33 Women: A gripping new thriller about the power of women, and the lengths they will go to when pushed...

by Isabel Ashdown

  44. BRAMBLE

  Present day, Two Cross Farm

  Regine massages chamomile oil into her arthritic knuckles, and waits for me on the office sofa as I finish off my call to DI Aston.

  ‘As you know, following your statement, the coroner has confirmed that Robyn Siegle’s broken neck is entirely consistent with an accidental fall,’ he says. ‘Seed – or rather, Alex – has provided a separate statement which appears to corroborate your version of events. I just want to confirm that you still maintain that Fern Bellamy acted alone in moving Robyn’s body to the riverside, and that no other person was involved?’

  ‘That’s right,’ I reply, picking up a framed photograph of the vibrant young Fern that now sits on the desk before me, and recalling how frail she already was by the time Robyn died. She couldn’t have moved a kitten by then. ‘She acted alone, detective. No one else had any knowledge of it.’

  ‘And Vanessa Murphy. We’re satisfied that she was murdered by Jem Falmer in 2005, but again, the removal of her body – you’re saying that was Fern too?’

  ‘It was. Her alone.’

  It gives me no pleasure to sully Fern’s name in this way, but Regine and I stand shoulder to shoulder in our bid to protect the living; to protect the current and future community at Two Cross Farm.

  ‘Hmm,’ he says, and, while I hear in his tone that he’s not at all convinced, he’s a good man, and has already hinted that it’s in nobody’s interest to chase after those of us on the sidelines of these more serious crimes. We’ll just have to wait and see how the Crown Prosecution Service chooses to proceed with the charge of failure to report a crime, but our legal advisor tells me there are loopholes we can take advantage of.

  ‘I’ve been going over your formal statements,’ DI Aston continues, ‘and you’re still willing to stand up in a court of law and testify that it was Fern who landed the fatal blow against Jem Falmer? You and Regine are both prepared to name Fern?’

  ‘We are,’ I reply. ‘We both want this whole thing cleared up as soon as possible, for everyone’s sake. It’s what happened, detective, and we have nothing to hide.’

  As I return the phone to its cradle, I’m transported to that final moment in our moonlit garden in 2005, when Seed staggered to her feet and took the spade from Fern’s hands, her expression shifting to rage as that monster squeezed the life from Vanessa’s throat. I can see the scene today as clearly as then; I feel the gentle swoop of our barn owl as it soared overhead, and I hear the whoosh of that spade as Seed swung it, powerful and wide, felling Falmer with a dense and final thud. Seed had collapsed again then, from her own injuries, and, when she finally came round, Fern managed to convince her it was she who’d killed Jem, that Seed was confused about the order of events and had merely witnessed it. Once Falmer’s body was disposed of, that night had never been spoken of again. When it came down to it, Fern had acted as any good mother would: she had done what she could to take away her child’s pain.

  I gaze at Fern’s photograph for a few moments longer, and, as though she is reading my mind, Regine claps her hands to snap me back. ‘Don’t beat yourself up, honey. We don’t call ’em lies if they serve to protect. If it was me who kicked the bucket, you’d have my blessing to pin anything on me. You’d do the same, Bramble, wouldn’t ya?’

  And I know, without hesitation, that I would. I’d do anything for my fellow sisters. Even for Regine, the mouthy old dame.

  ‘Good,’ she says, waving a dismissive hand towards the file on the desk in front of me. ‘Let’s move on. It’s what Fern would have wanted.’

  The folder before me is labelled ‘Letters of Application’, and I open it up, pushing my spectacles up my nose. ‘We have a few vacancies to fill if we’re to get back up to thirty-three,’ I say, taking a letter from the top.

  Regine nods sagely. ‘We’d better get on with it, then.’

  And of course, she’s right. There’s women’s work to be done.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  My latest novel is a story concerned with the significance of numbers, and the power and spirit of women. And so, it seems fitting, in the year that I turn fifty, that I extend thanks to every one of the wise women who have helped to shape my life so far. I won’t name individuals for fear of omitting others, but I’m confident you know who you are. You are my friends, family, team-mates and cheerleaders; you are near and far; you are recent and long ago. We have laughed together, cried together, stayed up late deciphering the world together. You’ve influenced my choices and encouraged my endeavours, and you are, every one of you, a blessing. Power to you all, sisters. Love to you all.

  Read on for a sample from

  Beautiful Liars by Isabel Ashdown…

  A Death

  It wasn’t my fault. I can see that now, through adult eyes and with the hindsight of rational thinking. Of course, for many years I wondered if I’d misremembered the details of that day, the true events having changed shape beneath the various and consoling accounts of my parents, of the emergency officers, of the witnesses on the rocky path below. I recall certain snatches so sharply – like the way the mountain rescue man’s beard grew more ginger towards the middle of his face, and his soft tone when he said, ‘Hello, mate,’ offering me a solid hand to shake. Hello, mate. I never forgot that. But there are other things I can’t remember at all, such as what we’d been doing in the week leading up to the accident, or where we’d been staying, or where we went directly afterwards. How interesting it is, the way the mind works, the way it recalibrates difficult experiences, bestowing upon them a storybook quality so that we might shut the pages when it suits us and place them safely on the highest shelf. I was just seven, and so naturally I followed the lead of my mother and father, torn as they were between despair for their lost child and protection of the one who still remained: the one left standing on the misty mountain ledge of Kinder Scout, looking down.

  I can see the scene now, if I allow my thoughts to return to that remote place in my memory. I watch myself as though from a great distance: small and plump, black hair slicked against my forehead by the damp drizzle of the high mountain air. And there are my parents, dressed head-to-toe in their identical hiking gear: Mum, thin and earnest, startle-eyed; and Dad, confused, his finger pushing his spectacles up his florid nose as he interprets my gesture and breaks into a heavy-footed run. Their alarmed expressions are frozen in time. There is horror as they register that I now stand alone, no younger child to be seen; that I’m pointing towards the precipitous edge, my eyes squinting hard as I try to shed tears. There are no other walkers on this stretch of path, no one to say what really happened when my brother departed the cliff edge, but the sharp cries of distress from the winding path far below suggest that there are witnesses to his arrival further down.

  It wasn’t your fault, it wasn’t your fault, it wasn’t your fault.

  This was the refrain of my slow-eyed mother in the weeks that followed, while she tried her best to absolve me, to put one foot in front of the other, to grasp at some semblance of normality. ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ she’d tell me at night-time as she tucked the duvet snugly around my shoulders, our eyes never straying to the now-empty bed inhabiting the nook on the opposite side of my tiny childhood room. ‘It was just a terrible accident.’ But, as I look back now, I think perhaps I can hear the grain of uncertainty in her tone, the little tremor betraying the questions she will never voice. Did you do it, sweetheart? Did you push my baby from the path? Was it just an accident? Was it?

  And, if I could speak with my mother now, what would I say in return? If I track further back into that same memory, to just a few seconds earlier, the truth is there for me alone to see. Now at the cliff edge I see two children. They’re not identical in size and stature, but they’re both dressed in bright blue anoraks to match their parents, the smaller with his hood tightly fastened beneath a chubby chin, the bigger one, hood down, oblivious to the sting of the icy rain. ‘Mine!’ the smaller one says, unsu
ccessfully snatching at a sherbet lemon held loosely between the older child’s dripping fingers. This goes on for a while, and on reflection I think that perhaps the sweet did belong to the younger child, because eventually it is snatched away and I recall the sense that it wasn’t mine to covet in the first place. But that is not the point, because it wasn’t the taking of the sweet that was so wrong but the boastful, taunting manner of it. ‘No!’ is the cry I hear, and I know it comes from me because even now I feel the rage rear up inside me as that hooded child makes a great pouting show of shedding the wrapper and popping the yellow lozenge into its selfish hole of a mouth, its bragging form swaying in a small victory dance at the slippery cliff edge. The tremor of my cry is still vibrating in my ears as I bring the weight of my balled fist into the soft dough of that child’s cheek and see the sherbet lemon shoot from between rosy lips like a bullet. ‘No!’ I shout again, and this time the sound seems to come from far, far away. Seconds later, he’s gone, and I know he’s plummeting, falling past the heather-cloaked rocks and snaggly outcrops that make up this great mountainous piece of land. I know it is a death drop; I know it is a long way down. I can’t say I remember pushing him – but neither can I remember not pushing him.

  So, you see, I’m not to blame at all. From what I recall of that other child – my brother – he was a snatcher, a tittletattle, a cry-baby, a provoker. Even if I did do it, there’s not a person on earth who would think I was culpable.

  I was seven, for God’s sake.

  CREDITS

  Trapeze would like to thank everyone at Orion who worked on the publication of 33 Women.

  Agent

  Kate Shaw

  Editor

  Phoebe Morgan

  Sam Eades

  Copy-editor

  Linda McQueen

  Proofreader

  Linda Joyce

  Editorial Management

  Sarah Fortune

  Charlie Panayiotou

  Jane Hughes

  Alice Davis

  Claire Boyle

  Audio

  Paul Stark

  Amber Bates

  Contracts

  Anne Goddard

  Paul Bulos

  Jake Alderson

  Design

  Debbie Holmes

  Lucie Stericker

  Joanna Ridley

  Nick May

  Clare Sivell

  Helen Ewing

  Finance

  Jennifer Muchan

  Jasdip Nandra

  Rabale Mustafa

  Elizabeth Beaumont

  Sue Baker

  Tom Costello

  Marketing

  Lucy Cameron

  Production

  Claire Keep

  Fiona McIntosh

  Publicity

  Alex Layt

  Sales

  Laura Fletcher

  Victoria Laws

  Esther Waters

  Lucy Brem

  Frances Doyle

  Ben Goddard

  Georgina Cutler

  Jack Hallam

  Ellie Kyrke-Smith

  Inês Figuiera

  Barbara Ronan

  Andrew Hally

  Dominic Smith

  Deborah Deyong

  Lauren Buck

  Maggy Park

  Linda McGregor

  Sinead White

  Jemimah James

  Rachel Jones

  Jack Dennison

  Nigel Andrews

  Ian Williamson

  Julia Benson

  Declan Kyle

  Robert Mackenzie

  Sinead White

  Imogen Clarke

  Megan Smith

  Charlotte Clay

  Rebecca Cobbold

  Operations

  Jo Jacobs

  Sharon Willis

  Lisa Pryde

  Rights

  Susan Howe

  Richard King

  Krystyna Kujawinska

  Jessica Purdue

  Louise Henderson

  About the Author

  Isabel Ashdown was born in London and grew up on the south coast of England. Since her award-winning debut Glasshopper was released in 2009, she has written a further seven novels, with two of her dark family thrillers shortlisted in the prestigious Dead Good Reader Awards. She is a full-time novelist, a Royal Literary Fund associate, and a regular creative writing host at the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate. 33 Women is her eighth novel, set in historic Arundel, not far from where she lives.

  For news, previews and book prizes, join Isabel’s newsletter at www.isabelashdown.com

  You can also find Isabel on:

  @IsabelAshdown

  @isabelashdown_writer

  IsabelAshdownBooks

  #33Women

  By Isabel Ashdown

  Glasshopper

  Hurry Up and Wait

  Summer of ’76

  Flight

  Little Sister

  Beautiful Liars

  Lake Child

  Copyright

  First published in Great Britain in 2020 by Trapeze

  an imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd

  Carmelite House, 50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  An Hachette UK Company

  Copyright © Isabel Ashdown 2020

  The moral right of Isabel Ashdown to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is

  available from the British Library.

  ISBN (eBook) 978 1409 17896 5

  www.orionbooks.co.uk