by Andrea Mara
Praise for One Click
“One Click pulls you in and won’t let go – be prepared to read in one sitting. It’s a page-turner that will hook you from page one, and will make you stop and think before you make one click online again.” – Patricia Gibney, author of No Safe Place
“One Click is menacing from the start, surprising to the end. Makes you think – hard – about what we share and reveal, and who might be watching.” – Emily Hourican, author of White Villa
“A cracking read!” – Stella O’Malley, author of Bully-Proof Kids
‘Gripping – it will keep you guessing until the last page.’ – Sarah Breen, co-author of Oh My God What a Complete Aisling
Praise for The Other Side of the Wall
“A masterful debut, which combines the ordinary themes of working mothers and modern suburbia, with all the foreboding malevolence of a Jeffery Deaver novel … a gripping read that is hard to put down and would make a great movie.” – The Independent
“I read this in one sitting and thoroughly enjoyed it – the right side of chillingly good.” – Woman’s Way
“A twisting tale of evil lurking behind a suburban hall door.” – Sinéad Crowley, author of One Bad Turn
“This is a prime example of a superior grip lit book. From the first eerie chapter to the very last page it is quite literally unputdownable with an abundance of ‘oh!’ moments throughout. The characters are well developed and the subplots all deal with everyday-life issues that everyone I know will relate to. Honestly, a very, very superior debut.” – Margaret Scott, author of The Fallout
“Finished it in three sittings … Grips and twists to the very end. A very clever and accomplished book.” – Emily Hourican, author of White Villa
“Domestic Noir with believable characters and a clever, corkscrew plot.” – Sue Leonard, Irish Examiner
“The plot and the writing are excellent ... [in] Mara’s well-paced thriller.” – Sophie White, writing in The Domestic column in the Sunday Independent
“… a well written, engaging thriller about a woman who suspects strange goings-on next door – but with the stress of a mess at work, a new baby and a toddler, is her mind playing tricks on her? Or is someone in danger? Really, really liked this.” - Sharon Leavy, Behind Green Eyes.com
“This is a fine debut that you will struggle to put down.” – Margaret Madden, BleachHouseLibrary.ie
“Andrea Mara has written a remarkable debut novel that will make you reflect on what really goes on behind closed doors. The Other Side of The Wall is a well balanced novel that moves along at a very fast pace.” – Mairéad Hearne, writing.ie | SwirlandThread.com
“The Other Side of the Wall by Andrea Mara is a debut novel that will absolutely knock your socks off and leave you looking at your neighbours in a whole new light … Gripping, enthralling, and downright creepy, this novel has got it all… [it’s] the epitome of what a psychological thriller novel should be, and will leave you asking the question, do you ever really know what happens behind closed doors?” – Linda Green, BooksOfAllKinds.com
“Within just a paragraph of very cleverly structured words Andrea Mara had me gasping out loud and standing up out of my seat and almost applauding at what had just unfolded.”
– Emma Crowley, ShazsBookBlog
One Click
Andrea Mara
Poolbeg
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.
Published 2018 by Crimson
an imprint of Poolbeg Press Ltd
123 Grange Hill, Baldoyle
Dublin 13, Ireland
www.poolbeg.com
© ANDREA MARA 2018
Copyright for editing, typesetting, layout, design, ebook
© Poolbeg Press Ltd
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-78199-825-0
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photography, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
www.poolbeg.com
About the Author
Andrea Mara lives in Dublin with her husband and three children. She’s a freelance features writer for newspapers and magazines, and blogger at OfficeMum.ie.
One Click is her second novel. Her first book, The Other Side of the Wall, was shortlisted for the Kate O’Brien Award 2018.
Also by Andrea Mara
The Other Side of the Wall
Published by Poolbeg
To my mum. She’s not any of the mothers in this book, but I think she’d have enjoyed all this.
Prologue
If I’d known what would happen to all of us, I would never have taken the picture. Was there even a decision? Or just an unconscious microsecond between seeing the woman and reaching for my phone. A whisper of a pause during which I could have uncurled my fingers. The uncurled fingers, the unflapped wings of the butterfly in the unrippled water.
But I did it. One small motion. Like the hose lying flat and lifeless on the ground, before the tap is turned. Just one twist, and the hose takes on a life of its own, spraying water into the sky and drowning everything in sight.
One small motion. Just one click.
LAUREN
Chapter 1
The woman is where she is every day. Her eyes closed, her face turned to the sun, and she has no idea I’m here. Turquoise waves lap around her feet and the low frame of her deckchair. Dark-red hair glints in the morning light and her book hangs loosely in her hand. It’s Utopia wrapped up in a single square shot and I can’t resist.
My phone is on silent, and there’s no tell-tale click when I take the photo, but still she glances up. Does she know? She looks at me for a moment, then down to her book.
I turn and take some more shots, out to sea this time. My arms drop to my sides and I stand for a moment, breathing in the sea air, letting the babble of accents wash over me. Then a wave splashes across my feet and the spell is broken.
My wet trainers squelch on the sand on the way back to the campsite. I should run, but it’s too hot now, and I’m tired. Or maybe old. Older than yesterday when I’m sure I ran for longer.
“Caffè? Pasticcini?” comes the familiar call from the kiosk.
“Cappuccino, per favore,” I say, feeling only slightly guilty that I don’t have enough money with me to take pastries back to the girls. I’ll drink my coffee on the walk back so they don’t get cranky. Especially Rebecca, I think, picturing the raised-eyebrow look she’s been perfecting since we arrived in Italy. The coffee is strong and hot as it hits the back of my throat, and the morning ritual is complete.
“Mum, did you bring us anything?” Rebecca asks as I walk up to the deck, not looking up from her phone. Her hand hovers absentmindedly over a plate of toast.
“Are you on Snapchat again? It’s going to cost a fortune, Rebecca.”
Now she looks up, and there’s the raised eyebrow. “Did you bring us pastries?” she asks, and takes a bite of toast.
“Nope, I didn’t have any money with me,” I tell her. “Where’s Ava?”
“Still in bed,” she s
ays, going back to her phone.
Pulling up a chair beside her, I scan through my photos. Fourteen taken this morning – the girls will have a field day. They never take photos of the sea, or anything that doesn’t have a pouting human in the foreground, and they can’t understand why I do. I stop when I get to the girl with the dark-red hair. There’s something about her expression that radiates an easy indifference to the sunbathers and paddlers around her. The way the book hangs from her hand, the tilt of her wrist. Her upturned unlined face. The blush-coloured dress against nutmeg skin, a turquoise bracelet the only flash of colour. A sun goddess dressed up as a carefree millennial. Clicking into Instagram, I upload the photo. It doesn’t need a filter – the girl on the beach speaks for herself. I type a caption.
*All* the envy on my morning run – this is #howIwishIspentmytwenties
I hit share, and put down my phone as Ava pads out of the mobile home and flops into a chair.
“I’m starving – did you bring us anything? Hey! Rebecca, did you eat all the bread?”
And just like that, I’m back to the real world of ever-hungry teens and bickering siblings.
It’s after lunch before I check into Instagram. 354 likes already. I share it on Facebook and Twitter too, and Rebecca catches me smiling.
“Mum, are you obsessing over your blog again? You’re never off that phone,” she says, mimicking me.
“It’s not my blog, it’s Instagram, and I’m just checking it. I haven’t been on in hours actually,” I say, mimicking her back.
She leans in to have a look.
“Who’s that in the pic?”
“I don’t know – just a woman I saw on my run this morning. Doesn’t she look so happy and chilled?”
“Yeah . . . does she know you took her photo though? Did you ask her?”
“No, but it’s just a photo of the beach – people take pictures like that all the time. With strangers in them, I mean.”
“Sure, but this picture is very much about her, and now you’ve put it online. Like, you can see her really clearly – she’s not just one of the crowd. Ha – you’re constantly telling us not to post photos without permission, and now you’ve just gone and done it!”
“Excuse me, it’s not the same thing – photographers take pictures like this all the time. It’s a candid shot – a study of a person having a moment in time, that’s all.” I’m aware of how defensive I sound and, watching my daughter do her perfect eyebrow-raise, I see she is too.
“Whatever, Mum, but maybe practise what you preach?” she says, picking up her plate and walking inside.
I can hear her telling Ava about it and I can picture the eye-rolls. Shutting out their voices, I look down again at my phone. It’s just a good photo. That’s all. And the woman will never know I took it. Even if she did, she’d surely be flattered. She’s beautiful, and she has 354 likes now too.
At the pool, the girls jump straight in the water while I stay on a sunlounger with my book. It’s odd to think of all those times I wished for this when they were small – now they don’t need me any more, and I miss it. I watch as Rebecca stands under a fountain of water, shrieking that it’s cold. Memories of a similar pool in another campsite surface – a much smaller Rebecca standing under a stream of water while Dave held her, the two of them laughing hysterically. I close my eyes to block it out but it doesn’t work. Dave did all the holiday bookings – he was rubbish at lots of things, but great at finding just the right campsite in just the right part of France. That’s why we’re in Italy now – because I needed it to be different.
Still thinking about Dave, my eyes move across to the next pool and that’s when I see her – the woman from the beach is lying on a lounger, reading her book. Shit. I had no idea she was staying on the campsite. Then again, what does it matter? She’s hardly going to see the photo. I wonder where she’s from? At the beach I assumed she was Italian, but now I’m not sure. I squint to see the name of her book but I can’t. Did it show up in the photo? I click into Instagram to check. The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt – so she’s an English-speaker, or at least someone who can read books in English. A splinter of unease digs into the pit of my stomach. Maybe I should take down the photo . . . But it has over 600 likes on Instagram now and almost a hundred between Facebook and Twitter. I’m being silly – it’s not doing any harm. There are dozens of new comments about what people wish they’d done in their twenties too and, as I scroll, I spot one from Rebecca.
So much for ‘don’t post pics online without permission’, Mum.
She’s followed it with a smiley face but it still makes me defensive.
It’s a candid shot of a beach, smarty-pants, I reply before scrolling on.
A message interrupts my browsing – Dave wants to know if he can let himself into the house to collect some more stuff. He’s thinking of booking a week in the sun, he says. With Nadine, of course. Closing my eyes, I take some deep breaths and only start to type when I know I can say the right thing.
Of course, any time. Weather great here.
I hit send, and stuff my phone in my bag. My book is on the ground beside me but I don’t feel like reading any more. How ironic, after all those years wishing I could do just this. I close my eyes.
The night-time humidity is a muggy blanket, and the only light on the deck is our candle, glowing in the centre of the table. Tonight’s game is Pontoon, and Ava is winning. My wine is crisp despite the heat, but it won’t be long before it’s lukewarm – taking a deep swallow, I check my phone. The photo of the woman has been picked up by an entertainment website and shared on their Facebook page – they’ve asked their thousands of followers to post their own answers and photos with the hashtag #howIwishIspentmytwenties and they’re doing so in droves, each one trying to outdo the last with funnier and pithier responses. They should have asked me first, but they do credit my blog name so I can’t complain really. Strangers are tweeting me with their answers to the question, and notifications light up my phone every couple of seconds. Someone called Jess122 says I’m being presumptuous about millennials, and a user called Maxx wants to know if I got the woman’s number. There’s a tweet from a VIN saying the beach looks lovely and asking where we are, and another person called Sharon would like our campsite details so she can book for next year – I can’t remember posting that we’re on a campsite but maybe I did. EmmaB says she’s in her twenties like the woman on the beach, but it’s too late to do anything – she wants to go back to her teens.
I wonder if any of us mean it – would we change things if we could? Would I? I certainly got married too young. Twenty-four and barely out of college, with nothing seen of the world. Me the strait-laced psychology graduate, and Dave, the cliché: the handsome junior doctor who – more cliché – swept me off my feet. I had never met someone like him. He didn’t care what people thought and he didn’t take shit from anyone. I remember when I first took him home to meet Mum – I was so nervous about what he’d say or do. But he flipped like a light-switch as soon as she opened the front door – turning into this charming template of a perfect boyfriend. Less than a year later she walked me down the aisle and into Dave’s arms, and ten months after that Ava came along. So would I change it? I look over at Ava, studying her hand of cards. Not if it meant changing the girls. But if I could have had those same children when I was older, then yes, maybe I would change how I spent my twenties – going straight from college to marriage to nappies wasn’t how I expected things to go.
I shake my head and Rebecca looks up.
“Are you okay, Mum?”
“Yep, just thinking.”
Rebecca touches my phone screen. “Wow, Mum, is that your beach photo on TheDailyByte.ie – oh my God, it’s practically viral! What are you going to do if the woman finds out?”
I pull my phone away. “Oh come on, it’s not a big deal, and she’s hardly going to see it – she’s probably Italian. I doubt she follows my blog or The Daily Byte somehow.”
&nb
sp; “She doesn’t look Italian – Italians don’t have red hair, do they? Ha, she’s probably Irish! I’m just amazed at the double standards, Mum. You’d literally kill me if I did the same thing.”
“That’s a completely incorrect use of the word ‘literally’,” Ava tells her.
“I don’t know . . . maybe not,” I mutter, clicking back into Twitter.
The person called “VIN” has tweeted me a second time asking what the name of the beach is, and someone called Oliver says the woman looks older than twenty, completely missing the point. But most people are focused on giving their own suggestions about how they wish they’d spent their twenties. Beer, wine, and sun feature heavily. My Twitter friend MollyRants72 wishes she’d spent her twenties having her kids so she’d be out the other side now.