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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
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  114. 109
  115. 110
  116. Teaser chapter
  117. ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Cooper discarded Evan’s uneaten cereal in the dustbin and put the packet of seeds on the table. The envelope was open and a handful spilled across the cloth. He moved toward her, and they lost themselves in one last kiss, a slow-falling stepping off a cliff. Fifty-two years of shared history. A promise, then, to protect their past, to steady their present and light their future.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

And then Cooper Clifton opened the door to meet his fate.

101

101

Wednesday 1st August 2018, 6:28 A.M.

27 The Avenue

In the beginning, it was never about the killings. That came much later, when too much water had passed under the bridge and going back would be like rubbing himself out.

There had been no intent, not at first. But falling in love had triggered a rare kind of alchemy, and by the time Cooper had recognized the threat of it all, he was in too deep to find his way home.

Not that he had wanted to.

The sense of power had been unexpected. It had started with the old woman, years and years ago. Bridget. Always going on, she was. Do this. Do that. She had made Audrina scrub the shop floor, even though she was eighteen and star-bright, sharper at accounting than most women twice her age. When he had protested, the bitch with the permed hair and crepe-paper hands had stared at him with scorn, eyeing the dirt beneath his nails, the stains on the knees of his trousers, his lack of everything.

His anger had ignited, white-hot, blinding him to common sense and decency. His hands had been trembling when he turned the sign from OPEN to CLOSED. Drew the bolts across and pulled down the blind.

Credit where credit’s due, mind. When he’d smacked her on the back of her skull with a wooden mallet, she had staggered, but she hadn’t fallen over. She’d been stunned, though, and fracturing bone makes such a distinctive sound.

He’d hit her again and again, the powder flying from her made-up face like dust from a beaten rug. But the child’s hammer he’d snatched up from the miniature version of a carpenter’s workbench lacked the heft to finish what he had begun. Weakened, yes, but she still had the strength to drag herself away from him, crawling like a baby amongst the teddy bears and building blocks.

He’d cast around, looking for a more effective weapon. The puppets watched him, unblinking. The wooden trains with their tiny passengers paused on their journeys to wait and see what he would do next. The shop waited.

In the end, he’d settled on a spinning top. He’d smashed the metal casing against the wall until it dented and split, and a corkscrew-shaped spike lay in his hand.

He punctured her temple, burying it in her brain.