by A J Waines
The Samantha Willerby Series
Books 1-3 in the series
A.J. Waines
Contents
About the Author
Also by AJ Waines
Lost In The Lake
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Inside the Whispers
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
About the Author
Perfect Bones
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
About the Author
AJ Waines is a number one bestselling author, topping the entire UK and Australian Kindle Charts in two consecutive years, with Girl on a Train. Following fifteen years as a psychotherapist, the author has sold nearly half a million copies of her books, with publishing deals in UK, France, Germany, Norway, Hungary and Canada (audio books).
Her fourth psychological thriller, No Longer Safe, sold over 30,000 copies in the first month, in thirteen countries. AJ Waines has been featured in The Wall Street Journal and The Times and has been ranked a Top 10 UK author on Amazon KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing).
She lives in Hampshire, UK, with her husband. Find her books here and visit her website and blog, or join her on Twitter, Facebook or on her Newsletter.
Also by AJ Waines
Standalones:
The Evil Beneath
Girl on a Train
Dark Place to Hide
No Longer Safe
Don’t you Dare
Samantha Willerby Mystery Series:
Inside the Whispers
Lost in the Lake
Perfect Bones
Writing as Alison Waines:
The Self-Esteem Journal
Making Relationships Work
Copyright © 2018 A.J. Waines
The right of A.J. Waines to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2017 by A.J.Waines
Re published in 2018 by Bloodhound Books
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publisher or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
www.bloodhoundbooks.com
In memory of Tigsey,
my treasured feline companion, who was
by my side throughout the writing of this book
(1996-2017)
Prologue
Did I make you jump? Turning up like that in your own kitchen? You have to admit, it must have been a nasty shock.
I bet you thought you’d been ever so smart at covering your tracks. But, be honest, you made a complete hash of things. You made out you were one step ahead of the game all along, but once you scooped the ultimate prize you couldn’t work out what to do next! Face facts, you were too ambitious for your own good and hadn’t thought things through properly.
You took great delight in explaining your cunning scheme to me, even though it was bound to leave you with egg on your face. I could see you thought you’d have the last laugh. I could tell your little brain was ticking over, thinking that once you’d told me the whole story, there was no way I’d be walking out of there. But that’s where you went wrong. You underestimated me. Most people do.
I could feel rage burning up my insides as you brandished that bottle of whisky like we were mates – in it together.
‘Let’s toast our windfall’ you suggested, trying to make me smile. By then, however, my fury with what you’d done had ignited from a niggling spark into a white-hot ball of fire. Every moment I was forced to endure with you, a growing, uncontainable frenzy was building inside me.
You reached over to the dr
aining board to find two glasses and that’s when you made your fatal mistake.
You should never have turned your back.
Chapter 1
Sam
October – Four months earlier
‘I was early,’ she said, as I invited her inside my consulting room. ‘But you know that already, don’t you? You’ve been watching me.’
Her directness took me by surprise, but I didn’t let my welcoming smile falter.
She eased past me and helped herself to the wrong seat, the one I always use that’s closer to the door with a clear view of the clock. ‘I’ve been observing people coming and going,’ she went on without a beat. ‘Humans are weird, don’t you think?’ She laughed. ‘But then, you know that too. That’s what you’re interested in, isn’t it?’
Rosie Chandler had barely been in the room ten seconds and already I felt like she’d spun me around. I casually pulled up the other chair, outwardly cool and unruffled. Working within the field of psychotherapy is strange; you have to be a blank screen and usher all your own feelings out of the way.
Rosie was right; I had spotted her, nearly two hours earlier. As a psychologist well practised in interpreting behaviour, I should have read the signs there and then. A young woman not clutching a mobile phone and with nothing better to do than sit alone amid a bank of plastic hospital chairs. It was out of the ordinary, to say the least, and I should have recognised the implications.
I took a breath ready to launch into my usual introductions, but she beat me to it.
‘I knew it was a mistake,’ she continued. ‘None of us wanted to be there. Shall I just tell you about it?’
I’d been caught in the starting blocks.
‘Yes, go on.’ I reached for my notebook. She was here to tell me her story. The formalities could wait until later.
‘It happened two weeks ago. I was in the back of the van, not far from Penrith in the Lake District; we were on our way to the B&B after our final rehearsal. I was looking at the curve of the road behind us as it cut into the hillside. Stephanie and Max were in the front with Richard. He was driving. The man with the van. Everyone likes a man with a van, don’t they?’
Her words came tumbling out with tiny snatches of air between each sentence. Then she stopped.
‘You were in the van…’ I nudged.
Her cheeks flushed a little. ‘Oh, right. Yeah. It was pretty clapped out; one of those small delivery vans with seats only at the front. One of the windows at the back was missing. I didn’t know it then, but…well, that botched-up piece of cardboard saved my life.’
There was an unfortunate whine in her voice and she stared into the far distance with a puckered brow, as though struggling to see something.
‘I’m not even sure why I ended up in the back...’
It sounded, although straws weren’t mentioned, like she was used to being the one who drew the short one.
‘Do you believe in fate?’ she said, staring straight at me as if she genuinely wanted to know.
‘That’s a big question,’ I said. ‘Can we come back to it later? Why don’t you tell me more about what happened, first?’
‘Sure,’ she said cheerily.
I’m meant to be a sounding board, a flawless mirror so patients have space to explore how they genuinely feel, without interruption, opinion or judgement. The job suits introverts like me. I’m naturally private and it’s second nature to me not to give anything away, but I know the downside is I can seem detached. Lacking in personality even. So much so, that most of my patients wouldn’t recognise me if they saw me ‘off duty’. A male patient once spotted me shaking full-blown shimmies on the dance floor in a bar and turned away in horror. I worried for days that it might have undermined all our work together, but I’m only human. In reality, I love gossip, filthy jokes, too much champagne and wearing off-the-shoulder dresses with stilettos. Just not between nine and five.
Rosie drew her knees together.
‘The road was windy and I was getting thrown about in the back without a seatbelt,’ she went on. ‘Did I say Richard was driving? He was going far too fast. Showing off and trying to shake us all up…’
Again, she seemed to float off into a daydream.
She had dense but patchy freckles on her face that gave her the look of an unfinished pointillist painting. She tugged at a loose ginger curl trapped under the arm of her clunky specs and as she let it go, it sprang back into a tight coil. Her hair was busy like that all over. An unkind person might have said it was the most interesting thing about her appearance.
‘The van…’ I said.
‘Oh, yeah…the engine was revving like we were on a racetrack and Max was yelling at him to slow down. Richard tugged the wheel to take the next bend and that’s when it happened. All of a sudden the view from the back shifted completely. The road disappeared and it felt like we were flying. My stomach was sucked up inside me; that lurching feeling, you know, when you go down too fast in a lift?’
She pressed her knuckles into her mouth. Her twitchy mannerisms and trilling voice reminded me of a teenager. I had to check my notes again; was she really in her mid-thirties?
‘We were diving, dropping…branches and foliage scraping the paintwork. Instinct told me to duck down, wrap my head in my arms and squeeze my eyes shut. Then, with a smack, we hit something, but it wasn’t the landing I was expecting. I was waiting for a metallic, bone-rattling jolt, but it was more of a dull thud like an egg dropping into flour.’
I was disconcerted. Lots of patients describe a traumatic experience in a deadpan tone, skimming over the details, as if it had happened to someone else. It’s a common defence mechanism. But Rosie was the opposite. She was embellishing her ‘story’ as if she’d been asked to engage a bunch of school kids at morning assembly. I made a mental note to address it if our sessions continued.
‘The cold made me yelp and the sounds went hollow and boomy,’ she went on. ‘The light was kind of silvery, then too dark. The shapes were so blurred I couldn’t recognise anything any more. There was a roaring sound, pressure on my eardrums and I couldn’t work out which way was up. I lost my glasses.’
Her sultana-brown eyes glistened behind the thick lenses; alert and intense.
‘Everything happened in slow motion. There was a heavy clunk and that’s when we hit the bottom of the lake. I yanked at the back door handle, almost wrenched it off, but it wouldn’t budge. Then I remembered the sheet of cardboard and kicked at it in a frenzy with both feet.’
Rosie suddenly looked up as if to check I was still there.
‘More water gushed in and the van filled up faster and faster. In seconds I was right under. I thought I was going to die.’ She tugged her lip. ‘What I did next was stupid, I know, but it was pure instinct. Instead of getting straight out through the back window, I felt around and grabbed my viola. Can you imagine? What was I thinking?’
Her knees had been jiggling up and down the entire time.
‘Then, somehow, I was through the broken window and out. I kicked frantically against the water, but it took forever to reach the light. Eventually, I broke the surface, gasping for dear life, the viola case floating beside me.’
She was silent for a while, breathing hard, still inside the memory of it.
‘The first thing I noticed was how quiet and still everything was. It was like bursting out of a bubble of chaos into bliss. Like suddenly finding I’d gone to heaven. Then I realised there was no one else up there on the surface with me. It was the first time I’d properly considered the others. For a second I wondered about diving back down, but I didn’t have enough energy left. I’m a pretty good swimmer, but not that good. I knew I’d die trying. Besides, my glasses had gone and everything was fuzzy. I couldn’t tell one shape from another.’
Her eyebrows dipped towards each other and she dropped her gaze. ‘I felt this terrible pain trying to rip open my chest, so I rolled onto my back and just floated. For a while I just let the water lap aroun
d me. I remember thinking the sky was perfect, like a thin skin of forget-me-not blue wrapped around the earth. I heard a bird squawk, clear and close by, and I knew then that I was going to be okay.’