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Praise for Two Wrongs

‘Meticulously plotted and UTTERLY chilling – everything you want from a contemporary thriller’ PAULA HAWKINS

‘I cared desperately about these characters and turned the pages frantically, praying for their survival. Clever, compassionate and completely compelling’ ERIN KELLY

‘A deliciously disturbing thriller’ ANN CLEEVES

‘I can’t remember the last time I was so invested in a book’ SATHNAM SANGHERA, THE TIMES

‘An unsettling, compelling story. Mel McGrath has a unique skill for drawing flawed yet fascinating characters who captivate the reader’ RACHEL ABBOTT

‘Mel McGrath tackles hard-hitting issues in a thought-provoking way… A book-club novel ripe for discussion’ ADELE PARKS, PLATINUM

‘I was completely drawn in… A timely addition to the academic noir genre, as #MeToo finally starts to catch up with universities in a long-awaited reckoning. Highly recommended’ HARRIET TYCE

‘A gripping exploration of consent and power play, this is all too timely’ HEAT

‘A clever and compelling storyline, with complex characters you really care about. Two Wrongs is the perfect read’ B A PARIS

‘Mel McGrath skilfully controls the drip-feed of information in a complex and painfully topical mystery’ TIMES CRIME CLUB

Praise for Mel McGrath

‘McGrath excels in creating believably flawed characters, and her masterful control of suspense and pacing make for a psychological thriller that is both perceptive and disturbing’ GUARDIAN

‘Dark, clever, terrifying’ PAULA HAWKINS

‘Absorbing… McGrath asks: should it be a crime to witness a violent event, and say nothing?’ THE TIMES

‘A scorching, clever thriller’ TAMMY COHEN

‘Chilling, fiendishly plotted and surprising, this stayed with me long after reading’ WOMAN & HOME

‘This roller-coaster read will have you hooked’ CLOSER

‘Psychologically acute and deeply satisfying’ TELEGRAPH

‘Perceptive… McGrath is a thoughtful writer’ DAILY MAIL

‘A dextrously written thriller and examination of guilt and innocence… [McGrath is a] diamond-hard talent’ FINANCIAL TIMES

‘Unsettling, disturbing and vital. 5*’ HEAT

‘A psychological tour de force with a superb plot from one of the UK’s most gifted crime writers’ KATE RHODES

‘Disturbing and dark yet very compelling’ MEL SHERRATT

‘Utterly compelling right from the start’ CRIME MONTHLY

About the Author

MEL MCGRATH is an Essex girl, co-founder of Killer Women, and an award-winning writer of fiction and non-fiction.

As MJ McGrath she writes the acclaimed Edie Kiglatuk series of Arctic mysteries, which have been optioned for TV, were twice longlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger, and were Times and Financial Times thrillers of the year. As Melanie McGrath she wrote the critically acclaimed, bestselling memoir Silvertown. As Mel McGrath she is the author of the bestselling psychological thrillers Give Me the Child and The Guilty Party. Two Wrongs is her latest novel.

Also by Mel McGrath

The Guilty Party

Give Me the Child

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Dedication

To those who continue to listen.

In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email [email protected] or [email protected]. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. The Canada Suicide Prevention Service is 1-833-456-4566. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org.

Prologue

The lights on the Clifton Suspension Bridge are dazzling in the thin Bristolian rain. The woman walks across it all the time on her way to and from her shift cleaning at the Royal Infirmary and even though it is a notorious suicide spot she has never yet seen anyone fall. But there is a first time for everything and as she spots a young woman clutching the railings of the suicide fence, the thought zips through her mind: this might be the time.

She hears herself call out reflexively – Hey! The young woman clutching the fence looks her way and for an instant hope surges in the woman who has just come off shift until the younger woman, turning back to face the gorge, reaches out and begins to climb the fence. There is a terrible purpose in the way she moves. The woman who has just come off shift knows that whatever she does now could make the difference between life and death, and knowing that, sensing it, makes the hairs on her skin lift and her heart hammer and her legs surge forward.

Still the young woman clambers upwards.

‘Hey!’ The woman who has just come off shift feels her breath quit. She is so tired. It was a long day at work and she cleans the A&E department and there is always so much blood and grease and body fluids and so many cups and snack wrappers to clear up. She is accustomed to seeing bodies and knows what that three-second flight from the bridge through the air and into the water can do to flesh and bones.

The young woman lifts one arm and shouts, ‘Go away!’

The woman who has just come off shift stops in her tracks, three or four metres from the figure making her way up the fence. It is all in this moment. Life, death. She hears her own voice bark back, ‘Please, stop!’ The young woman freezes and shouts down.

‘Stay where you are,’ the young woman screams. ‘I don’t want your help!’

‘OK, OK,’ the tired woman replies, holding up her hands as if in surrender. ‘But talk to me!’ She has no idea what she is going to say but she knows that she must find a way to connect. The tiredness has drained from her. Her mind is razor sharp. If I let this happen, she thinks, what will I tell my kids? How will I live knowing I have let a woman die?

She wonders how the young woman can think of leaving this city that she loves so much, this wonderful, stone city with its dark history, its independent, almost feral people and its brilliant, hopeful bridge? She wonders if the young woman knows that this bridge was first conceived of by a woman with six children who drew up the plans and gave them to a man and refused to take any credit because women ‘shouldn’t be boastful’. Women are always building bridges, linking things, people, moving between worlds not made for them, always thinking up new ways to reach across the darkness, to connect.

She wants to ask the young woman why she is doing this, how can anything be this bad, but she knows enough not to. Instead she shouts out, ‘I’m Sondra, what’s your name?’

The young woman turns her head. ‘Satnam.’

‘We’ve all felt like you’re feeling now, Satnam,’ the tired woman says. ‘I’m older than you, so I know. But the feeling passes. It always passes.’ They are more than strangers to each other now. Each has made her way indelibly into the other’s experience, their history, the story of their lives.

Satnam shakes her head. ‘I can’t, I just can’t.’

Her words are slurred. She’s not in her right mind, Sondra thinks. ‘Please, Satnam, come down from the fence. If we stand here any longer, we’ll both be wet through. I live just the other side of the bridge. We can go and have a cup of tea. I’ve got chocolate chip Hobnobs! We can talk.’

Sondra reaches for her mobile phone to call the emergency services but, guessing at her purpose, Satnam shouts, ‘No, no police!’

‘OK,’ Sondra says. ‘No police. But let me call the Samaritans. You don’t have to speak to them. You can just let me do the talking.’ She’d love to call the Samaritans right now. They would know what to do and the tired woman has absolutely no idea.

Satnam’s head is bobbing. She’s mumbling, trying hard to remain conscious and on the fence. The wind is up, the bridge swaying minutely underfoot. Bristol is such a blowy city. The tired woman loves that about it. Every day is a bad hair day in Bristol. You can’t be a Bristolian and be fussy about your blow-dry. What odd thoughts come unbidden when you’re up against it. Sondra scopes around in her head for some better ones. ‘I don’t need to call the Samaritans. I can call anyone,’ she says. ‘Just give me a number.’

Satnam is looking at her now. She is so young and beautiful, with delicate, even features and long, black, unruly hair. ‘I don’t know any numbers. My phone…’ She’s losing focus, slurring her words. Sondra can’t tell if this is a good thing or not. She takes a step closer. It’s the wrong move. Satnam resumes her grip on the fence and climbs higher, balancing herself by bracing on the upright.

‘OK, OK, I won’t move. Is your phone here?’

Satnam nods. She’s pointing away, towards the bridge tower. ‘You left it over by the tower?’ Satnam moans in response. Sondra says, ‘Promise to stay there and I’ll get your phone.’ She walks backwards towards the tower, slowly, one step at a time. In a minute she’s reached the spot where Satnam was pointing. One eye scouts about under the lights, the other remains on Satnam. It’s hard to see. The rain is on her glasses and so much is in shadow. She wants to ask, What does it look like? What colour is it? But those questions will be wasting time and there is no time to waste. Besides, the young woman is growing more and more incoherent. Soon, she thinks, Satnam won’t be able to say anything at all. Sondra’s eyes sweep the paving on the walkway. Just as she is beginning to feel desperate, her foot makes contact with something. She bends and gropes at the pavement and there it is. An iPhone. Oh, what a relief! She has found it and it’s an iPhone. Sondra also has an iPhone so she knows how they work.

‘You need to tell me the passcode.’ She thinks she hears one oh four oh but it’s so slurred that might not be it. Hurriedly, she plugs in the numbers. And thank God, thank God, the homescreen appears.

Satnam says, ‘Call Nevis.’

Nevis? Is that a last name or a first? Will Sondra find it in the contacts? Maybe, but it’ll take too long. Another better idea bubbles up. She pushes the menu button and waits for the tone then speaks into the phone as clearly as she can. ‘Siri, call Nevis.’

The phone speaks. ‘Calling Nevis.’

At that moment the eye that is on the young woman registers movement. Sondra turns her head and sees that the young woman has jumped down onto the walkway and is dragging herself towards the gap in the fence where the suspension wire attaches to the bridge.

Oh God, thinks Sondra. I shouldn’t have walked away. I shouldn’t have left her. She’s going to go and I’m not going to be able to pull her back. She feels herself take a leap forward and closes her eyes.

Chapter 1

Nevis

Nevis Smith, student mathematician, bird lover, and keeper of secrets, is lying on her bed in the flat she shares with Satnam Mann trying to finish a tricky piece of coursework on deep vent modelling when her phone bleeps with Satnam’s ringtone.

‘Hey, I thought you’d gone to bed already.’ The door to Satnam’s room was shut and the light was out when Nevis came in late from the library.

An unfamiliar voice replies. ‘My name is Sondra. I’m with your friend Satnam on the Clifton Suspension Bridge. She wants you to come straight away. Please come, right now.’

Nevis says, ‘Is she hurt?’

‘Not yet, not yet, but she’s in a bad way. Oh please. Don’t call the emergency services. She’s says that if she sees a blue light she’ll jump. Please, I don’t know what else to say to her, just come.’

The words hum and hiss and swirl around in Nevis’s head. Is this some kind of joke? Or a scam? Someone playing a sick prank. What would Satnam be doing on the bridge past midnight? Why would this woman be calling? In any case what Sondra is saying is impossible because it’s after midnight and Satnam is asleep in her bed.

And yet the urgency of the voice is unmistakeable. Nevis rushes into the hallway and throws open the door to Satnam’s room. In the murky light she picks out the shape of an empty bed. There is something rancid in the air which she has never noticed before. Is she imagining things? She can hear her head drumming or is it her heart? What is happening? Nevis, who prides herself on thinking straight, can hardly think at all.

She reaches for the light switch and flips it on as if that might illuminate the inside of her head. But no. The bed remains empty. She walks around it and opens the wardrobe. She calls, ‘Satnam?’ and hears traffic outside and the clamour of her pulse. What is going on? As she turns to leave, her eye catches a bottle of vodka on the bedside table. How could she have missed it? She hurries over, picks it up, shakes the few remaining drops inside the bottle, puts it back down and feels the moving parts of her brain clicking into place at last.

Is this The Moment? she thinks. Has it come?

Honor always told her that in every life there is The Moment. It might be very small, like holding out a hand to stop a child stepping over a pavement, or very big, like giving the go-ahead for a doctor to flick the switch on a life-support machine. It may be saying yes or saying no. It might be as simple as making or taking a phone call. The Moment can steal up on you and arrive in the most unexpected minute of the most unexpected hour. It may hit hard or be so soft-footed that you may not hear it coming. Your life can be defined by it. It can be your making or your ruin.

Satnam is on the Clifton Suspension Bridge with Sondra. Satnam is… oh it’s too horrible to think about but Nevis must steel herself. Satnam is in deep, deep trouble. This is my Moment, she thinks. This is my time. Whatever decisions she makes, whatever action she takes now will be etched on her soul. She cannot escape this; she can only move towards it.

Nevis’s hand is trembling so hard now that she can hardly hold the phone. ‘Let me speak to her.’ She can feel her adolescence receding. So distant now. Adulthood coming at her like a rocket.

‘She won’t let me approach. Please just come,’ Sondra says.

Nevis thinks. Can I do this? Do I have a choice? She takes a deep breath. You always have a choice, Nevis. The right thing or the easy thing. Step up. Stop asking questions. Control yourself. Take a breath and quiet your heart. This is The Moment.

‘Tell Satnam I will be there in fifteen minutes.’ Her voice sounds weirdly distant, Nevis thinks, as if it belongs to someone else. She grabs her phone to summon an Uber and throws on clothes. A different person from moments ago. A crisis will do that. In seconds she’s rushing down the stairs and into the street, one eye on her screen to follow the progress of the taxi, willing the driver to go faster. Farok in the black Prius, come on. Three minutes, two, one. The longest one hundred and eighty seconds in history. There’s a moment, maybe a second or two, when she loses heart and thinks, how can I do this? But how can she not? Satnam is her best friend, her only friend. Nevis owes her this.

The Prius has barely come to a stop at the side of the pavement before Nevis is throwing open the door and hurling her body inside. Farok whips his head round, meets the expression on her face with a look of alarm.

‘Nevis, Clifton Bridge?’

‘Yes. It’s not what you think. Or it is what you think, but it’s not me, it’s my friend.’

Farok hesitates for a second as if trying to decide whether this ride is way above his pay grade. He turns back to the dashboard and glances at her in the rear-view mirror and – miracle – a look of resolution is on his face. He’s decided this one is worth doing.

‘OK,’ he says. ‘We’ll go very fast.’

As they speed up the hill towards Clifton she calls Satnam’s number again, but the device goes to voicemail. What if it’s too late? Oh God, please no. This is like solving an equation, Nevis tells herself, perhaps the most complicated, challenging equation you have ever been asked to solve. There will be a point where you can take one of several different pathways. Only one of these pathways will lead to the correct solution. You have to think it through. You have to get it right.

But how? She does not have all the parameters. This isn’t the Satnam that she knows. This is not the friend who sits on her bed and watches crap telly or the friend who called out the wanker who thought it was funny to spray-paint ‘Mentalist’ on Nevis’s daypack. This isn’t the friend who dreams of becoming a medical researcher, the girl who is determined to marry for love whatever her parents might think. It’s not the girl who jogs even when it’s raining and is always happy to share her chips. But perhaps the Satnam on the bridge is the same Satnam who says she’s going to the library but never seems to be there, the friend who has lost weight recently but says she hasn’t, the one who cries in her bedroom and once – recently – threatened to leave Avon University. Perhaps this Satnam has secrets.

People are complicated. Satnam is complicated. If only people were as simple as mathematics.

‘I don’t know what to do,’ Nevis says, to no one in particular. The person she would normally ask in a situation like this is Satnam. Because Satnam has everyday, ordinary, practical smarts. Nevis has maths smarts as well as knowing a great deal about river birds. But Nevis has no people smarts. I am useless, she thinks.

Farok doesn’t answer. He doesn’t know either. Of course he doesn’t. He has no idea. In any case, he’s doing what he can, which is driving really very fast across the northern edges of the city towards Clifton. Farok is looking at Nevis in the rear-view mirror. He also seems terribly concerned.

I can’t speak, Nevis thinks, the words have gone. There is just wire wool in my throat where sentences should be. Who can I text to help me?

She pulls out her phone. There are so few numbers in her contacts. There is Honor of course but they haven’t really spoken in months, not since Nevis found the letter.

Chapter 2

Honor

Honor is asleep when the call comes from Nevis. At first she doesn’t realise what has woken her and thinks it must have been Zoe, who is sitting at the bottom of her bed, doing what she has always done since she died, staring into the middle distance. Is it morning or is Zoe playing one of her tricks? Perched on her elbows now, Honor scouts the darkened room. The slice of window left visible after she shrank the curtain in the wash is still night-black. She listens out for birds but hears only the usual distant hiss of London traffic making its way along the A12 at Bow and the murmur of the boat on the water. Her brain, which feels as thick as toothpaste, is demanding more sleep. It’s tempting to ignore Zoe. Over the nearly two decades since Zoe’s death it has become Honor’s principal survival technique to pretend there’s no trouble in life so pressing you can’t turn your back on it and hope it will go away. Then again, Honor also knows that Zoe will not go away until she’s said what she’s come to say, which is tricky, given that she never speaks.

‘What’s up?’

No reply.

Her phone buzzes and throws out its tinny blue light. So this is why she woke after all. There are only two people who ever text after work hours: her daughter Nevis and her neighbour Bill and it’s too late to be Bill.

Honor reaches over to the bedside table where the phone is sitting on its charger and reads Need speak now. The breath catches in her throat. Her pulse thrums. Nevis was always scrappy about keeping in touch. She’s never been one for the long, intimate conversations that Honor knows other mothers have with their daughters. In the last few months they’ve barely communicated at all. Something Honor did or said. Nevis won’t say what. It’s gone midnight. There’s a hammering at the front of her brain. Her chest pops and splutters. All the old, long-buried anxiety comes rushing back as though the dam that had kept it back all these years has just burst its banks. She can feel it rising in her legs. She presses callback, the pad of her finger sliding on the screen, leaving a tiny slick of sweat. Holds her breath while the call connects and when Nevis doesn’t pick up, feels a terrible sinking. She cuts the line and bashes out a text.

I’m here. Call me.

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