it I was pinned against the wall, his body pressed against mine. I couldn’t have gotten away even if I had wanted to, which I didn’t. We kissed for what seemed like forever and I was flying. I straightened myself out before I got home, before he politely handed me back to my father, who couldn’t have been oblivious to what had just passed between us. If he knew though, he didn’t show it. It might have been easier for everyone if he had just put his foot down and forbade me from leaving the house again.

I didn’t sleep that night; I was so full of excitement, I wasn’t sure I would ever sleep again. I could tell in the following days how disappointed my father was in me, but he let me live my own life. He didn’t want to be the overbearing parent, he didn’t want me to run away again.

Rocket and I became lovers, stealing moments at work and spending every other minute that we could together. He would drive me to work in the mornings – JD would sit in the back seat and say nothing – he never said anything. On Saturday afternoons, we would go to the reservoir and dip our toes in the water until one day I saw a stoat or something in the undergrowth and freaked out. After that we would drive out to the little villages that surrounded the city, each time getting slightly further and further away until eventually we would drive for over an hour before we would stop, looking for that perfect spot for us to hide.

Eventually we found a small town with a river running through it. There was a bend there where the pool of water was bigger, like our own private Garden of Eden. Rocket would lie at the side of the river and watch me swimming in the water, sheltered from the sun by a willow tree that hung over the riverbank. We were hidden from the rest of the world. We never ran into anyone else and this became our special place. I would be frozen when I got out of the water, my skin cold and wet, but he would still throw me down on the grass and make love to me, not caring about his own clothes or the fact that I was numb to his touch.

Those days by the river I felt invincible, as though no one could ever shatter the woman I was becoming. I was stronger for him, or at least I thought I was. I had been so preoccupied with being free that I hadn’t noticed my isolation from everyone else. The only world I knew was Rocket. My friends had given up on me. Laughing my absence off at the fact that I was in love and that life never gets better than this honeymoon period. They were right about one thing. Life never did get any better, it only got worse. I was totally complicit in my own demise and I wasn’t even aware of it until it was far too late.

It wasn’t for a full year that I began to really notice what was happening. Rocket had asked me to move in with him and I’d said yes. He and JD shared a house but JD worked a lot and was never home. My parents helped me move my things, and then we said our goodbyes. I assumed I would see them a week or so later, but I didn’t see them again for two months, and the time after that it had almost been half a year since we’d met up. In fact, I didn’t really see anyone from before I’d met Rocket – this man that I was so blindly in love with that I accepted everything he did or said without question.

JD started dating a bottle blonde and moved in with her; she was pretty but she talked so much. It was hard to imagine him being with a girl like her. Maybe her constant noise took the pressure of talking away from him. Sometimes I caught him looking at me across the room when we were all together. He didn’t make me feel nervous or bad though. I couldn’t put my finger on it at the time, but I realise now he was checking that I was OK, looking for outward signs of stress or distress. He knew where this was going; he had been here before. But still he didn’t warn me.

Rocket would sit next to me wherever we went, his arm always around me, or if he couldn’t do that then his hand would be on my knee or my shoulder. I thought this was affection, but I now know that it was possession. I belonged to him, he had plucked me straight from my parents’ arms and put his hooks in me. He had never mistreated me, but I had never stepped out of line, I had never done anything unexpected or out of the ordinary. Until then I had never done anything that he saw as questionable. He had moulded me into the girlfriend he wanted – adoring, loyal and fiercely in love.

He got a promotion at work and so he told me I could stop working if I wanted to, but I didn’t want to, I enjoyed my job. It wasn’t the most glamorous of jobs admittedly, but I liked the hours. I started at 5 a.m., worked for eight hours a day and still had half the day to enjoy myself. I think, looking back, this was part of the problem. Those few hours between when I finished work and Rocket came home from his shifts at the hospital. He didn’t know what I had been doing and that bothered him.

His friend owned the camera shop SNAPPO’S and Rocket got me a job there so we could meet for lunch every day as it was near the hospital. I left my waitressing job and started working in the camera shop. I had talked to him before about how much I had always wanted to be a photographer and so he bought me a camera. It wasn’t an expensive one, it was an old Russian camera that I had mentioned; it produced imperfect images and that was the kind of art I wanted to create, maybe because I had always felt imperfect myself. I thought Rocket was supporting my love of photography by finding me a job more suited to my interests. Although I missed having my free afternoons, it was good to be doing something different. The manager paid my wages in cash to Rocket, but at least I got my films developed for free as a perk of the job.

In a little over a year my life had been transformed. I had no family around me anymore and it seemed as though my friends were all moving in a different direction to me – it wasn’t until much later that I realised they just didn’t like him, they didn’t trust him. I wish someone had told me, had made me look at what I was getting into, but no one said anything. There was nothing to say, I suppose; for all intents and purposes, he was lovely. I couldn’t fault him – there was nothing to fault. He was generous and kind and he was always good to me. Until he wasn’t.

Chapter 13

The toilets were empty when Selina walked in; she hurried into the stall and closed the door. They had a ten-minute break before the next lesson and she had a terrible stomach cramp. She held her breath as the exterior door opened and more people piled into the bathroom. The faint aroma of cigarettes, Impulse and hairspray in the air told her it was Pippa, Liza and Naomi. They ran the taps and she listened to them speak, imagining them reapplying the black lines to the corners of their eyes, curling their eyelashes and applying a rosy lip gloss. This was their bathroom ritual, it was how they managed to look preened at all hours of the day.

‘So, did he take you ALL the way home then?’ Naomi said, her raspy voice instantly recognisable.

‘A lady never tells!’ Pippa said.

‘Right, so what happened then?’ Liza’s deep and sultry tones were also easy to spot as she jibed Pippa.

‘Bitch,’ Pippa said and they all burst out laughing.

‘So, what did his dick look like?’ Naomi said quietly. The laughter continued.

‘Naomi!’ Pippa called out, indignant.

‘No! I mean is he like, circumcised? I heard all Americans do that shit. Is it weird? What’s it look like? Are you seeing him again?’

‘We’re hooking up at the weekend.’

Selina guessed they were talking about her new neighbour, Connor. His arrival at the school had caused quite a stir. Most of the kids in school all knew each other from primary or even nursery school – they were all from similar neighbourhoods, so when someone new came in all eyes were on them. Add to that the fact that Connor had an American accent and he was one of those typically chiselled sporty boys, there was no chance these girls weren’t going to get their hooks into him. She looked at her watch; it was almost time for class and she didn’t want to be late. She flushed the toilet and took a deep breath before exiting the cubicle to face the girls.

‘Have a good listen, Dildo?’ Pippa said.

‘You’re such a fucking freak,’ Naomi muttered.

Selina walked up to the sink and washed her hands. She could feel them all staring at her.

‘You should let me straighten your hair, you know, it would look so much better than that ratty mess,’ Liza said.

Selina pushed past them and out into the hall, finally exhaling properly. Since she had started at the secondary school, those three girls in particular had made her life hell. Having a surname like Dilley didn’t help, completely lending itself to the term Dildo, which had been her unofficial name since she had been twelve years old. It didn’t bother her as much as they probably hoped it did. She had much bigger things on her mind than those idiots.

Connor stood by the rugby pitch watching the rest of the class. He had been dreading his first sports lesson and for it to come just a couple of days after an argument with his father made him even more nervous. He liked to play sports, but he was worried about the changing rooms afterwards, aware that he had a lot of marks on his body, more than the usual teenager. He knew he could lie about where they came from, but he didn’t like the attention. He tried to stay in the moment and just focus on the game for now, trying to discern who the weaker players were. He already knew the rules, as his father had always made them watch matches together and so it wasn’t something he couldn’t pick up. It was strange not to be kitted out and protected, strange to just run on into danger. Connor liked the idea of it.

Mr Wallis, the P.E. teacher, blew the whistle and subbed Connor into the game. There were only a few minutes left, but he got the ball and ran hard with it, right into the fray. Within seconds, he was under a pile of guys. The whistle blew again.

‘Can I have a word, Connor?’ Mr Wallis called him over before shouting at the class. ‘Everyone back in formation. Start again.’

Connor ran to the teacher, slightly breathless, slightly out of practice. He had been kicked off the team a few months earlier at home and so his physical fitness was not as hot as usual. It wouldn’t take him long though, a bit of training and he would be back on top.

‘Yes, sir?’

‘You sure you’re up for this? You’ll have to unlearn a few things, and despite what you might think, it’s quite different to the football you’re used to, not harder – but different. Rugby is tougher in the sense that players play the ball continuously. But with American football, because of all the breaks, you get to play harder when the ball is in play. You’ll need to conserve energy at certain times with rugby. You don’t need to go full out every time you have the ball. You’ll learn soon enough, but if you play like that constantly you’re going to end up with some pretty nasty injuries in no time.’

‘I can handle it.’

‘I’m sure you think you can. But for now, humour me.’

‘OK, sir.’

Mr Wallis blew the whistle and the boys stopped playing immediately. They all rushed back towards the school building with much more enthusiasm than they had when playing rugby.

‘I read about some of your sporting achievements at your other school and we’re lucky to have you here. You just have to keep it together. We play rugby on Mondays and Fridays and then general games on a Thursday, until next term, and then we switch to football – or soccer as you might call it – for spring, then back to rugby in the summer term. We’re looking forward to seeing what you can do.’

‘Thank you, I’ll do my best.’

‘I’m sure you will. Now go get showered and changed.’

Connor grabbed his things and headed for the changing rooms. When he got in, all the other boys were out already and drying themselves off which was a relief as it meant he got to shower alone. One of the other boys in the class smiled at Connor as he opened his locker.

‘Hey, Connor.’

‘Hi …’ he replied.

‘It’s Neil. You did great out there, it’s good to have some fresh blood on the field. How did it feel without all that padded crap you guys wear?’

‘It felt pretty good.’ Connor was used to this kind of talk; he had heard it his whole life from his father.

‘Hey, I have my driving test soon. If I pass we’re all going out. Do you want to come?’

‘Sounds cool, sure.’

‘Great,’ Neil said, ‘I’ll let you know.’

Connor waited for Neil to turn his back and then slipped into the shower when he was sure no one was looking. He got under the water, the heat of the shower soothing against his bruises. They didn’t hurt as much as they should have because he was used to feeling bruised. The first few times it was much worse, but now, he could take it. This was the norm and maybe it was exactly what he deserved. Playing rugby would provide the perfect excuse for the large purple lesions left behind by the buckle on his father’s belt; it had pierced the skin as it always did, faded versions of the same marks mottled the rest of his body. There were several marks across his torso. It was the reason he threw himself into football back home. Because people just accept that you get bruised when you play sports. He never got asked any questions, not once.

Connor put his clothes on, his hair still wet, the collar of his shirt cold and damp against his neck. He gathered his things and threw his backpack over his shoulder, both eager to get out of here and anxious to get home. He hoped his father would be out at work today, he couldn’t handle the pretence and he hadn’t seen him all weekend, not since the beating.

Walking home, he saw the girl from the house next door on the opposite side of the street to him. She kept her head down as she walked. He hadn’t noticed her at all at school during the course of the day. She obviously hung in different circles. He could tell she knew he was there, she must have seen him and she didn’t want him to speak to her. She walked a little faster and then disappeared into her house. He found himself walking faster to get home, to get to his tree house, to watch her.

Chapter 14

‘Nothing,’ Adrian said flatly.

‘What do you mean, nothing?’ Imogen put two cups of coffee on the desk and sat down next to Adrian, looking at the clock – it was a little after ten in the morning. He picked his up immediately and started drinking. She wondered how long he had been sitting here.

‘Absolutely nothing on the CCTV, not even her. I’ve watched everything from around the cathedral and the circle outwards to her house. I even got hold of the surrounding shops. Everything that was working, anyway. It’s taken forever and there’s not one single image as far as I can see.’

‘What about the drawing? The one Tanya Maslin instructed on?’

‘Here. Take a look at that and tell me what you see.’ He handed her a photocopy of the picture Tanya Maslin had come in to create with the sketch artist that morning before she started work. There was something very familiar about him.

‘Isn’t that Kurt Cobain?’

‘She must have her wires crossed or something. We know it wasn’t him at least, he’s dead.’

‘Well, if you believe the theories, then he’s living on a desert island somewhere. Or at least I like to think so.’ Imogen had cried when she’d heard that Kurt Cobain had shot himself; she had idolised him as a teen. Now just reduced to being another member of the twenty-seven club, an ever-expanding group of celebrities who’d died at that age – Cobain, Winehouse, Hendrix, Joplin, Morrison. Strangely, all musicians that Imogen had listened to growing up. Twenty-seven, the same age as Imogen.

‘According to Tanya Maslin, he was in The Bay Tree with Erica Lawson,’ Adrian said.

‘She didn’t seem like a liar, maybe he really did look like this.’

‘Seen anyone like that wandering around town?’

‘Maybe he wasn’t local.’ Imogen shrugged. ‘What did the DCI say?’

‘She didn’t think he was that hot.’ Adrian let out a cheeky smile.

‘I mean about what she wants us to do with it.’

‘Hit the neighbours again, see if they saw him come or go. Maybe the pic will jog their memory,’ Adrian said.

‘Fair enough. Anything else?’

‘Gary has some news on the social media front, but Erica was conspicuously absent from all the usual haunts. He wants us to go see him.’

Adrian stood up and rubbed his eyes. She guessed he had been here all night watching all those tapes, and probably slept at his desk. Worrying about Adrian was definitely a good way to distract her from her own problems. They made their way to Gary’s office.

‘How are you holding up? You look tired,’ Imogen said.

‘Home is crazy. It’s hard. Andrea is acting like the wife I never had and it’s just so overwhelming, I never get any time to …’ he trailed off.

‘Is she looking for her own place?’

‘No, she’s in major denial about what’s going on. We’re headed for a big conversation. I don’t want to, but I just need some space.’

‘You can’t have your ex living with you, especially with you guys’ history.’

‘I can’t kick her out, Grey.’

‘Well if you ever need a break, you’re welcome at mine,’ she offered.

As they arrived at the tech lab, Gary shot Imogen a look, a question in his eyes: is Adrian OK?

She shrugged almost imperceptibly in response. As good as can be expected.

‘Welcome! Can I get you some coffee?’ Gary asked. ‘I bought my own machine, one of the ones with the little capsules. Don’t tell everyone though.’

‘Just had one thanks. But you’ll be getting a lot more visits from me in the future,’ Imogen said.

‘Why do you think I got the machine?’ he said, grinning.

‘So, what do you have? Did you find out anything new about her? Was her relationship with her sister as solid as it seemed?’ Adrian asked, skipping past the small talk.

‘Sarah Lawson gave me access to their personal emails and texts and as far as I can see the sisters were very close. No big arguments, just the occasional passive-aggressive advice. As far as Sarah Lawson goes, she wasn’t aware of any social media accounts Erica had and it’s definitely trickier without her laptop to see what websites she was using, but we contacted her ISP and got a full history.’

‘And?’ Imogen said impatiently.

‘She had a Facebook account under a different name. All her own pictures, but the name is Nina Lawless. I searched Nina Lawless and found several profiles on various free social messenger and dating sites. She wasn’t stupid though, there was no indication of where she lived from her online photos. You would be surprised how many people post pictures that show their house, street name, all sorts.’

‘She was hooking up with people?’ Imogen said.

‘I don’t know how many she actually hooked up with, but she was most active on one of the apps connected to Facebook. It’s a social game where you trade on your avatars, your profile photos, buy and raise each other’s value, like commodities. It’s all done online, like a stock exchange type thing. People from all over the world take part. Everyone owns someone and everyone is owned by some else. You can see her profile here.’ He pulled up a profile and some music started to play: ‘Where Have All The Cowboys Gone’. It was a hazy romantic visual of Erica, photos of her sitting on her bed, a little cleavage showing, a little pout, then a picture of her hugging her cat, the camera angled to make her eyes look bigger. The next photo was her holding her hands in a heart shape. Further down the screen was a little bio. Erica was looking for love, or at least some affection.