How to Fall

by Jane Casey

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  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

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Also by Jane Casey

  Copyright

  About the Book

  When fifteen-year-old Freya drowns, everyone assumes she’s killed herself, but no-one knows why. Her cousin, Jess Tennant, thinks she was murdered – and is determined to uncover the truth. On a summer visit to sleepy Port Sentinel, Jess (who bears a striking resemblance to her dead cousin) starts asking questions – questions that provoke strong reactions from her friends and family, not to mention Freya’s enemies.

  Everyone is hiding something – and Freya herself had more than her fair share of secrets. Can Jess unravel the mystery of her cousin’s death? A mystery involving a silver locket, seething jealousy and a cliff-top in the pitch black of night?

  For Rachel Petty, the ideal reader.

  Freya ran.

  It wasn’t a night for running, and the woods weren’t the best place for it. The full moon cast enough light to make it easy to see in the open, but under the trees it was one shade above pitch dark, and Freya was running blind. Rogue branches caught at her clothes, whipped her skin, barred her path. The ground under her feet was uneven, pitted with hollows and ridged with roots, and more than once she stumbled.

  But Freya still ran.

  She had long since lost the path, but she knew where she was going. The sound of the sea was louder than the leaves that rustled around her, louder than the voices in her head. Slut. Bitch. Freak. Voices she couldn’t outrun.

  She made herself go faster, sobbing under her breath as her feet flew. Between the trees ahead of her, she could see light. Space. Air. She threw herself towards it as if it was her only hope, as if it was her last chance. The trees thinned at the edge of the wood, spaced further apart, and she slowed a little as she dodged between the final two that stood between her and open ground. The sea spread out before her, the moon streaking a path across the waves, scattering light as the water rippled. The waves crashed against the cliff below. High tide, or close to it. Still hurrying but moving more carefully, she picked her way across the headland, skirting the thick gorse bushes that covered it, heading for the highest point of land where she knew there was a bench. In front of it, the ground fell away, the cliff face sheer down to the water. She could see every detail of it when she closed her eyes; she knew it as well as she knew her own face. It was terrifying.

  But it was the only way this could end.

  The bench rose up before her, sooner than she had expected, and she clung to the back of it for a moment. The weathered wood was reassuringly familiar under her hands, the paint flaking a little as she touched it. She let go of it reluctantly, stepping around it, stopping for a second to concentrate as she stood just in front of it. Ten steps from the bench to the edge of the cliff. Eight steps to the left.

  And then jump.

  She thought for a second that the bench was shaking, but it was her legs trembling uncontrollably. Exhaustion, because of her run. But more than that. Fear.

  Suddenly aware of herself again, she could feel every bruise aching, every graze stinging. A line across her neck burned and she touched it, running her fingers along it, feeling the raised skin that would look red and raw if she could see it.

  Slowly, deliberately, she took a deep breath. She was out of choices. There was nowhere else to go.

  Ten steps. Eight steps. Jump.

  Easy.

  The voices had fallen away. The only sound was the water below, and the beating of her heart. She stared at the horizon, and moved.

  Five steps.

  She couldn’t do it.

  Three more.

  She faltered, stopped.

  Two more.

  The edge.

  In front of her, the sea, the sky, the stars. Behind her – she twisted to look – the dark mass of the woods. Nothing moved.

  Impossible to go on. Impossible to go back.

  Freya . . .

  A whisper, barely audible. Her heart pounded, thudding in her ears. She looked around warily, trying to pick out where the voice had come from. Trying to work out if it was real.

  Freya . . .

  She was so tired. So tired of being afraid. So tired of running. But she couldn’t jump.

  The voice hissed again, commanding, demanding. Freya . . .

  And something touched her shoulder. She stepped away from it without thinking.

  The world tilted and swung, the moon spinning in the sky, the waves rushing up to meet her.

  And then there was silence.

  1

  AS A PLACE to spend the summer Port Sentinel probably had its good points, but it was doing a good job of hiding them. I trudged down Fore Street, the main and only street in town, feeling the rain soak into my jeans. It had been pouring since the night before, when my mother and I arrived in the middle of a thunderstorm and unloaded all our belongings in a serious cloudburst, running from the car to the holiday cottage in total hysterics. It would take weeks for everything to dry out completely.

  When I woke the following morning to steady drizzle the weather pretty much matched my mood. The sky was an ominous shade of grey that suggested there was plenty more rain to come. There was no TV in our rented cottage, or access to the internet, and I had lasted through four chapters of the witless romantic novel I’d found on a shelf before I gave up. Just because the hero was a ruggedly handsome cowboy I didn’t see why it gave him the right to be so rude all the time. Plus the heroine was a twit. I couldn’t even be bothered to flick to the end to make sure they really did live happily ever after. I grabbed my jacket (rainproof, hooded, essential accessory for a summer holiday in England) and went to find Mum.

  She was in her bedroom, I discovered, lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Fine. This is called relaxing. I’m relaxing.’

  ‘You sound as if you’re trying to convince yourself.’

  She grabbed a pillow and threw it at me. ‘Leave me alone.’

  ‘What? I’m just saying, you don’t look relaxed.’

  ‘I’m trying. This is a holiday, after all.’

  A holiday she had decided we were going to take. Molly Tennant, née Cole, returning to her roots accompanied by her teenage daughter Jess after an absence of many years and a bitter divorce. Because there was absolutely no chance of that being awkward. I didn’t bother with I-told-you-so. ‘I’m going out for a wander. Do you want to come?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘You’re going to have to leave the house sometime.’

  ‘Not yet, though.’

  ‘Mum . . .’

  ‘I’m building up to it.’

  ‘I’ll leave you to it, then. I’ll be back soon.’

  Which was no word of a lie, because it wasn’t as if it was going to take a long time to look around. Port Sentinel wasn’t a one-horse town, but that was only because they’d upgraded the horse to a Range Rover for the sake of the out-of-towners who owned holiday homes there. The locals probably had to share a three-legged donkey, but they were very much less important than the bankers and broker
s who’d built large houses all the way across the hill above the town. They were all at least five times the size of the tiny fishermen’s cottages and pastel-painted terraced houses that had once been the only buildings in Port Sentinel, before it became fashionable. Huge picture windows stared out blankly at the view, reflecting nothing but grey skies and the gravel-coloured sea. It would be pretty if the sun ever came out, I admitted grudgingly. Very grudgingly after I had stepped off the pavement into a puddle and soaked my right foot. Very grudgingly indeed after a blonde in a four-wheel drive had come within inches of mowing me down as she sped down the road, huge sunglasses firmly in place despite the weather.

  Fore Street was small and narrow, the old buildings leaning against one another drunkenly when you looked above the shopfronts. Half the shops were little boutiques and designer outlets too exclusive for me to consider visiting, even to get out of the rain. The other half consisted of a fairly random collection of teashops, charity shops, junk shops and we-sell-everything mini-markets wreathed in brightly coloured displays of plastic beach toys. They took up most of the narrow pavement. Passing one, I pushed an inflatable whale out of my way and collided with a girl who had been hidden behind it, heading in the opposite direction.

  ‘Sorry.’ I wasn’t, in fact; it was at least as much her fault as mine. But instead of apologizing in return as I had expected, the girl stared at me for a long moment from under her dripping umbrella. I had plenty of time to notice very perfect mascara standing out like stars around her wide eyes, and the serious diamond studs in her ears, and the expensively highlighted hair, and the white skinny jeans, and the sky-high wedges, and the pale-pink polo shirt she was wearing with the collar flipped up, and the Burberry mini-trench that had cost more than my entire wardrobe put together. She looked far more rattled than a near-miss should have made her – stunned, in fact. Alarmed. Panicked. And as a cascade of raindrops fell between us, I realized the hand that held the umbrella was shaking. Rainy it might have been, but it wasn’t cold. Not even a little bit.

  She stepped sideways eventually, still staring, and I walked on, wondering if she had just never seen anyone in frayed jeans and battered trainers on Fore Street before. I wasn’t wearing make-up, either. Call the fashion police, quick.

  I probably wouldn’t have thought much more about it if it hadn’t been for two things. One was the old lady who opened a shop door right in front of me a minute later so I caught sight of the street behind me reflected in the glass – including a perfect view of the girl standing under her umbrella, still gazing in my direction, now on her mobile phone, talking urgently. The other was the fact that three other people stopped to gawp at me in the space of the next three minutes: two girls on the other side of the road who nudged each other as soon as they spotted me, and a middle-aged woman who peered at me short-sightedly and started to wave, then dropped her hand and hurried on. I knew I was blushing, which was annoying in itself. If this was what it was like to be a celebrity I’d be quite happy to remain obscure for ever.

  But I was never going to be obscure in a small town like Port Sentinel. It was one of the many reasons why I hadn’t been thrilled to hear we were spending the summer there. I had waited to tackle Mum until we were actually in the car, halfway down the motorway, London not even a brown smudge in the rear-view mirror any more. I’d read in a parenting book Mum had borrowed from the library that the car was the ideal place for awkward conversations with teenagers; I didn’t see why that shouldn’t work just as well the other way round. (If you’re wondering why I was reading a parenting book, all I’ll say is: knowledge is power. I like to spot the psychological trickery well in advance. And if you’re wondering why Mum was reading a parenting book, so was I.)

  ‘The thing I don’t understand,’ I had said carefully, ‘is why now.’

  ‘Sorry?’ My mother, who is neither deaf nor stupid, played for time.

  ‘Why now? You haven’t gone near Port Sentinel or your family since before I was born, and suddenly we’re spending the summer there. Which, by the way, you didn’t even discuss with me.’

  ‘There was nothing to discuss, Jess.’ She kept her eyes on the motorway and her knuckles were white as she gripped the steering wheel. That didn’t mean anything; she was a nervous driver at the best of times. But I knew I was making her tense.

  Which was no reason to stop.

  ‘I was sort of looking forward to spending the summer in London. You know, with my friends. And with Dad,’ I added.

  ‘I seem to recall someone complaining about their friends being away. Isn’t Lauren in France?’

  ‘Staying with a family in Provence. Her mum is completely obsessed with her being fluent in French by the end of the holidays.’ Lauren had moaned about having to go, right up to the moment when she realized the family included an exceptionally hot nineteen-year-old named Raoul. Raoul, who was tall, dark and handsome, and knew it. Raoul, who spent his life lounging around half naked or in the pool. She had only been there for three days but already I’d been emailed seven pictures of him snapped with her phone, and if she thought he hadn’t noticed her stalking him she was quite wrong. Raoul posing casually by the fridge in boxers, drinking milk straight out of the carton (which, yuck – but it hadn’t put Lauren off). Raoul standing on a diving board, six-pack on display. Raoul soaking wet, his tan like caramel, glancing casually at Lauren at just the moment she happened to be taking his picture. Five more and I’d have enough for a calendar.

  ‘And Ella’s in the States.’

  ‘In a giant camper van, with her whole family, on the trip of a lifetime.’ I shook my head. ‘I don’t think everyone’s going to make it back alive.’

  ‘That’s a long time to be stuck in the same vehicle together. I could barely face the drive down to Devon.’

  ‘Yes, and why exactly are we going?’

  ‘That again.’

  ‘You didn’t answer me the first time.’

  ‘Is this teenage rebellion kicking in at last?’ Mum shot me a sidelong look, amused.

  ‘Oh, you’ll know when it’s teenage rebellion, I promise you. This isn’t it. I just want to know why we packed up everything we own so we could spend six weeks in the back end of nowhere.’

  A shrug. ‘Family stuff.’

  Very informative.

  ‘What about Dad?’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘Doesn’t he mind us being away for that long?’

  ‘Well, your father doesn’t care where I go, or with whom.’ Another sidelong look; she had picked up on the note of hurt I hadn’t quite managed to keep out of my voice. ‘And I did ask him about your visits, Jess, but he’s really busy at the moment and he said he’d catch up with you when we get back.’

  ‘Busy with work or with Martine?’

  ‘I didn’t ask. But I imagine with both.’

  I rolled my eyes. ‘Grim.’

  ‘Martine seems a very nice person.’

  ‘Mum, you don’t have to like everyone. Especially not Dad’s new girlfriend.’

  ‘We’re divorced. He can do what he likes. And so can I.’

  She spoke lightly but I wasn’t fooled. It had been a tough couple of years since they broke up. Or rather, since Dad had left her. Mum had married young and stayed young, so when Dad left she struggled to cope. We’d both had to do a lot of growing up in a hurry. There were days when I felt as if I was the one who should be looking after her.

  ‘OK. So if you’re going to start acting like Dad, I can expect you to turn up with a twenty-four-year-old lover one of these days.’

  She laughed. ‘I don’t really go for younger men.’

  ‘Maybe you should. Maybe that’s the mistake we’ve been making. Younger men must be easier to push around.’

  Mum’s eyes were full of sympathy. ‘Oh, Jess. Are you still upset about Conrad?’

  ‘Never mention that name to me again.’

  ‘OK. I won’t. But just so you know, I never liked him. I thought you co
uld do better.’

  ‘If only you’d said.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have paid any attention.’

  She was right. It was my turn to go silent. I stared out of the window. I couldn’t think about Conrad without wanting to curl up in a ball, which wasn’t really possible in the front seat of Mum’s Nissan Micra. I didn’t like to think about how I’d fallen for Conrad. He was tall and thin, with high cheekbones, amazing hair and a dreamy, distracted air that had intrigued me. I had imagined it was because he was deep in thought but actually he was just vacant, his brain in neutral most of the time. He was artistic, or so he said. He wrote poetry, even. Really, really bad poetry, as I’d discovered almost immediately. No matter how much I wanted to believe he was The One, the poetry had always worried me.

  All that, and I’d thought I was in love. Right up until the moment I’d arrived late at a party, wandered in and found him sitting on top of Karen Seagram, one hand burrowing in her top as if he’d lost his keys, with his tongue stuck in her mouth. To which I had said, ‘Rather her than me, Conrad. You kiss like a goat eating a jam sandwich through a letterbox.’

  I’d walked out with my head high, thinking, Never let them see you cry. But in private I’d done more than my share of crying.

  I shook my head, trying to dislodge the image, and returned to my original point. ‘What family stuff?’

  ‘You’re not going to drop it, are you?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘You’re so stubborn. I think you get it from your father.’

  ‘That’s fighting talk.’

  ‘You do get some things from him, you know.’

  ‘Name three.’

  ‘You’re argumentative. Stubborn, as I said before. And you’re tough.’

  I hadn’t been expecting that. ‘Tough?’

  ‘Not in a bad way. Just – you’re not like me. You don’t back down. You stand up for yourself.’

  ‘If I have to. But I’m not sure I like being described as “tough”.’

  ‘Call it strength of character, then.’

  ‘That’s better.’

  ‘Proving my point . . .’ Mum murmured, more or less to herself. Then she sighed. ‘Look, it’s been a difficult year. You know about Freya.’