Cover

Books by Shalini Boland

The Secret Mother

The Child Next Door

The Silent Sister

The Millionaire’s Wife

The Perfect Family

The Best Friend

The Girl from the Sea

The Marriage Betrayal

Available in audio

The Secret Mother (Available in the UK and the US)

The Child Next Door (Available in the UK and the US)

The Silent Sister (Available in the UK and the US)

The Perfect Family (Available in the UK and the US)

The Marriage Betrayal (Available in the UK and the US)

Dedication

For my brave and beautiful daughter who I love more than life xxx

1

Then

She’s inside a nightmare. She’s inside hell. And nothing will ever be the same again.

The gears grind as Catriona puts her clunky old Ford Fiesta into second and turns right into slow-moving three-lane traffic. November rain lashes the windscreen and the wipers move frantically, barely making a difference, just sweeping with a dull squeak as water puddles down the glass. She can’t even remember getting into the car. She just knew she couldn’t stay in the house. Not afterwards.

A van honks to her left. She glances across to see an angry man mouthing something and making rude hand gestures. Catriona realises she’s drifted into the wrong lane, so she jerks the wheel in the opposite direction, overshooting and causing more horns to blare. ‘What does it matter anyway?’ she mutters to herself. ‘Who cares.’ Her nose is running so she wipes her forefinger across her top lip, glancing in the rear-view mirror as she does so. She realises that her hands are still caked in mud. So now she has both mud and snot smeared across her face. Normally this would concern her. Not today. Not now. Not ever again. Still, she wipes her face again, with the sleeve of her sweatshirt this time.

More vehicles flash and beep her. She’s trembling. She needs to get off the road. Up ahead are signposts into the shopping-centre car park. She’ll turn in there. Park for a moment. She doesn’t want to think about what she’ll do after that.

There’s a queue of traffic to get in, but eventually Catriona reaches the entrance of the multi-storey, drives in and pulls into a narrow parking space that faces a grey breeze-block wall. She kills the engine. The wipers come to a stop in the centre of the windscreen. It’s quieter in here, away from the drumming rain and the roar of traffic. A sob almost escapes her lips, but she can’t let it out. She doesn’t deserve the luxury of crying.