In a Cottage In a Wood

Copyright

HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2017

Copyright © Caroline Green 2017

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017

Cover photographs © Mark Owen/Trevillion Image;

Shutterstock.com (trees)

Caroline Green 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 is entirely a work of fiction. Any references to real people, living or dead, real events, businesses, organizations and localities are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. All names, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and their resemblance, if any, to real-life counterparts 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 e-books

Source ISBN: 9780008248956

Ebook Edition © September 2017 ISBN: 9780008248963

Version: 2020-10-15

Dedication

For all the orphans I know,

and the ones I’ve never met.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

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

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Also by Cass Green

About the Publisher

1

Neve stares up at the nicotine-yellow ceiling and thinks about the long journey between here and her own bed. Or at least, the sofa bed in her sister’s flat.

She has a fierce longing for ice-cold Diet Coke and paracetamol. Her head is already starting to hurt and she hasn’t been asleep. She needs to pee, badly.

Squinting at the small travel clock that blinks with neon aggression on the bedside table, she sees it is 03:00. They got here about two. The sex had taken about fifteen minutes, tops. Maybe she had briefly fallen asleep after all.

Whatsisname sighs and gently farts in his sleep.

Christ.

He told her he had his own software company and was in London for a conference. But it didn’t ring true. Surely no one held conferences a few days before Christmas? Plus, he said ‘pacific’ instead of ‘specific’ and smiled in a glazed, uncomprehending way at a couple of her more acerbic comments. He didn’t seem bright enough to have his own company.

Now she slowly begins to extricate herself from the bed, placing her bare feet down onto the rough, worn carpet. It feels greasy and gritty. She curls her toes with a shudder and spots the squished comma of the condom lying next to the bed.

The air smells of hot dust from the ferocious radiator that’s within touching distance of the bed, with a base note of damp.

The outside of the hotel – which was grandly named the Intercontinental, London – had looked alright with its jaunty blue and white awning, potted plants and fairy-lit windows.

Neve has always been a sucker for fairy lights.

But the room, with its shabby MDF table and undersized kettle, feels like the kind of place travelling salesmen go to commit suicide. There’s a white extension cable snaking across the middle of the floor and she makes a mental note that she mustn’t trip over it on her way to the bathroom. The wallpaper is the textured sort popular in the 1970s, splashed lumpily with a jaundice-yellow emulsion.

Whatsisname’s (Greg? Gary? Something like that) wheelie case is sitting open on a chair next to the table. The arm of a jumper hangs languidly towards the carpet. She pictures him getting ready earlier, selecting a shirt that would mean the best chance of getting laid. Well, it had worked.

Self-disgust puffs through her like hot steam. She has somehow bypassed the numb, unconscious part of this scenario and gone straight to the hangover and guilt. She’s suddenly appalled by the idea of him waking and suggesting she come back to bed. Or, worse, wanting conversation.

This whole thing had seemed like a good idea at the time.

Her own office party – dinner in an uninspiring Italian restaurant, followed by drinks in a bar near Waterloo – had ended early because, in her view, her colleagues were a bunch of lightweights, all making excuses about babysitters or night buses or I’ve-had-quite-enough-haven’t-you? Well, no, she hadn’t, clearly.

Her usual ally and best friend, Miri, was too pregnant to last beyond eight p.m. and Neve’d had to work hard, again, not to make a wistful comment about the fun they’d once had on nights out. She knew that Miri might as well be emigrating to the other side of the world soon. Nothing was ever going to be the same again between them. Watching Miri expand and step tentatively into this new world, she felt jabs of real grief.

So when someone decent looking had come over and bought her another bucket-glass of Merlot, she hadn’t said no. Plus, she wasn’t wearing her contacts and was drunk enough that everyone looked quite attractive in their own way. And he was Irish and therefore exotic.

She can almost hear Lou saying, ‘You’re thirty now, Neve,’ in that mouth-like-a-cat’s-arse way she reserves for her only sister.

A wave of misery washes over her and she carefully gets up and starts to hunt for her knickers among the discarded clothes on the floor. She spots them lying in a forlorn figure of eight where she’d shucked them off earlier.

She’d already been thinking this was a mistake by then. The kissing – hard up against a doorway outside the bar – hadn’t been that promising. His tongue had been a muscular slug that poked and jabbed at the inside of her mouth as though on a mission to find something.

Now Neve fumbles for her bra and, once on, reaches for the gold silky top she’d bought especially for the night out. She’d been delighted with it at the time because it was half price, but wearing it she’d discovered that it made her sweat under the arms. She’d spilled red wine down it earlier too. She wrinkles her nose as she rolls the top over her head and down her body.

‘You leaving?’

The voice makes her jump. She turns to see Whatsisname looking up at her from the rumpled bed, propping himself up on pale, muscular arms.

‘Yeah,’ she says, ‘Um … I’d better get going.’ She smiles as though they’d just had a casual coffee together instead of a joyless, drunken shag. ‘I’ll just …’ she hooks a thumb in the direction of the bathroom and then goes in, closing the door behind her as she pees.

She quickly washes her hands and avoids her reflection, aware it will only make her feel worse in the circumstances. Maybe she is faster than he expected, because when she comes back into the room a minute later, he’s leaning out of the bed, vigorously checking the pockets of his trousers that are pooled next to it.

He stops and regards her with a sheepish shrug.

Realization burns. ‘What the actual fuck?’ she says. ‘Did you think I was going to take your wallet?’

Her head is far too sore to be speaking this loud. But it’s better than smashing him in the face with the travel kettle, which she might do otherwise.

‘I don’t really know you, do I?’ he says, defiantly raising his chin.

‘No you don’t,’ she hisses, hunting for her bag and shrugging on her coat. It feels as though these actions take far longer than they should.

Finally, she is able to take the few paces to the hotel door.

‘By the way, you’re shit in bed,’ she says as she wrenches it open. ‘Merry Christmas, arsehole!’

She wants to slam the door behind her but it’s on one of those safety hinges and, instead, it gently closes with a disappointing sigh.

The word ‘Bitch’ is lobbed through before it shuts.

Outside on the street, she pulls her fake fur coat together at the throat. Fury pumps through her. She half thinks about going back and giving him a further piece of her mind.

But instead, she walks away, her high heels ringing out against a pavement that’s glossy with recent rain. She swallows down a surge of self-pity and blinks hard, trying to concentrate on which way to go.

Neve has a terrible sense of direction. Several boyfriends, and Lou, have claimed not to believe quite how poor it is, as if getting lost often is some sort of affectation. As if it is a choice, to experience the freefall sensation of panic when you don’t really know where the hell you’re going.

At the end of the street she stops and considers which way to turn.

There’s some sort of factory on the opposite corner and she’s sure now that they passed it. So she heads off that way, praying that she will find herself somewhere near Waterloo. If she can get over the water to the Embankment, she can probably find a night bus.

Her shoes chafe the backs of her heels and her teeth are gently chattering with the bitter cold. Whatsisface had a fashionable beard and it feels now as if a cheese grater has been taken to her chin. She’ll have to slather it with E45 when she gets home or she’ll look like she’s been sunburned. And Lou will be all over that in the morning.

It’s like being seventeen again, and not in any good way.

Neve takes another turning and begins to feel the usual thrum of worry that she’s going in the entirely wrong direction to where she wants to be. But she keeps moving and soon finds herself on a promisingly major road. Tall brown buildings soar on either side, glass-fronted windows lifeless, and a long row of bikes for hire seem to be resting like a tired herd.

Before long, she can see the distinctive glass sphere of the IMAX building by Waterloo and she lets out a breath of relief that curls in the frigid night air.

She’s grateful for the few other people around now, either party-goers draped in tinsel, laughing and shouting to each other, or London’s invisible army of workers dressed in cheap, sensible coats; heads down, hurrying from one service job to another.

Neve isn’t nervous about walking alone in London at night. It’s the sort of thing her parents would have fretted about but now … well, there’s only Lou and hopefully she’s asleep. She has only once been the victim of a crime, when her phone was stolen from her bag in a nightclub. The thief had clearly decided it wasn’t new enough to keep anyway, because it had been dropped in the beer and dirt and found by the doorman.

She hurries on, wondering whether Miri will find this a funny story tomorrow or give her friend the new look, the one that is just ever-so-slightly disapproving.

Neve tries to remember exactly where she can get the night bus to Kentish Town. Then, with a cold plop of realization in her stomach, she remembers taking her keys out of her bag that morning because a pen had leaked in the front pocket. She can picture them, still lying on the big kitchen table. Frantically, she begins feeling around inside her bag now, but knows by the lack of heft in the pocket that they’re not there. She closes her eyes for a moment and says, ‘Shit-shit-shit-shit-shit.’

Lou will have a field day with this. The whole house will get woken up.

She can hear her now, with her martyr face on: ‘It’s about time you took control of your life.’

Neve has been staying with her sister, brother-in-law and their two children since breaking up with Daniel, six weeks before. It feels so very much longer.

If she could go and sleep under her desk, she would, but she’d need a key for that too. It’s too cold to hang about, and anyway, it will probably take forever to get home. Maybe her sister will be up with the baby by then.

She hurries on towards Waterloo Bridge.

2

It’s surprisingly quiet. Apart from the occasional vehicle hissing past on the damp road, she has the bridge to herself. She stomps onward, ignoring the bright blue corona of the London Eye to her left and the comforting glowing face of Big Ben across the water. Normally she gets a thrill from these sights; loves the reassurance that she no longer lives in a tiny village near Leeds. But it’s too cold and too late for that.

Here, exposed on the bridge, the knifing wind feels mean and personal so she tries to tuck herself down into her coat, tortoise-like.

When she sees the figure ahead of her, she has the disorientating sensation that it is a hallucination, or even something ghostly. It’s partly because of the paleness of the woman’s skin and hair, combined with the clingy, bone-coloured dress. Maybe it’s the sheer incredulity she feels on registering that the woman wears no coat in the small hours of this December night.

The woman stands on the left, facing towards Blackfriars Bridge and the gold-lit Parliament, staring out over the water. She is very still.

Neve involuntarily shivers at the sight of the woman’s thin, bare arms, which hang by her sides. In one hand she carries a small, silver clutch bag.

As Neve approaches, the woman turns to her, with a hopeful look on her face. Neve feels the stab of embarrassment of the Londoner, despite the late hour and the strangeness of the encounter. She dips her head but can tell the woman is watching her. She turns, reluctantly, to face her again.

‘Look, are you okay?’ she says. Her voice sounds hoarse from the cigarettes she smoked with Whatsisface earlier. ‘Haven’t you got anything else to put on?’

The woman shakes her head in a quick, sharp movement and then smiles with something like sympathy. It’s almost as if Neve is the odd, vulnerable one rather than the other way around.

Make-up-less, apart from a slash of scarlet lipstick, the woman is startlingly beautiful, with wide pale eyes and a full mouth. Unlike Neve’s thick, dark blonde hair, the other woman’s is so pale it’s almost white. It is pinned at the sides and falls in silky waves around her thin, white shoulders. Her waxen skin is almost blue from the cold.

She’s clearly not poor, thinks Neve, eyeing her. The dress is made from some kind of ivory silk and clings fluidly to her slim frame. It’s almost unnatural, the way it hangs in a sweeping circle around her feet. A princess dress. The words float into Neve’s brain from some childish part of herself and she’s a little ashamed.

‘What are you doing here?’ she asks with a sigh. This one brief exchange means she now has a sense of responsibility to this woman. It’s why no one usually bothers in London.

She should know better. She delves into her handbag and pulls out her purse.

‘Look, I haven’t got much,’ she says, ‘but I can probably stand you a night bus. What happened to your coat?’

A particularly vicious gust of wind sweeps across the bridge, making both women take a step to the side. The bitter cold is ramping up Neve’s headache now and the other woman’s silence is starting to get on her nerves. Maybe she doesn’t speak English?

Neve has had enough and is about to walk away when the other woman finally speaks.

‘You’re lovely,’ she says. Not only is she English, but she has the refined, smooth voice of the girls who always looked down on Neve at school. The swishy-haired ones who dominated the sixth form common room.

‘I’m not, not really.’ Neve feels strangely annoyed by this compliment. ‘I can see how cold you are, that’s all.’ She pauses. ‘Look, I’ve just had a totally shit evening too. Is this about a bloke? Have you had a row with someone?’

The woman makes a non-committal sound that Neve takes to be assent and takes a step closer.

‘He’s not worth it,’ she says. ‘Trust me. And no offence, that’s a lovely dress and everything but you really will get hypothermia wandering about like that.’

‘What’s your name?’ the woman says quietly. Neve sighs again. Why did she get sucked into a conversation? Her instinct is to tell the woman to mind her own business but she is too tired now. Her heels hurt. Her head aches. It’s freezing here.

‘It’s Neve.’ Neve wraps her arms around herself as a shudder of cold mingles with a yawn.

‘Neve … what?’ says the woman.

Neve stares at her.

‘Why?’

‘Please?’ says the woman, and her eyes sparkle. She makes a small, desolate sound in her throat. Neve takes another step towards her.

‘Hey,’ she says. ‘Don’t cry.’

‘Please,’ says the woman emphatically. ‘Can you just tell me your name?’

Neve stares at her for a moment before replying. ‘Neve … Neve Carey. Um, what’s yours?’

‘Isabelle,’ says the woman in barely a whisper, and then, with more force, ‘Neve, will you do something for me?’

She pictures herself getting on the night bus with this strange wraithlike creature and both of them rocking up at Lou’s. Clearing her throat, she has to work hard not to sound sulky.

‘Uh, yes, I guess,’ she says. ‘But it depends on what it is.’

Isabelle opens the clutch bag and produces a small brown envelope. ‘I want you to take this.’

Neve hesitates and eyes it suspiciously. ‘What is it?’

‘It’s a gift. For being kind to me.’

Neve takes a step back and holds up her palms. ‘Look, I’ve done nothing. I just don’t want you freezing to death on my conscience. I’m not that kind, trust me. I’m actually a bit of a cow. Ask anyone.’

‘You are kind,’ says Isabelle quietly. ‘I can sense it. Will you take this, just to humour me? Say you will. Say it.’

Neve stares back at the woman, discomfited by her intense, strange manner.

A passing car washes them with its headlights. For a moment Isabelle looks cadaverous, her eyes sunk in deep pockets of shadow.

‘It’s important,’ she says fiercely. ‘Please.’

Neve is so unnerved now that all she can do is thrust out her hand and take the envelope.

Isabelle’s shoulders droop and she seems to shrink in on herself.

‘Thank you,’ she says quietly. ‘Thank you so much.’

She fumbles inside the bag and, after producing a mobile phone, turns away and whispers something quietly into it. The she returns the phone to the bag and looks at Neve. Her eyes are gleaming now, as if she is close to tears.

‘You should go,’ she says thickly. ‘I’ll be fine here.’

It’s tempting.

Neve sighs heavily.

‘Come on,’ she says, ‘let’s get the fuck off this freezing cold bridge. Where do you need to get to? I can—’

‘No.’ The sharp retort makes her gasp. ‘I’m sorry. But you need to go now. Leave me here. You shouldn’t be—’

She seems to bite the end of her sentence off and, for the first time, Neve sees that she is terrified in a way Neve has never witnessed before in real life.

Neve crosses her arms.

‘No way,’ she says. ‘I’m not leaving you here. It’s bloody cold and—’

She yelps as Isabelle lunges, kissing her quickly on each cheek with cold, dry lips. Her grip is surprisingly strong. Neve feels a flash of fear as Isabelle’s lips brush her ear.

‘I’m sorry. Please forgive me. And keep it, if you can bear to.’

Then she turns to face the water and, in one neat movement, climbs over the side of the railing and jumps into the river.

3

Neve sits in the back of the police car now, wrapped in a silver thermal blanket as blue light smears rhythmically across the windows. The hiss and crackle of the radio begins to fade as icy rain pounds onto the roof of the vehicle.

The RNLI had arrived first, confusing her with their jaunty logo because she thought they were people who rescued you at sea. They came with astonishing speed after she made the call. Later she would learn that one of their emergency stations was situated close to Waterloo Bridge.

They arrived before the police. Neve’s phone had died before she could finish the conversation with the operator so for ten surreal minutes before the police car had arrived, she’d stood on the bridge alone, looking down at the boat as it turned slow circles in the blackness below, its spotlight swishing back and forth. She half thought about hurrying away and leaving them to it. But it seemed desperately sad that this stranger should have no one apart from the emergency services rooting for her to be found.

So instead she kept up the vigil, staring into the depths below. Her heart had jolted when she saw something white swell and roll in the water, then she realized it was a large plastic bottle. The sensation of relief, that she wouldn’t have to jump in and attempt a rescue, had almost buckled her at the knees.

Later, she would understand that no one would expect her – someone with only average swimming ability – to try and rescue a drowning woman from the Thames in winter. But guilt periodically comes in a bright, sharp jab under her ribs. This at least is a sensation she recognizes.

When the police arrived she’d told them what happened in jerky, shocked sentences. They’d gently encouraged her to start again from the beginning and tell them the whole story.

Now here she is, in the strange aftermath and she can’t stop shivering. Every now and then a particularly strong shudder jerks through her, which makes her clench her jaw. It’s unnerving. She read somewhere that shock can be dangerous in some physiological way she doesn’t really understand and wonders whether she ought to ask for something from the ambulance crew.

She looks out the window and sees through the condensation and raindrops that one of the RNLI men is talking to the policewoman. It’s the small, Northern one with tight curly hair and an efficient air about her. The policewoman nods and then glances at the car. Neve draws back, as though caught doing something wrong.