The Dilemma
B. A. Paris
Praise for B A Paris:
‘Clever, addictive and twisty, I couldn’t sleep until I found out the truth… The twist floored me! Utterly compelling from beginning to end’
Claire Douglas
‘A tale of dark secrets, with mystery and intrigue building up and up to an ending with a fabulous twist. I devoured it – I couldn’t turn the pages quick enough’
Mel Sherratt
‘This book is compulsive reading from start to finish. A perfectly crafted work of art, seamless and mesmerising. I envy those yet to read it for the pleasure they have in store’
Amanda Robson
‘A cracking page-turner with a killer twist’
Camilla Way
‘An incredibly pacy, heart-pounding thriller – the twist at the end left me reeling. B A Paris does it again in this exhilarating exploration of love, jealousy and betrayal’
Phoebe Morgan
‘AWESOME. That final twist!’
Lisa Hall
‘Great read and OMG that ending’
Annabel Kantaria
‘Utterly brilliant. Couldn’t put it down’
Roz Watkins
‘So dastardly – so devious – so good!’
Kaira Rouda
‘This dark deliciously twisty thriller will keep you guessing till the end’
Mel McGrath
B A PARIS is the internationally bestselling author of Behind Closed Doors, The Breakdown and Bring Me Back. Now approaching 1.5 million copies sold in the UK alone, she is a Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller as well as a number one bestseller on Amazon and iBooks. Her books have sold in 38 languages around the world. Having lived in France for many years, she recently moved back to the UK. She has five daughters.
Also by B A Paris:
Behind Closed Doors
The Breakdown
Bring Me Back
The Dilemma
B A Paris
ONE PLACE. MANY STORIES
Copyright
An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2020
Copyright © BA Paris 2020
BA Paris asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition © January 2020 ISBN: 9780008244910
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Page numbers taken from the following print edition: ISBN 9780008244903
For M, my inspiration for this novel.
I might not have known you, but I’ll never forget you.
Contents
Cover
Praise
About the Author
Booklist
Title Page
Copyright
Note to Readers
Dedication
Livia
Adam
Adam
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Acknowledgements
About the Publisher
SUNDAY 9TH JUNE
3.30 A.M.
Livia
It’s the cooling bathwater that wakes me. Disorientated, I sit up quickly, sploshing suds up the sides, wondering how long I’ve been asleep. I release the plug and the drain gurgles, a too-loud sound in a silent house.
A shiver pricks my skin as I towel myself dry. A memory tugs at my brain. It was a sound that woke me, the roar of a motorbike in the street outside. I pause, the towel stretched over my back. It couldn’t have been Adam, could it? He wouldn’t have gone off on his bike, not at this time of night.
Wrapping the towel around me, I hurry to the bedroom and look out of the window. The guilty beating of my heart slows when I see, behind the marquee, a yellow glow coming from his shed. He’s there, he hasn’t gone to settle scores. Part of me wants to go down and check he’s alright but something, a sixth sense perhaps, tells me not to, that he’ll come to me when he’s ready. For a moment I feel afraid, as if I’m staring into an abyss. But it’s just the dark and the deserted garden that’s making me feel that way.
Turning from the window, I lie down on the bed. I’ll give him another ten minutes and if he’s not back by then, I’ll go and find him.
Adam
I race along deserted streets, scattering a scavenging cat, cutting a corner too tight, shattering the night’s deathly silence with the roar of my bike. Ahead of me, the slip road to the M4 looms. I open the throttle and take it fast, screaming onto the motorway, slicing in front of a crawling car. My bike shifts under me as I push faster.
The drag of the wind on my face is intoxicating and I have to fight an overwhelming urge to let go of the handlebars and freefall to my death. Is it terrible that Livia and Josh aren’t enough to make me want to live? Guilt adds itself to the torment of the last fourteen hours and a roar of white-hot anger adds to the noise of the bike as I race down the motorway, bent on destruction.
Then, in the mirror, through the water streaming from my eyes, I see a car hammering down the motorway behind me, its blue light flashing, and my roar of grief becomes one of frustration. I take the bike to one hundred mph, knowing that if it comes to it I can push it faster, because nothing is going to stop me now. But the police car quickly closes the distance between us, moving swiftly into the outside lane and, as it levels with me, my peripheral vision catches an officer gesticulating wildly from the passenger seat.
<
br /> I add more speed but the car sweeps past and moves into my lane, blocking my bike. I’m about to open the throttle and overtake him, taking my bike to its maximum, but something stops me and he slowly reduces his speed, bringing me in. I’m not sure why I let him. Maybe it’s because I don’t want Livia to have even more pieces to pick up. Or maybe it was Marnie’s voice pleading, ‘Don’t, Dad, don’t!’. I swear I could feel her arms tightening around my waist for a moment, her head pressing against the back of my neck.
My limbs are trembling as I bring the bike to a stop behind the police car and cut the engine. Two officers get out, one male, one female. The male strides towards me.
‘Have you got a death wish or something?’ he yells, slamming his cap onto his head.
The second officer – the driver – approaches. ‘Sir, step away from the bike,’ she barks. ‘Sir, did you hear me? Step away from the bike.’
I try to unfurl my hands from the handlebars, unstick my legs from the bike. But I seem to be welded to it.
‘Sir, if you don’t comply, I’m going to have to arrest you.’
‘We’re going to have to arrest him anyway,’ the first officer says. He takes a step towards me and the sight of handcuffs dangling from his belt shocks me into speech.
I flip up my helmet. ‘Wait!’
There must be something in my voice, or maybe they read something in my face, because both police officers pause.
‘Go on.’
‘It’s about Marnie.’
‘Marnie?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who’s Marnie?’
‘My daughter.’ I swallow painfully. ‘Marnie’s my daughter.’
They exchange a glance. ‘Where is your daughter, sir?’
THE DAY BEFORE
SATURDAY 8TH JUNE
8 A.M. – 9 A.M.
Adam
Leaving Livia sleeping, I move from the bed and stretch quietly in the warm air coming through the open window. I stifle a yawn and check the sky; not a single sullen raincloud in sight. Liv will be pleased. The weather is just about the only thing she hasn’t been able to control for her party tonight. She’s been on top of everything else for months, wanting it to be perfect. But the relentless rain of the last few weekends was beginning to get her down.
I watch the steady rise and fall of her chest as she sleeps, the tiny flicker of her eyelids. She looks so peaceful that I decide not to wake her until I’ve made coffee. I find the clothes I was wearing last night and pull on my jeans, flattening my hair as I tug the T-shirt over my head.
The stairs creak as I go down to the kitchen and Murphy, our red merle Australian Shepherd, raises his head from where he sleeps in his basket by the wood-burning stove. I crouch next to him for a minute, asking him how he is and if he had a good sleep, and tell him that mine was disturbed by a nightmare. He gives my hand a sympathetic lick, then puts his head back down, ready to sleep the rest of the day away. He’s fifteen now and not as energetic as he used to be, which is just as well because neither am I. He loves his daily walk but the days of our long runs together are a thing of the past.
Mimi, Marnie’s marmalade cat, who acts as if she’s a purebred pedigree and is anything but, uncurls herself and comes to brush against my leg, reminding me that she exists too. I fill their bowls, then the kettle. As I switch it on, the splutter of water connecting to heat disturbs the silence. I look out of the window at the huge white marquee, crouched on the lawn like a malevolent beast, ready to leap onto the terrace and swallow the house. I remember now, the nightmare that woke me. I dreamt the marquee had blown away. I pull it from my memory – that’s it, I’d been standing on the lawn with Josh and Marnie when the wind began to pick up, and the gentle rustling of the trees became a sinister hissing, then a deafening roar that ripped the leaves from the branches and tossed them into the air, dragging the fairy lights with them into the vortex.
‘The tent!’ Josh had cried, as the wind turned its fury on the marquee. And before I could stop her, Marnie was running towards it and had grabbed at one of the flaps.
‘Marnie, let go!’ I’d yelled. But the wind caught my words and whipped them away so that she couldn’t hear, and the marquee had carried her high into the sky until we could no longer see her.
Liv will laugh when I tell her – it turns out she’s not the only one feeling the pressure of the party. I move restlessly from the window and give my body another stretch, my fingertips brushing the ceiling of our old cottage as I raise my arms above my head. I’m not quite sure when Josh overtook me in height, but he’s been able to lay his palms flat on the ceiling for a while now.
His rucksack is where he left it, dumped at the end of the table along with two plastic bags. I move them onto the floor and run a critical eye over the table. It was one of my earliest pieces, a simple structure of varnished pine that I’d tried to make different by reinforcing the legs with a bridge-like structure, a nod to the dream I once had of becoming a civil engineer. At first, Livia hadn’t liked the lack of space underneath. Now, she loves to sit on the cushioned bench-seat, her feet resting on one of the beams, her body curved back against the wall.
The kettle clicks off. I fill the cafetière and leaving it to brew, unlock the door to the garden. The noise disturbs a male blackbird sitting in a nearby bush. There’s a panicked flapping of wings, and as I watch him soar into the sky, I’m reminded that Marnie is on her way home.
Smiling at the thought of seeing her again, because nine months is a long time, I walk across the terrace and climb the five craggy steps, enjoying the feel of rough stone against the soles of my feet, followed by dewy grass as I cross the lawn. The morning air smells of a damp mulch I can’t quite place, something to do with Livia’s roses. There’s a huge bed of them, on the right-hand side of the garden, in front of the wooden fence and as I walk by, I catch the incredible scent of Sweet Juliet. Or maybe it’s Lady Emma Hamilton. I can never remember which, even though Livia tells me often enough.
I walk around the marquee, checking that it’s properly anchored, in case my nightmare was a premonition of some sort, and see that they’ve taken it so far back it’s practically touching my shed, leaving only the smallest of spaces for me to squeeze through. I know why they’ve done it; they’ve had to leave room for the tables and chairs which will be set up in front of the marquee. But if it’s possible to resent a tent, I’m doing it now.
I sit on the low stone wall that borders the other side of the lawn, opposite the fence, and try to imagine what the garden will look like tonight with a hundred people milling around, lights tangled in the branches of the apple and cherry trees, and balloons just about everywhere. I always knew Livia wanted a big party for her fortieth but I hadn’t realised quite how big until a few months ago, when she began to talk about caterers and marquees and champagne. It had sounded so over the top that I’d laughed.
‘I’m serious, Adam!’ she said indignantly. ‘I want it to be really special.’
‘I know, and it will be. It’s just that it sounds a bit expensive.’
‘Please don’t ruin it before I’ve had a chance to work things out,’ she implored. ‘Anyway, the money isn’t important.’
‘Liv, the money is important,’ I said, wishing I didn’t have to mention it. ‘Josh is going away this summer and Marnie’s in Hong Kong, we have to be careful for a while. You know that.’
She looked at me, and I knew that look. Guilt.
‘What?’ I asked.
‘I’ve been saving,’ she admitted. ‘For the party. I’ve been putting money by for years, not huge amounts, just a little each month. I’m sorry, I should have told you.’
‘It’s fine,’ I said, wondering if the reason she hadn’t told me was because of the time I spent her savings on a motorbike. It still makes me cringe even though it happened years ago, before Marnie was born.
The thought of Marnie jogs my memory. I make my way back to the house and, stepping over Mimi, who always manages to get
under my feet, find my mobile where I left it charging last night, tucked next to the bread bin. As I was hoping, there’s a message from her.
‘Dad, you’re not going to believe it – my flight’s been delayed so I’m not going to make my connection in Cairo. Which means I’ll get to Amsterdam too late for my connection to London. It sucks but don’t worry, I’ll get there somehow. Maybe they’ll put me on a direct flight and I’ll be there earlier than we thought! I’ll text when I arrive at Heathrow. Love you xxx’
Damn. I love Marnie’s optimism but I doubt they’ll put her on a direct flight to London. They’ll probably make her wait in Cairo for the next available flight to Amsterdam. Not for the first time, I wonder why I agreed to her taking such a roundabout way to get here.
When she began planning her party, the one thing Livia never imagined was that Marnie might not be there. We’ve always known the date of the party, so the first thing Marnie did when she knew she was going to be studying in Hong Kong this year was check when she had exams. But then the dates changed.
‘I now have exams on the third, fourth and fifth of June and then again on the thirteenth and fourteenth,’ she said, her face flushed with frustration when she FaceTimed us back in January. ‘I can’t believe I’m going to miss the party.’
‘What if I move it to the fifteenth?’ Liv asked.
‘I still wouldn’t be able to get there in time, not with the time difference.’
‘Or the twenty-second?’
‘No, because then Josh wouldn’t be there. That’s the date he’s leaving for New York, remember? He chose it to fit in with your party. He’s already got his ticket so he won’t be able to change it. I’m really sorry, Mum, I wish there was something I could do. But there isn’t.’
We spent hours trying to find a way around it, but in the end, we had to accept that Marnie wouldn’t be at the party. It was a huge blow for Liv. She wanted to cancel the party and use the money to buy flights to Hong Kong, and celebrate her birthday there. But Marnie wouldn’t let her.
