The Thin Place
Page 1
PRAISE FOR C D MAJOR
‘Cesca Major is so skilled at taking real historical events and weaving them into stories that are as fascinating as they are disturbing. They’ll make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.’
– Kate Riordan, author of The Heatwave
‘I loved this historical thriller. Tense, compulsive, atmospheric and emotional, with two wonderful lead characters and an original plot that had me hooked from beginning to end.’
– Claire Douglas, author of Then She Vanishes
‘It’s chilling, tense, and atmospheric, with an irresistible premise.’
– Roz Watkins, author of the DI Meg Dalton series
‘Breathtaking, pacy, and utterly compelling, it had me gripped until the very last word.’
– Cathy Bramley, author of A Patchwork Family
‘C D Major is a truly gifted storyteller. I adore everything she writes.’
– Amanda Jennings, author of The Cliff House
‘Atmospheric, chilling, and absolutely compelling – I loved it.’
– Rachael Lucas, author of The Telephone Box Library
‘I was swept up in this story, captivated by the characters, the suspense . . . This story is cleverly plotted, skilful and breathtaking in the telling. I started reading it and couldn’t stop until I reached the startling climax.’
– Maddie Please, author of The Summer of Second Chances
‘This was a marvellous read, gripping from the very start, and builds layer upon layer of tension. So good I read it all in one sitting, and wanted more when I finished it.’
– Sara Benwell, Good Housekeeping
‘Hugely atmospheric, incredibly creepy, and emotional. A clever and sinister page turner set in a New Zealand asylum, exploring the idea of past lives. I can’t recommend this book enough.’
– Cressida McLaughlin, author of the Cornish Cream Tea series
‘With a tense undercurrent and an immersive story, The Other Girl is completely gripping and atmospheric.’
– Vikki Patis, author of Girl, Lost
‘Tense, compelling storytelling with a stellar cast of characters that had me believing every word.’
– Rona Halsall, author of The Honeymoon
‘An utterly creepy and mesmerising read – I couldn’t bear to put it down.’
– Angela Clarke, author of On My Life
‘This is a heartrending story turned skilfully into an edge-of-the-seat historical thriller. The characters are well drawn, the storytelling emotional and gripping, the setting presented like an oil painting of its time.’
– Susanna Beard, author of Dare to Remember
‘The writing is beautiful and the story was just so intricate and enticingly, sympathetically weaved. This is next level.’
– Anna Mansell, author of The Man I Loved Before
ALSO BY C D MAJOR
The Other Girl
The Silent Hours
The Last Night
Writing as Rosie Blake:
The Hygge Holiday
How To Find Your (First) Husband
How to Stuff Up Christmas
How To Get A (Love) Life
The Gin O’Clock Club
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2021 by C D Major
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781542023016
ISBN-10: 1542023017
Cover design by The Brewster Project
To Kirsty and Izzy – my wonderful friends and talented writers.
CONTENTS
Start Reading
Prologue
Chapter 1 AVA, PRESENT DAY
Chapter 2 MARION, 1929
Chapter 3 AVA
Chapter 4 CONSTANCE, 1949
Chapter 5 AVA
Chapter 6 MARION
Chapter 7 AVA
Chapter 8 AVA
Chapter 9 CONSTANCE
Chapter 10 AVA
Chapter 11 MARION
Chapter 12 AVA
Chapter 13 AVA
Chapter 14 CONSTANCE
Chapter 15 AVA
Chapter 16 AVA
Chapter 17 MARION
Chapter 18 AVA
Chapter 19 CONSTANCE
Chapter 20 AVA
Chapter 21 MARION
Chapter 22 AVA
Chapter 23 CONSTANCE
Chapter 24 AVA
Chapter 25 MARION
Chapter 26 AVA
Chapter 27 AVA
Chapter 28 CONSTANCE
Chapter 29 AVA
Chapter 30 MARION
Chapter 31 AVA
Chapter 32 CONSTANCE
Chapter 33 AVA
Chapter 34 MARION, 1939
Chapter 35 AVA
Chapter 36 CONSTANCE
Chapter 37 AVA
Chapter 38 AVA
Chapter 39 AVA
Chapter 40 MARION
Chapter 41 AVA
Chapter 42 AVA
Chapter 43 CONSTANCE
Chapter 44 AVA
Chapter 45 AVA
Chapter 46 MARION
Chapter 47 AVA
Chapter 48 CONSTANCE
Chapter 49 AVA
Chapter 50 AVA
Chapter 51 AVA
Chapter 52 MARION
Chapter 53 AVA
Chapter 54 CONSTANCE
Chapter 55 AVA
Chapter 56 MARION
Chapter 57 AVA
Chapter 58 CONSTANCE
Epilogue PRESENT DAY
HISTORICAL NOTE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
‘Heaven and earth are only three feet apart, but in thin places that distance is even shorter.’
Celtic proverb
Prologue
She stands on the bridge. I stare from the window of the house.
I can see her top half over the thick stone. I can see what’s in her arms.
It has begun to rain, the glass of the window that divides us spattered with tiny flecks. I can’t drag my eyes away. My chest is squeezed tight as I hold my breath.
The wind lifts her hair as she looks out over the gorge. I imagine the drop: the water, the rocks below.
She takes a step forward and my breath comes in a rush, fogging the glass. I rub at it frantically. She stays standing there. Perfectly still.
Don’t. Please. Please, don’t.
My nose is practically touching the pane as I plead with her.
She knows I am watching.
One more step and she is right next to the wall, the stone separating her from the depths below. Her arms are enclosed tightly around the bundle.
Don’t. I’ll do anything. Please, please . . .
She looks back at me. Then she raises the bundle.
No. Please. I’m sorry. Please don’t.
The movement is sudden; one minute the bundle is safe and the next she has thrown it over the wall. For a second I imagine it suspended, before it plunges out of sight into the gorge.
I scream and scream and scream.
Chapter 1
AVA, PRESENT DAY
‘Sorry I’m late!’ Fraser jo
gged towards her, shirt collar sticking up, tanned cheeks flushed.
‘You’re not late,’ Ava soothed. ‘The appointment isn’t until 4 p.m.’ She felt immediately better that he was here with her.
He took her hand. There was a faint sheen of sweat on his top lip and his five o’clock shadow was emerging. The end of the school year was always hectic, but he was also doing a handover with the old head of sixth form, whose paperwork was a mess. Fraser, a technophile and lover of spreadsheets, had been horrified at the endless scrawled notes and lack of any decent system.
‘Shall we head inside?’ Fraser squeezed her hand. ‘Are you nervous?’
Ava bit her lip and nodded.
‘It’ll be OK.’
He stepped towards the electronic double doors of the hospital, which slid back to reveal a large foyer with signs pointing every which way and an endless labyrinth of corridors in salmon pink. Their footsteps echoed from the hard floor. Posters lined the walls; signs overhead directed them to departments Ava had never heard of before.
Their destination was on the second floor and, as Fraser jabbed the button in the steel-grey lift, Ava felt her stomach roll. Gripping the chrome handrail, she steadied herself before stepping out.
Mint-green bucket chairs were bolted to the floor alongside a long reception desk staffed by a curly-haired woman with only the top of her head visible. She looked up from the file she had been studying and gave them a small smile, taking their details and directing them to take a seat. Someone would be along shortly.
There were a few other patients waiting, hurried glances as they passed, no conversations in the hushed atmosphere. Fraser nudged Ava as they sat, pointing past her to a sign that read ‘Family Planning Advice: Rear Entrance’. Ava suppressed a giggle, grateful for his efforts to make her less edgy.
They watched a woman disappear into a side room and Ava clutched her hands tightly, her neatly clipped nails digging into the flesh. A name was called. She reached into her handbag for a hairband and tied back her shoulder-length hair. Another name was called until finally, ‘Ava Brent!’
Ava looked up sharply and a large woman in a white coat and multi-coloured trousers glanced in her direction. ‘Here,’ she said, stumbling as she stood, feeling like a schoolgirl at registration.
Fraser joined her, taking her hand again as they moved across to the woman, who was summoning them to follow her with Ava’s file pressed to her chest. Ava concentrated on his firm grip, his calm expression. It was going to be alright. They had been waiting for this appointment for weeks. She had barely thought about anything else. A seasoned news reporter, she had just about managed to hold it together on camera, act the professional.
Stepping into a dark room with pale grey walls, Ava stared around at the single seat in the corner, a reclining bed in the middle of the room next to a machine with an enormous range of knobs and buttons, a monitor and another, smaller, screen on a metal arm that could be moved at an angle.
‘Pop yourself up on the bed, there,’ the sonographer instructed in a rich, low voice after introducing herself.
Ava swallowed and stepped forward, struggling to get onto the bed gracefully in her lined pencil skirt. Fraser loosened his tie then sat in the only chair, scraping its legs as he inched it closer to the bed. Ava didn’t dare look at his face, at his expression. This was it.
The sonographer had moved to sit on a low stool next to the bed, holding a tube of something in her hand. ‘I’m going to need you to roll down the top of your skirt so I can put this gel on your stomach.’
Ava did as she was told, fumbling with the zip, feeling exposed as she rested back – the pale skin of her stomach, the fine white line from where she’d had her appendix out.
‘This is your first baby?’
Ava nodded quickly as Fraser gave a quiet ‘yes’ next to her. The sonographer barely glanced his way.
‘And you haven’t had any problems?’ she asked, her tone conversational.
Ava shook her head, brushing her fringe out of her eyes. She thought then of the booking appointment a few weeks before, of some of the answers she hadn’t been able to give the midwife. Anxiety gripped her again. ‘There are a couple of gaps in my family history.’
‘Well, let’s take a look. You lie back and we can see what’s going on.’
The chair next to her scraped again but Ava didn’t turn her head. She was frozen as she rested back stiffly, shocked by the sudden coolness of the gel. The sonographer lifted a white piece of plastic that looked like a microphone on a plastic spiral and rested it on Ava’s stomach.
Immediately, the small dark room was filled with sounds. For a second it reminded Ava of a scene she had watched in a nature documentary about whales, a strange sort of underwater noise with alien hiccups and beats. It was loud, and peculiar, and Ava found her eyes drawn to the screen to her right, white lines and shapes moving on the black.
The sonographer was silent, the plastic wand prodding Ava’s stomach as she roamed the surface of her belly. She paused, pressed a little harder and with her other hand pointed at the screen.
‘That’s the heart.’
There was a noise to her left from Fraser, an involuntary exhalation as his hand shot out to grab hers that rested at her side.
There was a heart.
There was a heart and it was beating.
Ava felt a whoosh of relief, as if her shoulders had been tense for weeks and now they could sink back down. Their longed-for baby was alive.
The voice of the sonographer returned as she pointed out the head, the buds that would be arms . . . legs . . . Ava couldn’t drag her eyes from the screen. The sonographer started a series of clicks with a mouse, making marks on the frozen image.
‘I’d estimate you are almost bang on twelve weeks.’
Twelve weeks.
She blurted out questions. Did the baby seem alright? Could she tell if there might be a problem? When should they return to the hospital? They spilled out of her and the sonographer tried to reassure her. Fraser sat back looking stunned. His eyes hadn’t moved from the screen.
‘Congratulations,’ the sonographer said warmly. She handed Ava a roll of paper to wipe the gel off her stomach.
Ava took it all in, dazed. She really was pregnant.
She really was going to be a mother.
Chapter 2
MARION, 1929
What a marvellous treat! A tea dance in the day – the Savoy no less, and Mother has always been so against them. But it was my birthday and, truly, I pleaded with her for weeks and she relented. It was everything I imagined: the high gilt ceilings; winking chandeliers; the waiters in their fancy clothes; the dresses in every colour imaginable; fashionable hair styles – oh, how I wished Mother would have let me have a bob! The music from the band. Tunes that would stay in my head forever, I was sure of it.
Oh, it was just thrilling.
I gazed around at the other people, craving a friend like the ones chatting in a corner, heads thrown back, trilling laughs, light touches on the arm. Mother sat as my chaperone, a lemony expression on her face, managing to look like the only dull thing in the room. It made me frown and I didn’t want to frown today, to be glum on my birthday; I wanted to pretend for a moment that I belonged among this vitality, these beautiful chattering animals.
He walked in with a rakish smile, looking like a Brontë hero: full red lips, an abundance of Byronic curls and heavy-lidded eyes. I thought I might swoon when he caught my eye. Hurriedly looking away – I didn’t want him to think me loose – I felt my heart almost burst out of my chest as he made his way over. Mother watched my every move, hawklike, but how was I ever meant to find a husband if I was never allowed outside our house?
He held out a gloved hand and asked if I would join him in a foxtrot. So many girls there and he had picked me! I accepted with a ridiculous squeak, my movements clumsy despite knowing the steps. When I took his hand it felt as if someone had pressed a button on my flesh, a spark like
the one in our new electric light, the hairs standing on the back of my neck. There was a yellow stain on the thumb and forefinger of his glove that I could have got rid of at home.
He drew me close and I forgot Mother completely, overwhelmed by the scent of wood, spice and summer, his breath warm from the lamb casserole he told me he’d had for lunch.
‘I can make lamb casserole,’ I said. I wish I could talk to men but nobody teaches you these things and I was too frightened to say much else, desperate not to trip or tread on his toes, desperate for the dance to go on and on.
We moved around the floor and I tried terribly hard to keep in time, not to mess it all up. I’ve always had unfortunately large feet and dancing with him was rather different from practising on my own in my bedroom. His name was Hamish and he was four years older than me – twenty-eight, which was perfect. He had a rich voice, the hint of a Scottish accent. His family are from there.
‘I’ve never been,’ I said.
He left me after that dance and I waited on the seat next to Mother, tapping my feet on the floor in time to the music, desperate for him to return. Why hadn’t I been more scintillating? Why hadn’t I worn something less dreary? I looked so plain in this grand setting in my brown dress, my dark blonde hair not as shiny as the other girls’. Why couldn’t someone else appear and make him ragingly jealous? But, alas, Mother was soon glancing at her pocket watch like a Victorian governess and staring at the door. I thought I might weep there and then. Back to Barnes and our semi-detached house on Adams Street. Father sitting in our front room with the curtains closed. Mother would bring him food on a tray and tell me not to distress him.
I was waiting to fetch my coat and Mother had disappeared to the powder room when Hamish emerged through the double doors, looking all about as if he’d lost something. Then his eyes lit on me and I felt another leap inside, crumpling the ticket I was about to hand over.
He was disappointed to hear we didn’t have a telephone and I cursed my luck. Father always said there was no point to them, infernal inventions that merely disrupted. Any sudden noises now made him tremble. He didn’t even want a wireless in the house, even though he complained I’d played our old gramophone records half to death and he was sick to the back teeth of them.