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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
  16. 11
  17. 12
  18. 13
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  29. 24
  30. 25
  31. 26
  32. 27
  33. 28
  34. 29
  35. 30
  36. 31
  37. 32
  38. 33
  39. 34
  40. 35
  41. 36
  42. 37
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  44. 39
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  113. 108
  114. 109
  115. 110
  116. Teaser chapter
  117. ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Wildeve jumped and knocked over the glass, water spilling onto the carpet. A power surge, that was all, and an attack of clumsiness. When the thrumming in her veins had calmed, she leaned over the side of the bed. The hardback had slid onto the floor, its spine cracked, its pages fanning out like the feathers of a bird. But it wasn’t that which caught her attention.

Lying on the carpet was a folded sheaf of paperwork.

She gathered up the documents. Surprised, she began to read. The first was a handwritten statement about the disappearance of Bridget Sawyer, owner of a toy emporium. Dated September 1966 and covered in rows and rows of spidery writing, it was clear it had been sitting in a police file for several years. It had been photocopied three times.

There were also two photocopies of a yellowing newspaper picture caption dated nineteen years later, a row of five children clustered around a striped puppet booth in what appeared to be a reopening of the same toyshop.

She wondered how these had ended up in Adam’s possession. It was a loosely guarded secret that some police officers “lost” evidence that didn’t support their theories. When they’d knocked down the old police station at Greenham Lane, twenty-seven case files had been found at the bottom of the elevator shaft, the mother of all hiding places. But it looked like this case had simply been forgotten.

The lightbulb flickered again, making it difficult to read. Wildeve scanned the text, and two words jumped out at her.

The Avenue.

She stared at the words, trying to make sense of them. Could this have been what Adam was investigating? But how were the two events linked? And what did it mean?

She looked skyward. Is this what you’re trying to tell me?

The light flickered a final time and went out.

36

36

Now

The phenomenon of collective hysteria has always intrigued me.

What prompted a convent of French nuns to assume the behavior of cats until their mewls were whipped from them by soldiers? How was it possible for eighty-five schoolgirls to faint, one after the other, like a run of dominoes?

I did not believe in the truth of it until the events in the shop on that day.

The crow puppet had not proved as successful as I’d hoped.

When it swooped down and attacked the ballerina, one or two of the children started to cry. In my haste to hide it away, to pack all the puppets back into their boxes and recapture some of the earlier joy, I didn’t notice that one of the girls had become so distressed, she had left the shop floor and found her way into the old storeroom.

The door was supposed to be locked. And you were supposed to have locked it. But it was too late to do anything about that.