I'll Never Tell, page 1
Praise for Philippa East
‘Another solid psychological thriller … Fully developed characters who behave realistically complement the twisty plot. East is a writer to watch.’
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
‘An engrossing, twisty tale.’
NELL PATTISON
‘Taut, tantalizing suspense … Safe and Sound is gripping, spellbinding, and completely addictive.’
SAMANTHA M. BAILEY
‘A thought-provoking thriller.’
HEAT
‘A clever and gripping psychological thriller … It draws the reader into the character’s mind and onwards to a startling conclusion.’
JENNY QUINTANA
‘Breathtaking suspense. A phenomenal talent.’
HOLLY SEDDON
‘An addictive and gripping read which kept me obsessively turning the pages; it is heart-breaking in its conclusion and packed with complex characters who stayed with me for days.’
LOUISE MUMFORD
‘Terrifically engaging.’
JO SPAIN
‘Captivating and heartbreaking. An emotional family drama filled with twists and turns that will keep you guessing until the end.’
LAURE VAN RENSBURG
‘Addictive. I couldn’t put it down.’
PHOEBE MORGAN
‘Atmospheric, page-turning … Combining heart-rending sensitivity with sock-it-to-’em twists.’
HELEN MONKS TAKHAR
‘Tense.’
ARAMINTA HALL
‘Elegantly written with an effective blend of suspense and psychological insight. An extremely gripping read.’
MELANIE GOLDING
‘Heart-breakingly realistic.’
GYTHA LODGE
‘Such an original plot; a heart-breaking exploration of mental illness, loneliness and obsession, with characters who will stay with you long after you’ve read the final page.’
JACKIE KABLER
‘Compelling and beautifully written.’
DEBBIE HOWELLS
‘This emotional, twisty plot leads to a satisfyingly spellbinding end.’
CANDIS
‘A brilliant portrayal of the chasm that often exists between the reality of our lives and how we portray ourselves. It drew me in from the first chapter and had me hooked until the end!’
NIKKI SMITH
‘Engrossing and affecting … Beautifully written.’
ROZ WATKINS
‘Philippa East has somehow maintained a real sense of foreboding throughout but at the same time there’s a genuine poignancy in the fears that beset almost all the characters.’
TREVOR WOOD
PHILIPPA EAST grew up in Scotland and originally studied Psychology and Philosophy at the University of Oxford. After graduating, she moved to London to train as a Clinical Psychologist and worked in NHS mental health services for over ten years.
Her debut novel Little White Lies was longlisted for the Guardian’s ‘Not The Booker’ prize and shortlisted for the CWA John Creasy New Blood Dagger. Her second psychological suspense novel Safe and Sound is out now, and she is currently working on her fourth. Philippa now lives in the beautiful Lincolnshire countryside with her spouse and cat. Alongside her writing, Philippa continues to work as a psychologist and therapist. You can find her on Twitter: @philippa_east.
Also By Philippa East
Little White Lies
Safe and Sound
Copyright
An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2023
Copyright © Philippa East 2023
Philippa East 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 2023 ISBN: 9780008455804
Version 2022-11-24
Note to Readers
This ebook contains the following accessibility features which, if supported by your device, can be accessed via your ereader/accessibility settings:
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Page numbers taken from the following print edition: ISBN 9780008455781
To the D20 Authors and to Laure Van Rensburg
who contributed mightily to the salvage operation
Contents
Cover
Praise
About the Author
Booklist
Title Page
Copyright
Note to Readers
Dedication
Chapter 1: Julia
Chapter 2: Paul
Chapter 3: Paul
Chapter 4: Paul
Chapter 5: Julia
Chapter 6: Paul
Chapter 7: Paul
Chapter 8: Paul
Chapter 9: Paul
Chapter 10: Julia
Chapter 11: Paul
Chapter 12: Paul
Chapter 13: Julia
Chapter 14: Paul
Chapter 15: Paul
Chapter 16: Paul
Chapter 17: Paul
Chapter 18: Paul
Chapter 19: Julia
Chapter 20: Paul
Chapter 21: Paul
Chapter 22: Paul
Chapter 23: Julia
Chapter 24: Paul
Chapter 25: Julia
Chapter 26: Paul
Chapter 27: Julia
Chapter 28: Paul
Chapter 29: Julia
Chapter 30: Julia
Chapter 31: Julia
Chapter 32: Paul
Chapter 33: Julia
Chapter 34: Julia
Chapter 35: Paul
Chapter 36: Julia
Chapter 37: Paul
Chapter 38: Julia
Chapter 39: Paul
Chapter 40: Paul
Chapter 41: Julia
Chapter 42: Julia
Chapter 43: Paul
Chapter 44: Julia
Chapter 45: Paul
Chapter 46: Julia
Chapter 47: Paul
Chapter 48: Julia
Chapter 49: Julia
Chapter 50: Julia
Acknowledgements
Extract
About the Publisher
Chapter 1
Julia
NOW
The streetlights flash past: orange, black, orange, black, swinging low over the windscreen, over our faces.
It’s fine.
It’s not fine.
It’s fine.
But it’s not.
This car we’re in could skid off the road. Plough into a tree or oncoming traffic. I see us ripping through a crash barrier, causing a ten-car pile-up. I can see us being arrested; I see us breaking our necks.
These thoughts are wild; these thoughts are ridiculous. I’m in a car with my husband, travelling on the well-marked A40 back to Oxford, and we know where she is now: she’s at home, she’s quite safe. There’s nothing to go crazy about; there’s nothing to fear.
Chrissie’s violin case slides around on the back seat, despite the fact that we’ve strapped it in. She left with her rucksack and her coat, but not her instrument – the instrument she loves so much. Another small thing that doesn’t add up. Something she was trying to communicate to us? But what?
Chrissie, I think. Chrissie, Chrissie, Chrissie.
I’m still fumbling to grasp the details of what happened. We searched all over the London concert venue for her, after the fire crew gave us the all-clear. A false alarm, they eventually declared. We had been standing outside for forty-five minutes by then, but split up into different areas: audience on one side of the concert venue, and performers and staff on the other. How were we supposed to know that Chrissie wasn’t there? she timed things so well, making sure she’d been accounted for among the bodies gathered outside before she disappeared.
And she wasn’t back at the hotel either, the place where we’d dropped off our overnight bags earlier and the three of us took the chance to drink a half-cup of tea before the show. There was a big white double bed in that room, with crisp, clean sheets and a deep, comfy mattress. I wanted to climb right into that bed, curl up and sleep for a long time, but Chrissie was jittery – to be honest, we all were, and why wouldn’t we be? In a few hours, our teenage daughter would be standing centre stage, in front of the TV cameras and the live audience and the judges.
And then, after all that build-up, the night, her performance, ended with this?
The seatbelt strains like a garrotte across my neck as I lean forward, craning to see beyond the cats’ eyes and white lines zipping past. Paul, my husband, is in the driver’s seat. He is so reliable. So safe. How much I’ve depended on him over the years, rightly or wrongly. Ten years together, and who would ever have believed where we’re at now?
The seatbelt slides up, pressing where the skin of my jaw is still sensitive, only recently returned to its natural hue.
‘She played so well,’ I say, as though seeking reassurance, fighting to keep the dumb fear from my voice. ‘Didn’t she?’
Paul’s hands tighten on the steering wheel, as though they weren’t already gripping tightly enough. ‘She did, Julia. She was truly brilliant.’
So why this? I want to demand of him, as though he has any better answers than I do. As though he has secrets to reveal of his own. Why did she bolt from the venue when that fire alarm went off? Why do I suspect that she set it off herself? But it makes no sense that she would run off before the winners were announced, when she had every chance of being one of them. Why do that without telling us and without then bothering to answer her phone, but instead sending us and all the staff into such a panic, wasting everyone’s time in searching the Barbican and then the hotel? We had no idea where she was, until eventually Paul turned on the tracker app – the one he had installed on her phone and his after that time at the Botanical Gardens, the one I didn’t know about until tonight – and, lo and behold, turns out of all places she had gone back home. It seemed she just got herself on a train from London, Paddington to Oxford, and left.
So it’s fine, I tell myself. She’s fine. Those images of disaster are all of my own making: because of my own guilt, my own lies.
Black-orange. Paul’s face flashes again in the streetlamps overhead. ‘We’re going to talk to her,’ he says, ‘properly this time. We cannot have her acting like this.’
‘Yes. We will. Of course.’ My stomach instinctively roils at the thought of such a discussion, but if it comes down to it, I will. I’ll listen to everything she has to say. That’s over now, I remind myself. That’s done.
In my lap, my phone blips and I fumble to swipe the message open. Chrissie? But it isn’t her, of course, it’s one of the Young Musician coordinators. Let us know as soon as you’re with her. We’re so sorry about this. Please let us know absolutely anything we can do.
I text back quickly. Thank you. We will.
‘I’m sorry,’ I tell my husband. ‘I’m sorry I haven’t been there.’ Six words that are so incredibly loaded, and I’m saying them now – of all moments – as we speed along in the dark, our daughter having temporarily vanished. But still, I got them out.
Paul gives a nod. I choose to take it to mean, I know.
‘Almost home,’ he says, and the knowledge makes me feel weak with relief. We just have to navigate Oxford’s one-way system and we’ll arrive at our grand, sturdy house on Woodstock Road. For the dozenth time, I check the tracker app on Paul’s phone, seeking to reassure myself yet again. The little pulsing dot hasn’t moved on the map; it’s still hovering exactly over our house. I wish I could zoom so close in to our street, our home, that I could tell exactly which room she’s in. Is it her bedroom or her practice room, our big bright kitchen or our snug? I’d like to be able to zoom in on every square foot of whichever space, and sense exactly what she’s doing right now – lying in bed or fixing herself a snack or throwing herself into yet more practice … Although she couldn’t do that, because her violin is here, on the back seat of the car, with us.
In a moment though, we’ll know for sure.
Paul swings the car into our wide gravel drive. I can hear our dog Jackson barking fit to bust, before either of us even gets out.
Thank God. Thank God. There’s a light on upstairs: in Chrissie’s window, with her bedroom that stretches across one whole end of our house. Leaving the suitcase and her violin in the car for now, I find myself almost shaking with relief as I point up for Paul. ‘Look. She’s in there.’
She really is home. The adrenaline drains from my body, leaving my limbs weak. I wonder whether she walked back from Oxford train station or took a taxi. Either way, she’s probably been back for close to two hours.
Jackson’s barks continue to ricochet from the indoor hallway. I grab Paul’s arm as he puts his hand on the knob of our front door. ‘Calmly,’ I say. ‘We have to go in there calmly. No panic. No shouting at her. We’ll just let her know how worried we’ve been, that’s all.’
My head feels loose on my neck as I speak. Despite my anger and my lingering fear, I know we still have to get this right.
‘No panic,’ Paul echoes. ‘No yelling. You might want to tell that to Jackson, though.’
I give a weak smile and Paul grins back, his joke letting in further ripples of relief.
He puts an arm round me in a brief, forgiving hug as I turn the knob and give the door a shove.
It sticks.
No, it doesn’t stick; this door never sticks. Jackson’s barks escalate.
It’s locked.
‘Have you got your keys?’ I say, calmly, to Paul.
Silently he fishes them from his pocket and neatly slides the right one into the lock. When the door opens, Jackson is all over us.
‘Down, Jackson!’ Paul says to him. ‘Hey, down, boy.’
I fumble for the hallway light switch and click it on, as Paul works to calm Jackson down.
‘She could at least have fed him,’ he says, and I give him an eyebrow raise that reads, what did we just agree? And he holds a hand up to say, okay, I’m sorry, I got it.
‘Why don’t you go up first,’ I say quietly. ‘And I’ll … put the kettle on. I’ll come up in a moment with some tea for her. That way it might feel like less of an ambush.’
We follow Jackson into the kitchen and I switch the kettle on. I listen for any sound of Chrissie moving about upstairs, but our house is so big that noise doesn’t always travel and I can’t hear anything. Paul leaves Jackson with me and heads upstairs. I try to stay calm as I put some fresh biscuits down for him. He doesn’t seem very interested and instead sits on the tiled floor, looking up at me with his big brown eyes.
‘What a nightmare,’ I whisper, drolly crossing my eyes at him to make another joke, as though that might ease the tightness in my chest.
I can hear Paul’s footsteps now, lumbering about upstairs. The kettle’s really going for it now and I hunt in the cupboards for the box of tea, clicking my tongue because Paul’s moved it again in one of his tidy-ups.
The kettle clicks off.
‘Julia.’
I jump, spinning round to find Paul standing there. I didn’t hear him come back down, over the rumble of the water. ‘What is it?’
‘She isn’t here.’
‘What?’ I say. ‘She has to be.’
‘Come and see for yourself if you don’t believe me.’
I feel as though gravity’s pull has doubled as I follow my husband upstairs, Jackson trotting faithfully behind. The doors to all the rooms up here stand open; Paul must have looked in every single one. I follow him to the doorway of Chrissie’s bedroom.
Her light is on, but she isn’t in there.
I grasp Paul’s arm.
‘Look,’ he says, as though I can’t see already. Chrissie is a neat child, she always has been, so now this scene is wrong in a hundred different ways. Her bed is a state, the duvet half dragged off. Her wooden desk chair tipped over on its side. Her phone on the floor, the screen smashed.
Jackson barks again. A nightmare. A nightmare. My mind goes wild, a whole new ream of images cascading through it. A slap, a struggle, a scream, a fall. The crash of furniture, the crack of glass, the thud of limbs.
I stand in Chrissie’s room, lost in disbelief and fear because those images are all I can see.
A nightmare. A nightmare. Playing over and over and over again.
Chapter 2
Paul
EIGHT WEEKS BEFORE
‘Wake up.’ The voice was distant. ‘Wake up.’
Paul rolled over and pulled up the covers, but the voice was persistent.
‘Wake up, Dad.’
His daughter, Chrissie. He opened his eyes.
She was standing above him in a crop-top and leggings, her stomach on show. He sat up and looked at his alarm clock. Six fifteen. Friday morning. It was barely light. Instinctively, he wanted to roll back up in the warmth. But they had agreed on this, and what example would he be setting for her if he didn’t commit?
