Chapters (78)
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Prologue
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Thirty-Nine
- Forty
- Forty-One
- Forty-Two
- Forty-Three
- Forty-Four
- Forty-Five
- Forty-Six
- Forty-Seven
- Forty-Eight
- Forty-Nine
- Fifty
- Fifty-One
- Fifty-Two
- Fifty-Three
- Fifty-Four
- Fifty-Five
- Fifty-Six
- Fifty-Seven
- Fifty-Eight
- Fifty-Nine
- Sixty
- Sixty-One
- Sixty-Two
- Sixty-Three
- Sixty-Four
- Sixty-Five
- Sixty-Six
- Sixty-Seven
- Sixty-Eight
- Sixty-Nine
- Seventy
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- Remarkable Praise for Nicci French
- Also by Nicci French
- About the Publisher
But she stopped. The anger left her and she just felt a dull, flat dreariness. Nat’s face was blank now, as if he had been wiped clean of all emotion. He was like a stranger, this man she had been two months away from marrying.
“It’s over,” she said. “We’re over because—oh well, look at us, Nat.”
Jude slept on the sofa that night and the next morning she worked her way through her contacts searching for a spare room. She knew she could sleep on Dee’s sofa, but Dee’s flatmates would be back at the weekend, and Jude hated the thought of being surrounded by other people when she felt so raw and ashamed and all she wanted to do was hide away. After several calls, she was put in touch with Simon, a friend of a friend who was off to Berlin for a job. By the time she left for work, Jude had arranged to flat-sit for him, feed his cat, water his plants, send on important mail. She would move in the following day, which she had free before working nights.
There was no way back, she told herself, and to stop herself from having second thoughts, she sent messages to a few of her closest friends telling them that the wedding was off. She would tell her parents face-to-face, and they could tell her brother, Michael.
She waited for the grief, but it didn’t come. Instead, she felt a kind of weightlessness. She was alone; she had no home and she had no partner. As easily as stepping out of clothes, she had shed her imagined future. No wedding, no party, no honeymoon, no buying a flat, no children in the near future. All the plans, the arrangements, the plaiting together of two lives—gone, leaving this sense of emptiness.
The story wasn’t going away; fueled by the photo on Instagram and the mystery around Jude’s presence at the Norfolk cottage, it was gathering a horrible momentum. There were three journalists waiting for her today at the hospital entrance, and a man from TV with a camera and mic that he thrust in her face.
She didn’t hear all they asked, just a babble of questions and phrases: What was the reason for your weekend jaunt? What did you do and why did you do it? Secret affair. Teenage obsession. Love nest. Camera flashes in her eyes, a woman with a notebook, the man’s mic pushing at her.
She wanted simply to tell them to leave her alone. She knew that she mustn’t say anything but then, out of nowhere, she said it anyway.
“Liam Birch is dead,” she said. “Someone killed him. I’ll never be able to make it all right. Never.”