You Let Me In

Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018

Copyright © Lucy Clarke 2018

Cover design by Simeon Greenaway © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018

Jacket photograph © Roderick Field/Trevillion Images

Lucy Clarke 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: 9780008262549

Ebook Edition © July 2018 ISBN: 9780008262563

Version: 2020-11-10

Dedication

For my parents, Jane and Tony.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

1. Elle

Previously

2. Elle

Previously

3. Elle

2003

4. Elle

Previously

5. Elle

2003

6. Elle

2003

7. Elle

Previously

8. Elle

Previously

9. Elle

2003

10. Elle

11. Elle

2004

12. Elle

Previously

13. Elle

Previously

14. Elle

Previously

15. Elle

2003

16. Elle

Previously

17. Elle

Previously

18. Elle

2004

19. Elle

20. Elle

2004

21. Elle

Previously

22. Elle

2004

23. Elle

24. Elle

Previously

25. Elle

2004

26. Elle

2004

27. Elle

28. Elle

29. Elle

2004

30. Elle

31. Elle

32. Elle

33. Elle

34. Elle

35. Elle

36. Elle

37. Elle

Epilogue: One year later

Read on to enjoy an exclusive extract of The Castaways

Acknowledgements

If you enjoyed You Let Me In, don’t miss these other breathtakingly gripping novels from Lucy Clarke

About the Author

Also by Lucy Clarke

About the Publisher

Prologue

I’d like to offer you one piece of advice. It’s just a small thing. It won’t apply to many of you – but it is important.

It changed everything for me.

It’s this: if you’re considering letting someone into your house, pause first. Think.

Think about what it means to give a stranger – or strangers – the keys to your home.

Think about that stranger drifting through your house; a hand slipped into a drawer; fingers trailing through the clothes hanging in your wardrobe; the bathroom cabinet opened, examined.

Think about where their gaze may linger; the photos of you and your family hanging on the walls; the calendar in the kitchen outlining your plans; the file you keep at the bottom of a trunk.

Think about that person lying in your bed; the mattress moulding to their warm body; tiny cells of their skin shedding on your sheets; their breath moist against your pillow.

What other parts of themselves will they leave behind?

What parts of you will they discover?

1

Elle

‘What happens in the first chapter of your novel should be like an arrow pointing to the last.’

Author Elle Fielding

I slow the car into the curve of the lane, feeling it bounce over ruts and channels, loose gravel spraying from beneath the tyres.

As the track climbs, I straighten, peering beyond the hedgerows to catch a glimpse of the sea. In the muted light of dusk, I spot whitecaps breaking across the water, the sea ruffled by wind. Already, my breathing softens.

I flick off the radio, not wanting the presenter’s voice to dilute the next moment. I’ve been looking forward to it during the long drive from London to Cornwall.

As I turn the corner, I see it: the house on the cliff top, standing like a promise at the track’s end.

*

Pulling into the driveway, I cut the ignition, and sit for a moment, engine ticking.

It still feels entirely incredible that this is where I live.

In the first meeting with the architect, I’d no idea what I’d wanted beyond the number of rooms and a space to write. Over the months that followed, those untethered ideas began to weave together into a vision, which now stands three storeys tall, overlooking the wave-pounded bay.

The house is painted dove-grey, with large windows framed in natural wood. ‘Contemporary coastal heritage’, the architect said. I’m glad the weatherboarding is starting to lose some of its stark newness, and the windows look pleasingly salt-licked. I still need to soften the exterior, perhaps train some wisteria to climb around the entrance – if it can survive the bracing sea winds.

I’ve never owned a house before. Or a flat. Growing up, my sister, mother and I always lived in rented accommodation. Words like house and mortgage were for other people, not us.

The car door swings wide as I step out, the sea breeze causing my dress to billow and flatten around my thighs.

Gravel crunches underfoot as I cross the drive, hauling the case onto the flagstone doorstep, then searching the depths of my handbag for my house keys. I’m one of those people who carries too much – purse, phone, pens, a novel, my notebook.

Always a notebook.

Slotting the front door key into the lock, I hesitate.

There is something unsettling about returning home knowing strangers have been staying here. My fortnight in France was laced with worry over the decision to Airbnb the house, so much so that twice I’d clambered onto the roof terrace of the farmhouse in search of mobile reception. Thankfully there were no cries for help from them, or my sister.

Standing on the doorstep, I have the unnerving sensation that when I open my front door, I will find the family who rented it still inside. The mother – an attractive woman with an expensive-looking hairstyle, I recall from her Airbnb profile – will be at my butler sink, water sluicing over pale hands that hold a plastic beaker. Behind her, I imagine a child in a high chair, pudgy fingers pushing a strawberry into its mouth. At the breakfast bar, a father will be cutting slices of toast into soldiers, lining them onto one of my stoneware side plates, before carrying it to a girl of three or four, who will count the pieces carefully with a fingertip.

There will be music playing. Talking and laughter. The side-step of parents’ feet as they avoid a toy car on the floor. All that noise and energy and movement that a family generates pulsing inside my house.

My heart contracts: it should be my family.

Pushing open the front door, I’m immediately aware that the air smells different. Something earthy and damp, mixed with the residue of someone else’s cooking.

The wind sucks the door shut, slamming it behind me with a startling clang.

Then silence.

No one to call out to. No one to greet me.

I drop my handbag onto the oak settle beside a pile of neatly stacked post. I glance at the bill resting on top, then look away. I slip off my shoes and walk barefoot into the kitchen.

Sea and sky fill the windows. Even at dusk the light is incredible. Two gulls wheel carelessly on the breeze, and beneath them the sea churns. This is why I fell in love with the house, which was originally a rundown fisherman’s cottage that hadn’t been modernised since the sixties.

I read somewhere that the beauty of a sea view is that it’s always changing, no two days are the same. I remember thinking the statement was pretentious – but actually, it’s true.

Pulling my gaze from the water, I scan the kitchen. The long stretch of granite surface is clean and empty. A note is tucked beneath the corner of a terracotta basil pot. In my sister’s handwriting, I read:

Welcome home! All went well with the Airbnb. Pop over for a glass of wine when you’re settled. Fiona x

I missed her. And Drake. I’ll go over tomorrow, suggest a beach walk, or a pub lunch somewhere with a play area so Drake can roam.

Right now, all I have the energy for is taking a long bath with my book.

I reach into the cupboard for a glass, and as I draw it towards the tap, a movement by my fingertips causes me to drop it, the tumbler smashing into the sink. A thick-legged house spider scurries from the broken pieces to take up a crouching position in the plug hole.

I shiver. There’s just something about the way spiders move – the jerkiness of all those articulated legs. With a sigh, I resign myself to the new task of removing the spider from the house. Catching it in a spare glass, I head for the front door.

The flagstones are freezing as I climb down the steps barefoot, then wince as I pick my way across the gravel to the far end of the driveway. This bugger isn’t getting back in. I set down the glass, then nudge it over with my toe, before hopping back. The spider remains motionless for a few moments. Then, with a flurry of black legs, it scuttles away.

I turn back towards the house just in time to see my front door catching in a gust of wind, slamming shut.

‘No!’ I hurry across the driveway and grab the handle, yanking at it fruitlessly. My palms slam against the door; I’m furious with myself.

My handbag is on the settle, my keys and mobile zipped within it, my jacket hanging from its hook. Idiot!

Fiona is my spare key holder, but her house is a good half-hour walk away. I can’t do it barefoot and coatless in November – I’ll probably freeze to death before I get there.

I look over my shoulder towards the bungalow that crouches beyond my house. It is the only other property on the cliff top and belongs to Frank and Enid, a retired couple who’ve lived there for thirty years.

I remember walking to their door that first time, my hand pressed in Flynn’s, filled with an excited anticipation that we were homeowners, that we were meeting neighbours. It all felt so impossibly grown up, as if we were play-acting. Frank had a brusque manner and looked at us through the corners of his eyes, as if trying to get the full measure of us. Enid fretted over the strength of the tea and that there were dishes in the sink from breakfast. But Flynn always had an easy, relaxed way with people and by the end of the visit a friendship had been made.

Now those visits are over. I haven’t been inside their home in months. If we pass on the single-lane road, Frank ensures it is me who reverses to a pull-in, or if he catches sight of me while putting the bins out, he looks determinedly away.

With a sinking feeling, I cross the driveway, framing my request for help.

My hair whips around my face, and I gather the long twist of it in one hand. I’m about to press the bell when the door swings open and a man steps out, shrugging on a black leather jacket.

He stops abruptly, hooded eyes fixed on mine.

‘Oh. Hi,’ I say, taken aback. ‘I’m Elle. I live next door.’

Through a curtain of thick, dark hair, his gaze flicks towards my house. The set of his features shifts, tightens. He looks to be a few years younger than me – in his late twenties, perhaps – the first scribblings of lines settling around his eyes, his jaw grazed with stubble.

‘The author.’ There’s something about his intonation that makes it sound like an insult.

‘That’s right. You must be Enid and Frank’s son?’

‘Mark.’

That is it. They’d mentioned a son some time ago – when we were all still on good terms. I think Enid had said he’d left Cornwall for work, but I can’t recall the rest of the details.

‘Here’s the thing, Mark. There was an incident with a spider … I was evicting it from the premises, when the wind caught me unawares and the door slammed shut. Stupidly, my keys and phone are inside.’

His gaze travels down my body, over the pale blue summer dress, down my tanned legs, settling on my bare feet, which are set together, my toenails painted a shimmering pearl. I want to explain, I don’t usually dress like this in November. I’ve come from the airport. I—

‘Shoes.’

I blink.

‘Your shoes are locked inside, too.’

‘Oh. Yes. They are.’ I hug my arms to my chest. ‘Would you mind if I used your phone to call my sister? She has the spare key.’

He waits a beat, then steps aside, holding the front door open. I move past him into the narrow hallway.

The smell of fried onions hangs thickly in the air, alongside something pungent. Weed, I realise, a warm burst of memory swimming back to me.

‘Are Enid or Frank home?’

‘No.’ There is a heavy clunk as Mark shuts the door. He stands with his back to it.

I shift. I always need to know where an exit is, to plan how I could get out of a room, a building – a habit ignited at university, which now seems impossible to shake. My gaze travels to the lock. Yale. No key on the internal side of the door.

‘So, are you visiting for a few days? You live in the city, don’t you?’ I ask, my friendly tone overlaying the first prickle of fear. ‘What is it you do? I think your mum mentioned something about computers, or I may have made that up.’

‘Why would you make that up?’

I can feel myself shifting uncomfortably beneath his gaze. I am a thirty-three-year-old woman. I don’t need him to like me. I just need to use his phone.

The landline sits on an old-fashioned telephone table, set below a brass-framed mirror. ‘May I?’

‘Not working.’

‘Do you have a mobile?’

There is a pause before he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a mobile. He taps in a passcode, then holds it out to me. There is an odd moment of resistance – no more than half a second – where he holds onto the phone as I go to take it.

Flustered, I try to recall Fiona’s number. I don’t want to look up, yet I’m certain Mark’s gaze is on me. Heat is building in my cheeks.

‘I can’t remember her number. I used to know everyone’s numbers, but now they’re all programmed in our mobiles, aren’t they?’

He says nothing.

I clear my throat. I begin entering the dialling code and, as I do so, the rhythm of the rest of the number comes to me. Relieved, I hold the mobile to my ear, listening to it ring. I make a silent prayer that Fiona will be there.

The leather of Mark’s jacket squeaks as he leans against the door, checking his watch.

‘Yes?’ Fiona whispers, Drake most likely asleep nearby.

‘Oh, thank God! You’re there! I’m calling from someone else’s phone. Listen, I’m locked out. Tell me you have my spare key? That you’re home?’

‘I’m home. I have the spare.’

‘Can you come over? Or I could get a taxi to you if Drake’s in bed?’

‘Bill’s here. I can come. Gets me out of bath-time.’

‘Perfect, thank you.’

‘Whose phone is this?’

‘I’ll explain later.’

I can imagine Fiona’s expression as she tells Bill that she has to go and rescue her sister. Again. Getting locked out of the house is not the sort of thing that happens to Fiona. There will be some sort of system in place, a back-up key meticulously hidden, or a syndicate of neighbours with spares.

I return Mark’s phone. ‘My sister is on her way. She’ll only be ten minutes.’

There are several beats of silence. Then Mark says, ‘I’m going to be late.’

‘You … you want me to wait outside?’

He doesn’t answer, instead he opens an under-stairs cupboard and spends a moment rummaging within it. He turns back to me holding out a woman’s purple fleece.

Then he opens the front door. There is no mention of whether I’d like to borrow shoes. I step out onto the freezing concrete step noticing that dusk has slipped into night.

I push my arms into the sleeves, a musty, lavender scent filling my nostrils. ‘I’ll drop this back later.’

He shrugs as he moves past me, pulling the door closed behind him.

A black motorbike is parked at the edge of the property. I almost laugh. Of course he’d ride a motorbike! I watch as he pulls on his helmet, straddles the bike, then guns the engine.

Crossing the driveway, I’m grateful when the security light flicks on. I perch on my doorstep, the cold of the flagstone seeping through my seat bones.

‘Hurry up,’ I mutter to myself, imagining my sister sitting stiffly behind the steering wheel, sticking religiously to the speed limits.

I pull the fleece tighter, my shoulders hunched towards my ears.

I can feel the house behind me, looming, empty. I half wonder if it’s punishing me for abandoning it – like a dog put into kennels who ignores its owners when they return.

The security light switches off and I’m left shivering in the darkness.

Previously

A single-lane track carves through tall hedgerows, climbing towards the cliff top.

‘It’s at the very end,’ I tell the taxi driver.

The driveway is gravelled with grey and white stone, no doubt selected to complement the exterior paintwork and natural wood weatherboarding.

The house sits imposingly on the cliff top, steel struts bored into the rock so that the sea-facing side of the house seems to hang suspended above the cliff. There is something in the contrast of the fresh warmth of the house, versus the jagged dark hues of the rocks below. It is an incredible feat of architecture.

‘Lovely place you’ve got here,’ the driver says as the taxi crunches to a halt.

‘Yes, indeed,’ I say with a private smile.

I pay the fare, tipping him more than is necessary.

I carry my holdall to the front door, setting it down on the flagstone steps. I wait until the taxi has circled from the driveway and disappeared within the tunnel of hedgerows. Then I cross to the edge of the property where, as described in the email, the wheelie bins are stored within a discreet fenced area.

I drag the green recycling bin aside, which clinks with bottles. Beneath it lies a large pebble. I lift it carefully, feeling like a child turning over rocks in search of a treasured glimpse of woodlice or bugs.

There it is: the key to the house.

I return the wheelie bin into position, then cross the drive to the doorstep. My fingertips meet the solid wood door, painted in a grey-green shade that recalls the sea. I pause for a moment, aware of the magnitude of this moment stretching around me, raising the beat of my heart.

I glance once over my shoulder, just to be sure that there’s no one watching. I take a breath, then slot the key into the lock.

2

Elle

‘Thank God you were in,’ I say, refilling Fiona’s wine glass, then sinking back onto the sofa.

‘And if I hadn’t been?’

‘Flynn’s the only other person with a key.’

‘He still has a key?’

I shrug. ‘It’d feel churlish to ask for it back.’

Fiona doesn’t say anything. She never needs to. Her eyebrows – dark and angular – speak for her.

‘How did Drake get on at Bill’s parents?’ I ask. ‘I missed him. Maybe he could come over this weekend? I got him a little treat while I was away.’

‘He needs a treat reprieve. Bill’s parents let him watch cartoons for two hours a day – and took him for ice cream every afternoon. I’m surprised he hasn’t asked to be formally adopted.’

‘You must have missed him.’

‘You’re kidding? I had lie-ins. I didn’t cook. I got more work done than I’ve managed in months. I’ve asked if they’ll make it an annual thing.’

‘Is that right?’ I say, my turn to arch an eyebrow. Drake has just turned two and it’s the first time he’s stayed a night away from home. Bill spent months carefully negotiating the week-long visit to his parents in Norfolk.

‘What about you? How was France?’

‘Oh, fine.’ I’d been invited as a guest-speaker on a writing retreat. I’d deliberated over going, anxious about my approaching book deadline, but equally the retreat was so well paid that it would have been a mistake to turn it down. ‘They put us up in this stunning old farmhouse in the middle of the countryside. There was a beautiful pool. I swam every morning.’

‘If you’ve come back skinnier than you went, then you didn’t eat enough cheese.’

‘I ate cheese for breakfast.’

‘Good girl,’ she says, taking a drink of wine. ‘What were the guests like?’

‘Interesting, intelligent, passionate about books. One or two were a little intense. Deadly serious about word counts. In bed by ten o’clock.’ I pause. ‘You’d have liked them.’

Fiona laughs – a laugh I’ve always loved, loud and unapologetic.

‘Yes, but did any of them take revision notes into the shower?’

During her A Levels, she used to tuck her revision notes into a plastic sleeve, so that she could continue to study while showering. She’s always been the one with the focus, the drive.

‘Can’t say I witnessed it.’

‘And what about …’ Fiona pauses dramatically, ‘… your work in progress?’

I glance towards the window, lamplight reflected in the dark pane. Just the thought of my second novel makes my stomach tighten.

‘Still floundering in the wilderness.’

‘Will you make the deadline?’

I lift my shoulders. ‘It’s in six weeks’ time.’

Fiona assesses me closely. ‘What if you don’t?’

‘I lose the book deal.’

And then I lose this house, I think, panic beating its wings within my ribcage. I can’t let that happen.