Both of You

by Adele Parks

  ADELE PARKS was born in North Yorkshire. She is the author of twenty bestselling novels including the recent Sunday Times Number One hits Lies Lies Lies and Just My Luck. She’s an ambassador for The National Literacy Trust and a judge for the Costa. Adele has lived in Botswana, Italy and London, and is now settled in Guildford, Surrey, with her husband, son and cat. Both Of You is her twenty-first novel.

  Also by Adele Parks

  Playing Away

  Game Over

  Larger Than Life

  The Other Woman’s Shoes

  Still Thinking Of You

  Husbands

  Young Wives’ Tales

  Happy Families (Quick Read)

  Tell Me Something

  Love Lies

  Men I’ve Loved Before

  About Last Night

  Whatever It Takes

  The State We’re In

  Spare Brides

  If You Go Away

  The Stranger In My Home

  The Image Of You

  I Invited Her In

  Lies Lies Lies

  Just My Luck

  Short story collections

  Love Is A Journey

  Copyright

  An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2021

  Copyright © Adele Parks 2021

  Adele Parks 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 © May 2021 ISBN: 9780008395582

  Version 2021-05-18

  Note to Readers

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  Page numbers taken from the following print edition: ISBN 9780008395599

  For Abdu Mohammed Ali.

  Tech genius who saved the day.

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Author

  Booklist

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Note to Readers

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  2. Leigh

  3. Leigh

  4. Leigh

  5. Leigh

  6. Mark

  7. DC Clements

  8. Leigh

  9. Kai

  10. Kai

  11. Kai

  12. Kai

  13. Kai

  14. DC Clements

  15. DC Clements

  16. Fiona

  17. Kylie

  18. DC Clements

  19. Kylie

  20. Mark

  21. Fiona

  22. Oli

  23. Kylie

  24. DC Clements

  25. Kylie

  26. Daan

  27. Kylie

  28. Fiona

  29. Kylie

  30. Oli

  31. Kylie

  32. Daan

  33. Fiona

  34. DC Clements

  35. Kylie

  36. Fiona

  37. Kylie

  38. Mark

  39. Fiona

  40. Kylie

  41. Mark

  42. Kylie

  43. Kylie

  44. Kylie

  45. DC Clements

  46. Fiona

  47. Kylie

  48. Daan

  49. Kylie

  50. Fiona

  Extract

  1. Lexi

  2. Lexi

  3. Lexi

  Acknowledgements

  About the Publisher

  1

  Tuesday 17th March 2020

  I am engulfed in emptiness. I’m not in my bed. I am not in any bed.

  In the instant my eyes flutter open I know there is something wrong. Seriously wrong. It’s dark. I’m suspended in a threatening, airless blackness. I’m lying down but am disorientated because I’m on a cold concrete floor. A floor that looks as though it’s waiting to be tiled, but something immediately suggests to me it never will be. My mind is lazy and unable to process why I think this. I can’t remember when I last slept on a floor, a million years ago when I was a student and would bunk in another student’s room if I was too drunk to get home. I try to sit up; my limbs feel heavy, my head sore. I try to stand up but as I do so, I am yanked back down, my left hand is tethered. Chained. I hear the rattle of the chain at the same time as I feel the cold tug. Am I dreaming? My head pulses, swells and then bursts, I close my eyes again, my lids are like sandpaper scratching, I open them for a second time, giving them a chance to adjust to the darkness. Is it my dizziness that’s leaving everything unfamiliar? Shaky? I feel slow, behind myself.

  How much did I have to drink last night? I try to remember. I can’t. And then – this is terrifying – I realise I can’t remember last night at all. I feel sick. I can smell vomit, suggesting I have already been sick. I should not be waking to the smell of vomit. Where is the smell of my husband’s early morning breath? There is no smell of toast from the kitchen, no traces of the Jo Malone Lime Basil and Mandarin room spray that I sometimes wake to. I’m somewhere dusty, not damp, a little overwarm. Am I in a hospital? No. What sort of hospital makes patients lie on the floor, chains them? There are no sounds. My boys are not arguing in the kitchen, the TV is not blaring, no doors opening, slamming, no demands, ‘Mum, where are my football shorts?’ I wait, sometimes I wake to something more serene. Sometimes it is Radio 4 and the smell of coffee.

  Nothing.

  Alarm and horror flood through my body. My organs and limbs turn to liquid and I can’t coordinate my movements. None of us are that naive anymore. The news doesn’t always enlighten or inform, often it terrifies. My foggy mind realises I must have been drugged. I have been abducted. The terrible thing that you read about that happens to someone else – someone other – has happened to me.

  Panicked, I tug hard at the chain, there’s no give. I scramble about in the darkness. Trying to understand my environment. I can’t move far because of the chain, which is attached to a radiator at one end and through a zip tie that is tight around my wrist on the other. The chain is about a metre long. As my eyes adjust, I see that I am in a room that is about three metres long by just over two, like a standard guest room. The walls are manila. It is clean and bare. I am not in a derelict warehouse or abandoned cottage. It’s bland to the state of anonymous. I imagine that is the point. I could be anywhere. There’s no furniture in the room. None at all. Not a bed, a mattress, a lamp. Nothing to soften or comfort. Just a plastic bucket. I realise what this is intended for and my stomach heaves. I can see the outline of a door and a boarded-up window. I can’t reach the door as it’s in the far corner, or the window
as that’s at the end of the wall opposite the one with the radiator I am chained to.

  I go to check the time, but my Fitbit has been removed. Not knowing what time it is, or even what day it is for sure, sends spikes of isolation and confusion through my body. Still, I have my voice. I can shout and maybe attract attention. I fleetingly consider that shouting will attract the attention of whoever it is that brought me here. He could do a lot worse to me than chain me up, but I have no choice.

  ‘Help! Help me! Help!’ My voice shatters the dead, unnatural silence. I yell over and over again until I become hoarse. The pain in my tender head intensifies.

  No one comes.

  No one responds.

  The silence stretches. I stop yelling and listen. Hoping to hear something, cars in the distance, people in the street, birdsong, as the light has started to eke around the boarded window. A new day, but which day is it? Nothing. It’s like I’m in a vacuum. Then, I hear footsteps coming towards the door.

  ‘Please, please let me out,’ I whimper. I’m crying now. I’m not sure when I started crying. Tears and mucus pour down my face. I don’t want to be weak. I want to be strong, brave, resistant. That’s what you imagine you’ll be in a situation like this but it’s beyond me. It’s a ludicrous fantasy. I am just terrified. I will beg, plead, implore. Anything to stay safe. Anything. ‘Please, please don’t hurt me. Please.’

  Then I hear the distinct sound of the keystrokes of an old-fashioned typewriter being pounded. A sort of shuffling rat-tat-tat. Slow, precise. Like a hostile countdown. Next, the hurried juddering whirl of paper being forcefully pulled out of the machine’s roller. It is incongruous, this passé sound is the domain of busy newspaper rooms in decades gone by. Who has a typewriter anymore? There is rustling, as the piece of paper is pushed beneath the door. I stretch to reach it, but it is tantalisingly out of my grasp. I lie on the floor and carefully, oh so slowly, edge it nearer with my toes until I can drag it close enough to snatch it up.

  I am not the villain here.

  2

  Leigh

  Sunday 15th March

  Sunday. The boys are out. All three of them. I probably shouldn’t refer to Mark as one of my boys, not really. It’s a bit infantilising and he’s not that sort of man at all. He’s very capable. Strong. Powerful. It’s just shorthand. And it sounds a bit formal and pedantic if I say my husband and sons are out.

  Plus, not strictly accurate.

  My husband and his sons are out. The thought flickers into my head, nips hard and cruel. Even now. This sudden and brutal distinction wounds. Although, it hasn’t been sudden, has it? Not really. I might as well be honest with myself. It’s always been there. An imbalance that we are both aware of and try not to acknowledge ever. An imbalance that has been impossible to ignore for these past few months, Oli has started being insistent on highlighting the difference.

  They are my sons. I always think of them as my sons, I love them as though they are. I couldn’t love them more.

  I really couldn’t.

  I have done everything a mum can. I have bathed them, nursed them, fed them, shopped for them, I have played with them – oh the endless, mindless games! I have taught them. Not just their alphabet and how to tie their shoelaces, I’ve taught them how to swim, ride their bikes, measure out cooking ingredients, fasten buttons, tie knots, tell the time, cross the road. I try to teach them everything I can about the world. I want to stuff them full of knowledge and fortitude and curiosity because these qualities will sustain them when I’m away from them. But sometimes – maybe it’s all the time – kids are not pliable. They don’t note or understand your grand motivations. They don’t know you are trying to keep them safe, help them grow. They just think you are the strict parent, the one that obsesses about homework and teeth cleaning.

  They are my sons. No matter what Oli says.

  It’s breaking my heart. Everyone warned me that this stage would come, somewhere in their teen years when they test boundaries, want to develop their own identities, set their own agendas, create new worlds, generally turn into little shits. My best friend Fiona jokes that Oli could be doing far worse things than calling me Leigh. He could be ditching school, shoplifting or getting high every night. I should be grateful, she says. I’m not, I’m heartbroken. Because this is not a stage, it’s a protest. A point. It is true I’m not their biological mum but I’m the only mum they have, so you’d think he’d accept I’m doing my best. We used to be so close.

  We had another row about it this morning. I filled out a parental online form about his Prom night. Just stuff about allergies (he has none) and giving him permission to get the coach that’s taking the kids on to the afterparty (I agreed). Nothing controversial. He said I had no right. I’m paying for the bloody party.

  Mark just said it wasn’t the day to get into it. He always says that. We shouldn’t get into it on a school day because kids doing GCSEs are under enough pressure, we shouldn’t get into it during the weekends or holidays because it will bring the mood down. We shouldn’t get into it on a day ending in ‘y’. Although we are always into it. Oli seethes. Grunts. Sulks and is monosyllabic a lot of the time.

  When they go out – look, this is an awful thing to admit – but sometimes, when the door slams shut behind them, and I know there are walls between us, the silence changes. There’s often a silence that’s claustrophobic and accusatory but I feel freer. Without anyone’s gaze on me, it is easier to think.

  They are visiting Mark’s sister-in-law. Mark has stayed close to his first wife’s family, her sister in particular. Usually I also go along to see Paula and her family, when Mark and the boys go, but today there are a number of reasons why I thought it was best that I leave them to it. I pointed out I have some phone calls to make, there is a stack of washing up to be done and the kitchen floor needs mopping. Sunday lunch has been quite eventful. While we were eating, our cat, Topaz, jumped onto the counter and paddled in the discarded, greasy baking trays in the kitchen, leaving a trail of oily footprints everywhere. He’s a big, greedy cat and somehow, he managed to pick up the chicken carcass and throw it onto the floor, where it slithered and slid, leaving a trail of smeared poultry fat. Finding the cat hunched over the chicken carcass, gnawing on the bits of remaining flesh, led to a mini crisis as Seb panicked that the cat was going to choke on a chicken bone. He didn’t, he just spat and clawed aggressively when I separated him from his prize. I’m not especially house proud. Before I was a mother and wife, I used to keep my flat neat enough but then one day I read a fridge magnet that said, A clean house is the sign of a wasted life and I realised I agreed with it more than almost anything else I had ever read.

  I can’t bear waste.

  Especially wasted time.

  However, even with my fairly relaxed standards, I couldn’t leave the kitchen swilling in bird fat; the boys would walk it through to the carpets, Seb – who is a bit clumsy – would no doubt slip on it. So, I said I’d stay behind and make everything shipshape.

  Besides I hate graveyards.

  Today is the anniversary of Frances’s death. Eleven years to the day since they lost their real mother. Mark’s first wife. My predecessor. The forerunner. Mark is taking the boys to visit her grave. Frances’s sister, Paula, her husband and their three daughters are going too. Frances is buried just minutes from Paula’s house and Paula often visits the grave – keeps it tidy by weeding and supplying fresh flowers. Paula’s three girls visit the grave so frequently that they talk about it in the same way as they talk about visiting their nana or going to the playpark. ‘Shall we go and see Aunty Frances?’ they cheerfully ask on a regular basis. I think it’s because they like buying flowers at the florist – what little girl doesn’t? Paula’s kids weren’t even born when Frances died but Paula keeps her alive for them, and for my boys too. She is forever telling Oli and Seb stories about Frances. She’s in a unique position to do this and I think it’s important for them to feel comfortable talking about Frances.
I don’t think she necessarily has to be the main topic of conversation every time they see their aunt, sometimes it might be nice if Paula talked to the boys without breaking off mid-sentence to exclaim, ‘You like chocolate fudge cake? Of course you do, your mother loved chocolate fudge cake’ (well, who doesn’t?) or ‘you remind me so much of your mum when she was your age. The spitting image.’ The boys actually look like their dad, but I suppose they might have mannerisms inherited from Frances that I’m unaware of. I am not disrespectful of Frances. I understand that by all accounts she was a wonderful woman. Kind, patient, funny, clever. No one has a bad word to say against her (which honestly, I find a little hard to swallow – none of us is perfect). I also understand some people get a great comfort from visiting graves, they like to show their respect and demonstrate gone but not forgotten. I think grave visiting is morbid. And in this case, a power play.

  It’s just a fact that Paula and I are not close. We don’t argue but we don’t gel. Never have. We are polite with one another. I suppose her cool detachment towards me is understandable. Mark could get a new wife; she could never get a new sister. I realise if Frances hadn’t tragically died of cancer, I would never have become Mark’s wife, Oli and Seb’s mum, because they were not the sort of couple that would ever have split up. They were happy. Mark would never have noticed me.

  But Frances did die.

  It takes a lot of strength and determination not to think of myself as second choice. Second place. I am constantly reminding myself, I’m not Plan B, I’m just a different path. I do visit her grave with them on her birthday and even Christmas Eve, just before we dash off up the M1 to see Mark’s parents – although that drives me mad, because there are a ton of things that have to be done on Christmas Eve and all of them are time-sensitive. I just think making a thing out of the death anniversary is a bit much.

  I’d rather wash the kitchen floor.

  I am going to do the housework first and then settle down to my telephone calls, catch up with friends and family. It will be my treat after the drudgery. I’ll make plans for the coming week, discuss bars and restaurants that are worth a visit, remind myself that there are more ways to validate my life than my success – or otherwise – in parenting Oli and Seb, being Mark’s wife.