Harborside Hatred

A Liars Island Suspense Novella

Sarah A. Denzil

Contents

Also by the author:

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Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

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Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

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Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

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Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Epilogue

About the Author

HARBORSIDE HATRED

EBOOK EDITION

Copyright © 2021 Sarah A. Denzil

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this work, in whole or in part, in any form.

This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, organizations and products depicted herein are either a product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously.

Cover Design by Cormar Covers

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Also by the author:

Psychological Suspense:

Saving April

The Broken Ones

Silent Child

Only Daughter

The Liar’s Sister

Poison Orchids

Little One

Crime Fiction:

One For Sorrow (Isabel Fielding book one)

Two For Joy (Isabel Fielding book two)

Three For A Girl (Isabel Fielding book three)

The Isabel Fielding Boxed Set

Supernatural Suspense:

You Are Invited

Short suspenseful reads:

They Are Liars

Aiden’s Story (a SILENT CHILD short story)

Harborside Hatred

Welcome to Liars Island… a stand-alone series of interconnected, novella length domestic thrillers set in the picture-perfect community of Liars Island. Here, nothing is quite as it seems.

On this island, families and friendships are more than meets the eye … secrets, deceptions, and jealousies threaten to ruin everything these influential people have built. But it isn’t only the rich that live here … and power comes in all shapes and sizes. Everyone here is a liar … just how far would you go to get what you want?

Read more in the series! https://liarsislandsuspense.com/

Prologue

I can see you right now, sitting by the window. You’re drinking coffee. It’s funny, I never saw you as someone who drinks coffee, but maybe you’ve changed. After all, it’s been a long time since we spoke to each other. I used to believe that I knew you so well, and now I look at you, and you’re so changed.

You’re not the only one to evolve during all this time. Take me, for instance, I used to love you. But not anymore. No. Now I hate you.

You have no idea that I’m here and how I’m waiting and watching and waiting and watching. You see, I’ve been just a few steps behind you for a very long time. I’ve been in your shadow, biding my time… because I hate you.

Do you know why? Have you any idea? I’ll tell you why: because you never paid for what you did. It was a long time ago, I know, but being young isn’t an excuse when you tear a family apart and ruin all of their lives.

I’ve waited too long. So many times, I’ve lost my nerve over the years, but this time I won’t. This time I’m going to show you who I am. Because the hatred is bubbling over. I can’t contain it anymore. I’m coming for you, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.

Chapter One

The Harborside bookshop smelled like leather, old paper and the first cup of coffee of the day. There was nothing more welcoming, or so cosy, as a room filled with books from floor to ceiling. At least, that was what I believed. Every morning I woke up at 6:00 a.m., came down from the flat upstairs, where I lived, and poured myself a strong Americano. The golden sunrise gleamed in through the windows, picking up on dust floating through the air, while Knightley curled up at my feet behind the counter. This was my dream, as a bookworm from London, to be here at Liars Island, in this tiny little corner of heaven. I sipped my coffee, leaned back in my chair, and gently allowed myself to wake up.

After draining the coffee, I opened the diary and ran a finger down the lines, noting where I’d scribbled in the margins, and where Bridger had jotted down events, his handwriting much neater and squarer than mine. My index finger lingered over his words, and a smile spread across my lips. He’d be here for his shift at 8:30, just half an hour before the shop opened.

Knightley turned his face up to me and emitted the kind of angry meow that let me know I was late to deliver him his breakfast. He was a pampered, plump former rescue tabby cat who rubbed his head against the legs of non-cat lovers as they browsed the books. But Knightley was cute enough to win over even the most ardent of cat haters. No one had resisted his charms. Not yet.

“Come on, puss.” I stepped precariously through to the little kitchenette at the back of the property, with the cat winding in and out of my legs. I bent down and tipped a tin of meat into the bowl. Knightley purred happily as he tucked in.

It gave me a couple of hours to unpack a new shipment, catalogue some special editions and package a bundle of rare books going to a collector. Bridger always complained that I did too much work before his shift started, giving him little more to do than ring up orders at the till. But I couldn’t help myself. I was an early riser and then, I needed to keep myself busy.

Always moving. That was my motto. It’d taken me a while to settle in a place like Liars Island. After leaving London ten years ago, I moved to New York, working as an assistant at a publishing house. But the money dried up exceedingly fast. Then I tried Connecticut for a while, searching for that perfect American suburb to spread roots. Nowhere felt right, until I came across Liars Island and saw a ramshackle shop on the harbour.

As soon as I saw it, I knew it was the perfect place for me. I pictured string lights around the windows, a back room with a small table for book clubs, and a couple of armchairs so people could read curled up with a cappuccino. I’d called my dad almost immediately and asked for the money Mum left me in her will. Before then, I’d wanted nothing to do with it.

Always moving, never looking back. Yes, I’d settled here on the island, but I was determined to keep moving at all times. I had to work. The shop did relatively well, but I didn’t want to rely on my dad for any handouts, so I worked twelve-hour days making everything perfect. I set up an online shop, posted flyers at Thyme Tea shop, Brew Love and all of the bakeries and coffee shops around the island. Now I had a loyal core of regulars, a book club with a waiting list, and several rare book collectors who used me as a supplier. Every day, I lived my dream. My best life.

So why couldn’t I sleep at night?

Knightley meowed before the key scraped the lock. He always knew when Bridger was about to arrive. I instinctively moved a lock of hair away from my face and brushed down my dress. Gossip had already spread around the island—it was a small community, gossip was rife—about mine and Bridger’s relationship. But it was all a load of rubbish, Bridger had worked here for six months while he wrote his first novel. We were friends, that was all.

“Morning!” he said brightly. “I brought you a bear claw.” His brown eyes twinkled when he smiled at me. Bridger had a lean physique, was perhaps an inch or two taller than me, and loved to wear blazers. I’d always thought him to be a perfect love interest for a bookworm like me. He had the gentlemanly manners of a Mr Knightly or a Mr Bingley.

My stomach rumbled as he passed me the paper bag. I could already smell the pastry and melting icing sugar. “You’re a lifesaver.”

“Is there coffee?”

“Yep, in the pot.”

“Awesome. I’m Jonesing.” He grinned and made his way through to the back. “Let me guess, Oakland. You’ve already unpacked that shipment, boxed up the books for the collectors and catalogued everything?”

I followed him through, trying not to stare at my feet, but at the same time avoided his gaze so that he hopefully didn’t notice the pink flush working its way up from my collarbone. He laughed, picked up the pot and poured himself a generous portion of coffee.

“You’ve got to chill,” he said, raising an eyebrow. “You know you pay me, right? I’m here to actually work.”

“I can’t help myself.” I sat down on one of the armchairs near the entrance to the kitchenette. “I think I’m a workaholic.”

“Yeah, no kidding.” He came through and sat down at the table. “One of these days I’m going to get you to take the day off.”

“I take days off!” I protested.

“When? Christmas?”

“Yes!”

He laughed. “Apart from all that extra time you spend putting up the decorations.”

“Oh, that reminds me, we didn’t have enough lights last year.”

“Oakland, it’s March!”

I shrugged and wandered back through the bookshop to flip the sign and unlock the door. I opened it for a moment, breathing in the salty air drifting over from the harbour, and then gave Tyson a wave over at Elite Crossfit. My eyes fell upon the marina, which bustled with people today. Some of the local millionaires had moored their enormous yachts and whenever that happened, it attracted pedestrians hoping to soak up the glamour. That world didn’t entice me. Even though I’d grown up comfortable, I no longer coveted that lifestyle.

I closed the door, picked up a clothbound edition of Pride and Prejudice and made my way back to the armchair to read it while, carefully, eating the bear claw. Bridger could put his money where his mouth was and watch the shop on his own for a while. I was relaxing.

Sometime around Lizzie’s first encounter with Mr Darcy, the phone rang. We had two in the store, one by the counter, and another on the wall of the kitchenette. Bridger answered either when I wasn’t around, but when I was, I tended to take care of it. I placed the book down on the table and checked the small screen on the back of the receiver. It was an unknown number.

“Harborside Books.”

Silence.

“Hello?”

More silence.

“I can’t hear you. Is the connection bad?”

And then I heard a breath. I blinked, tried not to panic, ignoring the way all the air in my lungs turned to ice. It had to be a coincidence. It had to be. It was a mistake. A wrong number. A person who struggled to talk on the phone, or… I didn’t know, but there had to be a rational explanation.

“Hello?” I tried one more time. “Is there anyone there? I’m sorry, I can’t hear you.”

In.

Out.

In.

Out.

The breathing grew louder, raspier, more purposeful. I slammed the phone down and staggered away, bumping into the table behind me.

It was impossible? Wasn’t it? It couldn’t be them?

But in my heart, I knew it was. I’d heard that breathing before. I knew what it meant.

Chapter Two

My hand flew to my mouth. Not again, I couldn’t go through this again. I glanced at the phone hanging on the wall, the mustard-yellow casing too bright, too cheery. There was no point trying Caller ID, the number had come up unknown, obviously this person did not want to be found, but they did want to frighten me. They’d succeeded. I walked quickly through to the front of the shop because I didn’t want to be alone.

“Everything all right?” Bridger asked. He was at the laptop behind the counter, probably sorting through online orders.

“Yeah, fine.” My voice came out slightly squeaky. I cleared my throat and tried to pull myself together.

Bridger paused, and his eyes narrowed. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

I hadn’t seen one, but I had heard one. I shook my head. Bridger couldn’t know anything about this. “Just a sugar rush from the bear claw, I think. Too much caffeine today, too. Is everything going all right in the shop?” I bent down to scratch Knightley’s head as he lounged in front of the counter desk.

“It’s still quiet, but then it’s 10 a.m. on a Tuesday morning.” He smiled. “Are you sure you’re all right? Maybe you should have a lie down for an hour. You’re working way too hard right now.”

“I think I might actually. If you have everything under control.”

“’Course I have!” Bridger said. “Go have a rest. We’ll be fine down here.”

“We?” I frowned.

“Knightley and me.” He winked.

I forced out a laugh, trying to prove to myself that the call hadn’t shaken me, but it sounded fake, and it sort of hung in the air between us. Bridger’s eyebrows bunched together in concern, and I noticed the tiny creases around his eyes, so tiny because he was young, just twenty-eight years old. Only five years younger than me and yet so much better preserved. I patted him on the shoulder to try and prove that everything was all right. But then I realised it was the first time I’d ever touched Bridger, and suddenly warmth flooded my face again. I turned sharply away and walked stiffly back up to the apartment, not quite there in my mind, somewhat numb from the strange morning.

What Bridger didn’t know—what no one knew—was that every day between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one, I’d heard that heavy, rasping breath on the other end of the line. Every time I answered the phone, I asked who was there, they panted at me, and then I hung up. Every. Time.

I folded myself up on the bed, nestled into the crumpled sheets, my mind stuck in the past. Dad and I had been alone by my eighteenth birthday, having said goodbye to my mum just a few months before. Her cancer had started in her left breast and metastasized all over her organs, slowly and painfully until she wasted away. And at eighteen, Dad and I were still dazed by it all. The phone calls had been the cherry on top of the trash heap that had been my teens.

I remembered that time as clearly as a bell ring. Mum’s death had changed me. Around that time, I didn’t like myself very much.

When the calls began, Dad and I had gone straight to the police, as anyone would, and they tried to track the calls as best they could. It was the early 2000s and hundreds of different Pay as You Go mobile phones on the market. None of the numbers used to call me were registered to a contract so they could never find an address. The calls came at any time of the day, meaning I spent every waking hour tensed up in anticipation. Sometimes they called straight after school, other times they called my mobile phone at lunch time when I was trying to enjoy my time with my friends. Then there were the phone calls in the middle of the night, waking up both me and Dad to terrorise us. Those were the worst days, when I went to bed hoping that they’d finally stopped, but later, at 2 a.m., the shrill sound of the phone woke us.

Then we tried changing our number and delisting it. But Dad needed to give out the number to his work, and somehow they found it again. Only moving stopped them. Briefly.

When I was twenty-one, I moved away from London for a job in Leeds. It wasn’t a career job, really. I’d given up on the idea of being an editor for a large publishing house—my dream at the time—because London didn’t feel safe anymore and there were no large publishers in the north. But I did manage to get a job at a small academic publisher in Leeds as an assistant to the editor. My job was mostly coffee runs and answering the phone—ironically—but I had a blissful few months of no more calls.

Until they started again.

Intermittent now. Perhaps the caller had a busier life. The calls were once a month at first, then once a week. Sometimes I screamed at them down the line. I yelled awful words, ones I’d never use in front of my dad.

It was around that time that I met my first serious boyfriend, Nick, who was a few years older than me. Perhaps I sought the safety and security of an older man. But it didn’t last because I could never relax. For as long as I could I kept it a secret, afraid of how it made me look. I don’t know, pathetic maybe? The perpetual victim who couldn’t find her stalker, who could never live a normal life of not looking behind my shoulder.

Eventually, I gave up on Leeds. The calls were daily then, almost always on my work phone. I would switch mobile phones often, I never had a landline, and only a handful of people ever learned my number. But my work phone was impossible to hide. I moved again, to Newcastle, and then down to Cornwall, and then finally to America. And that was when the calls finally stopped for good.

Or so I thought.

I scrunched up the pillow beneath me, and felt a familiar weight land on the bed. Knightley. He purred, kneaded the bedsheets with his paws, and curled up in the crook of my knee. With his warmth next to me, I drifted into a shallow slumber, listening to the rhythmic little snores coming from the cat.

I’m not sure how long I slept for, but at some point, the door to the flat opened and heavy footsteps approached the bed. Sleep fell from me in an instant, and I shifted up the bed to rest against the headboard, eyes taking a moment to adjust. Knightley leapt from the bed and scuttled off somewhere.

“Oakland! Oh my God, I’m so sorry you were asleep.” Bridger, flushed pink as though he’d just run up the stairs, was grinning from ear to ear.

“It’s okay,” I said. “Is something going on?”

He sat down on the edge of the bed, both knees bouncing up and down. He was like a coiled spring waiting to unleash his energy. “I just got off the phone with Harper Collins. They want to publish my book.”

I dived forwards and grabbed him by the arm. “Oh, that’s amazing. Wow, I can’t believe it. I mean, I can believe it because you’re talented. I’m so happy for you. Congratulations!” I almost reached out to pull him into a hug, but it felt strange to do so on my bed. So instead, I gestured for us to go into the kitchen. “Come on. We should have a glass of something to celebrate.”

“I don’t want to put you out.”

“Don’t be silly! I’m thrilled for you. I’m so excited I think I need some alcohol to take the edge off.” I delved into the fridge and pulled out an open, two-day-old bottle of wine with just enough left for two glasses. “Sorry, this is all I have chilled.”

“That’s more than okay.”

I grabbed glasses and poured out the wine. Bridger was still smiling when I handed him his.

“You’re going to be a published author,” I said. “That’s unbelievable. Have you called your parents yet?”

“No,” he said. “I’ll do it after work.”

I sipped my wine. “The shop—”

“It was quiet. I closed up for ten minutes. Is that all right?”

I nodded my head. In all the excitement, I hadn’t even thought to check the time. The clock on the oven timer told me it was a little after noon.

“Are you feeling better?” Bridger asked.

“So much better,” I lied.

“Are you sure? You seemed spooked by something earlier.”

“It was nothing,” I said. “Honestly, it doesn’t matter at all.”

Chapter Three

Once Bridger left to reopen the shop, I grabbed some brie from the fridge and smeared it onto a chunk of bread. Knightley meowed until I threw him a tuna cat treat, and then I curled up on the armchair and called my dad. The comfort food was necessary, I was about to bring up an event that had tortured us both for years.

It took him a little while to answer, and I worried that it was a strange time in England. I hadn’t thought to check. My heart pitter-pattered.

“Hello?”

“Hi Dad.”

“Hello, darling. What a lovely surprise.”

“I’m sorry to call you. Is it a funny time there?”

“Oh no, it’s absolutely fine. It’s lovely to hear your voice. How’s the bookshop?”

“It’s doing well. Still turning a profit.”

“And you’re saving up a pension?”

“I am.”

“Good, good.”

“Dad,” I said, trying to stop his train of thought before it went down the financial planning route. It was always best to get ahead of one of those rants. “Listen, I have something to tell you.”

I think he heard the note of worry in my voice, because he went quiet, and spoke softly. “All right. I’m listening.”

“I had one of those calls today.”

He was silent.

“You know, the ones from… back then.”

“I know the ones,” he said. “Are you sure?”

“I think so. Someone called and breathed loudly.” I inhaled slowly, stemming the tears building up behind my eyes. When this happened years ago, I could go to my dad and cry on his shoulder. Now I had no one but Knightley.

“How long ago did they call?”

“A few hours ago.”

“Have you called the police?”

“No,” I said. “I… I think… Dad, I think they’ll say I’m crazy. They don’t know the history.”

“Oakland,” he said, using his “Dad” voice, “you have to explain to them why this is such a grave situation. You need to be proactive and go to the police before anything happens.” He sighed. “Christ. I can’t believe this. And you’re so far away. I hate it.”

“I know, Dad.”

“Do you promise me you’ll go to the police? I just don’t want you to have to go through this alone.”

“I promise.” I sighed. “But what if I’m wrong? Maybe it was a wrong number or just a one-off prank call from someone else. I mean, how old is this person now? It’s been sixteen years. Why are they so obsessed with me?”

I broke off, because I didn’t want to go there. I didn’t want to answer those questions in my mind. It would lead me down a dark path and I couldn’t confront it. Not yet.

“I wish I knew,” he said. “Would you like me to come? I could stay with you.”

“I’m sorry, Dad. I just don’t have room. My flat is tiny.”

“Perhaps I could stay at a hotel, or one of the B&Bs on the island?”

“No. It’s fine. Honestly, I’m completely fine.” I didn’t want him travelling because he’d had some problems with his heart, despite how much I needed to cry on his shoulder again. “I’ll keep in touch, though. Okay?”

“Yes, you do that.” He sounded tired, even old. One tear managed to make its way through the barrier I thought I’d formed. It rolled down my nose.

“Speak soon,” I said, hanging up before more tears fell.

Knightley sat on the coffee table watching me from the centre of the room. I pushed my hands into my eyes and wiped the tears away. Dad was right, as always. I had a history with this stalker, and I needed to call the police. But I didn’t want to do it yet. A flutter of nerves built up in my stomach. One call wasn’t enough evidence. I decided to wait and see if they called again. If they did, then I’d go to the police, and if not, then I got to move on with my life.

The problem was… After all these years, and several different police departments working on this stalking case, none of them had figured out who was stalking me. And that was my fault, wasn’t it? I closed my eyes tightly, balled my hands into fists. Every part of me went stiff all over. Yes, it was my fault. Because there had been a pool of suspects back then. Not an Olympic sized pool, more of a pond, and I hadn’t told anyone about it.

A few lines from a Christina Rossetti poem sprang into my mind: Tell my secret? No indeed, not I; Perhaps some day, who knows? But not today; it froze, and blows and snows.

“Oh, Oakland, you coward.”

I got up from the chair and paced for a few moments, chewing on a thumbnail, wishing there was more brie left in the fridge. And then I went to my desk and opened my laptop. For the first time in a week, I started to work on my novel. I’d recently reached chapter ten, and I needed an inciting incident, but nothing was happening. The main character gets a prank call, I thought, and almost laughed.

* * *

After a good night’s sleep, the call didn’t feel quite so bad. I’d stayed in for the rest of the day, written another chapter in my book, and had an early night. My achievements were not quite as amazing as Bridger’s accomplishment, but it was something. And then I tiptoed down to the shop early in the morning as the pink-orange sun rose above the marina. I made the coffee, checked my diary, fed the cat and waited.

Bridger came in with a hangover, his skin an off-white, and I sent him back to his houseboat to sleep it off.

“I’ve let you down,” he said in a morose tone as I shooed him out the door. “It was the whiskey.”

“Go sleep it off. I’m fine here.”

He gave me a little wave as he stumbled out of the shop and back towards the harbour.

The poor guy. He deserved a celebration after his good news, though I couldn’t help noticing that I hadn’t been invited to whatever shindig had gone down. Still, I shrugged it off and got on with work.

The phone rang three times that day, and each time, my heart leapt. But every one of them was an order for a book. I jotted down the titles, pulled them and kept them behind the counter for the buyer. Then, after closing up the shop, I got ready for an appointment.

Liars Island attracted the wealthy, and on the east coast, there were many millionaire mansions to admire. They were the kind of glass-fronted cubes you saw in unobtainable TV dramas about lawyer-mums. It didn’t bother me so much—my family lived a comfortable life and had inherited their own modest fortune—but it wasn’t my scene and I rarely visited the cold, craggy coast. But I had an appointment on that side of the island with one of my regular buyers, Christine Price.

She’d purchased a first edition of Jane Eyre annotated by Charlotte Bronte herself, that had been shipped from the UK especially. I went through to the safe, where I kept rare books, and removed the precious item. I slid on a pair of cotton gloves, and gently removed it from the soft linen wrap. There it was, the two-hundred-year-old clothbound book with Charlotte Bronte’s pen marks in the margins. I leaned over the pages, delicately turning them, squinting to see the notes. Time seemed to stand still. I wanted nothing more than to keep this for myself, but it wasn’t mine. Gently, I closed the cover, wrapped it in the linen and placed it in a wooden case. Then I packed it into the back of my car.

“No point crying over a book, Oakland,” I muttered to myself, putting the car in drive. Adjusting to an automatic car hadn’t been as traumatic as I’d expected when first moving to America, but driving on the correct side of the road was.

On the way to Christine’s mansion, I switched the radio to a jazz channel and tried to relax. The day had raced by, and already the sky was turning dark. I’d given Christine a ballpark time, so I wasn’t late, but I still felt a sense of urgency to get there faster.

“You’re getting paranoid, Oakland,” I muttered to myself again, as I leant forward and turned the radio up, hoping to drown out all those negative thoughts creeping into my mind.

I didn’t like driving along the coast in the dark. I knew the sea was out there, hidden by the dark-ink of the night sky. The expanse of an ocean had always terrified me as a child. Not only did it stretch for miles and miles, there were unfathomable depths, too, with unearthly creatures hidden in the waters. Headlights and streetlights brought the sea back into view every now and then, before forcing it to disappear again. It made me feel as though the land was temporary, that it could be snatched away at any moment. I’d never been a confident driver, either, and now I was winding along narrow roads in America, with the cliff edge somewhere close by.

My fingers tightened against the leather as a set of headlights came into view from the rear view mirror. They were driving fast. Too fast. They were gaining on me. Why were they driving so fast on these roads? I pressed the accelerator just a tiny bit to try and get ahead of them, but soon they were right on my backend, barely slowing down. It made the breath in my lungs freeze. What did they want? There was nowhere to pass here. And more importantly, who were they?

Chapter Four

The back of my neck felt moist despite the air conditioning circulating through the car. My throat was tight, as though the air was too cloying to breathe. Every time I looked into the rear-view mirror and saw those headlights behind me, I found my heart pumping faster, my skin heating up as the adrenaline coursed through me. My gaze flicked over to the cliffs. Only a barrier stood between my car and the rocks down by Paradox Cove.

The car behind me was driving erratically, speeding up and slowing down, edging out from their lane one moment, but then pulling back in the next. What the hell was going on? Were they going to ram me off the road? Were they just trying to scare me? Or was it a drunk driver behind the wheel? I squinted into the mirror to try and pick out any facial features, but the sky was turning black, and I saw just the barest shape of a person within the shadows.

Even though it meant taking a longer route, I turned off at the next junction, moving inland, away from the coast. It lifted a huge weight from my shoulders. But of course, the car followed me too, still swerving and accelerating behind me, at times loudly revving before backing off. It felt like a taunt, or a game, and I was getting sick of it.

“What is your problem?” I snapped, to myself mostly, and the voices on the radio. Heat spread over my skin, emanating from the burgeoning anger deep down in my abdomen. I put my foot down, desperate to get away from this crazed person.

The gap between us widened until I felt confident that I could return to a normal speed. I hadn’t dared glance at the speedometer on the dashboard. But I was proud of myself. As a perpetually nervous driver, I’d somehow dealt with the situation. The car behind faded into the background and I settled into my drive. A few cars passed me on the other side of the road. It reminded me that there were people around, that I wasn’t alone with this lunatic. And for a minute or two, I began to relax.

The road went quiet. At first, I thought I was the only car on the road and that my pursuer had turned off somewhere. But then I saw them, hurtling towards me so fast that I gasped and braced myself for the impact. I sped up too, terrified they were about to rear-end me at a break-neck speed. There was nowhere to swerve, we were about to enter a residential area with pavements on either side of the road, people walking their dogs, houses set back from the street. This was not a place to start playing chicken with another car. I forced myself to look at the speedometer and saw the needle hit sixty. This was insane. I could hardly breathe. And yet the car was right on my rear end.

I couldn’t help myself, I started to slow down, terrified of hitting a pedestrian and killing someone. Sweat ran down my back in a long, steady rivulet. No one showed you what to do in this situation. No one prepared you for the stupidity of others. I shook my head, taking a deep breath and continued to let my car slow down. Fucking hit me then, I thought, gritting my teeth. Go on. Chicken. Go on, crazy bastard. Try it. I hadn’t felt this kind of anger since I was fifteen years old and had a temper problem at school.

The needle dropped to forty, and then thirty-five, but the hothead behind me backed off too. I laughed out loud, scaring myself. The adrenaline had turned me manic, and I was… Well, I was starting to enjoy the rush, and most of all, enjoy winning the battle. When the car pulled out and overtook me, I cheered, waving my arm in the air.

“Fuck you!” I shouted, and then I clamped a hand over my mouth and started to laugh.

When I swerved the car a little too much around the next bend, I slowed right down and pulled in next to a random house. My hands were shaking, my legs trembling. Even my teeth chattered together. I was a wreck. I reclined the back of my seat and for five minutes, I simply lay, composing myself.

Someone had come at me with their car. They’d refrained from ramming me off the road—just barely—but they absolutely had tried to scare me. Why?

Now that I wasn’t being harassed by a rogue driver, the air conditioner chilled me to the bone. I turned the temperature up and rubbed the tops of my arms. As I’d been talking to my dad earlier, I’d decided that I wasn’t sure the caller really was the person from years ago. I’d begun to talk myself into believing that I was mistaken. And now? The reckless driver couldn’t be a coincidence, could it?

I put the car back into drive and made the rest of the drive to Christine’s house without any more strange occurrences, but as I wound the car up the hills, it took all of my energy to keep going. My heart beat so fast I knew I was close to an anxiety attack, but I couldn’t, not then and there. I had to keep going, and the sight of Christine’s glass box of a house could not have been more welcoming.

“Oakland, sweetie, you look like you could do with a shot of liquor. My goodness, you’re so pale.” Christine had swung open the door with a grin stretched across her lips. But one look at me brought on a frown.

High up in the hills, her mansion overlooked the cove and coastal road. I’d never seen the view in the day, only at night, but I was sure it was spectacular. In fact, Liars Island lit up all over, headlights crawling, streetlights dotted between buildings, it was beautiful too.

“Would you like a bourbon?” Christine asked, gesturing to a generous drinks trolley behind the sofa in her lounge.

“No, thank you,” I said. “I’m driving. Where shall I put the book? On the table?”

“Sure,” she said, sitting down on the sofa opposite. She crossed her legs tidily at the ankle, her red toenails visible through her tan hose. Christine was a well put together woman. She was only a few years older than me, a self-made millionaire who recently sold her cosmetics company and moved to the island. She always wore cobalt blue dresses that accentuated her eyes and her curves. And her hair never seemed to fall out of place as it cascaded down her shoulders in blonde waves.

I felt like the exact opposite of Christine. I’d come from a wealthy family, but all I’d managed to do for myself was buy a tiny bookshop with an even tinier flat above it, look after a cat, and still never find the time to brush my hair. In the photos on the white walls of Christine’s house, I saw her shaking hands with important people, hair perfect, makeup perfect. Women like Christine baffled me. Where did they find the time for grooming and business? How did they do it all walking in stilettos?

I placed the book down on the table, moving as swiftly as I could to hopefully obscure how much my hands were shaking.

“I can’t wait to see this,” she said, leaning forward.

I handed her a pair of cotton gloves and donned my own. Gently, I opened the case and took the book out of its bag and placed it down on top of the linen. Christine shuffled forward on the sofa and gently opened the cover.

“Oh, it’s perfect. You’re a clever, clever girl for tracking this down.”

I shrugged my shoulders. In truth, I was lucky. My father knew an antique book dealer and I’d been corresponding with him via email since moving to the island.

“I can’t wait to add this to the collection,” she said, and gently placed it back in its bag.

A little part of me cringed when she said that. I felt that books with historical significance, like this copy of Jane Eyre, should be in a library, somewhere that people could view it. Instead, it was going into Christine’s private collection for just her and a handful of her friends and family to admire. She was a genuine book lover and I liked her very much, but it still felt wrong somehow.

“How are you?” she leaned back on the sofa. “If you don’t mind me bringing it up, you look tired. No, you look spooked.”

I had to smother a laugh. Haunted by the past would be more accurate. “I think someone tried to run me off the road on the way here.”

“What? Are you serious? Where did it happen?”

“Near the cove on the coastal road. But then they followed me for a while, and I managed to lose them. It was really scary for a minute there.” As I said the words, I started to think about getting back in my car and driving home. The thought terrified me more than I was willing to admit.

“Listen,” she said. “I’ll make a call. I know a few people who could help you out.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oakland, I know Barty, the sheriff. If there’s a menace on the island, he needs to know about it. Did you get the plate number?”

I shook my head. “It all happened so fast.” I thought back to me pumping my arm in the front seat of the car as my stalker had driven off into the night. I’d had an opportunity then and I hadn’t taken it. A couple of numbers came back to me. Had I seen a 2? Had I noticed the state code on the plate? “Maybe some of it.”

“What kind of car was it?” she asked.

“Big,” I said. “A black SUV I think.”

“Well,” Christine said. “We get a lot of those around here. Now, where would you like to talk to Barty? I could tell him to go to yours tomorrow morning?”

“Thank you,” I said, somewhat stunned. Amazed that she had the influence to demand a meeting with the sheriff and know he’d agree. Then, I supposed, Liars Island was a quiet place. There wasn’t much crime here.

Chapter Five

When Christine offered to have her driver take me back to the bookshop, I was tempted. But I got back in my trusty Altima and drove about 10 mph below the speed limit all the way back to Harborside. I couldn’t face going any faster, not after what had happened.

It’d been a long day, and I was tired, but at least I had a nice fat cheque in my pocket for the book. As soon as I arrived home, I slipped it into the safe, kicked off my shoes and went upstairs to reheat a bowl of soup.

The terrifying car chase was over for now, but tomorrow I needed to explain to Sheriff Lynch why my receiving one prank call and experiencing a bad driver amounted to something dangerous. I had to find a way to express that without letting slip the one thing I didn’t want anyone to know.

I stirred through tomato soup while Knightley rubbed up against my legs, thinking about the person I was back then and the potential person—from my pool of suspects—who could still be terrorising me. If the caller and the driver were the same person then they must have moved to Liars Island, but surely another English person would’ve been noticed. I remembered my accent being quite the talking point when I first moved into the shop. I’d be bombarded with questions about someone from England. Do you know them, Oakland? Oh, you two should meet, you’d have so much in common! But then again, I was always in the shop and we had just a handful of regulars. Maybe I needed to get out more and actually meet people to know what’s going on in town. I’d become stuck in my routines. A loop of my own creation. Today had been the first bit of adrenaline pumping action I’d had in years.

The soup bubbled. I turned off the hob and poured it into a bowl, distracted enough to spill a few blobs on the counter. When I settled into my chair and opened a book of Keats poems, my mind continued to wander back to the stalker.

Ay, on the shores of darkness there is a light, and precipices show untrodden green; there is a budding morrow in midnight; there is triple sight in blindness keen.

Perhaps it was time to make the list again. I’d done it many, many times, writing down all the names and researching them on the internet. I’d kept an eye on many of them, but even after all these years I hadn’t figured out which one of them stalked me. And to be honest, I never knew what to do even if I did figure it out.

There was one certainty: the police would never figure it out. Not without my help. Not without my list. But I wouldn’t give it up. I couldn’t. So that was how I would play it in the morning, I’d give Sheriff Lynch the bare minimum information and then get on with my own research. I shut the book, giving up on any pretence of reading.

“I’m going to find them this time,” I said to myself, and part of me even believed it.

* * *

Sheriff Lynch took his coffee into the backroom and leaned back in a chair. Knightley had curled up by his feet, and the sheriff was gazing and nodding at everything in the shop, making little noises of approval as he did.

“This is a nice place you have here,” he said. “I’ll have to visit more often.” He rubbed the grey stubble on his chin—Barty was in his fifties, but still trim—and took a sip of his coffee. “In fact, I need a birthday present for my grand-niece, she’s seven now and she likes to read.”

“I’ll set something aside for you before you go,” I said. “I have just the thing. It’s about unicorns.”

“She does love unicorns.” He set his coffee down on a coaster and flipped open his notepad. “Now, I got some information from Ms Price last night, but I’d like you to tell me everything you know.”

I gave him the Cliff Notes version, leaving out just enough for him to not have any leads. I didn’t go into the past, ignoring my dad’s concerns, and instead focused on the call and the car. If he realised I was fobbing him off, he didn’t notice, diligently taking notes while sipping on his coffee. Every now and then, he bent down to stroke Knightley between the ears, and I decided that I liked Sheriff Lynch.

“Well, okay.” He let go of a long breath and leaned back. “My advice to you is to keep a log. Write down the day and time of any suspicious calls. Make a note of any cars you see hanging around, or people. And then let me know. We’ll keep in touch, okay, Oakland?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Let me get you my card.” He rummaged around in his pocket and produced a slim business card. “I know you live alone here, and I don’t want you to feel afraid. So, you keep in touch as much as you like.”

“Thank you,” I said, standing to show him out. “I do appreciate it. And I’ll get that book for you.”

I grabbed a copy of the unicorn book and insisted he take it as a gift, which he did but after a lot of protesting, and then I showed him out of the shop. Behind the counter, Bridger raised his eyes.

“You’re not going to jail, are you? What did you do, rob a bank?”

I gave him a playful tap on the shoulder. “Nothing like that. There was a bit of road rage on the way to Christine Price’s house last night. Some idiot tried to run me off the road.”

Bridger’s eyes widened. “What? Are you all right?”

I waved a hand, trying to prove to either him, or me, that it was no big deal. “Totally fine. It’s nothing to worry about. Honest.”

He opened his mouth to speak, but a customer needed assistance. I left them to it, thinking about how sweet his concern was. But what could I tell him? There was no way Bridger would understand. I wandered away from the front desk and my thoughts went straight to the place I always tried to stop them from going. I thought about what it would be like to date Bridger, to go to the movies, buy the massive pretzels I’d loved ever since watching Sex and the City. I thought about what it would be like to kiss him, to walk down the street with him hand in hand, to be in the audience clapping my hands when he won his first literary award. I thought about all of it and then I dismissed it because I didn’t deserve any of it.

Instead, I went through to storage and began dismantling some old boxes, stacking up a few piles of books that would be heading out into the store, and checked through a few old boxes I’d left lying around for months. Anything to keep me busy. Anything to stop me anticipating the next call. A shiver ran down my spine as I thought about my uncertain future. Never before had I experienced any stalking except for the calls, but now something new had happened. Now they’d stalked me for real. What was next? It could be a face at the window, someone breaking into the shop, creeping upstairs and staring at me while I slept. The rules had been broken; anything could happen.

“Oakland?”

I screamed, full throated and terrified. Bridger almost fell over in shock.

“Oakland? What is it?”

I crumpled down on a box. “I’m so sorry, I… Things have been a bit… a bit stressful and—”

“Hey,” he said, “It’s all right. Whatever it is you can tell me. I promise.”

“I shook my head. You know what? I’m going to close early today.”

“It’s not even lunchtime.”

“I know, but I just need some time alone. Okay? Is that all right with you?” My voice rose. I grew agitated and snappy and just plain horrible. My hand flew up to my face.

“Fine,” Bridger said in a flat voice. His back straightened up as he turned around. “Let me get my coat on the way out.”

“It’s just one day, Bridger,” I said, exasperated, but feeling guilty for the outburst. Well, if I’d ever thought we could be more than friends one day, I’d most likely killed that opportunity now.

I waited a few seconds and then followed him through the shop. When he left with a curt goodbye, I locked the door and took Knightley with me upstairs. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. But it felt good not to have to worry about Bridger picking up the phone and hearing the caller or asking a ton of questions about my meeting with the sheriff. However, I still poured myself a finger of bourbon and downed it before I opened my laptop. It was time to revisit the past.

In 2004, we were friends. It feels so long ago, like another lifetime. We were young, just eighteen, but we were such old souls. At our school, you either fit in with the boozy popular kids, or you were out on the fringe, with the weird kids, the bookish ones. And that's who we were. A group of outsiders that no one wanted to be around.

Weird kids who read Shakespeare and wrote our own plays. Who shared earbuds and playlists on our iPods. Who would stay up all night camping in the fields around our boarding school, talking and talking and talking.

I remember how much we hated King Edward’s. Every term, when we came back, lugging those enormous suitcases, we’d exchange glances across the courtyard while saying goodbye to our parents. And I would see the reticence in your eyes. The same sensation of dread that I felt myself. Because we knew we were about to be bullied. Didn’t we?

You had it worse than me. I saw the bruises on your arms from where the girls grabbed you. I can barely remember their names now. Rebecca. Daphne? Or was it Danni? It doesn’t matter. They were side players in our story. All they did was make us bitter and twisted and more likely to fuck up in the way we eventually did fuck up.

But the best part of King Edwards was when we were together. Alex as the leader, somehow silently agreed on by us all because she was… well, she was the sun, and we were the planets around her. It was natural. God, I loved that time. Those were the happiest days of my life, and I would be lying if you didn’t agree with me.

If Alex suggested we skip classes and walk through the fields to find a quiet spot to read, we did that. Whenever she found a new band to love, we loved them too. Did you love Alex the same way I did? I’m not sure you did. I loved her fervently.

And you took her from me.

Which makes this inevitable. I was always going to hate the person who took Alex more than anything else in the world. It’s logic, pure and simple. You destroyed her, wrecked her family, ripped our group apart and left it in a million ragged pieces. Even thinking about your name leaves acid on my tongue. I hate you. Truly, deeply, madly. I hate you as much as I loved her.

Chapter Six

This wasn’t the first time I’d thought about school and what happened to us back then. Of course, I’d gone through several names of the people involved, suspecting all of them. But in sixteen years, I’d never managed to pinpoint who it could be. I’d messaged every single one of them over the years, trying to get a confession out of them. None of them had replied.

I jotted their names into a notebook.

Jamie Thornton

Mohammed Ahmood

Sam Rogers

Ruth Russell

There they were, scribbled next to a shopping list and a quick calculation for my accounts. Hastily written down like they meant nothing.

They meant everything.

I chose Ruth first. We’d been close, or so I thought. But even she’d never been in touch with me since school ended. They’d abandoned me, and what was worse, I considered all of them enemies now. All of them. After years of stalking, any friendliness I’d had towards them had broken down and I viewed them with nothing but suspicion.

When I put Ruth’s name into Facebook, a private profile came up with no picture. I sighed. Of course. There was nothing on Instagram, or Twitter or LinkedIn. One by one, I went through the rest of the names, coming up with nothing. They were internet ghosts. They’d even removed the option to add them as a friend on Facebook. Why? They’d all been relatively public for most of the time since leaving school. I scratched behind Knightley’s ear, wondering whether it was deliberate or not. Privacy online had become more prevalent over the last few years, maybe it was that simple. Or maybe, they didn’t want to be found.

After making myself a sandwich, I grabbed my phone and started scrolling through the contacts. It was an old SIM card and most of my contacts from school had been transferred over with each new phone. I took a bite of my sandwich before fist pumping the air when I saw Ruth’s number. And then I sat there, chewing, wondering what I was going to do about it. I had her number. So, now what? Did I call her?

God, no, I couldn’t call her. What a rambling mess I’d be over the phone. If I was going to get in touch it would be by text. I sucked in a long, steadying breath and started typing.

Hi Ruth, it’s Oakland. I know you don’t want to hear from me, but something is happening to me, and you could be in danger. Please text back. This is awkward, more than awkwar—

I deleted the last part.

I swear I wouldn’t bother you if it wasn’t important.

And then I hit send. I needed another hit of bourbon before I checked for more numbers. Fortunately for my liver, Ruth’s number was the only one that seemed to have survived the years. There was no getting in touch with Jamie, or Mo, or Sam. I could still picture their faces. Jamie had just got rid of his braces and begun growing into his ears. I wondered what he looked like now. Would I recognise him? Mo was slim and shy. He had a curtain of black hair that fell into his eyes. I remembered how he used that hair to shield himself from others when they annoyed him, leaning low in his chair, the dark locks obscuring his features. Sam was blond haired and blue-eyed, whenever out of school uniform he wore Converse trainers and skinny jeans, styling himself on The Strokes. He was the popular one out of all of us.

Ruth wore Puffa coats in winter and kept her hair short. She was plumper than most of the girls in school, and occasionally some idiot would make a comment in the cafeteria. It wasn’t a nice school. Private schools in England never are. It was a place of entitlement. A place where your father and what he did mattered. Where money mattered. I’d hated it. But I’d thought during my time there that I’d gravitated towards the “good ones,” the other kids who never gave a crap about all that bullshit.

And then there was Alex, but I didn’t want to think about that.

* * *

I was late to set up the backroom for the book club. After unceremoniously throwing Bridger out of the shop earlier in the day, I’d almost completely forgotten about it. We’d just finished reading She’s Come Undone by Wally Lamb, and I’d bought little chocolates in the shape of lambs as a joke. But now, as I put them out on the table, all I could think about was the apt title. I was coming undone too. My head was a mess, I’d snapped at Bridger and I’d thrown him out of the shop for no good reason. Small, building, smouldering worries rattling the life I’d built for myself on Liars Island.

With the snacks out, the kettle on and coffee in the pot, I went to the shop door and unlocked it ready for when the members arrived. Bridger was there alone, already standing sheepishly outside the door. On book club days he usually stayed late, and we gossiped about the other members before they arrived. Sometimes we placed bets on what people would say. Oh, it was so ahead of its time. Or, You could compare this to a fairy tale… Leah was the one obsessed with fairy tales and folklore. According to her, Jane Eyre was Cinderella.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, opening the door. “I was such a cow earlier. Honestly, I didn’t mean it—”

“I know,” he said, stepping in. “But will you please tell me what’s going on? I know there’s something wrong. It’s all over your face, Oakland. You’re scared of something.”

I waited until we were in the back room before I answered him. I needed time to filter through my thoughts, and it seemed like the easiest way to get it. Bridger placed his coat on the back of a chair and rested a fist on the table, watching me. Waiting for me to speak.

“There was a prank call,” I said. “I know it sounds… insignificant, but someone breathed heavily down the line. You know the kind, the creepy pervy panting that stalkers do in movies. And then the road rage incident happened, and I thought that it might be the same person.”

“Jesus, Oakland—”

“I know,” I said. “But I’m fine. I’m just a little shaken up and out of sorts. I’m so sorry I snapped at you earlier. I don’t want you to think it’s anything to do with you, especially after your success with the book and everything like that. I’m just not myself right now.”

“And the police are handling it?”

“Yes. I’m keeping a diary in case it happens again.”

“Is that all they can do?”

“They don’t know who it is,” I said.

“You don’t know either?” He pulled out a chair and sat down, resting a messenger bag at his feet.

“No,” I said. “I don’t.”

Bridger sighed. “I was going to ask you something, but it seems a bit inappropriate now.”

“What were you going to ask?”

“Well, I went out with a few friends the other night to celebrate the book deal, but you’ve helped me more than anyone. You helped me set the book in London, and you’ve given me time off to write whenever I want. You’ve been… brilliant, Oakland. Can I take you out to dinner?”

I glanced down at my shoes, suddenly feeling like a teenager again. “Sure.”

“Great. Tomorrow night?”

“Okay, yeah.”

Bridger grinned just as the bell went at the front of the shop. I stumbled my way around the table towards the shop, trying to rearrange my face into something neutral. Bridger had just asked me on a date. No, Oakland, I thought. It’s a dinner between friends. Not, a date.

Yui from the tea shop, Gordon the ferry captain, and Leah from the Parks and Rec department were all waiting in the entrance.

“Hi guys,” I said, waving them in. “We’ve got chocolate treats and coffee in the pot. Head on through, I’ll be waiting by the door for the others.”

“I brought Jasmine tea,” Yui said. “Do you mind if I brew?”

“No, go ahead.”

The book club was one of my favourite nights, because it involved getting to know people in a way my introverted side tended to inhibit. There was a fairly healthy turnover of regulars, but also plenty of newbies. Sometimes the book choice wasn’t for everyone and people skipped a month. Then young blood would step in and freshen everything up. But then there were people like Gordon and Yui who came every week and had their own little habits. Gordon never liked anything that Mike, the owner of The Barn bar, liked, and Leah and Yui always disagreed over romantic subplots.

I opened the door to another five or six people. Some of them newbies who needed to be registered. I liked to collect addresses for the bookshop mailing list. Then we went into the back and I helped people find a seat.

“Wow, we’re busy tonight! I think we have more than I expected, but I’ve got enough chairs. Are you all squeezed in comfortably? Okay, well I suppose we should dive in about what we liked about this book. Did you connect to Dolores as a character?”

I leaned back in my chair as Mike started off the discussion, watching Gordon shuffle and grumble at every point. Then I glanced across at Bridger who was smiling too. And in that moment, all the issues with the mysterious stalker and the people I knew from school simply melted away. I tried to smother a laugh, and Bridger did the same, and we both ended up staring at different points in the room trying to keep ourselves in check.

For the rest of the evening, we talked about characters and coming of age, and trauma and how the past affects the future, all the while inhaling the scent of coffee and jasmine tea. The book was a hit, with only Gordon grumbling through his complaints. And at the end of the evening, as we always did for a bit of fun, we spent fifteen minutes on free writing. Some people worked on fiction, others on poetry, others wrote about the book we’d read. I wrote a few muddled lines about a girl with a pet chicken and wanted to screw them up at the end.

“Don’t forget your chocolate lambs,” I said, as people began to file out of the shop. “There’ll be a poll online so either join the Facebook group or put your name on the email list.”

I stood by the door saying goodbye to everyone, a sense of pleasant tiredness washing over me. The book clubs were hard work to organise but paid off in satisfaction. Bridger hesitated by the door, smiling.

“Sorry, I need to head off,” he said, nodding to the streetlights outside.

“That’s okay,” I said. It wasn’t part of Bridger’s job description to help me clear up after the book club, but he often stayed behind and helped anyway.

“Shall I pick you up about seven tomorrow?” he said. “Um, we’ll have to walk or get a taxi. Is that all right? We could walk around to Fired Up and maybe get ice cream on the beach after?”

“I’d love that.”

“Sorry it isn’t fancy,” he said with a laugh. “The advance was pretty small.”

“It sounds perfect. Seriously, stop worrying.”

After Bridger left, I locked up, turned off the lights in the shop and went into the back to wash up the mugs. Knightley followed me around searching for biscuit crumbs, nipping at my ankles in impatience for his food. But I hardly noticed. I was humming a song. Something from the nineties. The Spice Girls, I realised after a few bars of it. The past was on my mind, I supposed.

And then I caught sight of a rogue sheet of paper torn from a notebook. The free writing. Why would anyone leave this behind? We just did it as a few moments of meditation to wind down after discourse. We weren’t an official writing group, so no one needed to turn in their work.

I walked over and picked up the paper. And then a cold sensation ran over my skin.

She’s a lie.

A wolf dressed like a lamb.

Her words come from a split tongue.

She will get what’s coming to her, because I will make sure of it.

Chapter Seven

She will get what’s coming to her, because I will make sure of it.

I dropped the paper onto the table. Who had been sitting at this spot? I tried to remember the faces as they’d been positioned around the table. Gordon and Mike had been a few places further down. Yui was next to me, Bridger opposite, Leah to the right… who else? I grabbed the sign in sheet and skimmed through the list of names. There were so many new people tonight. Why were there so many new people?

I thought about screwing the nasty little poem into a tight ball and throwing it away, but then I changed my mind. I reached into one of the drawers in the kitchenette and grabbed a freezer bag to store it in. Only after sealing it, did I allow myself to sit down and breathe. I could add this to the diary Sheriff Lynch had asked me to keep. But if I did, it would invite questions, and then… well, then I’d have to reveal my secret.

There was no evidence that this piece of writing was about me. But I had found it here at my book club after being stalked in two separate incidents. A coincidence seemed unlikely. She’s a lie. I shivered. Maybe they were right. And worst of all, the paper had been torn out of a notebook. It hadn’t fallen out of someone’s bundle of belongings. It was torn. It had been placed here on purpose. But by who?

I thought about faces again. If this was related to what happened at school, then this person would be new to the island and they would be about my age. That ruled out the people who’d been living on the island for a long time. I grabbed the list of names again and stared at them in dismay until my eyes hurt and I wanted to eat a whole box of chocolate lambs.

“Come on, Knightley,” I said. “Let’s go upstairs.”

With a heavy heart, and heavier feet, I trudged up to the flat. And then, to make matters worse, just as I threw the paper onto the coffee table, the phone rang. My scalp prickled from front to back. I felt the blood drain from my face, but I still answered it, I couldn’t not answer it.

“Who is it?” I demanded.

Silence.

I tightened my grip and pulled the phone an inch away from my ear, but then I decided to take a different track. “We need to talk.”

Breathing. Panting.

“Maybe we could meet. We could talk about what happened. Face to face.”

Panting.

“We’ve never done that, have we? We’ve never talked. Not for a long time, anyway.”

Silence.

“So you do know me?”

Silence.

I tried to think of something more to say, but my mind was blank. “Please. Let’s put a stop to this. You and me. Let’s move on. It’s been so many years. I’m tired. Aren’t you tired? Don’t you want to stop this too?”

They hung up. I stared at the phone, utterly flabbergasted. I’d never, ever been the last to put the phone down. I stumbled into the kitchen with adrenaline running through my veins. I felt like I could take on the world. I’d stood up to my stalker. I forced them to hang up. Perhaps I could take control after all, and maybe I didn’t need my dad or the sheriff. What if, all I needed to stop this from happening, was myself, and the nerve to end it?

In something of a daze, I wandered over to the drinks cupboard and poured myself a stiff gin and tonic, before taking the list of names over to my armchair to examine. If this was all related to what happened in 2004, then surely, I knew this person. I took three large gulps of the G&T, trying to straighten all the facts in my mind. I knew there were people at school who blamed me for what happened to Alex: Jamie, Mo, Sam, Ruth. But wouldn’t I recognise them? It’d been sixteen years since I last saw any of them, but how much did a person’s face change in that time?

So, how did they get in and out of the bookshop without me noticing? Had anyone been wearing a hat, or sunglasses, or some sort of large, baggy outfit? What if the stalker had cut their hair, or had a nose job, or changed some other distinctive feature about themselves? They could have put on weight or slimmed down. Ruth had always been slightly overweight, perhaps if she’d grown her hair long and lost a lot of weight, I wouldn’t recognise her.

I drained the dregs of my G&T before heading through to the bedroom. I had an idea. I opened my closet, tiny as it was, and rummaged all the way to the back. There was a box I needed. When I found what I was looking for, I pulled it up onto the bed and dumped out the contents. Then I spread everything out across the duvet. This was my memory box, packed full of photographs and trinkets that I’d almost burned several times.

It was the yearbook I wanted, clothbound in blue with metallic font on the front cover. The Year 11 yearbook, our last year before A Levels. All of us, fifteen and spotty. There were few photographs of my group seeing as Rebecca and Danni, my two bullies, were on the yearbook council. As I flicked through the pages, I found my form photograph but noticed that I didn’t exist anywhere else.

I tossed the yearbook to one side and instead reached for a scrapbook I’d put together about a year later. It was gold and glittery, an incredible girly monstrosity of a thing, with Arcade Fire lyrics written in gold pen in the margins. I’d glued in the flowers we picked in the fields around the school. Daisies and clovers and buttercups. They were brown and flat by now. A charm fell out, too. One of those friendship charms that the other person kept half of. Oh, I’d had a few of those with Ruth and Alex over the years. But this one was the only one I’d kept. Half a blue heart on a leather string. Alex had the other half.

I’d glued in photographs with a Pritt Stick. Ruth dressed as Falstaff for the terrible modern retelling of Henry V we put on in our dormitory room. Jamie as King Henry, Sam the Duke of Gloucester, along with other characters, Alex as the King of France and Mistress Quickly, her little brother—who sometimes tagged along—as most of the side characters, Sam another of the Earls or Dukes, I couldn’t remember and me as… who was I? The Archbishop of Canterbury, I think. We grinned in every photograph, ridiculous theatre makeup on our faces. We had no idea what we were doing.

My mother had just been diagnosed when I’d started on this scrapbook. Every lyric in gold pen, every poem scribbled in black, every magazine cutting and glued in photograph made me think of her, not Alex or Ruth or Jamie.

I couldn’t… I couldn’t look at these things… I couldn’t go back there to the past. It was too much. It hurt too badly. Suddenly, I threw the items back into the box. A wig I’d worn at Halloween, bracelets I’d stacked up my arms, pens and notebooks I’d used for secret letters. A book Alex had given me once. I slammed the lid shut and took it back to the closet, burying it behind as many clothes as I owned.

* * *

There were times in the past when I looked for a way to comfort myself when the phone calls became too much. In Leeds, I’d put on weight, ballooning up to my heaviest. At other times, I’d drank alone at night, numbing my feelings to get rid of the fear.

I’d slipped back into old habits and woke up that Sunday with a banging head. I didn’t open the shop on a Sunday. It was usually my day to catch up on paperwork or errands, but instead I slept until my hangover dissipated, and then ate my weight in pastries until the sugar helped chase away the weary, paranoia of a post-drunk unconsciousness. At least I hadn’t called anyone, especially Bridger.

But it was also the day of our date, and when he turned up at the shop, I was still feeling peaky. I’d plastered on some foundation and bright red lipstick in the hope he wouldn’t notice the dark circles under my eyes, or the slight queasiness making me feel discombobulated.

“Hey, you look nice.” He smiled.

We stepped out onto the street, me with a clutch bag under my arms. I’d decided to wear a flowing maxi dress and ballet flats. The spring weather remained pleasant on Liars Island, even in the evenings. But I’d made sure to bring a wrap in case the breeze turned chillier down by the beach.

“Thanks, you too,” I said. He was still casual but looked like he’d put a shirt and jeans together on purpose, and I noticed the extra cologne.

It felt strange, leaving the bookshop with Bridger. We worked so closely together but it was almost always inside the shop. I couldn’t think of a time when we walked down the street together. I waved to Tyson as he was closing the gym. It made my heart flutter. Would other people start to gossip about us now? Would they think we were an item? An item. I sounded like my dad.

“How are things?” he asked. “Have you had any more phone calls?”

I thought about lying and pretending everything was fine, but then I changed my mind. Perhaps it would help me to have someone I could confide in. “I did. Last night.”

“Oh, man, that’s awful. I just don’t understand why anyone would target you. I mean, you’re one of the sweetest people I know!”

I blushed, if only he knew the real me. “Thank you… I’m sure I’m not.”

He laughed. “Unless you’re like a secret serial killer or something.”

I managed to laugh with him, but my stomach churned.

“Sorry, that was in bad taste. I can tell you’re rattled by all this.”

“Is it so obvious?” We walked around a bend, passing shops and cafes. The light on Liars Island fell soft and warm against glass windows, reminding me why I moved here. “Sorry. I just need to not think about it for a while.”

“I can help with that,” Bridger said. “You can consider me the man to take your mind off the nasty calls.” His eyes twinkled, with those tiny creases at the corner that I loved. “Let’s talk about something else. Books. What are you reading?”

“I’m waiting for your book,” I said. “When do I get to read it?”

He evaded my eye contact for a moment. He did this every time I brought up reading his book. It was sweet how shy he became. “Soon. I promise. I just want to go through some of my edits with my editor first.”

“Wow, you have an editor,” I said. “That feels so fancy, doesn’t it? So grown up and sophisticated.”

“Yeah,” he said, laughing. “It kinda does.”

We walked along by the beach, stopping to look out at the view. I breathed in the sea air, feeling the whip of salty breeze against my cheek. The waves were churning, unusually unsettled that evening. Without me noticing, the wind had gained in strength. I pulled the wrap around my shoulders.

“And the good south wind still blew behind, but no sweet bird did follow,” Bridger muttered, staring out at the sea.

I recognised the lines, but I couldn’t place them. “Is that from a poem?”

He smiled. “Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Something about the wind made those lines pop into my head.”

“I think it might have been on my reading list at university,” I said.

“Mine too. Come on,” Bridger said. “Let’s go and eat. You’re cold.”

I nodded my head and we walked towards the restaurant. For the first time in days, I stopped thinking about the calls and the road rage and the terrible thing I did sixteen years ago.

Chapter Eight

A Liars Island night was exactly what I’d dreamed of when I immigrated to America. String lights twinkling around bar windows, the chatter of people eating out, the distant sound of music coming from a bar, the echo of waves along the beach. After dinner, we bought ice cream cones and sat on a bench overlooking the sea. It was cold, but I still enjoyed the ice cream, and the company. A group of teenagers had started a campfire on the beach, and someone played an acoustic guitar below us.

We chatted about the publication date of Bridger’s novel, and plans for the bookshop, and then we chatted some more about books and music. He told me about his houseboat and the little barbecue on the deck. I had on my wrap, pulled tight around my shoulders, my hair mussed by the breeze coming off the sea. But I didn’t mind. I bit down the cone of my ice cream and thought to myself that this was the most relaxed I’d been for weeks.

“Some of the rich yacht owners don’t like that the houseboat’s always there. They reckon it’s an eyesore.” He shrugged. “Not that I care.”

“Dickheads,” I said. “We should drive it out somewhere. The cove maybe.”

“I’d like that.” Bridger smiled. “Come on, let me walk you home.”

“Thanks.” I got up, smoothing my skirt and brushing ice cream cone crumbs from my lap.

“I don’t like to think of you alone in the flat with this stalker around. Do you think you should install more security at the shop? A camera? Or an alarm or something?”

“I’ve been thinking about that too. I’ve always felt so safe here, but I guess that’s over now.”

Bridger rubbed my shoulder as we walked, and I tried to decide if it was nothing more than a friendly commiseration, or whether it meant more.

“I’ll help you if you want. We can do some research together.”

“Thanks.”

After the shoulder-rubbing, I felt myself clamming up, my body tensing. I started to witter on about the prettiness of the island in the dark, and the stars on a clear night. Bridger smiled and humoured me, but I got the sense that he’d lost interest. The closer we came to the shop, the more I tensed. If this was a date, we’d kiss. But I didn’t know if it was a date. I had no idea.

But then, all of those concerns left me, because as we took the next turning towards the shop, I felt like I was looking at something and it was wrong. Like if you’d lived with a painting on your wall for years and years, and then one day you walked past it and there was something else in the frame. And then I realised what it was. There was a silhouette of someone standing outside the shop. They were tall and slim, in a large, loose fitting coat. Still a decent distance away, I squinted, attempting to get a better view. I couldn’t.

“Hey,” I called, breaking into a jog. “Hey!”

Bridger turned to me in surprise and then he noticed the figure as well. He caught up with me, taking the lead as we sprinted.

The person in the coat turned in our direction, but there was too much shadow, I couldn’t make out any features. They darted away, and Bridger set off chasing them. I struggled to keep up in my sandals, but I quickened my pace, too. Bridger called out to the person in pursuit, but they ignored him. I thought I saw some loose hair fly away from the hood of their coat. Blonde hair? Long hair? Could they be a woman?

Up ahead, Bridger ran out of steam, slowing down to a halt. He placed his hands on his knees, catching his breath. I caught up to check he was all right, putting a tentative hand on his shoulder.

“Sorry,” he said. “I couldn’t catch them.”

“Hey, it’s not your fault.”

When he straightened up, I noticed the sweat running down his temples. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and sighed. “Maybe you should stay on my boat tonight.”

I bit my bottom lip, considering a night on Bridger’s boat. I’d never been so tempted. But I felt like I was dragging him into my mess, and I hated it.

“Or maybe I could stay at yours? I don’t like the thought of you being alone with this… this stalker out there.”

“Honestly, I’m fine. They won’t come back now.”

“It’s so strange, Oakland. I don’t understand it.”

I pursed my lips together, holding back any explanation, even though it twisted my heart to see him so concerned. “Let’s not allow this to ruin our night, okay? I had such a great time. And besides, maybe they were window shopping.”

He smiled. “I had a great time too. You know you’re pretty decent company.”

I wanted to gush, but I held back the instinct. Instead, I said goodbye and started walking back to the bookshop. Bridger watched me from a distance until I was safely inside the shop with the door locked. I turned on the light and took a moment to let the evening settle around me. I needed a moment to breathe. But then I checked the window for any damage, and quickly scanned the rest of the room. At least the mysterious figure hadn’t thrown a brick through the window or tried to crowbar the door open.

Then I saw the sheet of paper on the doormat and my hands balled into fists. Notepad paper, like the note I’d found the day of the book club. I didn’t want to bend down and collect it, but I had to. I closed my eyes, knowing it would be something hateful, just like the scribbled poem I’d found after the book club.

Rather than open it then and there, I clutched the note tightly between sweaty fingers, and made my way to the back of the shop to make a cup of tea. I needed something stronger, but I sensed myself relying on alcohol to cope and didn’t want to go down that rabbit hole. Knightley mooched around his water bowl, which I refilled and placed back down on the mat, rubbing his head as he purred. A few moments later, the kettle boiled, and I poured out some of Yui’s special jasmine tea, sat down at the end of the table and tried to compose myself. I opened the note and spread it out on the table.

Why should you be happy? As far as I’m concerned, you don’t deserve it. Why should you get to move on while I can’t? I’ve been stuck, all these years, while you go out living your life unconcerned about what you did in the past.

I pulled in a deep breath, the words hitting me so hard I felt as though I’d been punched in the gut.

I know your secret, and I know what you did to Alex. You took her away from me for good. I hate you and I want you to suffer. You haven’t suffered enough as far as I’m concerned.

Wherever you go, I’ll be behind you, over your shoulder, waiting. I’ll be walking behind you on the street, just minutes away as you sleep, and outside your shop. You won’t recognise me. You’ll be wondering who I am, always.

And most of all, when the time is right, you will pay.

I dropped the note. As it fluttered to the table, my phone began to ring, this time my mobile.

“Hello?”

Silence.

I didn’t say anything, I simply waited for them to breathe. Once the panting started, I placed the phone down on the table and sipped my tea. There was no way I was going to be the first person to hang up. For all I cared, they could pant to themselves until they had no breath left.

I’ve been so close to you now. So close that I could spit on you. But you didn’t realise it. You always were a fool. You never saw a person, only what you wanted to see. Just like you didn’t see Alex. To you, she was strong. She was a competitor. You never looked deeper and you had no idea what kind of pain she was in. You didn’t care. But then, you’ve always been a narcissist. You’re good at hiding it, but I know better.

You’ll see me again soon. I’ll make sure of that.

You’ll know. Everything you did, everything you killed.

You killed me; you know.

That day.

I was never the same again.

And now you’ll face up to that. I’ll force you to.

Chapter Nine

The flash of long blonde hair. God, it had reminded me so much of her. Of Alex. But it wasn’t possible, was it? Alex had died long ago.

As I went to get a plastic bag for the note, I tried to clear my head and think rationally about what this meant. The long hair could mean that my stalker was a woman. But if my stalker was Ruth, I was confused. Ruth hadn’t loved Alex, as far as I knew. Both Ruth and Alex were straight. I wondered whether they’d started a relationship that they hid from the rest of the group. As far as I remembered, there were no judgemental homophobes in our friendship group, but I could understand why they’d want to keep something like that a secret out of fear. Especially sixteen years ago.

I glanced at the note. Whoever this was, they wanted me to know how easily they’d accessed my life. They’d slipped into the book club without me noticing, and now they were hanging around, following me when I drove, calling me on both my shop phone, and my private number. They wanted me to be afraid, and I was.

That night, I didn’t sleep well. I tossed and turned so much that Knightley ended up knocked from the bed. After an indignant meow he stretched out underneath it. The next morning, I called my dad and told him I’d informed the police, making it sound like nothing to worry about while also telling him I was taking it seriously. The whole time, I felt sick. I wanted nothing less than my dad finding out my secrets. He’d never look at me the same way again.

And then I did something I’d been avoiding since the very first call. I started to think about Alex. First, I called Bridger and asked him to open the shop so that I could “work on the accounts upstairs” and then I pulled out all the things from King Edward’s school that I’d shoved at the back of the closet. I went straight to the photographs and laid them out on the bed.

There was Alex, easily the most beautiful of us all, her fine blonde hair poker straight from the GHD irons we’d all bought that year. She’d had warm brown eyes and freckles across her nose. She was curvy and popular with the boys. But she hadn’t been like the popular girls. She’d been kind and nerdy and compassionate. She’d been the best of us, and that wasn’t something cheesy you said because you felt nostalgic about someone, it was true. She was.

And now she was dead because of me.

I’d spent all these years running away from prank callers, but was I really running away from what I did? Yes. Of course, I was. Why else would I move so far away from my dad? And why else did I feel like I didn’t deserve love? Because I knew, deep down, that I was a terrible person who did a heinous thing, and I would be paying for it for the rest of my life.

Everyone in the world has a dark side. The strength of human character is suppressing it. Finding the will not to lean into the base urges of selfishness. There had been times in my life when I allowed the dark side to win. Especially soon after my mum died. That event turned my world dark for a long time.

The good and the evil half. The classic literary trope rehashed into every hero’s journey. The duality of man. Jedi versus Sith. But is it a spectrum rather than two opposing forces? And do we swing back and forth depending on our circumstances?

I pushed those thoughts away and held back tears as I spread the photographs across the bed. Most of them were of us messing around outside in the fields. Sometimes we’d pack costumes and put on silly plays. It seemed so juvenile that I was embarrassed now, but it happened. Other times, we’d hang out at whoever’s house didn’t have parents for the night. We’d drink sugary alcopops and listen to music or watch irreverent movies and TV shows. We could quote Withnail and I or Black Books or Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Alex made mugs of tea for the drunkest. She forced us to drink caffeine or water to make sure we stayed hydrated. Always mother.

And who was I? A girl caught in the shadow of the others. Someone with little personality or wit to contribute. More sycophant than anything. I watched the movies they watched and listened to the music they listened to. It made me cringe to think of it, but I paid for things too. I bought rounds of drinks in pubs that served underage kids. I bought tickets to gigs they wanted to see, and lunches for anyone who asked. I was that person.

But who was secretly in love with Alex? In every photo Alex had her arm around someone. She was friendly and flirty, but not in a gross way. I examined each one, trying to memorise faces. Who could have changed so much that I didn’t recognise them now? Jamie was a wiry teen. Perhaps he’d bulked up and grown out his hair. It felt unlikely to be Mo, given the hair colour, but what if he’d been wearing a wig? Ruth always had short, dark hair, growing it out would change the way she looked. Sam always wore hats. Perhaps I wouldn’t remember how he looked without one.

And then my fingers caught the edge of an old ticket, the stub ripped away from the bouncer on the door. It was for a local band at a nightclub. We’d pretended to be older to get into. I’d seen Alex with someone else that night. A girl. Not someone I recognised from school, but I remember noticing how close they were, and how often they touched each other. I’d been… jealous. Yes, I had. I could admit it now I was older and understood my feelings better. I could admit to myself that I’d had some romantic feelings for her. Maybe if I admitted it, finally, I could understand why I did what I did. That terrible, dark act.

Chapter Ten

Someone outside kept banging on a door. Knightley arched his back and his tail shot up in the air. He stood on the tips of his paws on the bed as I blinked away the sleep from my eyes. I glanced at the clock. It was 9 a.m. I realised the person banging on the door was outside the shop and I was upstairs in my flat. Shit. I’d overslept.

I ran down the stairs in my pyjamas, barefoot and ragged. There was Bridger waiting outside, both hands in his pockets, frowning.

“Hey,” he said. “Are you all right?”

“I overslept.” I let him into the shop, but then locked the door behind us. “You know, I don’t think I want to open today. I’m not feeling great.”

“It wasn’t our date was it?”

My heart skipped a beat when he said the word date.

“No, nothing like that. I guess things are just hard right now—”

“And you need a break,” Bridger said with a shrug. “I’ve been telling you this for how long? Come on. Get dressed and I’ll take you out for the day. We could drive up to the ferry terminal and head to the mainland. Or we could go to Hideaway Beach? Whatever you want.”

“I want to see your houseboat,” I said. “Do you ever sail it?”

Bridger leaned on the front desk, his long legs crossed at the ankle, and made a pfft sound. “Do I ever sail it?” He laughed. “Actually, not very often. It’s limited how far it’ll go. But there is a beautiful spot just off of Paradox Cove where you get the best view.” He smiled. “Go get dressed and bring a bathing suit.”

“I’m not much of a swimmer,” I said.

“Doesn’t matter. You’ll be fine.”

“All right.” My heart swelled two sizes, I felt swept away by the idea of being on a boat with Bridger; the sun beating down on us, away from the bookshop, away from the stalker, and the hateful poetry and everything else. I nodded, and hurried upstairs, almost tripping over Knightley on the way there.

I had a bikini and a swimming costume to choose between. It wasn’t a skimpy bikini—the bottoms were high-waisted and covered most of my stomach—but was I brave enough?

I squeezed myself into the bikini and then pulled on a dress over top. I slipped on flip flops and a sun hat and grabbed a canvas tote bag. I threw in my sunscreen, keys, a towel, a book, a change of clothes, just in case, and my wallet. I brushed my hair and put on some moisturiser. I poured Knightley a bowl of kibble and scratched him under the chin before hurrying downstairs to where Bridger was waiting.

“Wow, that was fast.” He laughed. “I’m impressed.”

“Well, I did spend some time in the Girl Scouts so I know how to always be prepared.”

As we left the shop and headed down to the marina, I couldn’t help thinking about how easy and nice it was to have someone else in charge, making the decisions. I’d felt so alone, so indecisive about everything, even deciding my vacation days, and finally Bridger came along and knew what I needed.

One thing about myself that I’d always felt ashamed about, was my lack of experience with long term relationships. The idea of one person knowing what the other needed and guiding them towards it struck me as more romantic than heart balloons and chocolates.

“Here she is,” he said, as we turned onto the marina.

“Oh, Bridger, she’s lovely!”

Nestled in between the gaudy yachts and sailboats was a quaint, wood cabin on water. She had a curved edge to the roof, and a tiny, decked area built around the steering wheel. Modern, but cosy, kept afloat by pontoons and powered by a motor at the back of the boat.

“I know she doesn’t look like much, but she’s home.”

When we reached the boat, he helped me aboard and hopped on himself, showing me where I could sit down on a bench on the decking next to his grill.

Bridger opened sliding glass doors to allow me a peek inside the living area, which was surprisingly tidy. “It’s actually pretty cool living here. I’ve got solar panels for electricity, and all I need to buy is gas for the tank, and food.”

“Can I go inside?”

“Yeah, sure.”

If I lived in such a tiny space, my clothes would be everywhere, but Bridger kept it tidy. The finish of the wood was beautiful and modern, with a cute kitchen and dining area that looked like it converted into a bed. I sat down next to a window and gazed out at the sea. The edge of the mainland lay in the distance, the edges blurred by hazy sky.

“Stay here,” he said. “I’ll get her unmoored and drive us out towards the cove. Stay where you are, you’ll get a perfect view.”

“Okay,” I said, suddenly nervous by the prospect of being out on the water away from the land. We weren’t going far, I knew that, but it was still strange. I’d never been one for swimming or sailing, even though at the private school, many of the kids spent time on yachts in summer.

My thoughts moved back towards the past, but I was determined to stop them from ruining my day with Bridger. Instead, I stared out at the blue. My stomach fluttered when the boat first moved, but then I settled in, leaning back and enjoying myself.

I hadn’t noticed at first, but there was a box on the table. A little wider than a shoebox, and flatter. It moved back and forth as the boat continued around the coast, sliding along the surface. I caught it before it fell from the table, and curiosity got the better of me. I lifted the lid.

My throat went dry. It was Bridger’s book, printed out on white, A4 paper. The title was right there, in a bold font. The Accident. I placed a finger on the paper, my heart pounding. I shouldn’t be looking at his work like this. He didn’t want me to read it, otherwise he would have sent it to me. And yet I wanted to turn that page more than anything. I cast a guilty glance to the front of the boat, but Bridger was out of sight in the driver’s seat. Slowly, I turned the page and began to read.

How were we supposed to know? We could never have predicted what happened that night. The storm came so suddenly, dousing the slopes in a thick coating of snow. We’d been one short, but we thought she wasn’t coming. Little did we know about the terrible accident.

Mere miles from the house we rented on New Year’s Eve, a woman sat in her car. She was stuck in a snow drift.

The blood froze in my veins. A snowstorm on New Year’s Eve. An accident. I paused, willing myself to stop reading, but not able to tear my eyes away.

We were young and carefree. We spent our days at Queen Anne’s school outside London. A school filled with entitled rich kids. It mattered what your parents did at Queen Anne’s. What you wore, who you knew. But not to us. While the others drank and partied, we read books and wrote plays. We camped under the stars and spent the nights talking.

But we were young and naïve, and we had no idea of the vicious serpent lurking within our group.

Odelia rented the cottage, paid for everything and drove most of us up there herself. But that was something Odelia did all the time. She paid for things to get us to like her. But true affection could never be bought, and the truth was, we saw her as someone desperate for attention, a pathetic stray dog happy with the scraps tossed to them.

Since the accident I’ve grown to despise Odelia even more. I don’t understand why she forced us to Scotland for New Year’s Eve. None of us really wanted to go, but there she was dangling that carrot as always, promising us good food and drink in a beautiful place.

“Let’s put aside all our hurt feelings,” she’d said. “Come on, let’s go. I want us to be friends forever and we’re going to lose that. Don’t you see? We should all be bridesmaids and best men at each other’s weddings. But we’re all drifting apart. Alex, you think so too, don’t you?”

The boat stopped moving. I slammed the box shut, sickness rising from the pit of my stomach. Then I took the box and hid it under the table.

Chapter Eleven

We were north of Loch Ness, on the A835, all of us tired and hungry. I’d been driving for over 400 miles, with a few pit stops on the way, and now it was dark, light flurries of snow coming down and settling on the windscreen. Ruth was asleep with her head against the passenger window. Mo quietly rapped along to Eminem on the radio, annoying Jamie, and Sam stared at her phone.

“Mo, shut it will you? Look, I need a piss. We either stop now or I use that Coke bottle.”

I regarded Jamie in the rear-view mirror, ignoring his small blue eyes narrowing at me in annoyance. “Sat Nav says we’re five minutes away. Just hold it, all right?”

“Fine.”

I almost missed the next turning, but twisted the wheel just in time, jerking Ruth awake.

“Oakland, for fuck’s sake.”

“Jesus, guys,” I said. “You wouldn’t think we were going on holiday, would you? Fucking lighten up a bit.”

“It won’t be the same without Alex,” Ruth mumbled.

My fingers tightened around the steering wheel. “Well, she made her mind up, didn’t she? Shows how much she cares about the group. She’d rather see her other mates than us.”

“Well maybe we should’ve taken up Alex’s offer and gone out with her instead,” Ruth said. “Rather than drive for fucking miles into the middle of nowhere. Oh, and great, it’s snowing now.”

“Do you want me to stop? You can all get the hell out here if you like and fuck off.” I bit my lip and turned away from Ruth, afraid I was going to cry.

“Jesus, Oakland, just drive okay?” Sam said. “We’re very grateful that you paid for us all to come here.”

“Well, we’re here now.” I pulled into the drive and parked up. When Jamie ran out, I tossed him the keys to get in and went round to the back of the car with Mo for the suitcases.

“You okay?” he asked, heaving Sam’s pink case from the boot. He smiled at me, his brown eyes twinkling in the car lights. “You seem a bit on edge.”

I pulled out Jamie’s holdall and brushed snowflakes from my fringe. “I just want us to have a good time.”

Mo laughed. “Yeah, I remember the speech. ‘We could be each other’s bridesmaids but we’re drifting apart!’ Not sure how good I’d look in a bridesmaid’s dress to be honest.”

“It’s true though. Don’t you think? Alex was the glue holding us together, but she doesn’t care about us anymore.”

Mo lifted the suitcase and squinted against the snow. “Nah. It’s just because you’re mad at Alex.” He shrugged and walked over to the cottage dragging two suitcases through slushy snow.

A fine layer of snow had spread over my scalp. For some reason, I couldn’t feel the cold, despite being on the Scottish Highlands in winter. As I slammed the boot closed, I thought about what Mo had said. Was this all because of Alex? Just like always, my thoughts drifted back to her, and about what she meant to the group.

Alex went from our leader, to our deserter. We were rudderless without her. She hadn’t even bothered to come to my birthday party three months ago, and she skipped classes without us. Perhaps she’d replaced us with her other friends, someone who was always too good for the others moving on, as the brightest and most beautiful usually did. Or maybe she was adrift too.

My phone buzzed. I flipped it open, surprised to see a text from Alex.

I changed my mind. I’m on my way! X

“Are you coming in or are you going to turn into a snowman?” Sam stood in the doorway holding up a bottle of vodka.

“I’m coming,” I said, snapping my phone shut.

I can see you.

There’s no more waiting.

You will pay for your crime.

I can see you, Oakland.

Maybe I can reach out and touch you, too.

Chapter Twelve

“This is the most beautiful spot.” Bridger strode into the living quarters, a large grin plastered across his face. “Come on, get your suit on, we’re going swimming.”

I stared at him, open mouthed. Who was he? For six months I’d known this man as Bridger, the young writer-extraordinaire who came to Liars Island to work on his book close to the sea. He had an American accent. He told me about his family in Washington State and how they weren’t supportive of his writing. All of it, every single word was a lie.

How did this stranger know about the accident? I examined every millimetre of his face, from his pleasant, round eyes, to his smiley mouth, to the shape of his cheekbones. He wasn’t Jamie. He wasn’t Mo. Sam? No, I couldn’t see it.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Like what?” I said, barely managing to speak louder than a whisper.

“Like I have something on my face. Or like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I just had one of those calls,” I lied. “And… I’m not feeling well. I’m sorry, I think it’s the boat. Maybe… maybe we should go back.”

“No, Oakland! Don’t let those calls ruin your day. Come out onto the deck. You need to see the view.”

I didn’t know what to do. We were trapped together on this boat and he was the only person who could take us back to shore. I didn’t know how to drive this thing. What the hell was I going to do? Did he know he’d left the book out on the table? Did he do it on purpose?

There was nothing else I could do but pretend. I stood up on shaking legs and followed him out onto the deck. When I saw the view, my heart sank. We were miles away from Paradox cove, and I felt like it was purposeful. Bridger could have taken us closer for a better view of the coast, but he hadn’t. He’d kept us far enough away that I couldn’t swim to the shore. I wrapped my arms around my body and pretended to smile as he gestured to the open water.

“Isn’t it amazing?”

“Yes,” I said, in a monotone voice. “Bridger, when you suggested this day out, did you know I’d want to come on the boat?”

He cocked his head to one side. “What do you mean?”

“Did you guess I’d choose the boat? We did talk about it on our date, didn’t we?”

He shrugged. “I didn’t even know we’d be spending the day together.”

“Were you going to ask me here anyway? Maybe not today, but in the future?”

His eyes narrowed and I held my breath. I’d gone too far and he was suspicious of me. He sensed something was wrong. “Did you say you had one of those prank calls?”

“Yeah,” I said. “A few minutes ago. They got my mobile number somehow.”

“You put it in the email,” he said. “The one you send out to new book club members.”

“Oh. Right.”

“Are you okay, Oakland? I thought you’d be more impressed by this.” He swept his arm out to show the vista. “Honestly, I thought you’d be more grateful.”

I stayed silent. I didn’t know what to say. Very slowly, I took a step away from the side of the decking and manoeuvred myself away from him. My heart pounded so loudly that the blood thudded in my ears.

Bridger pushed his hands into his pockets. “Come on, why don’t we go for a swim?”

“I told you, I’m not much of a swimmer.”

“I’ll help you.” He paused. “Don’t you trust me? We’ve known each other for six months, Oakland. We’ve worked together every day. I thought… I thought we had a special friendship. Maybe more.”

None of it worked on me because I’d seen the book. I knew he was lying.

“Have you ever rented a black SUV?”

“What?”

“Have you ever driven it around the island, following me?”

“This is boring. Honestly, Oakland, this is so boring.” The smile had turned into a grimace. I saw the tension running through his body.

“I’m sorry if I bore you.”

We stood there, the boat gently rocking back and forth, with the salt air all around us, simply staring into each other’s eyes. I could see him making a decision in his mind, and I was doing the exact same thing.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“I loved her.”

His accent slipped. There it was, still slightly American from pretending for so long, but the London accent finally came out. My home city. He’d travelled here and tracked me down, but who was he?

“Alex?” I asked.

He nodded. “I saw her phone the night she died, and I know what you did. I know it was all your fault.”

Chapter Thirteen

The mood shifted when I went into the cottage. Sam poured me a vodka and orange and I downed half of it to warm me up from the freezing cold. Jamie and Mo were lighting a fire, while Ruth had thrown on a Nirvana album and was dancing around the room. Merrily, merrily shall I live now, I thought to myself. This was what I’d always wanted. I’d created this. Me. Not Alex, but me.

And then I thought of Alex turning up in several hours from now. She’d be here in time for New Year’s Eve, and then everything would be about her again. Ruth moshed her way over to me and soon we were jumping up and down, screaming with Kurt Cobain. Jamie and Mo cheered as the fire lit. Sam brought over crisps and sweets and laid them out on the coffee table. The arguments, the tension in the car, all that unpleasantness faded away. These were my people. They would be in my life forever; I could feel it.

I wanted it to last forever.

When the song finished, I wandered over to one of the comfy armchairs by the window, watching thick layers of snow forming in drifts along the driveway. Perhaps the snow would be over by the time Alex reached the north. It’d been raining when we left London and I imagined it still was. The snow probably only affected the Highlands. I flipped open my phone and I texted Alex the address to the cottage, except… it wasn’t the right address. I purposefully gave her the wrong house number, and the wrong postal code. She’d try to get here, give up, and go and stay in a hotel instead.

At least that was what I thought would happen.

Then I closed my phone, gulped down a mouthful of vodka, left my phone behind on the windowsill and went back to the party. Softly, the snow continued to fall. But it was fine. We were warm and happy inside the house.

Chapter Fourteen

“I know,” I said. “I know it was my fault.”

“You don’t deserve to walk free. You don’t deserve to be happy.”

I felt sick. Bridger hated me so much he’d travelled here to terrorise me. He pretended to be my friend. He flirted and led me on. He preyed on me. “Are you the one who’s been calling me all these years? It was you?”

He remained silent.

“Who are you? I don’t understand.” I glanced behind me, looking for some sort of weapon. But there was nothing aside from the bench.

He laughed. “You know, after all this time, I thought you might actually recognise me, but you still don’t do you? I had such a crush on you at one time. I loved you, Oakland. And I know I was younger and that you hardly noticed me. But remember how you’d let me in your group sometimes? Remember how I helped you put on plays in the fields outside the school.” He sniffed, wiped his nose with his sleeve. “Now looking at you makes me want to be physically sick. Going out on that date with you turned my stomach. I could hardly bear it.”

“Richie. Little Richie Hawthorne. You’re Alex’s younger brother.” I saw it now, the bright smile, the wide brown eyes. I saw Alex in him. Maybe I always had and that was why I found myself drawn to him. That made him older than he’d said. I hadn’t picked up on any of his lies. All this time. The shock made me numb all over.

“You’ve no idea what losing her did to my family. Did you know that my mother attempted suicide?”

“No,” I said softly.

“Luckily the Jamieson made her puke up the pills. I found her, out of it, vomit all down her jeans. My father gave up on her and left about two years after you murdered Alex. He couldn’t cope.”

“Bridger… Richie, I’m so sorry.”

“So, you admit it, then? You murdered Alex?”

“No. I didn’t know what was going to—”

“Don’t lie to me!” He screamed close to my face; those lovely, open eyes now scrunched into two tiny slits. His mouth grimaced and twisted. He was unhinged. A man with nothing to lose.

“I swear, I’m not. I know what I did, and I know how awful it was, but I didn’t think things through. I didn’t know what was going to happen to her. Richie, I thought she’d find a hotel and stay the night. I couldn’t have—”

“No,” he said. “No, you knew. You hated her and were jealous of her—”

“That’s not—”

“You wanted to be her. That was why you kept on spending Daddy’s money to get everyone to like you. Isn’t it?”

“Richie, I was eighteen years old. My mum had just died. I know I wanted attention and wanted to be liked, but come on, I didn’t understand what I’d done.” There were tears in my eyes. All of the shame came flooding back to me. Maybe he was right. Maybe, on some subconscious level, I knew what would happen to Alex. And if I did, even on a subconscious level, did that mean I belonged in prison? After all, I’d lied to the police, and to my parents, and to my friends, and most of all, to Alex’s family. I lied to them all and they believed me. The only person who didn’t was standing right in front of me.

“I don’t care how old you were. At eighteen, I was dealing with a heartbroken, depressed mother. I was broken inside. Bitter. Disgusted by the world, by the cruelty in it. Disgusted by you and what you did to my family. I hate you, Oakland. I hate you more than anyone else in this world. I hate you as much as I loved my big sister.”

“I loved her too,” I insisted.

“Stop kidding yourself,” he said.

He took a step towards me and my hands flew up to protect my face. I was convinced, then, that in the near future he’d been planning to bring me out here, to this lonely spot in the sea, to where we wouldn’t be seen. Maybe today wasn't supposed to be the day, but now it was, and he was ready to kill me.

Chapter Fifteen

I wish I could say I forgot.

It wouldn’t have changed the outcome, and it wouldn’t have exonerated me, but at least then I’d know that I didn’t do it deliberately for my own selfish reasons. I didn’t withhold the information from my friends because I didn’t want them to know that I didn’t purposefully ignore her messages when she ended up lost.

Alex did try to call everyone at the cottage, but the music was so loud that no one heard their phones. And, no, back then on a flip phone, we didn’t check our phones every two minutes. By the time Ruth tried to return Alex’s call, she’d dozed off at the wheel.

It wasn’t until I went to bed that I finally looked at my phone. I was walking unsteadily through the hallway, bumping from one side to the other, vision blurred and unfocused. But the messages made me go still. Through that foggy, drunken haze, the words floated up to me.

I’m stuck…. I don’t know where… It’s so cold…. Call me…

I forced myself to concentrate even harder until they made sense.

Did you send me the right address? Because I can’t find it.

Oakland, I’ve been driving up and down these roads for like half an hour and I can’t find you.

Hey, I’m getting scared now. Even the Range Rover is struggling on these roads.

Oh God, it’s snowing so much! I keep pulling over to text you and then I can’t get out!

I’m stuck in a snowdrift and I don’t know where I am! It’s so cold. Call me!!

Seriously, CALL ME!!

Oakland, I’m scared. Please call me.

I bent over, and I vomited on the ground.

Then I called 999, but it was too late.

The next morning, first responders managed to dig her Range Rover out of a huge snow drift on a tiny country road about five miles away from the cottage. She had died in the night of hypothermia.

If I’d checked my phone that night…

If I’d sent her the right address…

If I’d told the others she was coming…

She’d be alive.

But I didn’t, because I wanted to be the leader. Because I was jealous of her. Because we’d bickered for months and I was mad at her.

I lied about it. I told the police that I’d been drunk when I sent her the wrong address, and that I was dubious she’d even set off when she sent her first message. Alex was wishy-washy, and her promises often didn’t add up to much. I told them I’d forgotten all about it as the night had progressed, and the police had accepted that reasoning. To them this was a tragedy of circumstances and choices. Alex’s phone had run out of battery by the time the police found her. She spent all that time trying to contact us. If only Alex had gone back and found a hotel, or called her parents, or called the police before it was too late. But she hadn’t because she thought we were closest and that we would find her first. She thought I’d worry about her if she didn’t turn up.

She trusted us to find her. But we didn’t.

Chapter Sixteen

I’d never thought of Bridger as strong before. He’d always been my friend Bridger, compassionate and gentle, not this man who threw his weight behind a blow that made my ears ring. When I stumbled and landed backwards, he grabbed me by the scruff of my neck and forced me back onto my feet. I felt like a ragdoll, limbs limp, snot pouring from my nose as I begged him. My heart pounded against my ribs. He let out an animalistic roar as he delivered another blow.

Not used to pain, I crumpled easily, and scrambled across the decking of the boat, trying to get away from him. Bridger kicked out, but I lurched away, to where the guard rail dipped low for easy access on and off the boat. At that point, I could barely remember my name. I was so out of it from the heavy blows and the primal fear gripping my chest. And yet… I thought, just maybe. What if…

When Bridger ran at me, I grabbed him by the leg a second before he was about to kick me. It caught him by surprise, especially when I yanked, and he fell onto his back. While he was winded, I took my chance. I rolled him close to the edge of the boat, groaning with the strain as I heaved his weight towards the water. But Bridger quickly understood what I was about to do. He caught hold of the rail and held himself there as I pushed and shoved but it was no use. So I launched myself at him, sinking my teeth into the flesh on his arm.

He let go and yelled a curse word at me, which gave me the split second I needed to give one final heave and knock him into the water. Bridger’s eyes opened wide as he fell backwards. One pale hand launched out towards me, grabbed me by the throat, and snatched me forwards.

Freezing cold water hit me hard as bricks, surging into my mouth and nose. I went under, and then I rose, my feet treading desperately, flailing like fins. I gasped in air, coughing and spluttering. For a moment I forgot why I was there. The water in my throat, the cold, it all brought out a survival instinct that blocked out the unimportant. I turned to my left to see Bridger doing the exact same thing. Gasping for air, coughing, spluttering.

Two options presented themselves to me. I could try to climb back on the boat, hit the throttle and hope I could motor away from Bridger before he had a chance to attack, or I could become the aggressor. I could attack him before he attacked me. I swam forth, two, three strides. Bridger struggled against the water, his chin bobbing up and down. He’d hit his head on the way down and there was a trickle of scarlet running down his right temple. He noticed me too late. I rose out of the sea, my arms raised, ready to do what I needed to do. A flicker of fear skittered across his wide eyes. He tried to turn away from me, but I came down, my palms joining together like I was about to press down on an open wound. Instead, I pushed down on his head as hard as I could, my fingers digging into his scalp.

Bridger struggled beneath my weight, almost unbalancing me. There was a roar beneath the surface, a scream perhaps. He groped forth and found my torso with his fingers, digging and scratching away at me. But I did not let go.

His hands reached up and grabbed hold of my elbows as the water churned and bubbled around us. His desperate clawing almost knocked me away, but no. I remained tenacious.

My mind cleared until there was nothing in it at all. No worries, no feelings of guilt or horror or fear. Watching the water calm did not give me any pleasure, either. The act of holding Bridger under the water became a necessary task that I had to complete. When I let him go, he sank.

I climbed up onto the boat feeling completely calm and took a moment to think things through. Was I always like this? This cold-blooded? This dark?

After a minute or two, I hurried into the living quarters to grab the phone from my tote bag, water dripping all over Bridger’s tiny modern home. Luckily, I managed to get a signal. I dialled 911.

“Help, please help! I’ve been attacked! He tried to drown me, but… but I got away and he ended up caught by an undercurrent, I think. I think he’s dead…”

The operator told me to calm down and tell her my location, which I did, between tears and gasps. But when I hung up the phone, I wiped the tears away. A sensation of calm worked through me.

I had one last terrifying thought: Bridger’s book. I hurried over to the table. My wet fingers left smudge marks on the title: The Accident. I opened drawers and checked behind appliances before finding a hidden spot underneath the sink. Then I searched through his drawers and storage units for his laptop. He had to have one, and if he did, it would tell me more about whatever deal he made with the publishers. Did they know his story? Could I stop the link between my past and Bridger’s past becoming common knowledge? If anyone found out what I did the night his sister died…

As I was rummaging, I noticed the trail of damp handprints I left everywhere and quickly towelled off. Then I opened up the storage underneath his seating and found the Mac. My hands shook from the cold as I opened it. Bridger had it password protected.

“Fuck!” I cursed.

And then from somewhere in the recess of my mind, I remembered Alex’s birthday. I typed the date into the box, but the screen didn’t unfreeze. Chewing on a thumbnail, I thought again.

Alex’s death. That had to be it.

With a long, unsteady breath, I tapped in the date Alex died and the laptop came to life.

First, I tried Bridger’s emails, searching for Harper Collins. A short string of emails came up in his inbox. I read through them quickly. They were from someone called Beatrice.

Hi Richie,

Thank you so much for your submission. Unfortunately, The Accident has not been selected at this time. Thank you for sending us the manuscript. We did think that the writing was compelling, but we have decided not to continue—

Even the publishing deal was a lie. Of course. I deleted all the emails, along with the attachments. I went through his files and deleted every draft of the book. As I slammed the cover down, a boat engine roared. I threw the laptop back into his storage, wrapped the towel around my shoulders, and staggered out to wave down the Coast Guard.

Chapter Seventeen

Knightley had no idea what I’d done. He stared at me with his deep hazel eyes and purred as I scratched behind his ears. He had no idea I was a murderer.

Everything looked the same in my apartment. The copy of Pride and Prejudice on the bedside table. The balled up bit of kitchen roll abandoned on the kitchen counter. I’d forgotten to throw it away. My weighted blanket on the back of the sofa for nights with a hot chocolate and a good book. I tucked myself up with the blanket, hoping to chase out the cold. Tyson from the Crossfit place across the street had dropped off a casserole earlier, but I hadn’t eaten it yet. I kept refreshing the local news page on my phone, glued to the screen. There were no changes.

The Coast Guard had taken me to a hospital while Bridger’s body was recovered from the sea. Sheriff Lynch came to take my statement and talked me through what would happen next. There would be an inquest and a case would be opened. He seemed to buy my story that the boat trip had been a date that had gone wrong, and I’d been forced to fight Bridger off. We’d both gone overboard but Bridger had hit his head and drowned.

It was… partially true. Just like my explanation for the night Alex had died was partially true.

Did I snap? Bridger had been harassing me for years, causing me to move halfway across the world just to get away from him. And then he ingratiated himself into my life, pretending to be my friend. He pretended to be more than my friend. Would that amount of stress make anyone snap and kill like I had?

Knightley nestled into the crook of my arm while I thought about that numb, empty, almost serene sensation that had washed over me as I held Bridger’s head underneath the water. I thought about the adrenaline rush of outwitting the person in the SUV following me through Liars Island and the anger I’d felt after finding the unpleasant poem at the book club. Bridger wrote that poem. He hated me so much.

When the phone rang, Knightley leapt from my arm and stretched out on the floor. I grabbed the landline.

“Hello, Oakland,” Sheriff Lynch said. “Listen, I’ve got a question for you.”

“Go on.”

“Does the name Richie Clarke ring any bells to you?”

“Yes,” I said, forcing surprise into my voice. “I went to school with his sister. She was… well she was one of my best friends, but she died in an accident. Why do you mention that name?” My heart pounded. Inside my head a voice was screaming: Liar! Liar!

“Well, we ran Bridger’s fingerprints, and it came up with that name. Turns out Ritchie got arrested in New York a few years ago. Drunk and disorderly.”

“Wow,” I said. “Oh my god.” Liar!

“So you didn’t know?”

“No,” I said. “I had no idea. I didn’t… I didn’t recognise him this whole time. The last time I saw him in England he was, I don’t know, fourteen, something like that. I guess he changed a lot.”

“Is there any reason why he’d lie to you?”

“To hurt me I guess,” I said. “His sister, Alex, died coming to a New Year’s Eve party I’d organised. I think Richie always blamed me for it.”

“Uh-huh. All right, well, the investigation is still ongoing. I’d like you to stick around on the island for the foreseeable future. Okay?”

“Sure, anything I can do to help.”

When I put the phone down, goosebumps formed up and down my arms. I felt lightheaded, full of adrenaline. I’d lied for several minutes about Bridger to the Liars Island sheriff and I had to admit… I liked it.

As soon as I put the phone down, I picked it back up and called my dad.

“Oakie, how are you?”

He sounded tired. I’d woken him up. “Dad.”

“Has something happened?”

“I keep lying, Dad.”

“What do you mean?”

“I lied about Alex.”

He was silent for a moment. And then, “What happened, Oakland?”

“I gave her the wrong address because I didn’t want her to come to the party. And then I didn’t look at my phone on purpose, so I didn’t see any calls or texts. When she didn’t show up, I should… I should have done something, but I didn’t.”

“Jesus… Oakland…”

“I thought she’d gone to a hotel. Then I saw all the missed calls and the messages.”

The silence stretched out. “I don’t know what to say.”

“I’m a terrible person, aren’t I?”

“No,” he said, but it was hesitant. I heard him re-evaluating everything he knew about his daughter in that one word. “You were very young. Your mother had just died.”

I wiped tears from my cheeks. “I found out who’s been calling me all these years. It was Richie, Alex’s little brother.”

“Oh,” he said. “After all these years… I had no idea. I suppose it makes sense. Their family went through a lot after Alex died. Are you all right? Did the police pick him up?”

“Sort of,” I said. “You see it turns out that Richie was here on the island and had been for six months. I hired him, as my assistant at the shop. But I thought… I thought his name was Bridger.”

“Oakland, what’s been going on?”

“He tried to hurt me, Daddy” I said. “But now he’s dead.”

“What?”

“I killed him. I killed him, Daddy.”

Chapter Eighteen

The weeks went by in a haze. I cancelled all the book club events and sporadically opened the shop. They were lonely days I spent either lost in my own thoughts or in books. I researched sociopaths and wondered whether I matched the descriptions in the books. Why was I capable of lying so easily? Why did I feel so little remorse for holding Bridger underwater until he drowned? I’d believed myself to be ashamed and guilty for what I did to Alex all of those years ago, but what if I was feeling something else—anger for the harassment that came after.

Every day, at lunchtime, I walked down to the harbour to see if Bridger’s boat had been returned from the police. It still hadn’t. So, I sat down on a bench, staring out to sea while eating peanut butter sandwiches. The sea reminded me of him, and the flailing of his limbs.

Four weeks had passed, and I was still waiting to hear from Sheriff Lynch about the inquest. He hadn’t arrested me, but I knew he was… suspicious.

After a few sips of tea from my flask, I got up to wander back to the bookshop when I saw her.

I froze.

I saw Alex.

She was standing in front of a shop, her face reflecting back at me, the blonde of her hair almost white in the bright sunshine. The flask clattered onto the harbour, terrifying the seagulls who squawked and flew up into the sky. Their wings beat in front of my face, flapping like Bridger in the water that day. I blinked, moved around the noisy birds, and Alex was gone. No one stared back at me from the glass. I shook the sensation away, picked up my flask, and walked back to Harborside Books.

* * *

The day of the inquest loomed over me. And when it arrived, I had to face Alex’s parents all over again. Their said, long, grey faces, with those large, wet eyes. My stomach lurched.

My father had offered to come, but since our last conversation, I’d begged him to stay home. He knew. Well, he didn’t know quite how cold-blooded Bridger’s death had been, but he knew I was responsible, and I didn’t want him anywhere near the inquest, or Bridger… Richie’s… parents.

Alex’s mother, Susan, surprised me by pulling me into an embrace. “It’s been so long. God, it’s good to see your face. It makes me feel like she’s still here.”

“It does?”

She nodded.

“I’m so sorry about Richie. I didn’t recognise him.” My entire body trembled. Her eyes were so much like Alex’s. Soulful. Warm. Sad. But also so much like Richie’s.

“He was troubled.” She bit her bottom lip. “I didn’t know how bad it was. We were estranged, I’m ashamed to say. We’ve all gone our separate ways.” She glanced at her husband, or ex-husband, I wasn’t sure. “I’m so sorry for what he put you through. I don’t know why he grew so obsessed with you… This whole ruse. It’s—” she broke off and pulled a tissue out of her handbag.

I placed my hand on hers. “I know. It is for me too.”

Soon the coroner started proceedings and we heard the evidence. My chest tightened and released as each documented injury from the post-mortem was detailed.

“The scratch marks on Ms O’Neill’s torso could very well be consistent with her testimony that the deceased attacked her on the boat and knocked her down. They could also have been defensive. There was a bite mark on the deceased’s arm where Ms O’Neill bit the deceased. Ms O’Neill suffered bruising to her cheekbone and eye. There was also evidence of blunt force trauma to the back of her skull. The deceased’s head injury is consistent with Ms O’Neill’s claims that he hit his head on the boat. Blood samples were recovered from the wood.”

The book, I thought. The book would tell them what I did to his sister. It gave me a motive to kill him. Did they find the book?

“Therefore, the conclusion made by the coroner’s office is that Mr Clarke died from drowning following his attack on Ms O’Neill and her lawful use of self-defence…”

I hardly heard the rest of the statement. Susan Clarke squeezed my hand as she broke down sobbing. During my fog of relief, I placed an arm around her shoulder to console her. It felt like the right thing to do.

Close to the back doors of the room, a flash of blonde hair caught my eyes. Someone had turned around and was leaving. Alex. No. It couldn’t be. But it was someone who looked like Alex. The same person on the harbour that day? The young women acting suspiciously outside the bookshop the night I went on my date with Bridger/Richie? Whoever it was, they were following me. Once is a coincidence, three times, was a pattern.

Chapter Nineteen

After the inquest, I met Susan for coffee, and we talked about Alex for so long that I felt completely drained afterwards. She told me they were taking Richie’s body back to England for the funeral and invited me to go. I’d been taken aback. The mother of the man I killed wanted me to attend his funeral. I found myself staring at the damp, sore skin beneath her eyes, and the sad smile on her lips. And as I did, I tried to work out what I felt. Guilt? Shame? Remorse? I didn’t know. Every part of my body still felt numb.

When I told her that I couldn’t, I stared at the coffee on the table in front of me. She took that to mean it was too painful, but I knew the real reason.

What surprised me the most after the inquest, was that everyone from school finally got in touch. I can’t believe Richie stalked you. Wow, are you okay? What a psycho. Ruth came out of the woodwork, texting me as though nothing had happened, as though she hadn’t ignored me for sixteen years. Mo sent me a message on Instagram, he was a model now and had lots of followers, but he went by the name Maurice Starlight. Sam suggested we meet next time I went home. And Jamie said that Richie had always seemed off, with the way he integrated himself into the group. Didn’t he pay for stuff sometimes? No, I thought. That was me. I did that. I was that person.

I wanted to reply to them all: Where were you when I needed you? Why didn’t you get in touch with me?

All those years of wondering who harassed me. All those years of hating myself. If any of them, even one, had been in contact, maybe I’d be different now. A better person somehow.

But I was kidding myself. Talking myself around to another reality. Let’s face it, I was—am—a very dark person.

In the end, I did the petty thing and ignored them all. Besides, I wanted to get on with my life.

It was over, and now I needed to move on. I said goodbye to Susan, leaving her with one last lie: that I’d keep in touch. And I went back to my bookshop. I craved the early mornings, the orders, the customers, the book clubs. I craved the signings, the cardboard boxes, the dusty corners. Knightley sitting in the sun, his tail wagging when customers tickled his tummy. I couldn’t get back to Harborside any quicker to restart my life.

* * *

No bad deed goes unpunished.

I woke up in the middle of the night. I’d heard a noise downstairs, I was sure of it. Sitting up in bed, I controlled my breathing to allow me to listen. I knew every inch of the shop, and I especially knew how the floorboards creak as you walk behind the counter to the back room. The floorboards creaked now, and then I heard the soft close of a door. I immediately threw the duvet back and leapt out of bed.

Stepping over Knightley on my way into the kitchen, I grabbed the biggest, sharpest knife I owned, and made my way down the stairs to the shop. Movement. Someone shuffling through the rooms, their shoes and clothes scuffing quietly. It was a strange revelation, but none of it surprised me. I’d been expecting this to happen for a long time, and now here they were, ready and waiting.

When I swung open the back door into the shop and flicked the light switch, a hooded figure turned away from me and broke into a sprint. Fearing they’d get away, I followed as fast as I could, holding the knife aloft, sure that an animalistic grimace had spread across my face. I felt wild. Invincible.

“Stop!” I yelled. “Who are you?” My hand reached out and connected with their shoulder.

To my surprise, they were no stronger than me, and when I pulled them back, it unbalanced them. I took the opportunity to throw my weight into their torso and knock them to the ground. I pressed the knife to their neck and then I gasped as the hood fell away.

“Alex?”

The surprise quickly left my body, leaving me disappointed. The women underneath me simply resembled her. And it wasn’t a close resemblance. This person’s features were nothing like Alex’s. They had the same hair colour and cut, and their builds were the same. They both had the same colour eyes and full lips, but the nose, the face shape and everything else were all wrong.

“Who are you?”

“Let me up.”

“Not until you tell me who you are.”

“Bridget,” she said. “I’m Bridget.”

“That means nothing to me,” I said. “Why are you in my shop.”

She sighed. “I’m Alex’s girlfriend.”

I lifted the knife, just a centimetre or so. “Alex’s girlfriend?” And then I remembered… that night at the gig. I’d seen Alex with another girl, but I’d assumed they were just friends. Looking back now it seemed so obvious.

“You remember me, don’t you?” she said. “I saw you staring at me that night at the gig. And then I saw you at her funeral.”

I nodded. “Yes, I remember you. Why are you here?”

“I just want to talk,” she said.

“We could’ve talked in the daytime. Why are you really here?”

“All right. I wanted to scare you. One last time. Because you killed her, didn’t you? Alex always said you were off. She said you were jealous and… dark.”

“Alex said that?” I shook my head. That wasn’t right. Alex and I, we were… I thought we were good friends, best friends even.

“I know what you did,” Bridget said. “You lied to everyone, but you don’t fool me. And now you killed her little brother.”

“It was self-defence,” I said. “Were you working with him?” Then it dawned on me. “Bridger. Bridget. Oh my God.” Despite everything, I laughed.

Her face screwed up in anger and she squirmed beneath my body. “Fuck you, Oakland. You’re a psychopath.”

“You’re the one breaking into someone’s house,” I reminded her.

She spat at me and I managed to dodge it just in time. I pressed the knife closer to her throat. “You said it yourself, Bridget. I’m a killer. So you’d best not piss me off. Did you come here to kill me?”

She struggled under my weight and her chin jutted out defiantly. “No.” She shook her head sadly. “I couldn’t do that. I thought I might be able to.”

“Bridger was supposed to be the one to do it.”

She said nothing.

“Bridger never told me if he was the one calling me all these years. Was it you? Did you take turns?”

She smiled. “We took turns.”

“You two really were fucked up,” I said. “What with you looking just like his sister and the two of you working to take me down. Were you screwing each other too?”

Bridget stared right through me saying nothing, but her cheeks turned scarlet.

“Freud would have a field day with you two.”

“Would you just let me go?” Bridget said between gritted teeth.

“Why should I?” I said. “You’ll come back another day and murder me in my sleep. Or hire a hitman to do it. Or you’ll find some other way to make my life miserable.”

“I swear.” Her voice became raw, as though she was about to cry. “I promise you Oakland, I’m done. This was mostly Richie’s thing. I promise. I just want to live, okay?”

I had to admit, it made me feel powerful to know she was afraid of me. I smiled down at her, making my choice.

Epilogue

I wake up at 6 a.m. feed Knightley and come down to the shop. I unbox some books to stack on the shelves and wait for Sylvie to get to work before opening the shop. Sylvie is fifty-three and takes naps in the afternoon. She bakes scones for the book club and makes the best coffee. Sylvie is safe.

Not long after the inquest, the police released the boat and Susan told me to keep it. She didn’t want it, nor the hassle of selling it. The first thing I did was retrieve Richie’s manuscript and read it cover to cover. Thank God the police never found it. I’m not sure they expected Richie to have a book stashed in a concealed hole beneath the sink.

Reading it proved to be an unusual event. I had to admit the guilt of what I did to Alex didn’t hit me anymore. I’ve accepted the darker side of my personality and I’m fine with it. I’ve moved on from that part of my life.

I’m happy to be Oakland, owner of the cosiest bookshop on Liars Island, the friendliest book club, and the sweetest cat. I don’t need to hunt, or jump out of planes, or anything like that. I’m happy helping book worms find the special edition of their favourite book or climbing up onto a ladder to reach the top shelf for elderly customers. I’ll set a book aside for a customer I know will want it, even before they put in their order. I still write a chapter of my book every so often. Only it’s turned into a thriller now. A dangerous cat and mouse tale about a serial killer and the somewhat deranged cop chasing her.

Later in the afternoon, as I’m setting up the back room for the book club, the phone rings. I grab the cordless from the wall and note the unknown number message.

“Hello.”

Silence.

“Who is it please?”

Silence.

Heavy breathing.

I chuckle to myself.

“Bridget?”

More heavy breathing.

“How are you Bridget? Did you receive my Christmas card?”

Heavy breathing.

I smile to myself. “It’s nice to hear from you. Listen, I’m just in the middle of putting out the things for the book club. But do call back, won’t you?”

I hang up, genuinely pleased to hear from her.

Yes, I’d let Bridget live. She had no evidence, and she was a little unhinged so I didn’t think anyone would believe any story she decided to tell. Plus, the fact that her and Richie had stalked me for years and cooked up a bizarre plan to kill me didn’t exactly give her believability credentials. As I’d sat on top of her with the knife at her throat, I saw prey, not a hunter. She didn’t have it in her to take a life. Richie, for all his failings, a bad writer being one of them, did. But I’m pretty happy that I can handle Bridget. She still likes to call, and I like to listen to her. Sometimes I think I can hear the hatred seeping through the silence. I’m not going to lie; it gives me a thrill.

THE END

* * *

I hope you enjoyed this short, suspenseful read! Right now, you can claim a free novella when you sign up to my mailing list!

If you’re wondering what to read next, LITTLE ONE is a gripping, standalone psychological thriller. Fran finds a seven-year-old girl alone in the early hours of the morning. But it’s when she reunites the child with her family that things take a strange turn…

Welcome to Liars Island… a stand-alone series of interconnected, novella length domestic thrillers set in the picture-perfect community of Liars Island. Here, nothing is quite as it seems.

On this island, families and friendships are more than meets the eye … secrets, deceptions, and jealousies threaten to ruin everything these influential people have built. But it isn’t only the rich that live here … and power comes in all shapes and sizes. Everyone here is a liar … just how far would you go to get what you want?

Read more in the series! https://liarsislandsuspense.com/

About the Author

Sarah A. Denzil is a British suspense writer from Derbyshire. Her books include SILENT CHILD, which has topped Kindle charts in the UK, US, and Australia. SAVING APRIL and THE BROKEN ONES are both top thirty bestsellers in the US and UK Amazon charts.

Combined, her self-published and published books, along with audiobooks and foreign translations, have sold over one million copies worldwide.

Sarah lives in Yorkshire with her husband, enjoying the scenic countryside and rather unpredictable weather. She loves to write moody, psychological books with plenty of twists and turns.

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Writing as Sarah Dalton - http://www.sarahdaltonbooks.com/