it wouldn’t harm just to have a look, just to get an idea of what it was like… I finished it in the small hours of the following morning. It’s not long before you discover that this is the difficult-to-put-down second book. And if you haven’t read Into the Darkest Corner then you really should.’
The Bookbag
‘I really enjoyed Into the Darkest Corner and was looking forward to this second book. It is every bit as engaging. The plot is excellent… Plenty for reading groups to discuss.’
NewBooks Magazine
For an exclusive extract, turn to p.393
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Human Remains
Acknowledgements
AFTERWORD
About the Author
Copyright
For my best friends
Angela Wiley, Karen Aslett and Lindsay Brown with love
Annabel
When I got home I could smell the bins on the cold air, a faint bad smell that made me wrinkle my nose.
Inside, I opened the back door, rattling the box of cat biscuits in the hope that it would bring her scurrying. It was a clear night, so she would most likely not make an appearance at the back door until I was in the bath, when she would howl and scratch to be let in. Despite the cat flap and my efforts to get her to use it – propping it open, coaxing her and bribing her and even shoving her forcefully through it – she ignored it and came in and out only when I was home to open the door for her. I’d even tried getting rid of the litter tray, but she’d just piss on the lino in the kitchen and then pull it up at the corner with her claws to try and cover her excretions. After that I gave up.
I stood in the doorway for a few minutes. ‘Lucy?’ I called, experimentally. ‘Lucy!’
Nothing. The bloody cat could stay out there all night, I thought, knowing for a fact that I would be down here in my bath towel in a couple of hours’ time, dripping wet and freezing, rattling the cat biscuits while she sat on the lawn and stared at me, punishing me for having taken too long.
I made myself a cup of peppermint tea and some cheese on toast, and ate it sitting at the kitchen table with one eye on the open door in case the cat might walk in and I could shut it and trap her inside. When I’d finished I scraped the crusts of the toast into the kitchen bin, sniffing. Something definitely smelt bad. The last time I’d smelt something this rotten, the cat had brought in a frog and I hadn’t realised until I found it, half-slimy, half-dried, under the dresser in the dining room, right at the back. I’d had to get on my hands and knees with a wad of kitchen towel and rubber gloves on to get rid of it.
I stood in the doorway again, wondering if Lucy had killed a pigeon this time and left it by the bins, not trusting me to dispose of it appropriately. I put on my slippers, took my torch from the drawer and ventured down the steps into the darkness, listening to the sound of the traffic from the main road beyond the trees. In the alleyway between my house and next door I lifted the lid off each of the two bins: the black one, and the green one for compostable waste. Both smelt unpleasant, but that wasn’t it. I shone the torch around the base of the bins. No pigeon, no rat – nothing dead.
The house next door was unoccupied, had been for some time, but as I stood there I realised I could see a light coming from inside. A dim golden light, as though a single bulb shone in a room somewhere inside, undisturbed.
I tried to remember when I’d last been out here. Sunday afternoon? But it had been broad daylight, sunny, and even if the light had been on next door then I wouldn’t have noticed it. Maybe an estate agent had been in, or a property developer, and left it on?
When I’d first moved in, a couple had been living next door. I fought for the memory – what was she called? Shelley, that was it. She’d introduced herself to me once. It had been summer, a hot day. I was just getting home and she was working in the front garden. She stopped me for a chat even though it was the last thing I wanted. Tired, fed up as usual, all I longed for was to get inside and prise