by Elena Wilkes
‘I suppose it is.’
She touches the necklace. ‘There’s only one person that Chloe needs to belong to.’
‘Who’s that?’ Martin goes to take her hand and she lets him.
‘To herself.’
A letter from Elena
Thank you so much for choosing to read Keep My Secrets. It was a story that came to me unexpectedly, and not at all the story I planned to write!
It started out as being a psychological thriller about a woman who was being stalked – but I hadn’t worked out why that should be happening, and I didn’t know who this mysterious woman was. Then, one night, I was driving home in the dark when a car zoomed up behind me: too close and too fast. In that instant, Frankie came to me; a woman being chased by shadows but also being haunted by the darkness of her past life.
This notion of how we reinvent ourselves, fascinates me. People fascinate me. I think we all re-make ourselves over the years, until the person we present to people today is quite different from the person we presented to the world, say, ten or twenty years ago. But what would happen if our old life and our new life collided? Are there events from our past lives that we’d really prefer to forget?
Hence, we all keep bits of ourselves secret, and it’s those well-hidden gems that makes the work of a writer so intriguing.
If you have any thoughts about this book, I would love to hear them via a retailer review, or contact me via Facebook or Twitter.
www.facebook.com/elenawilkesthrillers
www.twitter.com/elenathrillers
Acknowledgements
I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Keshini Naidoo at Hera Books for supporting and encouraging me to write this book in the first place. There’s also a massive thank you to Jennie for her eagle-eyed editing. I have no idea where she finds the patience to sort through the inevitable bloopers when the ‘what-happened-when-to-who-and-why?’ goes awry. What a woman!
But of course, I have to say thank you to Amy Beashel, Ko Porteous, and Susie-Sue Bassett, who are my support and mainstay through this mad writing journey, and indeed, through life. Love you loads.
First published in the United Kingdom in 2021 by Hera
Hera Books
28b Cricketfield Road
London, E5 8NS
United Kingdom
Copyright © Elena Wilkes, 2021
The moral right of Elena Wilkes to be identified as the creator of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781912973576
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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