The Family Read online

  LOUISE JENSEN is a global No.1 bestselling author of psychological thrillers. Louise has sold over a million English language books and her novels have been sold for translation to twenty-five territories, as well as being featured on the USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestsellers’ lists. Louise was nominated for the Goodreads Debut Author of 2016 Award and The Guardian’s Not the Booker 2018. The Gift has been optioned for TV and film.

  Louise lives with her husband, children, madcap dog and a rather naughty cat in Northamptonshire. She loves to hear from readers and writers and can be found at www.louisejensen.co.uk, where she regularly blogs flash fiction and writing tips.

  Also by Louise Jensen

  The Sister

  The Gift

  The Surrogate

  The Date

  The Family

  Louise Jensen

  ONE PLACE. MANY STORIES

  Copyright

  An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2019

  Copyright © Louise Jensen 2019

  Louise Jensen asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

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

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Ebook Edition © September 2019 ISBN: 9780008330118

  Note to Readers

  This ebook contains the following accessibility features which, if supported by your device, can be accessed via your ereader/accessibility settings:

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  Page numbers taken from the following print edition: ISBN 9780008330101

  For Tim,

  This one had to be for you!

  With love x

  For I know the plans I have for you

  JEREMIAH 29:11-14

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Author

  Also by Louise Jensen

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Note to Readers

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Part One: The Cause

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Part Two: The Effect

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  Chapter Seventy

  Chapter Seventy-One

  Chapter Seventy-Two

  Chapter Seventy-Three

  Chapter Seventy-Four

  Chapter Seventy-Five

  Chapter Seventy-Six

  Part Three: The Aftermath

  Chapter Seventy-Seven

  Chapter Seventy-Eight

  Chapter Seventy-Nine

  Chapter Eighty

  Part Four: Eighteen Months Later

  Chapter Eighty-One

  Chapter Eighty-Two

  Chapter Eighty-Three

  Chapter Eighty-Four

  Chapter Eighty-Five

  Acknowledgements

  The following letter contains spoilers

  Book Club Questions

  Excerpt

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  NOW

  LAURA

  It all unfolds with cinematic clarity; the gunshot, the scream. Every detail sharp and clear. Time slows as her eyes plead with me to help her. In my mind I bundle her behind me, shielding her body with mine, but she is too far away and I know I cannot reach her in time.

  But still I try.

  My legs are weighted with dread as I run towards her; the fist around my heart tightening.

  A second shot.

  Her knees buckle. She crumples like a paper doll.

  The ground falls away beneath my feet and I crawl towards her like the animal I have become. My palms are sticky in the arc of blood that is staining the floor red. Blood is thicker than water they say, but hers is thin and beacon-bright. Adrenaline pulses through me leaving numbness in its wake, as I press against her wrist, desperately seeking a pulse. With my other hand I link my fingers through hers the way we used to, before I brought us to this place that has been our ruin. A lifetime of memories strobe through my mind; cradling her close in the maternity wing; Easter eggs spilling out of the wicker basket looped over her pudgy arm; her first day of school, ribboned pigtails swinging as she ran across the playground.

  She can’t be gone.

  Can she?

  Fingers of panic press hard against my skull. The colour leaches from the room. A black and white hue descending upon me. I tighten my fingers around hers, afraid I’m going to faint. Afraid I’m going to let her go.

  But then.

  A flicker of eyelids. A murmur from her lips.

  I lay next to her, gently rolling her towards me, holding her in my arms. I can’t, I won’t leave her. Family should stick together. Protect each other. Instead, I chose to come here.

  This is all my fault.

  The drumming in my head grows louder – the sound of footfall. I don’t have to look up to feel their anger, solid and immovable.

  The acrid smell of gunpowder hangs in the air along with my fear.

  Looking up, my eyes meet the shooter’s; they are still holding the gun and sensations return, hard and fast. The pain in my stomach is cutting and deep and I am no longer sure if the blood I am covered in has come from her.

  Or is coming from me.

  Her top is soaked crimson, as is mine.

  The pain increases.

  Terrified, I tug at her clothes, my clothes. Praying. Let her be okay. Seventeen is no age. Let it be me.

  At last I find the wound but before I can apply pressure to stem the flow of blood there are hands on my shoulders. My elbows. Pulling.

  Darkness flickers at the edge of my vision but still I fight against it. I fight against them.

  My hands are restrained, feet kick out, teeth sinking into flesh, but it’s fruitless. I am growing weaker.

  Her fingers twitch. Once. Twice.

  Nothing.

  ‘Tilly!’ My scream rips through me as I am yanked to my feet. ‘Tilly!’ I scramble for traction, every fibre of my being straining to reach my daughter.

  I can’t.

  I am still wrestling to be free as I am dragged, my feet scraping the ground.

  I know they’ll never let us leave here now.

  Not alive anyway.

  Part One

  The Cause

  Chapter One

  Before

  LAURA

  Fears. We all have the
m. That creeping unease. An aversion to something. For me it’s spiders. It stemmed from a nature documentary years before about the black weaver, a matriphagous breed that switches on her babies’ cannibalistic instinct by encouraging her spiderlings to devour her. Unable to tear myself away, I had watched through splayed fingers as the mother circled her lair, tapping and vibrating the web, stimulating her young’s primal instinct until they attacked her in a frenzied swarm. Hundreds of scuttling legs. Sinking fangs. The sound of the adult being consumed after venom had dissolved her from the inside out had stayed with me. What possessed a mother to sacrifice herself like that? How could her children turn on her? Of course that was long before I was a parent.

  The instant I saw Tilly, tiny hands fisted, eyes squinting in the unaccustomed light, I plunged headfirst into a love that was absolute. A fierce desire as her mother to shield her from the world however I could. And she needed shielding. I knew how damaging it could be out there.

  I had been damaged.

  That morning though I had no idea how I was going to shelter her from the contents of the letter. As I drove towards school, I tightened my grip on the steering wheel as if it might somehow stop the sense of everything spinning out of my control. It didn’t.

  What was I going to do?

  I slotted my rusting Volvo between two shiny 4x4s. Hordes of kids traipsed past the car, spines curved under the weight of the books they carried, dragging their feet towards the black wrought-iron gates. I rubbed my temples, trying to dispel the pounding behind my eyes.

  ‘Do I have to go back to school, Mum?’

  I heard the sadness in her voice. I heard it in my own as I said, ‘It’s been six weeks, Tilly.’ As though that was long enough to make everything right.

  It wasn’t.

  She wasn’t coping well. Neither was I but, for her, I pretended we’d get through it. We’d be okay. Even if I didn’t know how.

  ‘We talked about this,’ I said, but not unkindly. ‘It was your idea to come back on a Friday. Ease yourself into it. It’s one day, Tilly.’

  She tucked her unruly dark hair behind her ears as she looked anxiously out of the window. Her face looked smaller, skin ashen, black bags nestled beneath bloodshot eyes. She’d refused the offer of counselling, spending so much of her time shut away in her room that now, being outside was overwhelming.

  ‘You’ve already so much to catch up on but if you really can’t face it I won’t make you. You can come and help me in the shop instead. It’s time to try to re-join the world.’ I spoke slowly, deliberately, although each word was rough, grazing my tongue. Our Family Liaison Officer had said it was best to forge a routine, a semblance of normality, but was it? Sometimes being a parent was torturous. Spinning in circles like a bird with a broken wing. But Tilly was studying for A Levels. It was such an important year. Besides, at school she’d be with Rhianon and, although I knew the cousins were no longer inseparable, I hoped that away from the family drama they could begin to heal.

  God knows, we all needed to heal.

  ‘Fine.’

  It was dizzying how quickly she pinballed between sadness and anger, but I knew it was all part of the hard ball of grief that ricocheted inside her.

  She flung open the car door. A lengthy sigh escaping the mouth that no longer smiled.

  ‘Wait,’ I called, snatching her lunch from the backseat. ‘If it becomes too much you can always ring me.’ She snatched the Tupperware from my hands, her expression as hardened as the plastic.

  ‘Try to have a good—’ The slam of the car door sliced my sentence in two. ‘Day.’ A constriction in my throat prevented me calling her back. What could I have said to make things right? She stalked away without a backwards glance, swamped by her black winter coat, which snapped at her ankles as she walked. Weight had fallen off her. Again, I had found her half-eaten breakfast dumped in the bin. On top of the browning banana skin, a smattering of Rice Krispies ground to dust where she had crushed them with her spoon. She never could stand milk.

  She stooped as she crossed the road without waiting for the green man, the weight of both her rucksack and the world on her shoulders. I contemplated calling her back but I knew she couldn’t hide away forever. If she rang me I could be back there within fifteen minutes, no time at all, but I knew sometimes even sixty seconds could feel like an eternity. The desire to protect her, in the way I hadn’t been protected at her age, to whisk her away for a fresh start, was fierce and stabbing, but after that morning’s post, it seemed more out of reach than ever.

  Tilly merged with the throng of children crunching over the autumn orange leaves that carpeted the pavement. I was reminded of the times Gavan and I would tramp though the forest searching for gleaming conkers, a wellington-booted Tilly nestled between us, her small gloved hands in ours. The smell of moss and earth. It was still so clear to me, the joy of it.

  One, two, three, lift! We’d swing her back and forth as she clung on like a baby monkey, her infectious giggles making Gavan and I laugh. Even when she grew too tall, too heavy, she’d raise her knees to her chest to prevent her feet dragging on the floor, as if she couldn’t quite accept how big she’d grown. I watched her as she stamped up the drab grey steps, finding it hard to equate the carefree, smiling child of seemingly five minutes ago with this solemn seventeen-year-old. She was a young woman now, lost to me, almost. The days of being able to make everything in her world right again with a mug of hot chocolate and a cuddle were long gone, and I longed to have them back.

  The Special Constable with the patchy beard and straggly ponytail, who patrolled the secondary school at 8.45 and 3.15 every day with a ferocity that would put a lioness guarding cubs to shame, half-ran towards me. My rational self knew that he was going to tell me off for parking in the wrong place, but still, my hands were shaking as I released the handbrake. Each time I saw a police uniform it evoked such a physical response, sickness rising like a serpent. I zoomed off the yellow lines before he reached the car, and it wasn’t until he disappeared from sight in my rear-view mirror that my breathing began to slow.

  I would always associate the police with bad news.

  With endless, endless questions.

  Sometimes it all blended into a swirling, solid mass. The past. The present. Impossible to separate.

  The fear has never really left me. Recurrently concealing itself in the layer between skin and flesh, waiting patiently for another trigger. The chance to attack.

  I can’t remember.

  And sometimes, consciously, I couldn’t remember. The lie became my truth. The pressure in my head insufferable.

  Then, shadowed by night, the bony fingers of the past would drag me back and I would kick and scream before I’d wake. Duvet crumpled on the floor. Pyjamas drenched in sweat. And alone.

  Always alone.

  The scar on my forehead throbbed a reminder of my helplessness.

  Thoughts of the letter filled my mind once more as I drove towards work.

  What was I going to do?

  Chapter Two

  LAURA

  The realisation that I was unlocking the door for one of the last times stung like disinfectant being poured onto an open wound.

  I drank it all in. The light bouncing off the windows as the day gathered strength. The breeze kissing the ‘Laura’s Flowers’ sign as it creaked its delight. The way the key moulded into my fingers as though it should always be mine. Soon, it would be someone else’s key. Someone else’s dream.

  The door was streaked with dried egg yolk. I told myself it must be from the trick-or-treaters that had roamed the streets the previous night cloaked in black; plastic fangs protruding from bloodstained lips. I really should stop reading too much into things.

  But my edginess stayed with me, despite the comforting floral smell that wrapped around me like a hug as I stepped inside.

  I couldn’t believe it was over.

  When I’d opened the shop ten years before I had thought I’d eventually pass the business down to Tilly, or even to my niece Rhianon, who spent as much time at our house as Tilly did at hers. They loved gardening, kneeling side by side, fingernails caked with mud, trowels in hands, digging over the small flower bed that was theirs in the corner of our garden. Nurturing dandelions and buttercups because they were sunshine-yellow bright; pulling anemones and asters which hadn’t yet flowered; flashing me gappy smiles as I handed out cherry ice pops. As they transitioned into teenagers, their corner of the garden grew tangled and wild, their interest in flowers lost. For the first time I was grateful they weren’t wanting to step into my shoes and walk the endlessly worrisome path of the sole trader; declining business and too many bills.