The House on Fripp Island

Praise for
THE HOUSE ON FRIPP ISLAND

“Kauffman’s keen, atmospheric follow-up to The Gunners explores class, friendship, and dark family secrets . . . Inevitably, events spiral to a shocking conclusion. Kauffman’s characters leap off the page . . . Readers will devour this suspenseful summer drama.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Rebecca Kauffman has long been one of my favorite writers, and The House on Fripp Island is her best novel yet. The story of two very different families brought together for an unlikely vacation that takes a dangerous turn, Kauffman’s latest is a rare and gripping combination of gloriously observed prose and three hundred pages of pure suspense. I loved it.”

—Julie Buntin, author of Marlena

“A novel full of secrets set in a stunning beach house is my definition of a perfect summer read. I was stunned by the twists and turns of Rebecca Kauffman’s masterful novel, The House on Fripp Island. Bring plenty of sunscreen when you take this book to the beach . . . you’ll be reading all day long.”

—Amanda Eyre Ward, author of The Jetsetters

“A sharp, modern story about the wilderness of family life.”

—Adrienne Celt, author of Invitation to a Bonfire and The Daughters

THE HOUSE ON FRIPP ISLAND

ALSO BY REBECCA KAUFFMAN

The Gunners

Another Place You’ve Never Been

The
HOUSE on FRIPP ISLAND

Rebecca Kauffman

First published in Great Britain in 2020 by

Serpent’s Tail,

an imprint of Profile Books Ltd

29 Cloth Fair

London

EC1A 7JQ

www.serpentstail.com

First published in the United States in 2020 by

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company

Copyright © 2020 by Rebecca Kauffman

Conversation with the author and Reading Group Guide copyright © 2020 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company

“Street Haunting” by Virginia Woolf from The Death of the Moth and Other Essays. Copyright © 1942 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Copyright © renewed 1970 by Marjorie T. Parsons, Executrix. Reprinted by permission of the Society of Authors as the Literary Representative of the Estate of Virginia Woolf and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. All rights reserved.

Book design by Chloe Foster

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Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A.

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 78816 5204

eISBN 978 1 78283 7022

In loving memory of my grandmothers,

Mary & Evelyn

The possibilities of pleasure seemed that morning so enormous and so various that to have only a moth’s part in life, and a day moth’s at that, appeared a hard fate, and his zest in enjoying his meagre opportunities to the full, pathetic. He flew vigorously to one corner of his compartment, and, after waiting there a second, flew across to the other. What remained for him but to fly to a third corner and then to a fourth? That was all he could do, in spite of the size of the downs, the width of the sky, the far-off smoke of houses, and the romantic voice, now and then, of a steamer out at sea. What he could do he did.