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The Snakes

Sadie Jones

THE

SNAKES

SADIE JONES

Chatto & Windus
LONDON

Contents

  1. PART ONE
    1. 1
    2. 2
    3. 3
    4. 4
    5. 5
    6. 6
    7. 7
    8. 8
  2. PART TWO
    1. 9
    2. 10
    3. 11
    4. 12
    5. 13
    6. 14
    7. 15
    8. 16
    9. 17
    10. 18
    11. 19
    12. 20
  3. PART THREE
    1. 21
    2. 22
    3. 23
    4. 24
    5. 25
    6. 26
  4. PART FOUR
    1. 27
    2. 28
    3. 29
    4. 30
    5. 31
  5. Acknowledgements

About the Author

Sadie Jones is a novelist and screenwriter. Her first novel, The Outcast (‘Devastatingly good’, Daily Mail) won the Costa First Novel Award and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize. It was also a Richard and Judy Summer Reads number one bestseller and adapted for BBC Television. Her second novel, Small Wars (‘Outstanding’, The Times; ‘One of the best books about the English at war ever’, Joel Morris), was published in 2009, and longlisted for the Orange Prize. Her third, in 2012, was The Uninvited Guests (‘A shimmering comedy of manners and disturbing commentary on class… a brilliant novel’, Ann Patchett) followed by Fallout in 2014 (‘Intoxicating and immersive’, The Sunday Times).

By the same author

The Outcast

Small Wars

The Uninvited Guests

Fallout

For R.A.H.

All sins are attempts to fill voids.

Simone Weil

PART ONE

1

The night they decided to leave London Bea had a dream. Dreams are like silent films; guns are fired without shots, people talk without voices. This dream was deafening. The noise woke Bea up, shocked breathless, and terrified.

She didn’t think she’d had the dream because they had decided to go away, it was more likely because of what had happened with the Italian leather holdall and the girl with the knife.

The holdall was made of dark red leather and looked too good for its surroundings. Bea had stopped walking when she saw it, in the window of the charity shop on the Holloway Road. It was lying beneath the long pleats of a nylon skirt on a headless mannequin, which had been styled with a pink jumper in a way that was supposed to be retro but was just old-lady. The red leather holdall was glamorous. It looked as though George Clooney had stopped by on his way to meet Julia Roberts at a little airfield somewhere, and forgotten it. Bea could see its quality but could not see its price. There were plastic-amber beads in the display, and some high heels and an enormous-looking evening dress, drooping on another mannequin. Bea shielded her eyes, her face close to the reflecting glass. Dan would love the holdall. It was stylish and cool. She went to the door. When she pushed, it moved, but didn’t open. There were bags of donations piled against it on the inside, and a pair of jeans wedged between the rubber seal and the floor. Looking through the glass she could see a woman and a girl at the back of the shop, talking. The woman was behind the counter and the girl had one hand on a pushchair. It looked like they were arguing. Bea pushed the door harder and put her head through the gap.