The Woman in the Dark Read online

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 by Vanessa Savage

  Cover design by Blanca Aulet. Cover photographs by Getty Image: © Jitalia17/E+; © Ray Massey/Photographer’s Choice. Photo illustration and photography by Scott Nobles. Cover copyright © 2019 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

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  Originally published in 2019 by Sphere in the United Kingdom

  First ebook edition: March 2019

  Grand Central Publishing is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Grand Central Publishing name and logo is a trademark of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

  ISBNs: 978-1-5387-1429-4 (hardcover), 978-1-5387-3009-6 (ebook)

  E3-20190115-DA

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Part 1—Before: January 2017: SARAH CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  Part 2—The Murder House CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  Part 3—Waking Up CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  Part 4—The Dragon in the Man Suit CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  SARAH AND PATRICK—2000

  CHAPTER 37

  SARAH AND PATRICK—2000

  CHAPTER 38

  ANNA

  SARAH AND PATRICK—2000

  CHAPTER 39

  SARAH AND PATRICK—2000

  SARAH, ANNA, PATRICK, AND JOE—NOW

  ANNA

  SARAH

  About The Author

  Newsletters

  Headline from the Western Mail, May 2017:

  Two More Bodies Found

  in the Murder House

  It’s been so long since you lived here, and everything and nothing in this town has changed. The graffiti is dirtier, darker, the rot more deep-seated, a smell that lingers, a pus-stained bandage, a red streak of infection meandering away from the rotting heart of it.

  This house has always been the entry wound, sealing in the infection so it spreads under the surface, hidden, insidious, swelling and killing the healthy flesh around it. And you. You at the center: the dirty needle, the rusty knife, the cause, and the result.

  In my dream, the one I told you about, the dream I have where the house is still just a house and not yet the Murder House, all the rooms on the landing have doors and all the doors are closed. They’re always closed. But last night, the dream changed. This time, the corridor was longer and there was a new door at the end. And instead of running, as I always do, from the dragon in the man suit, half falling in that world-tipping way of dreams and thinking I’ll never get to the end, this time I knew I would make it.

  But I don’t want to anymore. There’s a door at the end that shouldn’t be there. There’s another door and this one is open.

  Part 1—Before

  January 2017

  SARAH

  CHAPTER 1

  “Happy anniversary, Sarah.”

  When I open my eyes, Patrick is next to the bed holding a gift-wrapped box. He’s already dressed and I glance at the clock—eight a.m. Oh, God—the kids, Patrick’s breakfast. I should have been up an hour ago.

  “Relax,” he says, sitting down. He pushes my hair out of my face and bends to kiss my forehead, smiling into my eyes as he does so. “Mia and Joe have already left for school. You stay in bed.” He holds out the box and I sit up, pulling the quilt to cover me.

  I look at the gift. The paper is silver and shiny, its creases sharp and perfect on the edges, curling silver ribbon tied on the top in an elaborate bow. “But it’s not…”

  “Not a real anniversary, no. This one is more important.” He lifts my hand and kisses it. He turns it over, kisses my palm, then up to my wrist.

  My mind is scrabbling for the date, but then I remember and relax: January 21, the date we first met.

  “Open it,” he says, pushing the box into my hand. My fingers fumble over the ribbons and he laughs and helps me, tearing off the paper and lifting the lid of the box.

  It’s a CD. I lift it out, frowning, then see what it is and the frown fades. That old Verve album I loved so much. On the track listing, “Bitter Sweet Symphony” is right there at the top.

  “Do you remember?”

  Of course I do. I close my eyes and I’m back at that student party: a dark, smoke-filled room, carpet sticky with cheap booze, all of us drunk, a tangle of teenagers sprawled on the floor, passing bottles. Then “Bitter Sweet Symphony” comes on and this man, this ridiculously out-of-place man in a suit, comes over and asks me to dance. All that noise and all those people, no one else dancing, and he twirls me around like we’re in some grand ballroom.

  “I thought we could dance to it tonight,” he says. “You can dust off your Doc Martens and I’ll soak the carpet with cheap rum.”

  He kisses me again and this time he lingers. I can smell his aftershave, the spicy, heady scent he’s always worn. I can taste coffee on his lips, feel the rough brush of his cheek against mine. I’m half-asleep and groggy and I can’t remember how long it’s been: weeks? Months, even? How long since we had sleepy morning sex, slow and languid, quiet because of the children? I reach up to pull him closer, but he moves away, letting in the cold.

  “Stay,” I whisper.

  “I have to go to work. Tonight, though… we’ll go to dinner tonight—somewhere special. Just the two of us,” he says, back to Patrick all grown-up, buttoned behind a suit, not the Patrick who lay on that booze-soaked carpet, laughing as I danced around him. But it’s all still there, isn’t it? That Patrick, that Sarah? In the curve of his smile, his soft laugh, the way he looks at me as the quilt slips down. All still there, just muffled by the day-to-day.

  “Stay,” I say again, pulling him closer and sliding his jacket off his shoulders.

 
He laughs and begins nuzzling my neck. “You’re terrible, Mrs. Walker…”

  When he leaves the bedroom, I fall back onto the pillows, closing my eyes, a smile on my face. I could sleep, sneak another hour before facing the day. But Patrick’s calling me from downstairs. I get up and reach for the threadbare dressing gown hanging on the back of the door. Patrick always teases me about this ratty old thing: he bought me a new, thick, luxurious one I never wear because my mother gave me this a million years ago when I left home. I’ve worn it ever since and I’ll wear it until it falls apart because I have so little left to remind me of her.

  Patrick is in the hall, holding up an envelope. “When did this come?”

  I feel a flash of guilt. I remember the letter. It arrived the other day, handwritten, addressed to Patrick. I picked it up off the mat, but instead of giving it to him, I stuffed it into the drawer because it’s handwritten, because the handwriting is feminine.

  “Sorry,” I say. “I must have put it in the drawer instead of on the top.”

  I watch him stare down at the letter. I’m ready to apologize again as I go down the stairs, but when I see Patrick’s face, I stop. I recognize angry and he’s not angry. I don’t know what this is.

  “What?” I ask, and when he looks at me, his eyes are burning and full, like he might cry, and there are spots of red on his cheeks.

  He glances at the letter once more, then pushes it into his coat pocket. “It’s nothing. Nothing important.”

  It is, though. I’ve never seen Patrick look like that before: fear chasing elation chasing… something. Or have I? I have, I think. Once.

  Caroline’s text comes through half an hour after Patrick leaves, and she’s knocking at the door ten minutes later, two steaming paper cups in her hands and a stack of travel brochures under her arm. “Cappuccino delivery,” she says.

  “You look disgustingly awake,” I say, opening the door wider and pushing my hand through my tangled hair. It’s only nine thirty, but Caroline looks like she’s been up for hours, fully made-up, hair sleek and shiny.

  “It’s a gorgeous day out there—cold, but gorgeous,” she says as she follows me through to the kitchen. “We’re going for a walk after I’ve fortified myself with sugar and caffeine.”

  I put down the coffee cup and flip through the brochures. “Thanks for these—I’ve never even considered the Cayman Islands,” I say, pausing on a page of turquoise sea and white sand.

  “Have you chosen where you’re going yet?” Caroline asks, and I sigh.

  “You don’t have to keep doing this, you know.”

  “Doing what? Bringing you coffee?”

  “All of it, turning up every morning, this false-bright Caroline. Up until a few months ago, I don’t think you opened your eyes before midday. But now, you and Patrick, it’s like a relay. He goes, you arrive.”

  Her smile fades. “Yeah, well, up until a few months ago, I never had to worry about you being alone in the house, did I?”

  “You don’t have to worry now.”

  “Don’t I?” she says, going to the cupboard and helping herself to cookies. I shake my head when she offers me one and sit down with my coffee.

  I make a mental note to get rid of the coffee cups before Patrick comes home. He doesn’t know—can’t know—about Caroline’s end of the relay.

  When my best friend moved into a bigger, better house around the corner from us, she announced it by turning up on our doorstep, a bottle of Prosecco in her hand, saying, “Surprise!” Patrick thinks she did it deliberately to wind him up, and although I denied it, I’m sure Caroline took an extra bit of pleasure in the move, knowing how much it would upset him. She’s known him almost as long as I have and, given how much energy they devote to trying to stop me from falling apart again, to keeping me focused on the future, they should be the best of friends. Instead, they’re constantly at each other’s throats.

  But I know their concern comes from a place of love, even their petty squabbles, and if their cotton-wool comfort makes me a little claustrophobic, I won’t forget it got me through the bad times.

  “Are you going to Helen’s book club tonight?”

  “I can’t—Patrick’s taking me out.”

  She raises her eyebrows and gets another cookie out of the jar. “What’s the occasion?”

  I smile. “It’s silly. The anniversary of when we met. He always says that’s our real anniversary because he knew he loved me right away.”

  Caroline shakes her head and laughs, but I don’t. Do you remember? Patrick said, and his words brought it all back. I fell too, the moment we started dancing. Sometimes, now, I forget. Patrick’s right to make it an occasion, to remind us of who we were.

  “Is this Joe’s?” Caroline asks, going over to a small framed pencil drawing I’ve propped up on the counter, ready to go on the wall. Joe, at seventeen, is far more talented than I was at his age. He’s captured Mia in a few bold pencil strokes, sharp, clean edges and soft, smudgy curves. You have to stand back, sneak up on it, squint at it from the corner of your eye to recognize her, but once you see her, it couldn’t be anyone else. It’s like he did it deliberately, tucked his beloved little sister away, hidden on the paper, a constant game of hide-and-seek. He should have done it as a self-portrait.

  “It’s funny, isn’t it,” Caroline says, her acrylic nails tapping on the glass, “how it’s Joe that’s turned out to be the artist?”

  “Funny?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  I step closer to the drawing, trace the edges of Mia’s face. “It’s not about DNA. Mia is my natural daughter and we couldn’t be less alike.”

  “Nature versus nurture?”

  Joe picked up a paintbrush all by himself. I never put it into his hand. But I encourage his talent, of course I do. I don’t need to have given birth to him to do that. I step to the side and the sketch of Mia seems to turn with me. I wonder how he would draw me. Or Patrick.

  “Why haven’t you told him yet? About…” She hesitates “… about him not being yours.” Caroline’s husband is a social worker, and ever since Joe reached adolescence, she keeps advising me on how best to deal with telling him and I keep shying away from it. “Why not just tell him, Sarah? It won’t matter to him, not really. You’re the only mum he’s known. And Patrick is still his father. He’d understand.”

  My stomach lurches and I look around, as I always do, to check that Joe isn’t lurking and hearing those forbidden words.

  Caroline sighs. “I can’t believe you’ve gotten away with it for so long.”

  Me neither. The knot of anxiety grows. What happens if at some point he asks for his birth certificate? Is that what I’m waiting for? For the issue to be forced?

  I touch the glass of the framed drawing. Joe has always been my boy. Mia and I clash all the time, she’s always been Patrick’s little princess, but me and Joe… Caroline’s saying the things that nag at me in the middle of the night. More so since my own mother died and I was reshaped into this new, broken Sarah with a raw wound that just won’t heal. If I tell Joe the truth, I’ll be taking two mothers from him, me and the long-dead Eve. My own loss broke me—what would it do to Joe?

  “I know… I know we have to tell him, I should have before now, but it seemed like the wrong time when he started getting into so much trouble in secondary school,” I say. “All those fights, the bullying…all those bloody teacher-parent meetings where they talked about him seeing some kind of child psychologist. God, Patrick was furious with them. Our sweet little boy was being bullied and they were trying to make out that it was Joe’s problem… I couldn’t throw this on him as well. So I kept up the lie until it became impossible to tell the truth. And it’s not just Joe, is it? How do we explain it to Mia?”

  “Oh, God, Sarah…”

  My throat tightens at the familiar worry in her voice and I swallow to clear it. “Look, his birth mother is dead. She’s not going to come knocking on the door. We will tell him. But
not now. I mean, the accident… he’s not ready.”

  “I could ask Sean to see if any of Eve’s family are on record,” Caroline says. “So when you do tell him, you have the information in case he wants to find them.”

  “No. Don’t. Please don’t. I’m sure if I ever need it, Patrick can give me any information about her.”

  “You’ve always said it’s Patrick doing the stalling, but I’ve always wondered if it’s you who’s more unwilling. Afraid of losing your boy.”

  “Of course I’m afraid. Yes, we’ve both lied, but when it comes down to it, Patrick’s still his father. I’m just the wicked bloody stepmother.”

  “Hardly wicked,” she says, putting her hand over mine and smiling.

  My own hand curls into a fist under hers and I frown. “But is Joe going to see that?”

  “Is he still seeing the therapist?” she asks.

  I shake my head. Patrick ended the sessions. He said they were a waste of time. I argued until Joe stepped up and told me he agreed with his dad. I’ve kept the therapist’s number, though.

  “Is he getting along any better with Patrick?”

  I sigh. “Not really. Not since he crashed the car.”

  Caroline nods, then touches the drawing again. “He’s good.”

  “He wants to go to art college.”

  She looks at me. “Does Patrick know?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Remind me not to be here when that discussion takes place.”

  We go to the park for our walk, coats buttoned to our necks, sunglasses shielding our eyes, Caroline badgering me about where we’re going on our grand family adventure. My answer is, I don’t know. There’s too much else going on, and I can’t quite focus. I think that’s why she keeps asking me, to give me something to hope for.

  The park around us is full of dog-walkers and mums pushing strollers, eager to be out on the first bright day of the year, pale-faced after being shut up indoors through weeks of rain.