Cross Her Heart: The gripping new psychological thriller from the #1 Sunday Times bestselling author

4

LISA

It’s gone way better than I expected, and two hours after our meeting starts, the deal is done. I’m still trembling, but this time it’s with pride, exhilaration, and general relief at not messing it up. I walk tall as I lead Simon through to Penny’s office, and all heads turn towards us, even Marilyn’s. It’s not only that I’ve obviously negotiated the contract and it’s a big one, it’s also that Simon Manning is not a man you can ignore. He’s not handsome in a smooth estate agent way like Toby, all hair product and overpowering aftershave, but he exudes something attractive. Handsome probably isn’t the right word. His nose is slightly misshapen as if it’s been broken a few times and he’s got the thickened out body of someone who used to play rugby but maybe doesn’t so much any more. Still physically fit, but with less intent. There’s grey hair at his temples, and he has a confidence about him which is alluring and friendly. But then he should be confident, I think, as I shake his hand and say goodbye for now, trying not to enjoy the feel of his strong grip, and leave him with Penny. He’s about to open his fifth hotel and health club. He can’t be much more than forty and he’s well on the way to building an empire.

I close Penny’s office door behind him, leaving them to it. I can feel the heat in my skin and I know I’m glowing. I can’t believe how well it went. He needs cleaning staff, catering staff and hotel staff and he’s happy to let PKR – me – manage it all. If I’d known after my first approach how many people he was interested in taking on, I’d have gone straight to Penny to handle it; it’s her company and this is a big deal, maybe one of the biggest contracts the company has ever had. I’m so glad I’d been oblivious. I’d been nervous enough thinking he was going to want maybe thirty workers, I’d have had a breakdown knowing the real figures. But it’s done. And brilliantly. I can’t keep the smile from my face as I emerge into their office chatter.

‘Oh, I always try to walk to work and back wherever I am,’ Julia, the new one with the brunette bob, is saying. ‘Keeps me toned.’

‘Go well?’ Toby asks, looking up at me, the girls’ conversation no longer interesting. I can see a glint of envy in his eyes. He’s so desperate to get on and succeed. He likes the slick IT clients, the ones who want graphic designers or web developers on one-year contracts for fifty or sixty thousand pounds, and yes, they probably do give him bigger chunks of commission when he places someone, but those jobs don’t come along every month. I’ve always liked the other end of the market. Helping people who really want a job, whatever it is. Those who need the sense of self-worth a weekly pay cheque brings in. I know how they feel. I felt it once.

‘Better than well, in fact. Turns out it’s going to be a pretty big contract. At least one hundred and fifty people.’ I sound like I’m bragging – and I am, but I can’t help it. Pride and falls spring to mind but I let myself have this small moment.

‘Wow, well done!’ It’s one of the new girls. Stacey. Long blonde hair, acrylic nails. Her words could sound patronising but they don’t. Under her veneer of make-up and tan, I can see she’s nervous and desperately wants to be liked, to fit in, and get on with her job.

‘Thank you.’

‘Definitely drinks on you tonight.’ Julia again.

‘I won’t be there, I’m afraid. I’m not much of a drinker and it’s my daughter’s sixteenth birthday. I’m taking her out.’

‘That’s nice,’ she says. ‘Normally at sixteen they only want to be with their friends, don’t they? I certainly did.’

There’s something sharp in the way she talks and I smart. She’s a little cocky for someone on her first day.

I look more closely at her. She’s not as young as I thought she was, however much she’s trying to appear otherwise. She’s over thirty definitely. Botox probably.

‘We’re very close.’

She smiles, sugar cubes dipped in cyanide, and shows perfect white teeth that are reminiscent of a shark. She makes me nervous and it annoys me.

‘I’ll never have kids,’ she says. ‘I’m too career-focused. Couldn’t do it as a single mum, either. Hats off to you.’

It’s an insult wrapped in a compliment and Stacey’s eyes widen at Julia’s nerve, and Toby – obviously the one who’s been talking about me – has the good sense to keep his gaze on his screen as if reading some hugely important email.

‘Thankfully, Lisa is a superwoman who can manage everything and more. If only the rest of us were so capable.’ Marilyn has appeared alongside me. Shark smile meets shark smile and this time Julia shrinks slightly in her seat. ‘Lunch?’ Marilyn finishes. The last is addressed to me as if the others aren’t there; flies she’s already swatted away.

‘There’s always one,’ she mutters as we get our handbags and jackets. ‘In any gaggle of women. There’s always one you have to watch. At least we know which it is in this bunch.’ She casts a dark glance back at Julia. Why does there always have to be one? I wonder. Why can’t things just be nice?

‘He’s gorgeous, too.’ Marilyn has our drinks, two glasses of Prosecco, and I’m clutching the cutlery as we grab a corner table. ‘In a rugged kind of way. And it’s so obvious he likes you. All those unnecessary meetings. The way he watched you walk when he followed you through the office.’

‘Oh shut up,’ I say.

‘I don’t see why you don’t go for it.’

‘Oh, can you imagine Penny’s reaction? Mixing business and pleasure. And anyway – no.’

She watches me, thoughtful. My lack of a man comes up at least once a year in a serious way, and she peppers our conversations with it throughout the other months. I wonder if this is going to be another probing lecture. Thankfully, it’s not. Instead, she holds her glass up. ‘Cheers and congratulations!’

We clink and sip our bubbles. I like the way it fizzes in my mouth. I prefer to drink at lunchtimes because it’s only ever one glass.

‘Oh, before I forget’ – she leans over and rummages in her oversized handbag – ‘I’ve got something for Ava.’ She pulls out a small wrapped gift. ‘From me and Richard. God, I can’t believe she’s sixteen. Where have the years gone? If she’s sixteen, how old are we?’

‘Old,’ I say, but I’m smiling as I drink some more.

I take the present and tuck it in my own bag. It’s not only me who’s lucky to have Marilyn. Ava is too.

I skipped breakfast because I was so nervous and although I’ve barely had half a glass, the wine is going to my head. The tension in my shoulders begins to unknot. Then I see Marilyn’s face and I know what’s coming. I was too quick to think she wasn’t going to pry today.

‘Nothing from Ava’s dad?’

‘No.’ I bristle, though she’s asking cautiously. Quietly. She knows how this goes. Another conversation that rolls around too often for my liking. ‘And I’m not expecting anything either.’ I need to change the subject. ‘Anyway, how are you? You seemed a bit quiet yesterday. A bit off. All okay?’

‘I had a headache. It was nothing. You know I get them sometimes.’ She looks over at the waitress heading towards us with our food. Is she avoiding my gaze? It’s not the first time she’s had a headache in the past few months.

‘Maybe you should go to a doctor.’

‘And maybe you should go on a date with Mr Manning.’

I scowl at her.

‘Okay, okay. I’m sorry. But Ava’s nearly grown up. You need to get back out there.’

‘Can’t we forget this and concentrate instead on how brilliant I am?’ I try to lighten the mood, and am relieved when the barmaid arrives with our sandwiches and chips, distracting us with food. How could I ever tell Marilyn anything? She knows it wasn’t a one-night stand like the lie I told Ava, but she doesn’t know the truth of it. The whole truth of it. She wouldn’t understand. Marilyn of the charmed life, the great husband, the nice house, the good job – happy, lovely Marilyn. If I told her, it would change how she saw me. Don’t get me wrong. I wish I could tell her. I’ve dreamed about telling her. Sometimes I find the words sitting right in my mouth, wanting to spill out, but I have to swallow them down like bile. I can’t do it. I can’t.

I know how words spread. They catch fire and pass from one person to another to another.

I can’t risk being found.

5

AVA

The rain has almost stopped by the time we get home, but my coat is damp from getting caught in a downpour running to the car earlier and I stamp my feet quietly on the pavement feigning more cold than I feel to hide my impatience.

‘We can watch a film if you like,’ Mum says when she finally gets out. ‘It’s still early.’

‘I’ve got to revise.’ It’s only seven and I’m not planning on going to sleep until at least midnight, but I want to get to the privacy of my bedroom. She looks disappointed, but she’s the one who’s always going on about my exams. It doesn’t stop the squirm of guilt in my guts. We used to always have sofa blanket and movie nights sharing bowls of microwave popcorn. I used to love them. I do love them. But life is more complicated now. He’s waiting. I have to talk to him. Sometimes I feel like I’ll die if I don’t.

‘Oh flip,’ Mum says suddenly, with a groan. ‘I forgot to pick up Mrs Goldman’s shopping. I’ll have to pop down to the little Sainsbury’s. Will you be okay on your own? I’ll only be ten minutes? Or you can come with me.’

My irritation rises and I prefer it to the sad guilt of forcing cracks into our relationship. Every time she goes out and leaves me she asks this. Every time. What does she think is going to happen? I’ll stick my finger in a plug socket because she’s not here? ‘I’m sixteen,’ I snap. ‘You’ve got to stop going on at me like I’m a kid.’

‘Sorry, sorry.’ She’s in too much of a rush to get offended and that suits me. I don’t really want to upset her. I don’t actually like upsetting her but she’s becoming so needy now she can’t control everything I do like when I was little. Our pizza hadn’t been too terrible and I know she’d been trying to make it a fun time, but all her questions are so cloying and clingy and intrusive. She wants to know everything about me all the time and somehow now I can’t tell her. I don’t want to tell her. Whenever I think about talking to her about something – like Courtney and the sex thing – it all gets tied up on my tongue and I get moody instead. Everything is changing. I need my own space. Now more than ever.

But still, she gave me great birthday presents. An iPad mini and an underwater MP3 player, way more expensive than the one I wanted. I love the necklace Marilyn’s given me too – thick silver coil with a dark purple glass centrepiece. It’s chunky and cool and perfect for me. Sometimes I wish Mum was a bit more like Marilyn. She’s relaxed and fun. If Mum was more easygoing maybe I would talk to her about stuff. Not everything, I think, as I try not to rush up the path to the house. But some stuff. I couldn’t talk to her about this. She’d go crazy.

‘Up for a chat tonight, Birthday Girl? I’ll be around for an hour or so if you’re not out having fun!’ The Facebook message had come in when I’d checked my phone in the loo before the puddings arrived. I said I’d get home as soon as I could and to please wait. I hadn’t realised how needy I sounded when I sent it, but it does sound a bit lamely desperate and that makes me worry I’m turning into my mum. But God, why can’t people just install Messenger on their phones? Like everyone’s data isn’t already out there in one way or another? Anyone under twenty-five has made their peace with it. It’s only adults who think anyone cares. What’s the point of having a message service you only use from your computer?

A different kind of privacy.

The thought worms into my head. It’s the kind of privacy you need when keeping secrets from those closest to you. A wife maybe? Whatever his reasons it’s the kind of privacy that has made me turn off notifications.

We all have secrets.

I’m beginning to realise maybe secrets are great.

I’m trying not to be disappointed when I come downstairs for a drink twenty minutes later. Our chat was brief and all his replies were short. Distracted and not really answering my questions. I don’t want to be upset – at least we had some time – but I guess I’m mainly frustrated. Courtney is all over my WhatsApp now. But I know what he wants. Funny how he’s pissing me off with it a bit. A few weeks ago I’d have been so happy to have him chasing me and making me feel pretty and sexy. Now, he’s simply another irritation.

I’m quiet on the stairs in my socks and when I turn the corner to head to the kitchen, I stop. Mum’s there. She’s standing by the kitchen table, staring at nothing, and there’s a stiffness to her that’s all wrong. The whole thing looks weird and I’m not sure why, but my heart is racing and my stomach churns. After a moment she reaches into her bag for the small bottle of Prosecco Marilyn gave her, twists the lid off and drinks it straight from the bottle.

I freeze where I am, confused and alarmed. Is this my fault? Is this because I’ve been so shitty? I hover in the hallway, unsure of what to do. Do I ask her what’s wrong? I feel small again. I go to take a step forward, but then hesitate. There’s something about the way she’s standing – the stillness – which makes me feel as if I’m watching something private. Something where I don’t belong. Are the cracks in our relationship coming from her side too? Does she have secrets she’s not sharing? I find it hard to believe. She’s an open book, my mum.

It’s unsettling though. Those little bottles only hold one glass or so, but who doesn’t pour wine before drinking? What would make you drain it in basically one swallow? In the end, my stomach in knots, I creep back upstairs. I can live without a cup of tea.

6

LISA

It’s pitch-dark outside, no hint of a comforting grainy dawn grey yet, but I sit, wide awake, with my knees up under my chin and stare out at the bleak night, my stomach in terrible knots. It wasn’t Peter Rabbit. I know that. Peter Rabbit is long gone. It would be impossible for it to have been Peter Rabbit, the Peter Rabbit, but I want to run down to the recycle bins at the end of the road and root it out again to be sure. I take a deep breath. It’s not Peter Rabbit. It’s just a coincidence.

When I’d seen the soft toy out there in the rain, slumped dejected against Mrs Goldman’s gate, my heart had almost stopped. It was grubby and sodden, dropped maybe hours before, but the bright blue trousers stood out against the greying white fur. It wasn’t the same bunny, that was clear when I’d picked it up with trembling hands and a scream trapped in my throat, but it was close. So close. I wanted to hold it against my chest and wail, but the front door opened and Mrs Goldman appeared and instead I forced an air of idle curiosity as I asked if she knew whose it was. She didn’t, of course. Why would she? Her hearing isn’t great and her days are spent staring at the TV, not out of the window.

I gave her the bag of shopping and tried to smile and chat but the bunny was heavy and wet in my hand and the soft fur was cold, and all I could think was how the blue dungar-ees were exactly the same shade and style as those dungarees and those dungarees had been hand-made, and my head started to swim and I felt sick. Once Mrs Goldman had finally gone back inside, I forced a confident walk down the path and then, out of sight of both her house and mine, I finally held the toy close as if it were a dead animal my body heat could somehow bring back to life.

I took several deep breaths, years of therapy having drummed the technique into me as if steady oxygen could make anything better when most of the time I wished I didn’t have to breathe any more at all, and walked swiftly to the big bank of recycling bins at the end of the road and threw it inside. I could still feel the ghost of damp fur against my fingertips though, and I wasn’t sure my legs would carry me home without crumpling.

In the kitchen, for once grateful my daughter was finally becoming the kind of surly teenager who hides in her room, I grabbed the small bottle of Prosecco Marilyn had given me from my handbag and twisted the lid off, drinking it straight from the bottle in two goes. The acid bubbles made my chest burn and my eyes sting but I didn’t care. Anything was better than the awful pain and fear at the core of me, in the place I try hard to pretend is at best empty now, until something like this happens and the scab is ripped away and all the terrible terrible hurt crammed inside is exposed once more and I want to curl up and die.

I gasped and choked as I swallowed the last of the wine, leaning on the breakfast bar and using the physical discomfort as a distraction to calm my thinking. Slowly the buzzing in my ears faded. It was a coincidence, it had to be. Lots of children have toy bunnies. Some poor toddler was probably crying for the one I’d so ruthlessly tossed away at the end of the street. So what if it was wearing blue dungarees? There were probably thousands of soft toys in dungarees. It wasn’t Peter Rabbit.

I repeated that one sentence over and over in my head, glad I’d thrown the bunny away in the communal bins rather than the ones in our garden, too far to keep running to look at it without drawing attention to myself. It wasn’t Peter Rabbit. Yes, it had upset me, but it hadn’t been put there on purpose. It was harder to reconcile myself with the second sentence. It isn’t a statement of fact. It’s highly unlikely it’s been put there on purpose, but I can’t for definite know it in the way my sensible brain knows the toy I found wasn’t Peter Rabbit.

It’s this unease I’ve felt recently. The sense something isn’t quite right. What if it’s more than my usual paranoia? What if I’m wrong to steer away from it? I get up and creep down the corridor to Ava’s room. The lights are all off and the house is silent and I twist the handle as carefully and slowly as I can, not wanting to make any noise.

I watch her from the doorway, my perfect girl. She’s on her side, facing away from me, curled up small, exactly how she slept as a toddler. She is so precious. So wonderful, and looking at her calms me and reminds me that I have to stay alive, I have to keep breathing. For her. She gave me back my desire to live, and I will always protect her. She will never know what I keep inside. Not if I can help it. I want her to be blissfully free. It must be a wonderful thing to be blissfully free.

I stay for a few minutes more, the sight of Ava far better for me than any amount of deep yoga breathing, and then reluctantly leave her to sleep in private. It’s nearly three a.m. Taking sleeping pills now is a bad idea, but so is facing the day with no rest at all, and so I compromise and only swallow one instead of the usual two I need when these fearful, sad moods have me gripped tight. I’ll feel terrible all morning tomorrow but at the moment two or three hours of oblivion is what I need. I can’t keep going round in circles of fear and grief. I’ll go mad by dawn if I do, I’m sure of it. The bad feeling is only my anxiety. The bunny wasn’t Peter Rabbit. The words bang at my skull, trying to knock sense into me as I crawl back under my covers.

I want oblivion, but instead I dream. It’s the dream, in glorious, vivid technicolour, and while I’m there, it’s wonderful.

In the dream, I’m holding Daniel’s hand. It’s soft and small and warm and his fingers grip tight in the way toddlers do as he looks up at me and smiles. My heart bursts in rainbow showers of joy and I bend over to kiss him. His chubby cheeks are all smooth, creamy skin, tinged pink from the outside air, and he giggles in surprise as my lips smack loudly against his face, but his eyes are lit up by love. His eyes are like mine, blue flecked with grey and green and in them I can see how I am his everything.

Peter Rabbit is in his other hand, and he holds him maybe even more tightly than he holds on to me. He cannot imagine me not being there, but he’s had some near misses with Peter Rabbit. Once left on a bus but remembered in the nick of time. Another time, on a counter in the corner shop. Daniel has the fear that Peter Rabbit might one day not be there and the thought alone is enough to make him cry. He’s two and a half years old and Peter Rabbit is his best friend.

I feel something tapping against my subconscious, a dark truth which won’t be ignored, not even in a dream – It is not Peter Rabbit who will one day not be there. This little hand in mine will be cold and still and will never reach for me again – but I push it away and take Daniel to the small park with the tatty swings and roundabouts where the paint is so chipped the rust from the metal below stains clothes on a damp day, but he squeals with joy at the sight of it. He’s two and a half and he doesn’t see rust and decay and something unloved. He only sees the good things. He is the good thing.

His hand is out of mine and he and Peter Rabbit run to the swings. I run after him, staying slightly behind because I love watching the way Daniel’s small body moves, so cute and clumsy, bound up in the constraints of his coat. He looks over his shoulder at me and I want to hold this picture of sweetness forever to remember when he is grown into a boy and then a man and this everything I am is gone.

It is a perfect dream. An afternoon in the park. The love is overwhelming. It’s pure. It’s so strong it almost suffocates me, bubbling out through my pores there’s so much of it. It’s unrestrained. No barriers are up around it. There is nothing wicked in the world in that moment and I think, if I let the love take me, I shall transform into a pure beam of light shining on Daniel.

I wake up, gasping painful breaths into my pillow and clutching at fragments of fading images, hoping in vain to grasp one and follow it back and hold his small hand forever. It’s always the same after the dream. It hurts so much I want to die, the aching need to go back and save him. I try to think of Ava, my perfect girl, the child who came after, oblivious, free and wonderful and untarnished by the world. She is here and alive and I love her with all of what’s left of my heart.

Perhaps my love for Ava makes it all worse, if it’s at all possible. I think of the bunny rabbit in the bin. It is not Peter Rabbit. I know that. I know where Peter Rabbit is.

Peter Rabbit was buried with Daniel.