No Place Like Home

by Jane Renshaw

  The sale of Woodside had funded the purchase of Little Knowes Croft with plenty to spare, although they’d got much less for Woodside than it was worth because of its associations with Finn Taylor’s death. But they had enough money in the bank to allow Kirsty to work only part time, to pick and choose the less stressful clients, the work that interested her, and let her spend more time with Mum and the kids.

  Bram was so pleased about that.

  He’d decorated his cell with the photographs Max had taken of Little Knowes, usually photobombed by Phoebe or Bertie or both. When Kirsty, sitting across the table from him in that awful prison visiting room, had sobbed that she felt so bad that he had never even seen Little Knowes, that it couldn’t seem like home to him, he had smiled. ‘Of course it does. My home is wherever you are. You and the kids.’

  This would be another good photograph for Max to take for Bram, she decided: the view through the tiny window next to the fireplace, from which you could see an old apple tree and the hedge, and the slate roof of Sebastopol, the tiny neighbouring croft house. Bram loved that name, and the fact that it dated the cottage so precisely to the Crimean War, to the 1850s. A veteran from that war, Bram speculated, had come home and built himself a little croft, and settled down to hoe vegetables and keep hens and a cow and a pig, and never have to fight again. Had the name Sebastopol been a sort of boast, a reminder to his neighbours that here in their midst was a war hero? Or had the name been a reminder of what was now behind him, a reminder to be thankful, every waking hour, that he was here and not there?

  Bram had been sentenced to eight years but had already served one and would be home in another three, all being well. He was in Porterfield Prison in Inverness, just an hour’s drive away.

  The conviction had been for manslaughter, not murder, given that Finn had been terrorising the family for weeks and Bram had, at least initially, been in fear of his life. He’d got the higher end of the sentencing range, though, because he’d left Finn for dead in the shed and failed to call an ambulance, and then perverted the course of justice by disposing of the body and trying to cover up what had happened.

  He had kept Kirsty out of it completely. Kirsty had no idea, he claimed, what he had done. Because Bram had pled guilty there had been no trial, only a sentencing hearing, and it had felt so wrong, sitting there in court listening to Bram take everything on himself. He had stood there so bravely in the dark grey suit she had pressed for him, the new white shirt, the blue tie he had worn at their wedding. Her Bram. Her wonderful Bram. There was no one in the world like him.

  She had thought, when she’d first met him in those bleak early days in the halls of residence, that he was like Scott – a good person, a person with integrity – but she’d had no idea just how good Bram Hendriksen was, how selfless and modest and funny and kind and loving.

  She had wanted to jump up and tell the sheriff all that, tell him what a good man Bram was, how he had always looked after her and the kids, and that was what he was doing now.

  But of course she hadn’t.

  Bram had told the police the truth about what had happened to Dad, not expecting to be believed, but after Dad’s body had been found, a witness had come forward who had seen Dad attacking Bram on the bridge. This witness had been a couple of years below Dad at school, been bullied by him, and gone in terror of him ever since. There was no way he was going to try to intervene – or even tell the police what he’d seen, until it had been confirmed that David McKechnie was dead.

  Kirsty felt herself tensing up whenever she thought about Dad and what he had done. What he had been. She had loved him, of course she had, and he had loved her – but his love had been a fierce thing, his need to protect her so all-consuming that it had come close to destroying her life, not once but twice.

  After Owen’s murder, Kirsty had been terrified to start another relationship in case Dad turned against her new boyfriend too. When she and Bram had married, though, and started their lives together in London, it had seemed possible that it would be okay. Once Dad got to know Bram, surely everything would be fine?

  She still couldn’t believe that Dad had tried to kill Bram!

  Her stomach plummeted.

  But she’d promised Bram she wouldn’t dwell on that.

  Onwards and upwards was his new motto. Against all her expectations, Bram seemed to be adjusting well to life behind bars. All her fears that he wouldn’t cope had proved groundless, and really, she should have anticipated that he’d be fine. He was so much stronger than his easy-going personality suggested. And people liked Bram. Even those scary criminals liked him, and Kirsty had helped the process along by chatting to other prisoners’ partners and parents in the waiting room, laying it on thick about how their kids, one only nine years old, had been threatened by the yob Bram had accidentally killed. And he had a lovely cellmate, an older man who was in for fraud, whom Bram was teaching to play the guitar.

  Kirsty made herself a cup of cocoa and one for Max, and opened the back door to call him in. He was in the tiny garage that faced the side of the cottage across the gravel drive. The garage was a wooden 1920s original, far too small for the Discovery, so they’d had it insulated and Max and Phoebe shared it as a ‘studio’. Max had partitioned part of it off as a dark room, and the walls of the rest of it were covered in his photos and Phoebe’s artwork. Max had got a taste for photography after he’d started documenting their lives in pictures for his dad, and was now experimenting with old-fashioned film as well as digital.

  The double doors were standing open, and there were moths fluttering in the light cast by the bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. Max was hunched over his laptop adjusting the light in a photograph of a sparrow. He straightened when Kirsty came into the garage, and smiled, and took the mug of cocoa from her.

  ‘Thanks, Mum.’

  She was going to miss him so much!

  His gap year was happening, although it had been a struggle to persuade him to go ahead with it; a struggle to persuade him that she and Phoebe would be fine without him.

  ‘Looks like Phoebe’s burning the midnight oil again,’ he said, nodding up at the window of his sister’s bedroom, which was glowing yellow. ‘Or the ten o’clock oil, at least.’

  Phoebe, never a good sleeper, had been particularly restless in the last week or two. Kirsty knew she was dreading Max’s departure in September as much as she was.

  While Max returned to his photograph, Kirsty went over to the table against the wall where Phoebe created her artwork. There was a big pile of completed drawings, and Kirsty smiled as she saw that the top one was an ambitious attempt to capture Grannie and Bertie in motion. Bertie looked like a small cow, and Grannie’s right leg, stretched out in front of her to take a step, was twice as long as her left one. This would bring a smile to Bram’s face. She’d ask Phoebe if she could give it to him next time she visited the prison.

  She started to look through the rest of the pile. Phoebe’s medium of choice was usually felt-tips, but she had been experimenting with the vividly coloured oil crayons Mum had bought her. There was one of the cottage, with Mum, Kirsty, Max, Phoebe and Bertie each at a window. Bram would like this one too. Then a stormy scene with a shipwreck and two pirate ships which seemed to be rescuing the casualties. Then a rather scary clown. Then –

  Oh God, it was the ‘psychopath’. The same leering face as Phoebe had drawn on her notice, where she’d depicted him shooting at Bertie. This time, his face was framed in a window.

  As she flipped to the next picture, she was aware of Max speaking. Of a moth landing on the sleeve of her top. Of a car engine, faintly, somewhere far in the distance, moving away on a descending note.

  She muttered something about going to check on Phoebe and snatched up the pile of drawings. She ran back inside, the sheets of paper clutched to her chest, and up the steep little stairs to Phoebe’s bedroom in the eaves. Phoebe was standing by the window in her Snoopy pyjamas, bare feet cold-looking on the wooden flo
or. Kirsty set the drawings down on top of the chest of drawers and ushered Phoebe back to bed. Then she went to the window and pulled the curtains across it.

  ‘Phoebe,’ she said, sitting down on the bed. ‘I was looking at your drawings in the garage and – I found this.’

  Phoebe took the drawing from her and frowned at it.

  It showed the ‘psychopath’ lying on the ground in a pool of blood, his mouth turned down in a sad face. Behind him was a shed, and two figures had each lifted one of his feet and seemed to be dragging him towards it. One of the figures’ hair was shoulder-length and black, the other’s short and brown.

  Kirsty and Bram.

  Dragging Finn to the shed.

  ‘What’s this?’ Kirsty got out.

  Phoebe bit her lip. ‘It’s – Finn.’

  ‘And me and Dad?’

  A nod.

  Kirsty struggled to control her breathing. Struggled to ask, levelly: ‘You saw us?’

  ‘Yeah. I was woken up by a noise from outside and I went to the window and I saw…’ She looked up at Kirsty, her blue eyes wide. ‘I saw the psychopath. Then I saw Dad fighting him.’

  ‘Oh, Phoebe!’ Kirsty took her hand.

  The small fingers squeezed Kirsty’s. ‘I was so scared that the psychopath was going to kill Dad, but I couldn’t do anything, all I did was stand there and watch. I didn’t even shout for help.’

  ‘You must have been in shock. That’s what happens – you sort of freeze.’

  ‘Then Dad went away and the psychopath was lying on the ground. I hoped he was dead.’ Her voice wobbled. ‘Then I saw you and Dad pull him into the shed and then leave again. You shut the shed door but you didn’t lock it. The key had fallen onto the grass – I saw Dad drop it.’ A sob escaped. ‘I was watching the shed and then – and then – his face was there! At the window! And you hadn’t locked the door and he was going to get out!’

  ‘Oh, Phoebe, darling!’ Kirsty gathered her in her arms and rocked her as she sobbed. ‘It’s all right now. Everything’s all right now.’ The drawings must have been Phoebe’s way of telling them what she’d seen. What she knew.

  Phoebe cried for a long time, and then subsided back on the bed. Kirsty got a washcloth to wipe her face, and a towel to dry it. Then she sat by the bed, stroking Phoebe’s hot head and murmuring reassurances.

  ‘I went outside,’ Phoebe whispered. ‘I got my torch and ran out and found the key on the grass. I was going to padlock the door but I needed to check he was still in there so I very very carefully opened the door and looked in. I shone my torch in the gap in the door and I saw him. The psychopath. He was lying on the boxes next to the window. There was blood on the back of his head. I got Dad’s hammer from the wall of the shed and I hit him. Maybe five times. Where the blood was on his head. Where he was already hurt.’ She reached up to touch the back of her own head to indicate the place. ‘Grandad said you have to hit them where they’re already hurt.’

  For a long moment, Kirsty couldn’t speak. Then: ‘When did Grandad tell you that?’ she found herself saying.

  ‘He didn’t tell me – he told Max, when he was showing him what to do if someone was fighting him. So that’s what I did. I hit him on his head where it was already all blood. His arms and legs were going like this.’ She pushed down the covers and twitched her arms and legs about. ‘Then I hit him two more times, really hard, and he didn’t move any more after that. He was dead then, wasn’t he, Mum?’

  Kirsty had a sudden memory of the shed, of the blood spatters all over the walls, on the ceiling… Of course. That couldn’t have been caused by Finn himself, stumbling about. That had been caused by an attack. By a weapon connecting with a bloodied wound.

  ‘Then I locked the door and put the key under the stone. Was it…’ Phoebe blinked. ‘Was it manslaughter, what I did, like Dad’s in jail for? If the police find out, will I go to jail too? I hid the hammer. I hid it in my bag and then when I was at Grannie and Grandad’s I took it to a bin on the street. And my pyjamas. They had blood on them.’

  Kirsty shook her head, and pulled the covers back up round Phoebe gently, as if to cocoon her from it, from this terrible truth that seemed to press in on them from all sides. ‘Listen, darling. You must never, ever tell anyone else about this. Not even Dad or Max or Grannie. This has to be something only you and me know about.’

  ‘So I won’t get in trouble?’ Phoebe whispered.

  ‘That’s right. You won’t get in any trouble if it’s just our secret. You have to forget about it, as if it never happened. As if it was a bad dream.’ Her fingers stroking Phoebe’s hair were trembling.

  ‘Okay, Mum,’ said Phoebe, with a little smile. ‘It was just a bad dream.’

  Kirsty, numbly, took her hand. ‘You were only nine years old. You didn’t understand what was happening. You didn’t mean to hurt him.’

  ‘Yes, I did. I’m glad Finn’s dead so he can’t hurt Dad or Bertie or Max or the crows again. He was a psychopath. He had it coming.’

  Kirsty made a wordless sound and stood, but still she clung on to Phoebe’s hand, still she squeezed it, offering a reassurance that, it seemed, her daughter did not need.

  He had it coming.

  It was what Dad had said about Owen.

  It was what he’d said about Finn. And, in the days leading up to Finn’s death: ‘He’s got it coming,’ she could remember him saying about the intruder, in Phoebe’s hearing. Not once, but several times.

  Oh no.

  Oh God.

  It was as if he was in the room with them, an unseen, triumphant presence.

  Dad.

  THE CHILD WHO NEVER WAS

  Her child has been taken. But no-one believes her.

  Sarah’s beautiful baby son Oliver has gone missing. And she will do anything – anything – to get him back.

  But there’s a problem. Everyone around Sarah, even her beloved identical twin, Evie, tells her she never had a son, that he’s a figment of her imagination, that she’s not well, she needs help.

  And on one level, they’re right, Sarah does need support. She has suffered massive trauma in the past and now she’s severely agoraphobic, very rarely leaves the house, avoids all contact with people.

  But fragile though she is, Sarah knows deep in her heart that Oliver is real, that the love she feels for him is true.

  And that can only mean one thing – someone has been planning this. And now they’ve taken her baby.

  GET THE BOOK NOW

  Please continue reading for a special preview of The Child Who Never Was.

  PROLOGUE

  The biggest risk, of course, was that some busybody would see the smoke and in due course mention it to the police. In fact, she wouldn’t put it past the village busybody-in-chief, Mrs Bowles across the lane at The Laurels, to see the smoke and decide to investigate, to come and see what was burning, to ‘pop over just to check everything was okay’ – because autumn or winter was the proper time for a bonfire, not the middle of June. Not the middle of the breeding season. Only a barbarian would cut back and burn vegetation while birds might still be nesting in it.

  But it had to be a bonfire.

  She could hardly dump a binbag of blood-soaked clothing in the charity recycling bank at the village hall. Or in their own or a neighbour’s wheelie bin. The police were unlikely to devote much in the way of resources to the investigation, but she couldn’t count on them being slack enough to neglect the basics.

  If she’d had a bit more time she could have jumped in the car and driven thirty miles and left the bag in a random bin no one was going to search.

  But she had no time.

  And complete incineration was the safest option.

  She wanted to know that it was gone. That all trace of what she had done was gone. Maybe then she could get into the mindset of the person she needed to be when the police got here, like an actor, a method actor inhabiting her role so completely that she almost believed it herself, almost believed that s
he was just a poor traumatised soul who was as bewildered by the whole thing as anyone else.

  The traumatised bit was going to be easy enough.

  Her hands were shaking so much that she dropped the matchbox into the tangle of sticks and logs that she’d built up and had to rootle around in them to retrieve it. Striking a match was the next challenge, but she managed it, she managed to hold the wavering flame to the scrunched-up newspaper until it caught and flared.

  Only when the fire was roaring away, the centre glowing orange with a heat so fierce that she had to stand back from it, did she throw on the first of the garments.

  The saturated T-shirt.

  It smouldered for a while, damping down the flames under it, sending streams of billowy white smoke up over the yew hedge that screened this workaday part of the garden from the lawns and the house. Then, when the moisture had evaporated off, the material caught and started to char, permeating the air with the aroma –

  She staggered away from the fire, bile rising as, in a vain attempt to dislodge the smoke trapped there, she forced a long breath out through her nose.

  But then she had to breathe in again and oh God.

  Yes.

  What she was breathing, what she was tasting at the back of her throat, was the savoury aroma of a summer barbeque.

  She couldn’t do this.

  She just couldn’t.

  She had to get away from the smoke so she ran, she ran down the shadowed path between the woodshed and the hedge, feet pounding on the damp, moss-slick packed earth –

  And straight into the person standing there, quite still, in the gloom.

  The person standing there, silent and wide-eyed.

  CHAPTER 1