Only Daughter: An gripping and emotional psychological thriller with a jaw-dropping twist

by Sarah A. Denzil

  ‘Can I speak to Gav, please?’

  ‘Who are you?’ she asks. I’ve learned from Matthew Gould that Gav lives with his aunt Eileen.

  ‘An old friend.’

  Without breaking eye contact, she shouts Gav’s name and leans against the door frame. Her feet are bare; chipped red polish on the toes, cracks in the skin around her bunions.

  ‘What?’

  Hearing his voice after all these years sends an involuntary shiver down my body. Eileen’s brow knits as she notices my reaction. She scrutinises me, trying to suss me out.

  Thumping steps come down the stairs at the back of the house, and a moment later, a tubby, middle-aged man lumbers into view. He knows who I am as soon as he sees my face. I, on the other hand, would never have recognised this man as the attractive boy with blue eyes who had caught my attention with his charm offensive all those years ago.

  Eileen takes a few steps back and allows Gav to move closer. He doesn’t say a word, simply stares at me, and I do the same back.

  ‘Give us a minute, will you?’ he grunts at his aunt.

  She regards me one more time and then shuffles back into the house, scooping up a tabby cat on her way.

  ‘Jesus, what happened to you?’

  ‘Annie Robertson found me.’

  The sound of her name has an effect on him. He reels back, and his eyes flick away from mine. Would this have been easier if he had no remorse?

  ‘She still had a grudge,’ I say. ‘Against me.’

  He shakes his head in disbelief. ‘Why?’

  I shrug. ‘I guess in some ways I was easier to blame.’

  ‘I always expected her to knock on my door, but for some reason I didn’t expect you would.’

  ‘Why is that?’ I ask.

  ‘You seemed like the type to draw a line. Move on.’

  ‘Is that what you’ve done?’

  He lets out a breathy laugh. No humour in it. ‘No. No, I haven’t.’

  ‘No one told me you were living near my mother.’

  He rubs his stubble. ‘I would’ve contacted you, but I didn’t know what to say.’

  ‘“Sorry” not in your vocabulary?’

  ‘Yes. But it’s not enough, is it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘For what it’s worth, I am sorry.’ He pulls at the sleeve of his Adidas hoody. ‘I was a different person then.’

  ‘So was I.’

  ‘I see her face every night. And every night I see myself not helping either of you.’ His voice cracks.

  A modicum of that fire sparks up again, and I push him, taking him by surprise and knocking him to the hallway carpet. ‘Don’t you dare suffer. It’s my suffering and you don’t deserve to share it. You are not haunted by that day, I am. Don’t you dare grieve for me.’

  ‘Katie, I’m—’

  ‘No. Shut it. I wanted to see you, and now I have. Now I can go.’

  As he nods once more, it feels like an acceptance. ‘All right.’

  * * *

  ‘Do you think she’d like it?’

  I don’t have the heart to tell him that I hate it and that I wish we’d had Grace cremated, her ashes thrown into the air to be taken by the breeze. Instead Grace ended up in the family plot, next to her grandmother. Charles felt that Emily’s presence would bring comfort to Grace, and I’d been too spaced out with grief, and too consumed with the idea of revenge, to say no to him.

  ‘She’d love it.’

  ‘It’s her, isn’t it? Simple. Unique.’

  The headstone is black, smooth marble with gold lettering. A violin and musical notes are etched beneath her obituary.

  Grace Cavanaugh

  5 February 2002 – 15 March 2019

  Beloved daughter. Forever loved.

  No words could ever summarise her. She was flawed and she made mistakes, but I loved her more than anything in the world and there will always be a hole in our lives, the shape of her, the sound of her. She died unfinished without a chance to right her wrongs.

  And, oh, Grace, those wrongs were not so bad. We could’ve overcome them together if you’d talked to me.

  I take a deep breath to steady myself, thinking about the kisses she used to plant our cheeks in the morning, the way she laughed with her whole body, the dance-party sleepovers. The way my love for her made me want to be a good person.

  ‘Kat? Are you all right?’ Charles wraps an arm around my waist and pulls me in.

  It’s hard to be close to him, to be close to anyone. There’s a doctor’s appointment hanging over both our heads. Later today, we’ll discover how advanced Charles’s cancer is. But I can’t think about that now.

  ‘You’ve been distant.’ His tone is careful. Since the fire he’s treated me with kid gloves. Not much physical contact; short conversations that are never too heavy. The ever patient husband. He deserves to know everything, and now is as good a time as any. Grace always did bring us closer together, it feels fitting that I tell Charles my story here, in front of her grave.

  ‘That night at the cottage in Edale didn’t happen the way Lily told the police,’ I begin. ‘I wrote what I had planned to do in the letter I gave to Michelle.’

  ‘It’s still unopened,’ he says.

  ‘Well, it’s, umm…’ My body is fighting off tears, but I regain control and continue. ‘It wasn’t Angela who started the fire that night. It was me. Angela wasn’t who she claimed to be. She was someone from my past, but she hid her identity so that she could be my therapist – for years. She was Annie Robertson.’

  Charles keeps his arm around my waist, but he frowns when his eyes meet mine, and I find it difficult to read his expression. Is he angry? ‘Who’s Annie Robertson?’

  ‘It’s a… long story.’ My breath refuses to steady and the tears are winning.

  ‘I have time.’ A gentle squeeze of my waist. Patience.

  ‘I never told you this, because I wasn’t sure how to say the words. Angela was the only one I ever spoke to about it, and that was mainly because I was paying her. But you see, she’d changed her appearance. I never…’

  ‘Take your time, Kat.’

  ‘We were thirteen. There were four older boys. They wanted us to go out with them, so we did.’ Slowly, in a trembling voice, I tell him everything. ‘Somehow, I don’t know exactly… I lifted the stone and I smashed it into Jamie’s head. I killed the man on top of me.’

  There’s silence between us. That protective arm still around my waist, keeping my knees from buckling.

  ‘I always said that I didn’t hide my violent background. That’s not strictly true. You knew about the school fights and the arrests, but you didn’t know about the time I killed someone.’

  He’s silent again. This time it stretches out, as though hours pass.

  ‘Those nightmares…’ He shakes his head. ‘I always suspected. Perhaps I should have asked you.’

  When I double over and finally allow myself to cry – for Grace, for Annie and for me – he holds me and stops me from falling down. It takes a while. Maybe two minutes, or five, or ten, I can’t tell. Eventually, I bring myself under control.

  ‘Annie pretended to be my therapist and she convinced me that I’m a sociopath. She made me believe that I can’t love. But I knew I loved Grace.’

  ‘I know you did.’

  And then I tell him about Lily, and the bullying, and how Lily manipulated Grace. I tell him about Daniel Hawthorne and the baby, and Angela’s arrival at the quarry.

  ‘Lily showed me an alternative suicide note written by Grace, but I think it probably burned in the fire. I wish I could show it to you.’

  Charles’s eyelashes are wet. I clutch his hands in mine.

  ‘That night when I told you I tried to kill myself, I met them both. They admitted it all to me. Annie pushed Grace into the quarry, and she was the one who pushed me too.’

  ‘Fuck, Kat.’ He shakes his head in disbelief. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘You believe me, don’t you
?’ My thumb finds a curve in his palm and strokes back and forth.

  ‘You’re not a liar. Eighteen years and you’ve always told me straight, either with your words or your eyes.’

  ‘Well, I had to lie to you in the hospital. I didn’t think anyone would believe me otherwise.’

  ‘I knew something was off. I know I got angry with you, but I still thought it didn’t add up.’ He lets out a long, heavy sigh, his head bobbing low. ‘Jesus Christ, poor Grace. God, I’m so fucking angry. Why didn’t you tell me? I could’ve helped you.’

  ‘It was my battle,’ I reply.

  We stand there in silence and I sense Charles mulling over my words, digesting them, coming to terms with them.

  ‘She loved us,’ I say. ‘She truly did.’

  He squeezes my hand.

  After another moment of silence, I ask, ‘Do you think a person can be good if they have bad thoughts?’

  He glances at me in surprise. ‘What sort of thoughts?’

  ‘Ones that see the bad in people. That sometimes wish bad things on people. Getting annoyed by insignificant things and mentally berating people, even loved ones.’

  Charles’s eyebrows pull together at first, but then his face relaxes. ‘We’re all bad people, then. Every single one of us. You know, thoughts are fleeting and fickle, changing from day to day, just as we change. What we do is what lasts forever. That’s what makes a difference. You can’t take back what you say or do, but you can allow your thoughts to exist and then let them go. I suppose thoughts are the ghosts of what we do. In some ways they aren’t even real.’

  ‘I’ve done terrible things, too. The fire.’ I stare down at Grace’s grave, trying desperately to ignore the throbbing burns on my forearms. ‘I swear she was out of control, she was going to attack me, but… Charles, I went there with a can of gas. I went there intending to kill them.’

  ‘You did,’ he says. ‘And you can never take that back. But in the end, the circumstances absolve your intentions. Not only did you wait until it became self-defence, but you saved one of the people who conspired to kill your daughter. Kat, this woman stalked you for over a decade, messed with your head and murdered our daughter. Christ, if I’d known any of this, I would’ve cut her into tiny pieces.’

  I shake my head. ‘No, you wouldn’t.’ As aged and frail as my husband has become since the cancer began to take its toll, his wisdom and patience shine through. There’s Grace in him, and I was stupid not to see it sooner. ‘We’re going to be okay, you know. We’re going to get through it together.’

  He pats my hand. ‘Of course.’

  One last look at the headstone. Grace isn’t here. ‘She wouldn’t want us to stay.’ I bend down and place a yellow rose on the grave. ‘Let’s go.’

  Charles leads the way as we step around the other graves to head back to the car. But a minute or so after leaving the grave, I have the strange urge to glance back over my shoulder. As I do, I catch a glimpse of a dark head of black hair hurrying in the opposite direction. I let go of Charles’s hand and make my way back to Grace’s grave. There, on the marble plinth, is a single white lily.

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  A Letter from Sarah

  I want to say a huge thank you for choosing to read Only Daughter. If you did enjoy it, and want to keep up-to-date with all my latest releases, just sign up here. Your email address will never be shared and you can unsubscribe at any time.

  This book has been one of my favourites to write, and I am so thrilled to be able to share it with you all.

  I hope you loved Only Daughter and if you did I would be very grateful if you could write a review. I’d love to hear what you think, and it makes such a difference helping new readers to discover one of my books for the first time.

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  Thanks,

  Sarah A. Denzil

  www.sarahdenzil.com

  Acknowledgements

  As always, a big thank you to family and friends for your support. An extra big thank you to my husband, who not only reads each and every book but also listens patiently to all of my worries and frustrations along the way.

  Another big thank you to the team at Bookouture, especially my editor, Natasha, and publicity whizzes Noelle and Kim. You guys put my work ethic to shame!

  And last but not least, thank you to each and every reader. Without you, I wouldn’t have my dream job right now.

  Published by Bookouture in 2019

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  An imprint of StoryFire Ltd.

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  Uniter Kingdom

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  www.bookouture.com

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  Copyright © Sarah A. Denzil, 2019

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  Sarah A. Denzil has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work.

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  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers.

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  eBook ISBN: 978-1-78681-710-5

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events other than those clearly in the public domain 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.