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Chapters (82)
  1. Cover
  2. Praise for The House of Whispers
  3. Title Page
  4. Note to Readers
  5. Transcript of interview with Mr Rohan Allerton, husband of Abigail Allerton: 20 December 2019
  6. One
  7. Two
  8. Three
  9. Four
  10. Five
  11. Six
  12. Transcript of interview with Mr Rohan Allerton, husband of Abigail Allerton: 20 December 2019
  13. Seven
  14. Eight
  15. Nine
  16. Ten
  17. Eleven
  18. Transcript of interview with Mr Rohan Allerton, husband of Abigail Allerton: 20 December 2019
  19. Twelve
  20. Transcript of interview with Mr Rohan Allerton, husband of Abigail Allerton: 20 December 2019
  21. Thirteen
  22. Fourteen
  23. Fifteen
  24. Transcript of interview with Mr Rohan Allerton, husband of Abigail Allerton: 20 December 2019
  25. Sixteen
  26. Seventeen
  27. Transcript of interview with Mr Rohan Allerton, husband of Abigail Allerton: 20 December 2019
  28. Eighteen
  29. Nineteen
  30. Twenty
  31. Transcript of interview with Mr Rohan Allerton, husband of Abigail Allerton: 20 December 2019
  32. Twenty-One
  33. Twenty-Two
  34. Twenty-Three
  35. Twenty-Four
  36. Transcript of interview with Mr Rohan Allerton, husband of Abigail Allerton: 20 December 2019
  37. Twenty-Five
  38. Transcript of interview with Mr Rohan Allerton, husband of Abigail Allerton: 20 December 2019
  39. Twenty-Six
  40. Twenty-Seven
  41. Twenty-Eight
  42. Twenty-Nine
  43. Thirty
  44. Thirty-One
  45. Thirty-Two
  46. Thirty-Three
  47. Transcript of interview with Mr Rohan Allerton, husband of Abigail Allerton: 20 December 2019
  48. Thirty-Four
  49. Thirty-Five
  50. Thirty-Six
  51. Thirty-Seven
  52. Thirty-Eight
  53. Transcript of interview with Mr Rohan Allerton, husband of Abigail Allerton: 20 December 2019
  54. Thirty-Nine
  55. Forty
  56. Forty-One
  57. Transcript of interview with Mr Rohan Allerton, husband of Abigail Allerton: 20 December 2019
  58. Forty-Two
  59. Transcript of interview with Mr Rohan Allerton, husband of Abigail Allerton: 20 December 2019
  60. Forty-Three
  61. Forty-Four
  62. Forty-Five
  63. Forty-Six
  64. Forty-Seven
  65. Transcript of interview with Mr Rohan Allerton, husband of Abigail Allerton: 20 December 2019
  66. Forty-Eight
  67. Transcript of interview with Mr Rohan Allerton, husband of Abigail Allerton: 20 December 2019
  68. Forty-Nine
  69. Fifty
  70. Fifty-One
  71. Fifty-Two
  72. Fifty-Three
  73. Fifty-Four
  74. Fifty-Five
  75. Fifty-Six
  76. Fifty-Seven
  77. Fifty-Eight
  78. Fifty-Nine
  79. Sixty
  80. Priory Hospital North London: 20 December 2019
  81. Acknowledgements
  82. About the Publisher

To the right of the green was a small lane: if you hadn’t been looking for it, you’d have missed it. I looked down it seeing, at the end, the flash of traffic passing on a busier road. Grace looked between me and the lane, her eyes dark holes in her face, and my heart thumped.

‘It’s down here,’ I said. I could barely hear my voice over the sound of the blood rushing in my head. Grace nodded.

‘Lead the way,’ she said, so I stood at the top of the lane, picturing for a few moments a girl on a bike, her whole life before her. A girl taking a shortcut on the day she got her A-level results. A girl who didn’t stop at the end of the lane; a girl whose bike smashed into a passing car, leaving her broken and dying on the tarmac.

My heart was thumping now, really jumping in my chest, and I had to pause before I could carry on, putting one foot carefully in front of the other, trying not to feel the speed of the girl’s bike freewheeling beneath her; not to see her ponytail flying in the wind as she lived the last minute of her life on this very lane.

With every step I was able to see a little more of the main road that lay ahead: a snatch of tarmac, the flash of cars sweeping by, the verge on the other side soggy and brown. It was a busy road, even more so these days, a bypass that fringed the village, connecting bigger towns to each other like the strands of a spider’s web. Beyond it, the fields of Kent stretched out, the pale greens and browns of winter and, above them, a straight line of black clouds approaching: the storm about which we’d been warned.

At the point where the lane met the road, I stopped abruptly, centimetres away from the passing traffic: the cars, vans and lorries that streaked by in a hurry, their tyres swishing close to the verge. The strip of green was splattered with mud, summer’s flowers nothing more than a memory. On the other side of the road, the hedge was taller, more unkempt, giving just a glimpse of the winter fields beyond. Dark specks of birds beat their wings high above, their raucous screams renting the sky. The trees above me rustled as the wind picked up and, in the distance, above the sound of traffic, there was a low rumble of thunder.

‘Is this where it happened?’ Grace whispered.

I nodded and steadied myself, checking that I really was here, right now, not just having another nightmare. I bowed my head.