The Fear: The sensational new thriller from the Sunday Times bestseller that you need to read in 2018

C.L. TAYLOR

The Fear

Copyright

Published by Avon an imprint of

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street,

London, SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2018

Copyright © C.L. Taylor 2018

Cover photographs © Henry Steadman

Cover design © Henry Steadman 2018

C.L. Taylor 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 e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, 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: 9780008118099

Ebook Edition © March 2018 ISBN: 9780008118105

Version 2018-06-29

Praise for C.L. Taylor

‘Fans of C.L. Taylor are in for a treat. The Fear is her best yet.’

Clare Mackintosh

‘Claustrophobic and compelling.’

Karin Slaughter

‘A skewering portrait of obsessive love and psychological manipulation, this book gets under the skin from the outset and won’t let you go until you’ve gasped at THAT ending. With characters so real you feel you ought to text them and a plot that keeps you tearing through the pages, this is Taylor’s best book yet.’

C.J. Cooke

‘A thoroughly enjoyable read, a highly original and timely tale that kept me utterly enthralled and entertained from beginning to end.’

Liz Nugent

‘I loved The Fear! It’s my favourite of C.L. Taylor’s novels now. I couldn’t put it down. Tense, twisty, terrifying – with one of the best premises I’ve read in ages.’

Julie Cohen

‘Many thrillers claim to be compelling: The Fear absolutely is. Breathtakingly bold, shockingly tense, you won’t be able to tear yourself away from this book. It’s dark, emotionally-charged and filled with characters who will make you question everything you think you know about them. The Fear will delight C.L. Taylor’s fans and win her an army of new ones. What a book!’

Miranda Dickinson

‘What an absolutely cracking read! Pacy, well-written,

and anxiety inducing.’

Lisa Hall

‘The Fear is a compulsive read, that forces the reader to consider just how far they would go to protect themselves and those around them. I could not put this book down!’

Emma Kavanagh

‘Dark and disturbing: this is a book I will remember

for a long time.’

Rachel Abbott

‘A terrifying glimpse into a dark subject. This brilliant book stayed with me long after I finished the last page.’

Cass Green

‘It’s a close call as the bar’s set so high but this has to be C.L. Taylor’s best yet. SO entertaining, high on the shock-factor and yet totally ‘real’.’

Caz Frear

‘The Missing has a delicious sense of foreboding from the first page, luring us into the heart of a family with terrible secrets and making us wait, with pounding hearts for the final, agonizing twist. Loved it.’

Fiona Barton

‘Black Narcissus for the Facebook generation, a clever exploration of how petty jealousies and misunderstandings can unravel even the tightest of friendships. Claustrophobic, tense and thrilling, a thrill-ride of a novel that keeps you guessing.’

Elizabeth Haynes

‘A dark and gripping read that engrossed me from start to finish.’

Mel Sherratt

‘Kept me guessing till the end.’

Sun

‘Haunting and heart-stoppingly creepy, The Lie is a

gripping roller coaster of suspense.’

Sunday Express

‘5/5 stars – Spine-chilling!’

Woman Magazine

‘An excellent psychological thriller.’

Heat Magazine

‘Packed with twists and turns, this brilliantly tense thriller

will get your blood pumping.’

Fabulous Magazine

‘Fast-paced, tense and atmospheric, a guaranteed bestseller.’

Mark Edwards

‘A compelling, addictive and wonderfully written tale.

Can’t recommend it enough.’

Louise Douglas

See what bloggers are saying about C.L. Taylor …

‘An intriguing and stirring tale, overflowing with family drama.’

Lovereading.co.uk

‘Astoundingly written, The Missing pulls you in from the very first page and doesn’t let you go until the final full stop.’

Bibliophile Book Club

‘The Lie is an utterly gripping psychological thriller that you won’t forget for a long time. Dark, creepy and wonderfully written.’

Alba in Book Land

‘Tense and gripping with a dark, ominous feeling that seeps through the very clever writing … all praise to C.L. Taylor.’

Anne Cater, Random Things Through My Letterbox

‘C.L. Taylor has done it again, with another compelling masterpiece.’

Rachel’s Random Reads

‘In a crowded landscape of so-called domestic noir thrillers, most of which rely on clever twists and big reveals, [The Missing] stands out for its subtle and thoughtful analysis of the fallout from a loss in the family.’

Crime Fiction Lover

‘When I had finished, I felt like someone had ripped my heart out and wrung it out like a dish cloth.’

By the Letter Book Reviews

‘Be prepared to be consumed by The Escape – you’ll want to read it in one sitting. Just brilliant.’

Bookliterati

‘Incredibly thrilling and utterly unpredictable! A must read!’

Aggie’s Books

‘A gripping story.’

Bibliomaniac

‘The Accident had me gnawing the inside

of my mouth!’

Beady Jan’s Bookshelf

‘Another hit from C.L. Taylor … so cleverly written and so absorbing that I completely forgot about everything else while reading it. Unmissable.’

Alba in Book Land

Dedication

To my friend Scott James

who never backs down from a dare.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise for C.L. Taylor

See What Bloggers Are Saying About C.L. Taylor …

Dedication

Chapter 1: Lou

Chapter 2: Wendy

Chapter 3: Lou

Chapter 4: Lou

Chapter 5: Chloe

Chapter 6: Lou

Chapter 7: Wendy

Chapter 8: Lou

Chapter 9: Chloe

Chapter 10: Wendy

Chapter 11: Lou

Chapter 12: Lou

Chapter 13: Lou

Chapter 14: Chloe

Chapter 15: Lou

Chapter 16: Wendy

Chapter 17: Lou

Chapter 18: Chloe

Chapter 19: Lou

Chapter 20: Lou

Chapter 21: Chloe

Chapter 22: Wendy

Chapter 23: Lou

Chapter 24: Chloe

Chapter 25: Wendy

Chapter 26: Ben

Chapter 27: Lou

Chapter 28: Chloe

Chapter 29: Wendy

Chapter 30: Lou

Chapter 31: Lou

Chapter 32: Lou

Chapter 33: Chloe

Chapter 34: Lou

Chapter 35: Wendy

Chapter 36: Wendy

Chapter 37: Lou

Chapter 38: Chloe

Chapter 39: Lou

Chapter 40: Wendy

Chapter 41: Wendy

Chapter 42: Chloe

Chapter 43: Lou

Chapter 44: Lou

Chapter 45: Ds Anna Hope

Chapter 46: Wendy

Chapter 47: Lou

Chapter 48: Mavis

Acknowledgements

Reading Group Questions

About the Author

By the Same Author

Keep Reading …

About the Publisher

Chapter 1

Lou

Saturday 24th March 2007

I hate surprises. So much so that when Ben rang me at work on Monday and told me to keep the weekend free because he was going to surprise me, I almost ended the call. Instead I pretended to be thrilled.

‘You okay?’ he asks now. ‘You don’t get travel-sick do you?’

If I look pale it’s got nothing to do with the fact that we are rocketing down the A2 in Ben’s battered VW Golf.

‘I’m fine,’ I say. ‘But I wish you’d tell me where we’re going.’

He taps a finger against the side of his nose and smiles. ‘You’ll find out soon enough.’

Ben was never meant to be more than a one-night stand. I figured he’d be straight out of my bed, and my life, the moment our sweat-slicked bodies cooled. But he stuck around. He stayed all night and then insisted on taking me out for breakfast the next day. I said yes, partly because it was less awkward than saying no. Mostly because I was hungry and I didn’t have any food in the house. We ended up staying in the café for over two hours. I learnt that he was a self-employed graphic artist, he’d never been to a gig, and his dad was a massive hypochondriac. He learnt that I was an only child, a project manager for an eLearning company and that my dad had recently died. Ben immediately reached across the table, squeezed my hand and said how sorry he was. When he asked if we’d been close I changed the subject.

I need to go back there at some point, to my childhood home in the rolling green Worcestershire countryside, to clear and clean the farmhouse and put it on the market, but there’s a good reason why I haven’t been back in eighteen years.

‘Not long now,’ Ben says as a sign to Dover/Channel Tunnel/Canterbury/Chatham flashes past us. ‘Any idea where we’re going yet?’

My stomach tightens but I keep my tone light. ‘Canterbury has a nice cathedral. You’re not planning on marrying me, are you? I haven’t packed a dress.’

If Ben knew me well, he’d realise that my voice is half an octave too high and my smile is pulled too tightly over my teeth. He’d ask if I was okay instead of laughing and making a quip about Gretna Green. But Ben and I have only been seeing each other for a month. He barely knows me.

I try to quell my anxiety, first by singing along to Ben’s Artic Monkeys CD, then by talking crap. As the miles speed by we discuss the DVD boxed set we’ve been binge-watching for the last week, the latest celebrity scandal that’s been splashed all over the broadsheets and where we watched the lunar eclipse. Logically I know that I have nothing to fear. I’m thirty-two, not fourteen. And Ben didn’t ask me to pack my passport. But the knot in my stomach remains.

‘Are we nearly there yet?’ I ask, as Ben presses a bottle of water to his lips.

He laughs, spraying the steering wheel with a fine mist. ‘Are you five?’

‘No, just impatient.’

‘I knew I should have blindfolded you. No,’ he nudges me lightly. ‘Gagged you.’

I tense but force a laugh. ‘Please tell me you’re not into all that S&M shit.’

‘Who says it’s shit?’

More laughter. We laugh a lot. We have since we met, in a pub in Soho. I was at a work leaving party and I’d just managed to spill the best part of a glass of red wine down my top. Ben came out of the men’s toilets as I swerved into the ladies’, dropping my purse in my haste. He waited outside so he could give it back to me. He was a nice-looking bloke, friendly and, because I was drunk, I said yes when he asked if he could buy me a drink.

One month since we met. Two months until we split up. If that. Thirty-two years old and I haven’t been in a relationship that’s lasted longer than three months. Sooner or later I’ll fuck things up. I always do.

The sign as we leave the M2 at junction 7 says Canterbury/Dover/Margate/Ramsgate. I can’t imagine he’s taking me to Margate for the weekend, although it could be fun. Canterbury then. It has to be. Maybe I should have packed a white dress.

‘Please tell me where we’re going,’ I plead.

Ben smiles but says nothing. The grin doesn’t leave his face as we exit the roundabout onto the Boughton Bypass and rejoin the A2.

‘No peeking,’ he says as I reach for my phone. ‘If you look on Google Maps you’ll spoil the surprise.’

Which was exactly my plan.

My grip on the hand rest tightens as we speed past the junction to Canterbury and I spot a sign saying ‘Dover 17 miles’. The only reason we could be going there would be to get a ferry to Calais. But Ben didn’t ask me to bring my passport. He must have discovered some kind of idyll nearby, a picturesque fishing village maybe, out of sight of the ferries and the boats.

‘Nearly there,’ he says as we drive through Dover and a grey stretch of sea appears between the buildings. ‘Trust me, you’re going to love it.’

Trust me. You need to trust me, Lou. I will keep you safe, I promise. I love you. You know that don’t you?

‘Ben.’

We’re only a couple of hundred metres from the ferry terminal now, a slab of grey, slapped up against the sea. We speed along the seafront then Ben slows the car as we approach the customs gates.

‘Ben, I—’

‘Don’t stress.’ He slows the car to a halt as we join the queue. ‘I’ve got your passport. Don’t kill me but I swiped it from your desk drawer when you were cooking dinner the other—’

‘I can’t do this.’

‘What?’

I yank on the door pull but the passenger door doesn’t open.

‘Lou?’

I try again. And again. Pull. Release. Pull. Release. The piece of black plastic flaps back and forth but the door doesn’t open. He’s locked me in.

It’s going to be okay, Lou. It’s what we wanted. Just you and me. A new life. A new start in a place where no one will judge us. We can be together, forever.

The window then. If I open it, unclip my seat belt and lean out, I’ll be able to open the door from the outside. I’ll be able to get out.

‘Lou?’

I try and turn the handle on the passenger door but my hand is slick with sweat and it keeps slipping from underneath my fingertips.

‘Are you going to be sick or something? I’ve opened the door. Sorry, it’s central locking and—’

A cold gust of air whips my hair around my face as I leap out of the car. In an instant I am fourteen years old again.

Mike is the love of my life and I am his. He’s taking me to France for a romantic weekend away. This morning I put on my school uniform as usual but, instead of getting the bus all the way to school, I got off a stop early on the corner of Holy Lane. Mike was waiting with his car. He’d told me to bring toiletries, a change of clothes and my passport in my school bag. He said he’d take care of the rest.

Chapter 2

Wendy

Sunday 8th April 2007

‘Monty!’ Wendy Harrison lays down her shovel, dusts the soil from her gardening gloves and stands up. ‘Monty, I’m going in now!’

At the sound of her voice, her piebald springer spaniel comes bounding out of the bushes and pads across the grass towards her, his pink tongue lolling.

‘Hello, Monts.’ Wendy rubs a hand over the top of his head. ‘I think we both deserve a treat, don’t you?’

The dog’s ears twitch at the sound of the word treat and he trots obediently beside his mistress, his eyes never leaving her face, as she makes her way inside the small terraced house on the edge of Great Malvern.

Wendy takes a bite of her custard cream, chews, swallows and then pops the other half in her mouth. When that’s gone she sips at her tea and picks up another biscuit. She was only going to have one. She’d even entered it into her Slimming World diary – custard cream, 3 syns – but somehow half of the packet has vanished.

Sod it, she thinks as she moves her finger over her laptop’s mousepad. I’ll start again tomorrow.

For the last hour she’s been flicking back and forth between the same three websites – Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. It’s the fourth time today that she’s logged on and it’s only 2 p.m. She tries to distract herself – with gardening, her part-time bookkeeping job and walking Monty – but her mind always drifts back to those websites. Has something new been posted? An update, photo or location? The panic builds in her stomach. What if the information is deleted before she reads it? What if she misses something important?

She can’t remember what first prompted her to google Lou Wandsworth. It might have been a passing conversation she’d had with her friend Angela about finding an old school friend on Facebook, an article she read in the paper, or maybe she was having one of those days where she woke up feeling as though a dark cloud had settled in her brain and nothing brought her joy, not even when Monty laid his head on her knee and stared up at her with his searching brown eyes.

It didn’t take Wendy long to track Lou down. She was the only Louise Wandsworth on Facebook. The trouble was, she could only see her name, an image of a cartoon character as her profile picture and a list of her friends. Nothing else. Angela had shown her how to set up her own Facebook page but she couldn’t use that to try and connect with Lou. She made a new page instead, called herself Saskia Kennedy, and added a few photos of a woman that she’d found online who was about the same age as Lou.

Wendy’s heart trembled in her chest when she pressed the ‘add friend’ button. But nothing happened. Her request was ignored. Days went by, then weeks. Wendy did some more googling: How do you get someone to accept a Facebook friend request?

She discovered that it looked suspicious if you didn’t have many friends, or any in common, so she set about adding random people who lived in London and looked about the same age as Louise. Men were easy – the woman in her fake profile picture was attractive – but it took a little longer for women to start accepting her requests. Once she had fifty friends and had filled her wall with silly photos and the same sort of updates as her ‘contemporaries’ she tried adding a few of Lou’s friends. To her surprise they accepted her, at least half a dozen of them. When she tried adding Lou for a second time her friend request was accepted.

She was in.

She felt jubilant as she clicked on Lou’s photo albums. All those months of detective work and she’d finally found what she had been looking for. Not just one photo of her but dozens and dozens. Lou had long brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. A hint of make-up around the eyes but no lipstick. Skinny. But not in an attractive way. Her jacket sloped away from her shoulders and her skirt bagged below her knees. There was a pinched, haggard look to her cheeks, despite her youth – the hollowed face of a long-distance runner or one of the dieters in Slimming World magazine who’ve lost four or five stone in a matter of months.

As Wendy clicked through the photos, a weight settled in her stomach. Lou might not be conventionally attractive but she was surrounded by people in every shot. There were photos of her in dim bars, chinking cocktail glasses with dewy-skinned friends. Shots of her running through the waves on a tropical holiday, not an ounce of fat protruding from beneath her string bikini. Lou on top of a mountain with a cagoule hood pulled tightly around her head with a look of triumph on her face. Lou in fancy dress, one foot cocked behind her like a fifties starlet, kissing a dark-haired man dressed like Clark Gable. She was vivacious, well-liked, well-travelled and content. Everything that Wendy was not.

Wendy didn’t go back on Facebook for a week after that first discovery. She didn’t even open her laptop. Just walking past it made her feel sick.

But then curiosity got the better of her.

‘I’ll just have a quick look,’ she told Monty as she settled down at her dining room table and opened the laptop lid. ‘Then I’ll stop.’

That was seven months ago.

‘Give me a second, Monty,’ Wendy says now as her dog nudges at her knee. ‘We’ll go for a walk in a minute.’

She reaches for a custard cream and pops it into her mouth. Outside, storm clouds are gathering in the sky. If they don’t go out now they’ll be in for one soggy walk. One last refresh of the screen, Wendy tells herself as she clicks the trackpad button, and then I’ll get my coat on.

What she sees on the screen makes her inhale so sharply a tiny bit of biscuit whizzes down her windpipe, making her cough. Lou has just updated her Facebook page.

I got the job in Malvern and I’m moving in a month’s time. London, I’m going to miss you.

Chapter 3