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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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  30. 25
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  32. 27
  33. 28
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  113. 108
  114. 109
  115. 110
  116. Teaser chapter
  117. ABOUT THE AUTHOR

“It’s Trefor Lovell.” He paused, trying to find a way to frame the words, to let Cooper know that his attempts to set him up were nothing but dust now. “Your husband is going to die in prison for what he’s done.”

99

99

Now

The police are almost here. The neighbors will gather in tangles on the corner or peer from behind their curtains, ashamed of their prurience, but too hungry to deny it.

They will shout at the journalists with their cameras and intrusive questions. They will shake their heads and tut at the spectacle of their street on national television again. They will breathe out their shock at the discovery of a killer in their midst.

Tomorrow morning, these hypocrites will hurry up the street with a newspaper tucked under their arm.

It fascinates me, the way we pretend to be something we’re not. The face we show to the world hides a darkness.

Mother. You. Natalie Tiernan, Will Proudfoot, Esther Farnworth, Elijah Outhwaite, Adam Stanton.

A roll call of the dead.

My dead.

But not quite all of them.

Time is almost up. I must say good-bye to my garden in case I do not see it again. I must walk the corridors of this house.

It’s the end of the road.

I am ready.

I will submit.

100

100

Wednesday 1st August 2018, 6:27 A.M.

32 The Avenue

Audrina poured granola into Evan’s bowl and sprinkled on an extra handful of raisins from a tub in the cupboard.

“Honey?” she said, already drizzling a spoonful, thick and sweet, across his cereal.

Evan stared at his breakfast, shoulders hunched, head bent. He did not look at either of the adults.

“Eat up,” she said. Kind. Full of encouragement.

Cooper stood by the back door. He was wearing his gardening clothes, and he was holding a small and neatly labeled envelope of seeds he had harvested himself, ready for planting. An ordinary scene in the life of an ordinary family. Except Evan didn’t belong to this family and there was a plywood box containing a child’s skull under the kitchen table, although Audrina didn’t know that.

Audrina’s heart broke for herself. For her husband. Fresh lines marked his face. He was old now. Defeated by circumstance. But they would get through this. As they had done before. As they would do now.

“Who was on the phone?” Cooper sounded steady but she had known him for enough years to detect the break in his voice.

She flicked a look at Evan and back again to her husband. Cleared her throat. Started toward him, to soften the blow of her words with touch. “That Trefor Lovell. He says the pol—”