ONE IN THREE
Tess Stimson
Copyright
Published by AVON
A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2020
Copyright © Tess Stimson 2020
Cover design by Caroline Young © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020
Cover photographs: Woman © Mauritius Images / Ingrid Amenda; Background © Lyn Randle / Trevillion Images
Tess Stimson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of 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, down-loaded, 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.
Source ISBN: 9780008299279
Ebook Edition © August 2020 ISBN: 9780008408459
Version: 2020-07-01
Praise for The Mother
‘Dark. Twisty. Addictive. I couldn’t put it down’
Lisa Jewell
‘More chilling than Gone Girl and twistier than The Girl on the Train, this emotional, raw, dark family drama keeps you guessing until the end’
Jane Green
‘Truly gripping: the opening is heart-breaking and it never lets up, all the way to a genuinely shocking denouement’
Alex Lake
‘Such a gripping, fast-paced book. I just couldn’t put it down and read it within a day!’
Short Book and Scribes
‘An edge-of-your-seat-wondering-what-is-going-on great thriller!’
Reader Review
‘A must-read for all psychological thriller fans!’
Reader Review
‘WOW! I could not put this down. The writing is superb’
Reader Review
Dedication
For Barbi,
My Wicked-Cool Stepmother
Who’d have thought I’d get so lucky twice?
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Praise for The Mother
Dedication
Chapter 1: The Present
Seven weeks before the party
Chapter 2: Louise
Chapter 3: Caz
Chapter 4: Louise
Chapter 5: Caz
Six weeks before the party
Chapter 6: Min
Chapter 7: Louise
Chapter 8: Caz
Chapter 9: Louise
Chapter 10: Caz
Five weeks before the party
Chapter 11: Louise
Chapter 12: Caz
Chapter 13: Louise
Chapter 14: Caz
Four weeks before the party
Chapter 15: Louise
Chapter 16: Caz
Chapter 17: Min
Chapter 18: Louise
Chapter 19: Caz
Chapter 20: Louise
Three weeks before the party
Chapter 21: Caz
Chapter 22: Louise
Two weeks before the party
Chapter 23: Caz
Chapter 24: Louise
Chapter 25: Caz
Chapter 26: Louise
Chapter 27: Caz
Chapter 28: Min
One week before the party
Chapter 29: Louise
Five days before the party
Chapter 30: Caz
Chapter 31: Louise
Chapter 32: Caz
Chapter 33: Louise
Four days before the party
Chapter 34: Caz
Chapter 35: Louise
Chapter 36: Caz
Three days before the party
Chapter 37: Louise
Chapter 38: Caz
Two days before the party
Chapter 39: Louise
The day before the party
Chapter 40: Min
Chapter 41: Caz
Chapter 42: Louise
The day of the party
Chapter 43: Caz
Five months later
Chapter 44: Louise
Chapter 45: Celia
Acknowledgements
Keep Reading …
About the Author
About the Publisher
Chapter 1
The Present
His blood is all over both of us. Arterial blood, bright with oxygen. My shirt is drenched in it. It’s in my mouth, in my nostrils; I breathe it in, I taste it. Salty and metallic, as if I’ve licked a rusty metal railing.
I rock back on my heels and push the hair out of my eyes. Our mortal struggle has left us both panting, gasping for breath. Ten feet away from me, she manoeuvres herself into a half-seated position, her left arm hanging uselessly at her side.
The knife lies in a glistening ruby pool between us. I don’t take my eyes off her for a single second. Her gaze slides towards the blade, and then back to me.
My phone is out of reach, in my bag by the door. There’s no use calling for an ambulance, anyway. He’s dead. No one can lose that much blood and survive.
There are shouts outside. Running feet. The Beach House is set away from the main hotel, but sound carries across water. Someone heard the screaming. Help is coming.
I see her realise it too. Cradling her dislocated arm, she turns quickly towards the open terrace door, weighing up her chances. It’s only one floor up, there’s soft sand below, but the tide is coming in, cutting off the causeway, and she’s in no condition to scramble up the treacherous cliff steps. She’s running out of time, anyway; the voices are right outside the door.
She looks at me, and gives a small shrug, win some, lose some, then leans back against the edge of the sofa, and closes her eyes.
The hubbub outside intensifies. The door shudders, and then splinters. Two men spill into the room, a press of white faces behind them. I see the shock in their eyes as the gory scene registers. One of them turns and shuts the door, but not before a mobile phone flashes in the crowd.
Now perhaps everyone will finally believe me.
CELIA MAY ROBERTS
PART 1 OF RECORDED INTERVIEW
Date:- 25/07/2020
Duration:- 41 Minutes
Location:- Burgh Island Hotel
Conducted by Officers from Devon & Cornwall Police
POLICE
This interview is being recorded. I am Detective Inspector John Garrett and I’m the Senior Investigating Officer of the Major Crime Team investigating the violent death of Andrew Page at the Burgh Island Hotel earlier today. The date is Saturday the twenty-fifth of July 2020, and the time by my watch is 3.40 in the afternoon. What’s your full name?
CR
Celia May Roberts.
POLICE
Thank you. And can you confirm your date of birth for me?
CR
I don’t see how that’s relevant.
POLICE
Just for the record, Mrs Roberts.
CR
The fourteenth of February, 1952.
POLICE
Thank you—
CR
Anything else you’d like to know about me? My shoe size? My star sign? I didn’t kill my son-in-law. Instead of wasting your time with me, you should be—
POLICE
Mrs Roberts, I’m not being rude, stopping you there, but it’s just important that I get the introduction bit done, so sorry to interrupt you.
CR
(Inaudible.)
POLICE
I realise this must be very upsetting for you, Mrs Roberts. Would you like a cup of tea before we continue?
CR
No, thank you. [Pause.] I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude. It’s just … we all loved Andrew very much. I can’t take any of this in.
POLICE
It’s all right, Mrs Roberts. We can stop at any time.
CR
I think I’d rather just get this out of the way, so I can be with my daughter and grandchildren.
POLICE
Right, then. Also present with me is …
POLICE
Detective Sergeant Anna Perry.
POLICE
Mrs Roberts, I know this is difficult, but if you could tell us what—
CR
Caroline killed him.
POLICE
You’re referring to his current wife, Mrs Caroline Page?
CR
Yes.
POLICE
Did you actually witness—
CR
I saw that woman standing right beside him, literally red-handed. There was blood everywhere. You should be arresting—
POLICE
Was anyone else there?
CR
My daughter, but—
POLICE
Your daughter being Louise Page? Mr Page’s ex-wife?
CR
Yes.
POLICE
What was she doing when you arrived?
CR
She was on the floor with Andrew. She had his head in her lap.
POLICE
So, just to be clear, Mrs Roberts. You didn’t actually see Caroline Page stab her husband. And no one else was there, other than your daughter and Mrs Page? You didn’t see anyone else go in or out of the Beach House?
CR
There were a couple of groundsmen outside, keeping everyone from going in. And of course a lot of people got there around the same time I did. We all heard the screaming – you could hear it halfway round the island. Min was there, and my son, Luke—
POLICE
But no one else was actually in the Beach House when you arrived, other than the two women?
CR
I told you, Caroline—
If we could just stick to what you actually saw, Mrs Roberts. [Pause.] Perhaps we could go back to why you were all at the Burgh Island Hotel in the first place?
CR
[Pause.] My husband and I were celebrating our golden wedding anniversary.
POLICE
Congratulations.
CR
Thank you.
POLICE
So you’d organised a bit of a family get-together?
CR
Yes, we’d been planning it since last summer.
POLICE
And whose idea was it to invite your former son-in-law?
CR
Andrew is part of the family. It went without saying.
POLICE
You invited his new wife, too? How did your daughter feel about that?
CR
They’ve been divorced four years. This wasn’t the first time they’ve socialised together. We all had dinner together a couple of weeks ago, after the children’s school play. Louise is tougher than she looks.
POLICE
According to your daughter-in-law – Min, is it? She tells us she and your son, Luke, begged you not to invite Mr Page and his wife.
CR
Louise told me she didn’t mind.
POLICE
Mrs Roberts, this was a bit more than bumping into one another at a school play, wasn’t it? A whole weekend on an island at a private family celebration with the woman who’d run off, sorry, with her husband. Emotions must have been running high, surely?
CR
I told you, Louise wanted Caroline to come.
POLICE
Even though the police were called last month over an altercation between them?
CR
Louise said she wanted to bury the hatchet, for the children’s sake.
POLICE
You didn’t think there might be another reason she wanted her ex-husband and his wife there?
CR
Like what?
POLICE
Well, that’s what we’re trying to establish, Mrs Roberts. [Pause.] Did you have another reason for inviting Caroline Page and her husband, Mrs Roberts?
CR
(Inaudible.)
POLICE
Mrs Roberts?
CR
For heaven’s sake. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, isn’t it, Inspector?
Seven weeks before the party
Chapter 2
Louise
Everyone in the family receives a formal invitation to my mother’s party. Thick vellum, Edwardian script, raised lettering, the works. Bella puts ours in pride of place on the kitchen mantelpiece, propped against the clay dog she made Andrew for Father’s Day the year she turned five. He took the dog into work and showed it off to everyone, convinced she was some kind of artistic prodigy. He didn’t take it with him seven years later when he left.
The embossed script follows me around the kitchen like the eyes of the Mona Lisa. I ignore it as I empty the dishwasher, opening cabinets and closing drawers with practised rhythm, finding comfort in the precise alignment of mugs, the orderly nesting of bowls, the military conformity of knives and forks and spoons in their segregated compartments. Everything in its place.
Everything but me.
Bagpuss winds his way around my ankles, impatient for his breakfast. I tip some dry kibble into his bowl, all he can keep down these days, and scratch him affectionately behind the ears. ‘Here you go, Bags. Don’t eat it too fast.’
The cat bends arthritically to his food, as old and saggy as his pink-and-white-striped namesake. I refill his water bowl, make myself a cup of tea and go outside. The air smells clean after last night’s much-needed rain, but already it promises to be another warm day, unusually muggy for June. Curling up in the wicker beehive chair, which hangs from the apple tree, I tuck one foot under my bottom, and push the ground with the other. I used to hate mornings before Bella and Tolly were born, but these days I treasure this precious half-hour of peace before the world wakes up. I lean back and close my eyes. It is the only time that’s truly my own.
The invitation has unsettled me more than I care to admit. My mother has sent one to Andrew and Caz, too, even though I begged her not to; now I will have to face them on my home turf, in the heart of my family.
Somehow I weathered their wedding day four years ago, energetically scouring out my kitchen cabinets as I imagined them taking their vows, scrubbing the bathroom floor as I pictured them cutting the cake, forcing the blunt lawnmower through six inches of grass as I envisioned them stepping onto the dance floor for their first dance as a married couple. Since then, I’ve learned the hard way to accept their presence together at school plays and sports days; I’ve built up a tough shell to protect myself. But this is different.
Maybe it’s because it’s my parents’ golden wedding anniversary, a milestone I dreamed of reaching with Andrew. Perhaps it’s because Mum was the last holdout against Caz; the invitation finally brings her in from the cold. Or maybe I just need to get more sleep. I was up till two this morning marking my media students’ end-of-term exams. I’d have finished more quickly if I’d let the misspellings and bad grammar go, but even though I may have fallen from the lofty heights of a weekly Fleet Street column, I still have standards.
&nb
sp; The sun breaches the horizon, a golden band of light falling across my face. Andrew was right, I think, as I open my eyes and gaze across the rolling downs. Despite my initial doubts, I have come to love it here.
I can still see him standing on the low stone garden wall the day we first viewed the house nearly seventeen years ago, his arms spread wide, a joyous expression on his face as he animatedly painted a picture of our life here. Somewhere for our new baby daughter to grow up safe and happy, with the wind in her hair and grass between her toes. I was so reluctant to leave London back then; not because of my column at the Daily Post, which I could have written from anywhere, but because the city made me feel alive, plugged in, as if the world was at my fingertips. I hated the thought of giving it all up to live in a crumbling money pit in the middle of nowhere. But Andrew had wanted it so much, and in those days I would have given him anything he asked. It’d never occurred to me then I’d end up living here without him.
My phone buzzes in my dressing-gown pocket, making me jump. I pull it out and swipe right, and my sister-in-law’s face appears on the screen. ‘Going to bed or getting up?’ I ask, climbing out of the beehive chair and letting myself back into the kitchen.
‘Just finished a double shift at the hospital,’ Min says. ‘Got home a few minutes ago.’
She looks as fresh as if she’s just come back from a fortnight in Hawaii. At forty-seven, she’s only four years older than me, but judging from the tiny FaceTime inset, I could pass for her mother. My mousy hair urgently needs some highlights, and my muddy blue eyes are shadowed. ‘Quiet night?’ I ask, propping my phone on the kitchen counter.