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Back The Family Next Door Save as PDF
Chapters (117)
  1. Also by
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright Page
  4. Epigraph
  5. PROLOGUE
  6. 1
  7. 2
  8. 3
  9. 4
  10. 5
  11. 6
  12. 7
  13. 8
  14. 9
  15. 10
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  114. 109
  115. 110
  116. Teaser chapter
  117. ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Audrina could feel the foundations beneath her start to tip. She looked at the man she had married all those years ago, could hear the echoes of everything she had lost, and the knowledge that had weighed upon her. Upon them both.

“Cooper,” she said again, and her voice cracked. He turned toward her then, as he had always done. As he always would do. He crossed the room, and the heft of his body on the edge of the mattress tipped her toward him.

His fingers were tender as he stroked her face. She rested her cheek against his hand, closed her own fingers around his.

“I love you,” he said. “Fifty-two years, and that has never changed. That will never change.”

“I’m scared.”

“You have nothing to be scared of.” He sounded warm, reassuring. Kindly. “I will look after you. Like I’ve always done. Like I always will do.”

“Cooper, I—”

“Hush now, don’t say anything,” he said, and pressed a finger to her lips to silence her. “Do you understand?”

He was smiling at her, and there was so much love in his eyes, and she wanted to tell him that everything would pass. That they would ride this storm, as they had ridden countless others. But instead, she nodded and he said, “Good girl.”

And then he pulled on his clothes and went downstairs.

86

86

Wednesday 1st August 2018, 3:15 A.M.

25 The Avenue

Evan watched the rescue unfold from the edge of the ditch. The paramedics had administered pain relief and he saw his mother’s face relax into unconsciousness.

His father pulled him into a hug, picked him up and swung him around. “Well done, Evan,” he said. “Well done.” The paramedics were about to carry her up the garden to the waiting ambulance. They were moving with extreme caution. “You might just have saved your mother’s life.”

His father did not ask why Evan had been out of bed. The boy guessed that question was for another time. Or perhaps not at all. When he thought about what might have happened if he hadn’t gone down to the tree house, he felt odd and shaky.

“Go and wake Aster. I’m going to follow the ambulance in my car. I’ll call your aunt, and she can drive down and mind you.” The relief in his father’s face pushed Evan to the edge of tears.

* * *

Aster was not in her bedroom. She was not anywhere in the house at all.

Evan was trying to think of a way to share this worrying development with his father when a commotion by the front door stalled him. The boy sat on the staircase, his face pressed against the spindles.