PRAISE FOR CLAIRE MCGOWAN

‘A knockout new talent you should read immediately.’

—Lee Child

‘It really had me gripped.’

—Marian Keyes, international bestselling author of Grown Ups

‘The definition of an utterly absorbing page turner. Richly drawn out characters, a compelling plot, and a finale that will keep you guessing.’

—John Marrs, bestselling author of What Lies Between Us and The One

‘A real nail-biter of a thriller that gets darker and more twisted with every page. If you liked What You Did, you’ll love The Push.’

—Erin Kelly, Sunday Times bestselling author of He Said/She Said

‘Absorbing, timely, and beautifully written, What You Did is a superior psychological thriller from a major talent.’

—Mark Edwards, bestselling author of The Retreat and Here to Stay

‘I loved this story. The flesh-and-blood characters, dry wit, and brilliant plotting are every bit as enjoyable as Big Little Lies.’

—Louise Candlish, bestselling author of Our House and The Other Passenger

‘A perfectly plotted murder mystery that had me hooked from the first page. Twisty domestic suspense that’s perfect for fans of Big Little Lies.’

—Lisa Gray, bestselling author of the Jessica Shaw series

‘I haven’t flown through a book so quickly in a very long time. It delivers on every single level.’

—Caz Frear, bestselling author of the DC Cat Kinsella series

‘What a nail-biting, just-one-more-page-I-can’t-put-it-down rollercoaster of suspense!’

—Steph Broadribb, author of Deep Down Dead

‘Smart, sassy, and satisfyingly twisty.’

—Sarah Hilary, author of the DI Marnie Rome series

‘Huge fun with some very dark moments and brilliantly awful characters. Excellent, twisty plotting.’

—Harriet Tyce, author of Blood Orange

‘A brilliantly observed and compelling thriller.’

—Anna Mazzola, author of The Story Keeper

‘A rollercoaster read, full of thrills and one spectacular spill!’

—Liz Nugent, bestselling author of Skin Deep

‘What You Did is a triumph, a gripping story of the secrets and lies that can underpin even the closest friendships. Put some time aside – this is one you’ll want to read in a single sitting.’

—Kevin Wignall, bestselling author of A Death in Sweden and The Traitor’s Story

‘Hitting the rare sweet spot between a satisfying read and a real page-turner, this brilliantly written book deserves to fly high.’

—Cass Green, bestselling author of In a Cottage In a Wood

‘I absolutely devoured What You Did. Claire McGowan has created the ultimate moral dilemma in this timely and gripping psychological thriller. I can’t recommend it highly enough.’

—Jenny Blackhurst, bestselling author of Before I Let You In

‘McGowan writes utterly convincingly in three very different voices and she knows how to tell a cracking story. She will go far.’

—Daily Mail

‘One of the very best novels I’ve read in a long while . . . astonishing, powerful and immensely satisfying.’

—Peter James

‘Funny and perfectly paced . . . chills to the bone.’

—Daily Telegraph

‘Plenty of intrigue makes this a must-read.’

—Woman & Home

‘A complex, disturbing, resonant novel that remains light on its feet and immensely entertaining.’

—The Irish Times

‘Page-turning.’

—Guardian

‘Highly satisfying and intelligent.’

—The Bookseller

‘Will keep you riveted until its breathless finish.’

—Sunday Mirror

‘A meticulous thriller full of twists and false turns.’

—Crime Time

‘Creepy and oh-so-clever.’

—Fabulous magazine

‘A fantastic and intense book that grips you right from the very first line.’

—We Love This Book

‘McGowan’s pacey, direct style ensures that the twists come thick and fast.’

—The Irish Times

‘A riveting police thriller.’

—Woman (Pick of the Week)

‘Taut plotting and assured writing.’

—Good Housekeeping

‘You’ll be desperate to know what happened and how everything will turn out.’

—The Sun

‘An excellent murder mystery.’

—Bella

‘Plenty of twists and turns keep you hooked.’

—Crime Monthly

‘With a great plot and brilliant characters, this is a read-in-one-sitting page-turner.’

—Fabulous magazine

‘A brilliant portrait of a fractured society and a mystery full of heart-stopping twists. Compelling, clever and entertaining.’

—Jane Casey

‘A keeps-you-guessing mystery.’

—Alex Marwood

‘A brilliant crime novel . . . gripping.’

—Company

‘A compelling and flawless thriller . . . there is nothing not to like.’

—Sharon Bolton

‘Ireland’s answer to Ruth Rendell.’

—Ken Bruen

ALSO BY CLAIRE MCGOWAN

The Fall

What You Did

The Other Wife

The Push

Paula Maguire series

The Lost

The Dead Ground

The Silent Dead

A Savage Hunger

Blood Tide

The Killing House

Writing as Eva Woods

The Thirty List

The Ex Factor

How to be Happy

The Lives We Touch

The Man I Can’t Forget

Title Page

Copyright Page

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Text copyright © 2021 by Claire McGowan

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

ISBN-13: 9781542019972

ISBN-10: 1542019974

Cover design by Heike Schüssler

CONTENTS

CONTENTS

Rachel

Casey

Rachel

Rachel

Casey

Rachel

Rachel

Casey

Rachel

Rachel

Casey

Rachel

Rachel

Casey

Rachel

Rachel

Casey

Rachel

Rachel

Casey

Rachel

Rachel

Casey

Rachel

Rachel

Casey

Rachel

Rachel

Casey

Rachel

Casey

Rachel

Casey

Rachel

Casey

Rachel

Casey

Rachel

Casey

Rachel

Casey

Rachel

Casey

Rachel

Casey

Rachel

Casey

Rachel

Casey

Rachel

Casey

Rachel

Casey

Rachel

Casey

Rachel

Casey

Rachel

Casey

Rachel

Casey

Rachel

Casey

Rachel

Casey

Rachel – two days later

BOOK CLUB QUESTIONS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rachel

Rachel

What would you do if you found a dead body? Call the police? Check for a pulse? Flag down a passer-by for help, tearful but responsible, gulping in air? You might imagine yourself with a blanket round your shoulders, cradling a mug of hot sweet tea, helpfully giving statements to uniformed officers. Being interviewed in the local paper sometime later. Such a terrible shock. Their poor family.

You probably wouldn’t do what I did, on that bright cold morning when I emerged from the trees into the clearing, Brandy already beginning to tense and whine on her lead – dogs know, they always know. When I spotted it, at first I thought someone had dropped a coat while out on a morning run. Then I saw the white hand, turned upwards among dead leaves, the fingers curling in towards the palm, the wedding ring gleaming on the fourth finger.

I stood there for a moment. It was just after 7.30 a.m. The forest was quiet all around me, only the calls of birds and the rustle of the breeze in the trees, barely light yet, no one else nearby – or so I thought at the time. I didn’t even let myself think, This is a dead body. I didn’t call the police or raise the alarm or do any of the things you’re supposed to do. Only one thought was in my head: Get out of here. Don’t let them catch you. Run.

And so I did, Brandy yelping behind me as I tugged on her lead. I turned out of the clearing and ran back down the path and out of the woods and across the green and up the garden path to my cottage, where I fumbled the lock, opened and shut the door, and dropped the lead with shaking hands. Then I sank down on the sofa, without even taking off my walking boots. What I had forgotten most of all was how quiet a crime scene is. No breath but yours. The faint breeze that stirs over lifeless hair and clothes. The glassy, open emptiness of dead eyes. It’s almost peaceful, a violent death, before they come in with heavy boots and tape and cameras. Before it becomes a story, out there in the world for people to read. Before it’s something that happened to you.

But no, it wasn’t real, it didn’t happen. I hadn’t seen it. Nothing was there. Still I didn’t call the police or tell anyone, never mind go back to check if they were still alive – I didn’t want to think about any of that. In fact, I did nothing at all. This might seem crazy to you, irresponsible, indefensible. But you don’t know what you’d do, if it wasn’t the first dead body you had found.

The ironic thing was, I had actually been happy right before I found it. Maybe happier than I had been in twenty years. I was walking in my favourite part of the woods, the cinnamon smell of leaves underfoot telling me autumn was on its way, with its promise of open fires and forgiving jumpers. I had Brandy on the lead, her small snuffling breaths the only sound, that constant strain on the collar that’s to be expected with a beagle. She had smelled something already, probably, but I hadn’t known that then. It was one of my best times of the day, just her and me, the trusting way she’d come to heel when I called, despite her searching nature. The faint trotting sound of her paws beside my boots.

I had felt pleasantly muzzy with sleep, looking forward to seeing Alex again that night. As I walked, I was thinking about his firm chest, the snarl of hair there I liked to tangle my fingers in, the warm smell of his neck. The way I’d palm my face to his back when he slept, holding on tight. He had stayed at mine two nights ago, and we’d woken up late, teasing each other about how slow we were to get out of bed. When I got up to shower, he’d pulled me back into bed, kissing me hard, starting things up again. He’d made me tea while I was in the bathroom, and I’d stood at the door in my dressing gown to wave him down the path (Audrey next door getting a good gawp), and he’d waved back at me as he reversed his van out.

It was going somewhere, wasn’t it? When I thought of it, I’d feel a pleasant lurch in the pit of my stomach, followed by a burst of worry. Things weren’t ideal, of course – and I would have thought about Anna here, I’m sure. She had been playing on my mind since our run-in the week before. She wasn’t supposed to know about Alex and me – too soon after their split, and likely to muddy the waters with the divorce, he felt. But somehow she had found out, and confronted me in town. She didn’t want him being with me, and was threatening to keep the house and stop him seeing his son if he didn’t end it, Alex said.

Sometimes it frustrated me – the first man I’d ever felt this way about, and he was technically still married, embroiled in an acrimonious break-up. But what was perfect at our age? All I knew was I finally felt something I never had before. True desire, true, dizzying passion. My stomach turned over when he smiled at me, when he rolled up the sleeves of a shirt to show his tanned forearms. I hoarded little moments from my day to tell him, funny things the dogs had done or Marilyn’s sayings, and I wanted to hear everything about his day too. What he’d had to eat, what he’d watched on TV, which trees he had chopped down at work and which were safe. What part of the Lakes he’d driven to on jobs, picnicking by the side of a tarn or on a stony beach, perhaps. After years of worrying if something was wrong with me, because I always lost interest so fast in relationships, rolling my eyes as a man told me the dull details of his life, I had finally found it. Alex. I’d even let myself make plans – maybe we’d get a place together, with a room for his son, Sam, to stay in. Sam would love Brandy. Anna would settle down eventually, meet someone else. We’d be happy.

Looking back on that moment, I wish I could shake some sense into the woman in the red coat with the dog on the lead, breathing in the fresh after-rain smell of the woods. Tell her that she of all people should have known never to let down her guard. She should have realised you can’t make plans. Because you never know when the safe little world you’ve so carefully put together will fall apart like a house of cards. And then I saw it in the leaves, the clothes, the white hand, and that was that. My life as I knew it was over.

I know it sounds strange, what I did. That instead of calling the police I came home, fed Brandy, tidied the kitchen, made porridge for my breakfast, ate it on the bench in my small back garden, soaking up the last of the October sun. Several hours passed. I hoovered, mopped the floor, though it wasn’t my usual day for cleaning. I kept my body moving and my mind totally blank, as I had learned to in the past. People do strange things at times like this. Your routine keeps you running like a train on tracks, even when the engine’s busted. All the same, I was sure it would come, the knock at the door. I didn’t turn on the radio as I normally would, knowing at some point I’d hear the words body found in woodland.

I shouldn’t have run away, I know. Things might not have gone so badly for me if I’d just behaved normally. But that would have required my brain to take it in, to accept I had once again been the person to find a dead body. The proverbial dog-walker, always first on the scene. I had a talent for it, it seemed.

It was around eleven when the doorbell finally went. I took my time. Rinsed my plate in the sink, tidied my hair in the small mirror I’d found in the British Heart Foundation shop. Slipped my feet into ballet pumps, my toes finding their own impressions in the leather. Outside, black-clad figures, a buzz of radios. The police. Gentler in this country, at least. No guns. The bell went again. I opened the door.

They were quite polite about it. Two officers, a man and a woman, neither a day over thirty. ‘Rachel Caldwell?’

‘Yes?’ My heart was hammering in my chest, but I tried to keep my voice steady.

‘We understand you walked your dog in the woods earlier?’ Over their shoulders, I could see that a small crowd had gathered near the edge of the trees. I recognised a few of my neighbours from the nearby cottages. I knew not to lie – someone would have seen me, it’s a small town, and I took Brandy on the same path each morning, both of us creatures of habit.

‘Well, yes, I do most days. Is something wrong?’

‘I’m afraid there’s been . . . an incident. Would you mind if we came in to ask you a few questions?’ That was the woman, young and pretty, with red hair and a cinnamon-sprinkle of freckles over her nose. Would I mind, she’d said. How nice to pretend I had a choice.

‘I didn’t see anything,’ I said. They couldn’t prove I’d found it – I couldn’t yet think about it as a person – and it was too hard to explain why I had seen it but run away. Normal people don’t do that.

Stupid of me, to lie so early on. I should have said nothing, not until they actually arrested me at least. Got a lawyer right away, watched my every word. Me of all people, I should have known that. But I didn’t want to look guilty. I thought I could play dumb. Stupid, stupid. The two officers exchanged a look. The man – not much more than a boy, to my eyes – said, ‘Well. If we can just come in, hopefully we can clear a few things up.’

‘Well, all right.’ As I stood back to let them in, Brandy came padding in to investigate, and I thought about what might happen to her if they took me away. The emergency folder was in the locked bottom drawer of my desk, explaining what to do with the house and Brandy and my things, who to contact. The key was in a vase on the mantelpiece. If the worst came to the worst, I would tell someone where to find it – Marilyn, most likely. It had always been a risk, keeping the folder in the house, with the information it contained, but I couldn’t bear to think of no one knowing the truth, no one on the outside fighting for me. We weren’t there yet. This was just questions. I stroked Brandy and gently edged her back into the kitchen – she gave a small whine, as if she knew something was up. I shut the door on her, feeling guilty at her surprise. Then I obediently followed the officers over to the sofa, sat down at right angles to them in the armchair, hands laid lightly on my knees.

The woman officer took out her notebook and flicked through it. I found it impossible to read them, if they suspected me or this was just routine or what. ‘So, we’re PC Darcy Chevening and PC Sam Price. Your name is Rachel Caldwell?’

‘Yes.’ Legally, it was true.

‘And what do you do, Rachel?’ PC Price, who had spots along the line of his collar. Last time, the police officers had seemed so many years my senior. Time had moved on.

‘I work at the dog shelter outside town.’ Not for pay, but they didn’t need to know that. ‘I’ve been there about ten years.’

‘And before that?’

‘Um – I was born in London. Moved around for a few years, then here.’

‘You have family in the area?’

‘No. It was just me and Mum and she passed years back.’ Poor Jenna. Never much of a mother to me, but all the same the fact of her death could catch me unawares at times like this, a small punch to the solar plexus.

‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ Perfunctory. Making notes. ‘Talk us through your morning walk, Rachel.’ PC Chevening again.

‘Um – I left about a quarter past seven, that’s when Brandy starts getting restless, and we went on our normal route. A quick turn is all, I take her later for longer.’

‘Brandy is a beagle?’ PC Price, glancing over at the kitchen.

‘Yes.’

‘They need walking a lot? And they have a good sense of smell?’

‘They’ll follow their noses anywhere.’ As I said it I remembered the pull on the lead, her slight whine as we entered the clearing. It was our usual path, so I didn’t think anything of it.

‘So she would pick up on a strange scent – like, say, a body?’

There it was.

‘There’s a body?’ I blinked my eyes wide. Good. That was what a normal person would say. An innocent person.

No confirmation. ‘She’d have smelled something like that, yes?’ PC Chevening. I kept forgetting their names and having to look at their badges. I realised my hands were clasped tight together, and tried to relax them.

‘Maybe. She does run after smells a lot, all beagles do, but I kept her on the lead.’

‘So you saw nothing?’

I pretended to think. ‘Not that I can recall.’

‘Very short walk, was it? Witnesses said you came right out again, almost running.’

Witnesses? Bloody Audrey, I bet.

‘I – needed the loo. Forgot to go before we left.’ No one could disprove that either. ‘Why are you here – just because I was in the woods? Lots of people go in the woods.’

I heard a nervy shake in my voice as I said it. I saw them exchange another look, and various scenarios flared across my mind. Someone had seen me in the clearing. Maybe there was even a picture of me approaching it and running, stumbling out – or worse, video footage. People could film things on their phones nowadays. Maybe I had touched it in my shock and not remembered, left my fingerprints or hairs or some other trace. Either way, I could tell from the way they were looking at me: somehow, they knew I had found the body. And that I had lied about it.

PC Chevening put her notebook away. ‘OK, Rachel. We may well want to talk to you again, OK?’

I didn’t understand for a moment, lost in my worst imaginings. ‘That’s it?’

‘For now. Thank you.’

They were going. They had suspicions, perhaps, but clearly they couldn’t prove anything yet. Anyway, it wasn’t a crime to find a body and not report it – was it?

As I watched them walk to their car, I saw that a large and muddy jeep was drawing up nearby. Marilyn. She got out, came towards me, and I was so pleased to see her ruddy cheeks, her untidy greying hair, brown cords held up with a safety pin and covered in dog hair, that I almost stumbled into her arms, hairs notwithstanding. Her eyes looked red and swollen. She was five years my senior, at most, but she took care of me as if it was more.

‘Rachel! What on earth happened? I know you go through the woods on your walk, so I thought I’d see if you were all right. Did you get arrested?’ Was that what people would think? I could see Audrey peering between her expensive slatted blinds, and she abruptly withdrew as I caught her eye.

‘No, I wasn’t arrested. Just . . . they were asking if I saw something in the woods today. There was . . . there was a body, apparently.’ I said the last in a whisper.

‘I know. You didn’t . . . find it, did you?’

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