While You Sleep: A chilling, unputdownable psychological thriller that will send shivers up your spine!

‘That’s my Kaye there,’ he said, nodding to the makeshift stage where the band were building to a crescendo. Zoe turned to look. The singer was a buxom woman dressed younger than her age, in drapey black skirts and a black lace top, her long pink hair bright and defiant. She sang with her eyes closed, a fist wrapped around the microphone, one foot in floral Doc Martens pounding the stage to the beats of the bodhran, her voice bluesy and hard-edged, smoke and whisky. Though Zoe could not make out the words, she surmised from the ferocity of the singing that it was some kind of nationalist rebel song, and that the anger soaked through its lyrics was still keenly felt by a good many of the patrons.

The rest of the band were men; all – apart from the young fiddle player – well into middle age, with grey hair pulled back into ponytails, and grizzled beards, leather waistcoats and cowboy boots. There was an accordion, a pennywhistle and a guitar as well as the bodhran and the violin; the music sounded vaguely familiar, the kind she had heard on a loop in Irish bars in Boston and New York, but here it did not feel manufactured for tourists. The musicians played with their eyes closed, as if every note mattered.

The rebel song ended in a burst of cheering and applause, but the band did not even pause to acknowledge it; instead the woman launched into a wild and wrenching lament, accompanied only by the violin and the heavy heartbeat of the drum. The room stilled to a reverent hush as her voice soared to the blackened rafters, transformed now into a fluting, other-worldly alto, holding tremulous notes that made goosebumps prickle along Zoe’s arms and the back of her neck. Though she did not understand the strange language, she could not miss the heart-cry in the music: a grief that seemed centuries old. Looking around, she saw old men with tears running down their faces, mouthing the words to themselves. The woman’s voice faded out and the young fiddle player stepped forward for a solo, his lips pressed tightly together, slender fingers moving nimbly over the strings, brow furrowed behind the long fringe that fell over his face. Zoe sipped her second whisky and experienced a sudden urge to reach forward and brush it out of his eyes, the way she would with Caleb when he was bent over his iPad, absorbed in whatever animation he was making, oblivious to everything. She became aware that Mick was leaning over the bar behind her, a dishcloth pressed between his clasped hands.

‘She has an incredible voice.’ Zoe realised she was expected to comment.

‘She’s something, isn’t she?’ Mick said, not taking his eyes off his wife. That glimpse of tender pride caused Zoe to flinch briefly. She remembered seeing the same expression on Dan’s face, at the first exhibition she had invited him to when they started dating; admiration of her talent and the thrill of being allowed to claim some share in it. She could not remember when he had last looked at her like that.

At the end of the song, the band set down their instruments and announced a break. Around the bar the hum of conversation resumed; glances once more directed openly at her, murmured observations that made no effort to disguise the fact that she was the subject. The woman with the pink hair sprang down and pressed her way across the bar, scattering smiles to left and right. She stopped breathlessly and caught Zoe’s hand between both of hers.

‘Zoe! We’re so glad you’re here. I’m Kaye Drummond. I hope he’s got you a drink? Top her up there, Michael, will you? You’re our guest tonight. Are you hungry?’

Zoe shook her head. If she had been hungry, the whisky had blunted all memory of it. Kaye looked up at her with anxious eyes. Though her figure was voluptuous, her face was delicate, almost elfin, the wide blue eyes rimmed with black kohl, her rosebud mouth painted the same shade of fuchsia as her hair; Zoe guessed her to be in her late thirties. She wore large silver rings on every finger, so that Zoe felt she was being clasped by armoured gauntlets.

‘That was a beautiful song just now,’ she said.

‘Oh, aye, thanks.’ Kaye beamed, her eyes shining. ‘It’s an old one. Everyone round here remembers their granny singing it.’

‘What does it mean?’

‘Och, they’re all awful depressing. It’s about a woman who loses her love to the sea and drowns herself of a broken heart. Most of them are, if they’re not about the Clearances. People have long memories up here. Have you come to paint? I said to Mick, we could have a wee show here in the pub if you wanted. Folk might like to see them. They might even buy one, if they weren’t too …’ she made a knowing face and rubbed her thumb and forefinger together.

‘Oh – that’s kind, but …’ Zoe felt herself growing flustered. ‘I hadn’t thought of selling. I’m a little out of practice. I’m here to find my way back to it, I suppose.’

‘Well, you let us know,’ Kaye said, undeterred. ‘It’s no like we’re experts. They could be total shite, we wouldn’t know any different.’ She broke into peals of laughter and flicked Zoe on the arm with the back of her hand. ‘I’m only messing with you. I’m sure they’re no shite. You’d buy one, wouldn’t you, Ed?’

She nudged the young man next to her, the fiddle player, in the ribs. He turned from the bar and gave Zoe a shy smile from under his fringe. He wore large tortoiseshell glasses that reflected the light, making it hard to see his eyes clearly.

‘Buy what?’

‘One of Zoe’s paintings.’

‘Oh. Well – ah – what are they of?’

‘I haven’t done any yet,’ Zoe said, smiling to ease his embarrassment. ‘Well – not here. But I guess I paint landscapes. Or I used to. Kind of impressionistic. Not very original,’ she added, with an awkward laugh.

He shrugged. ‘Everyone likes a landscape, don’t they? I mean, at least you know what it is. People don’t stand around in galleries arguing about what a landscape means, right?’

Oh, they do, Zoe almost said, but stopped herself; condescension would not be a good look. The boy took off his glasses and rubbed them on the hem of his shirt; his face appeared soft and exposed without them. A pint of dark beer was slopped down on the bar top in front of him. She glanced up and caught the eye of the barmaid, a thickset girl of about eighteen with heavy make-up, a top that was too tight to flatter and dyed black hair scraped into a messy topknot, pulling her small features taut under ruthlessly plucked brows. She looked at Zoe with evident disdain, even when Zoe ventured a smile.

‘Cheers, Annag.’ The boy, Ed, replaced his glasses, took a sip from the top of his pint and fished in his pocket for coins with the other hand. She noticed he did not look at the girl behind the bar. Instead he cocked his head towards Zoe. ‘Can I get you a drink?’

She glanced down at her glass. While her back had been turned, it had magically acquired another two fingers of Scotch. She would have to take it easy; already a gentle numbness had begun spreading up the side of her face, warm and comforting, as her head was growing lighter.

‘I’m good, thanks.’ She hesitated. The barmaid continued to watch her. ‘I’d take one of those, though.’ She nodded towards the open breast pocket of his shirt, where a pack of Marlboro Lights nosed out. As soon as she’d asked, she wondered why she’d done it. She hadn’t smoked for over a decade, not since before she was pregnant with Caleb. She hadn’t even been aware that she’d missed it. She had a sudden memory of the first day of college, self-consciously lighting a cigarette almost as soon as her parents had driven away, because for the first time there was no one who knew her and she was at liberty to try out a new version of herself, one less timid and constrained by expectations. Perhaps this was the same thing, twenty-five years on. Dan would be appalled. She supposed that was precisely why she had asked.

‘Course.’ The boy picked up his pint and patted the cigarettes in his pocket. ‘We’ll have to go out the back.’

As she turned back for her drink, Zoe saw the look of naked hostility on the barmaid’s flat face and realised, too late, that she might unwittingly have stepped on someone’s toes.

‘I don’t really smoke,’ she said, by way of apology, as the boy held open a door at the side of the bar and led her through to a paved courtyard that opened on to a grassy area with picnic tables overlooking a low wall. Beyond this, some way below them, lay the vast black expanse of the sea.

‘Nor do I.’ He flipped open the pack and offered it to her, glancing around as he did so. ‘At least, not where the children might see me.’

She looked at him, surprised. He could not be past his early twenties. People started younger in the country, she supposed. ‘How many kids do you have?’

‘Eleven.’ He left a significant pause, grinning at her expression. ‘Youngest four, oldest nearly twelve. I’m the schoolteacher here.’

‘Oh.’ Zoe laughed, to show that she had fallen for the joke. She regarded him with a new curiosity. ‘Just you?’

‘Just me. There’s only one class. The older kids take the ferry to the mainland and board during the week.’

‘Wow. How long have you been here?’

‘Since Christmas. The previous teacher had to retire on health grounds, they needed someone quickly. I was lucky. It’s my first job out of college.’ He gave a diffident smile and struck a match, cupping his hands around the flame as he brought it to the tip of her cigarette. He leaned in close enough for her to see the fine dusting of freckles over the bridge of his nose. Behind his glasses, his lashes were so long they brushed the lenses, and dark, darker than his hair. He sensed her looking and raised his eyes; a gust of wind snuffed out the flame before it could make contact.

‘What made you choose somewhere so remote?’ she asked quietly, as he threw down the burnt match and struck another.

‘I could ask you the same thing,’ he said. He laughed as he said it, but she glimpsed a flash of wariness in his eyes. The match guttered out and he dropped it with a soft curse.

‘Running away,’ said a firm voice behind them. Zoe jumped, as if caught in a forbidden act; she whipped around to see a man seated on a bench by the door, against the wall of the pub, almost hidden by shadows. He spoke through a pipe clamped comfortably between his teeth. A black Labrador lay at his feet, half under the bench, so dark its hindquarters seemed to disappear. ‘Everyone who comes here is trying to escape from something,’ he repeated, amusement lighting his eyes. ‘And those who were born here dream of running away.’ He rubbed his neat white beard and smiled, as if they were all included in a private joke. ‘Here, Edward –’ he held out a silver Zippo – ‘you’ll be there all night with this wind.’

The boy stepped forward to take the lighter. ‘What are you running from then, Professor?’

The older man considered. ‘History,’ he said, after a pause. His gaze rested on Zoe. ‘And you must be the artist from America. We’ve been looking forward to meeting you.’ He did not speak with the local accent, but in the rich, sonorous voice of an English stage actor. A reassuring voice, Zoe thought.

She inclined her head. ‘Zoe Adams.’

‘Charles Joseph.’ He held out a hand, though he didn’t get up, obliging her to cross to him so that he could shake hers with a brisk grip. Even in the half-light she could see that his face was tanned and weathered, his eyes a sharp ice-blue. He could have been anywhere between fifty and eighty. ‘And this is Horace. Named for the poet. He has a decidedly satirical glint.’ The dog raised its eyebrows and thumped its tail once in acknowledgement.

‘Are you a professor of history, then?’ she asked, to turn the conversation away from herself.

He laughed. ‘I’m afraid this young man is flattering me. Or mocking me, I’m never sure which. I have been a university teacher in my time, it’s true, though I never held tenure. Never stayed anywhere long enough.’

‘Everyone calls him the Professor, though,’ Edward said, cracking the Zippo into life. Zoe held her cigarette to the flame, inhaled and coughed violently as her head spun. ‘He’s our local historian. Anything you want to know about the island, he’s your man.’

‘Well. I can’t promise that, but I can usually find a book to help.’ Charles Joseph puffed on his pipe and folded his arms across his chest. ‘I own the second-hand bookshop on the High Street. Do drop by sometime. I make excellent coffee and it gets quiet out of season. I’m always glad of a visitor.’ Pale creases fanned out from the corners of his eyes, Zoe noticed, as if he smiled so often the sun had not had a chance to reach them.

‘He’s being modest,’ Edward said, breathing out a plume of violet smoke. ‘He’s the one who wrote most of the books. Get him to tell you the island’s stories. He can talk the hind legs off a donkey, mind.’ He grinned at Charles. Zoe sensed an unspoken affinity between these two men, despite their difference in age. Perhaps it was a matter of education; in a community like this, those who read books tended to huddle together against the corrosion of a small-town mindset. That was how it had been where she grew up, anyway.

‘My price is a cinnamon bun from Maggie’s,’ Charles said, lifting the pipe out of his mouth. ‘That’s the bakery three doors down from my shop. Bring me one of those and I’ll tell you all the tales you have time for.’

Zoe thought of Mick’s hesitant warning in the car, about the locals and their legends, embellished to frighten incomers. She took another drag, the second easier than the first, and felt the nicotine buzz through her blood.

‘How do you know so much about the place?’ she asked.

‘I lived here for a while, many years ago.’ Charles paused to relight his pipe. After considerable effort and fierce puffing, he looked up at her through a cloud of smoke. ‘After I retired, I drifted back. I think I always knew I would, deep down.’ He made it sound fatalistic, the way Mick had.

‘You missed it?’

‘It called me back. Simple as that. I took a look around and it occurred to me that people here could do with a bookshop.’ He drew on his pipe again with a rueful smile. ‘Not many of them agreed, if my accounts are anything to go by.’

‘Rubbish,’ Edward said. ‘People love the bookshop. Your profit margins would be a lot better if you weren’t always giving books away for nothing.’

‘Well, that’s the trouble, you see.’ Charles leaned forward, pointing the stem of his pipe at Zoe as if he were imparting a confidence. ‘Whenever someone comes in, I think, a-ha, I know just the thing he or she should read. But people have very fixed ideas about what they think they like – have you noticed? Sometimes I have to fairly insist they take it, and then I can hardly charge them. But I’m almost never wrong – Edward will tell you. Besides,’ he sucked on the pipe and sighed out a fragrant haze, ‘I hate to see books sitting alone and unloved on a shelf. I’d much rather they found a home.’

‘Not the smartest way to run a business,’ Edward said, with affection. Charles inclined his head.

‘True. But only an idiot would open a second-hand bookshop to get rich.’

‘Did you live here as a child?’ Zoe asked.

Charles looked at her, his white eyebrows gently puckered, as if the question required careful deliberation.

‘There you are!’ The door banged against the wall and Kaye stood on the step, a pint glass of water in one hand, jabbing a finger towards Zoe in mock-admonishment. ‘Thought we’d lost you.’

Zoe saw her take in the cigarette and felt immediately guilty, as if she were still her adolescent self and had exposed herself to the censure of the neighbours. Kaye’s look changed when her gaze fell on Charles, stretched comfortably over his bench, Horace’s chin resting on his boots.

‘Has he been filling your head with nonsense?’ She nodded towards him. She was trying to keep her voice light, but Zoe did not miss the underlying sharpness, the anxiety in Kaye’s eyes.

‘None that wasn’t there before,’ Zoe said with a smile.

‘He’s a great one for the stories, is our Professor,’ Kaye said, fixing him with a stern eye. ‘Keeps us all entertained round the fire when the nights draw in. Ed – Bernie wants to go in five. Give us a drag of that.’ She took Edward’s half-smoked cigarette from his hand without waiting for an invitation, throwing a guilty glance towards the upper windows of the building behind them. ‘If my girls are looking out, I’m in trouble.’

She hauled in another lungful and leaned down to stub out the butt in a pot of sand by the door. Edward dug his hands into his jeans pockets and dipped his head towards Zoe. ‘Nice to meet you. Hopefully we’ll see you up here again, if you’re around for a while.’ The diffident angle of his glance, the not-quite-meeting of her eye, the studied nonchalance of his tone, all caught Zoe off guard; was he flirting with her?

‘Sure,’ she said, aiming to sound neutral. The idea seemed so unlikely that almost as soon as it had occurred she felt embarrassed by it, in case he had guessed at her presumption. He nodded, gave Charles a brief wave and disappeared back inside the pub. Kaye beamed widely and looked at the door, as if she could will her guest back inside with the force of her smile. Zoe was too foggy with tiredness to offer any resistance. She looked at the cigarette burning slowly down between her fingers as if she couldn’t remember how it had come to be there. She ground it out in the sand and turned back at the door to Charles.

‘I’ll look out for your shop, Mr Joseph.’ She did not quite have the nerve to call him ‘Professor’.

‘Please do,’ he said, reaching down to tousle the dog between its ears. ‘Horace and I are there every day, putting the world to rights with whoever drops by. We’d be delighted to see you. I promise I’ll find you an interesting read.’

A brief twitch of alarm passed across Kaye’s face. ‘Mind you behave yourself,’ she said, pointing at him. ‘Mrs Adams is our guest.’ Once more, the jokey tone, with the undercurrent of warning. It was curious, Zoe thought; Kaye obviously liked the Professor, but she seemed keen to keep him away from her, without ever quite making it explicit. Did she fear he might tell her some local legend that would spook her so much she’d run away tomorrow and shout it all over TripAdvisor? She almost laughed, that they could think her so skittish. They had no idea; no story could be worse than the one she carried with her. Besides, she had already paid half the rent up front.

‘I like history,’ she said to Charles. ‘And poetry.’ Her tongue felt thick and woolly in her mouth as she spoke. She looked down at the glass in her hand and realised it was empty; she did not remember drinking it. She felt Kaye’s solid presence at her back, ushering her firmly but gently indoors.

After the night air of the courtyard, the heat of the log fire and the press of bodies crowded in on her. The whisky churned in her empty stomach and the nicotine pulsed in her temples, dizzying her and blurring her vision. She leaned against the wall, briefly closing her eyes. Her skull seemed to squeeze tighter and she took a deep breath to quell the nausea. Though she had no interest in making friends here, she did not want to be known forever as the woman who threw up in the bar within an hour of arriving.

‘You all right?’ Kaye laid her metalled fingers lightly on Zoe’s shoulder.

Zoe nodded. ‘The bathroom?’

‘Past the bar, on the right.’ Kaye patted her, as you might a small child.

The bathroom was even more stifling, airless with the heat of hand-driers in a confined space. Zoe took off her flying jacket and tucked it between her knees, splashed cold water over her face and dried it with the sleeve of her shirt. She rested her forehead against the cool of the mirror and watched as her breath fogged a circle on the glass. Her reflection stared back at her with frayed outlines. Her skin looked blanched, the shadows beneath her eyes so deep they appeared bruised. She had taken her make-up off before the flight and been too tired to bother applying any more. Straight off the red-eye, Bradley to Dublin, connecting flight to Glasgow and on to a five-hour train journey to the ferry, to bring her here. When she had planned it, back home, it had seemed a good idea: get all the travelling done at once, no layovers, no breaks for sightseeing. She was not here for tourist attractions. All she wanted was to get to the sprawling old house by that deserted shore that had called to her over the Internet, and wrap its solitude around her. She had no sense of time any more; she struggled to remember when she had last eaten, or showered.

Rubbing away the condensation of her breath with a sleeve, she met her reflection’s eye with as steady a gaze as she could manage. They both seemed disappointed with each other. Turning forty-three, and looking every last day of it. Did she seriously imagine that earnest, handsome boy would have been flirting with her? But it was more than jet lag, she thought, peering closely at her own face in the mirror; all the turbulence of the past year was written into her skin, a bone-deep exhaustion she could not shake off. Perhaps here she would finally be able to sleep.

She fished in her pocket and found a Chanel lipstick, one she had thrown in at the last minute, just in case. In case of what? What occasions to dress up had she imagined would present themselves on a small island off the west coast of Scotland, in winter? She barely wore lipstick even at home. Perhaps it was a defensive measure, a reaction against all the military-coloured hiking gear and shapeless sweaters she had packed. One last vestige of femininity. She opened her lips and slicked it around them, blotting the colour on a sheet of toilet paper. Not too garish; a discreet reddish-brown that she used to think suited her but now seemed to drain all the colour from the rest of her face. She wondered how soon she could reasonably ask to leave.

The door opened; Zoe glanced up and saw that another face was staring at her, unsmiling, in the mirror. The young barmaid, Annag, reached up and adjusted the pineapple of hair balanced on her crown, her eyes critically appraising Zoe all the while.

‘You’re the one who’s taken the McBride house.’ The girl’s accent was broad, rough-edged. ‘Brave,’ she added, cocking one thinly pencilled brow with an air of challenge.

‘It’s Mick and Kaye’s house, I thought,’ Zoe said mildly. ‘Aren’t they Drummonds?’ She did not ask why she should be considered brave, precisely because she could see that the girl was dying to tell her.

‘It’ll always be the McBride house round here,’ Annag said, with a meaningful look. She had an oddly flat face, Zoe thought, and wide, with all the features cramped together in the middle, like a puppet of the moon she had once seen in a kids’ show. Too pale for that unnatural shade of black dye, she added, in her head. This girl’s attitude seemed to provoke a mean streak in her, as if they were both in high school.

‘I’m afraid I can’t pronounce its real name,’ she said, forcing a smile.

Annag muttered a word deep in her throat that Zoe assumed was Gaelic, but sounded nothing like the way it looked on paper. ‘It means “resting place”,’ she said.

‘Oh. That’s nice.’

‘You think?’

Zoe looked up and saw that the girl was smirking openly. A strange chill ran through her as she understood. Clearly, the person who named the house had not stopped to consider its double meaning. Or perhaps they had.

‘Give us a lend of your lippy.’ A pudgy hand stretched out towards her, open; bitten fingernails painted flaking green. Zoe hesitated. Was this a normal thing to ask a stranger? She had grown up without sisters, without a close group of girlfriends; as a result she was possessive about her belongings and a little fastidious, bewildered by the kind of women who presumed all feminine items should be held in common. But she couldn’t think of a good reason to refuse without implying that she considered the girl unhygienic. Reluctantly, she passed the lipstick over. Annag stretched her mouth wide, drew on a red circle, smacked her lips together and pouted, apparently pleased with the result.