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‘I don’t actually. I have no idea. I have loved you for over a year and it’s been really quite painful and a bit sad. But it’s fine. Honestly. It’s fine.’
‘You’re joking? Why didn’t you… Ah, Naomi. Fuck.’ He pushed a hand through his hair. ‘But when we… That time ages ago when I came over for dinner and we spoke about… you know, and you said you were through with men. I thought…’
I did. I did say that at one point.
‘I was,’ I said. ‘But I could never be through with you. Oh my God, please tell me I didn’t say that out loud? Oh dear God. I’m sorry. Really, I apologise. I think someone must’ve spiked my coffee flask with cheese pills.’
But he laughed, a real ha-ha-ha laugh, and I laughed too, and then he pulled me by the waist of my cagoule and kissed me on the mouth – so hard I almost tripped on a tree root.
And that was the moment when this went from being the story of my friend Sam Moore and how he came to be found underground to the story of Sam Moore and how he came to be my almost boyfriend pending his recovery from the loss of a family that was never his and, oh, the annulment of his marriage to the murderer of his grandmother – you know, the classic girl-meets-boy scenario. We have had that one kiss. We hold hands. Actually, we hold hands alot,and when we sit together, there is not a wafer between us.But we are not, officially, an item. We need to wait, I have told him. Above all else, he needs time. He needs to get better, and then we’ll see what we have. And while I’m not the most confident in affairs of the heart, I know without any doubt that I can give him a life as free from conditions, mind games and manipulation as it’s possible to be, and hopefully help him to be happy. So much has been lost. Sam and I are like a lot of people right now – striving to pick up the pieces and each other again, to lick our wounds and crack on. It is all any of us can do, I suppose.
* * *
If you were gripped by Sam and Naomi's story and found yourself reading all night to decide whose side you were on, you’ll loveThe Housewarming. A year after a child disappears, a party turns everything her mother thought she knew upside down, in S.E. Lynes’s totally absorbing and shocking psychological thriller.
Get it here or keep reading for an exclusive
extract!
THE HOUSEWARMING
A COMPLETELY UNPUTDOWNABLE PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER WITH A SHOCKING TWIST
Everyone has something to hide
CHAPTER 1
AVA
When I think about that morning, it is beat by beat, like a heart – my own heart, my daughter’s, at the time so enmeshed it seemed she was part of me: my body, my tissue, my bones. She is part of me. She will always be part of me.
When I think about that morning, I watch myself, over and over, as if from above. I watch myself like you watch your children in a school play or a sports match, silently willing them to succeed, to shine, to not get hurt. I watch myself bleeding on the sidelines of slowly unfolding disaster, alive with the pain I know is coming but she, the me of that moment, does not.
I do this every minute of every hour of every day. And I have done this for almost a year.
I watch myself: there I am, making my way down the stairs with an armful of laundry. I can’t see over the top. I take it slowly, both feet on one step before I lower myself to the next. Another step down, another. I am always so careful these days. I used to be carefree, but now I see danger everywhere: an electric socket is a hazard, a glass left too near the edge of a tabletop risky, a staircase perilous.
Another step. I call her name. Abi.
‘Mummy’s coming,’ I say.
I say, ‘Mummy’s just going to pop a wash on and then we’ll go and feed the ducks.’
I say, ‘You’ve been such a good girl, waiting nicely like that.’
I’ve always chatted away to her – from the moment she was born. At two, she loves the sound of me prattling on.
Loves. Loved.
‘Mummy,’ she would say. She would hold my face in her tiny hands.
‘What?’
‘My love you.’
‘I love you too, little monkey.’
I would push the end of her nose, make a honking sound. She would throw back her head, helpless with giggles.
