The Bride: A twisty and completely gripping psychological thriller Read online

  The Bride

  A twisty and completely gripping psychological thriller

  Wendy Clarke

  Books by Wendy Clarke

  What She Saw

  We Were Sisters

  The Bride

  Available in audio

  What She Saw (Available in the UK and the US)

  We Were Sisters (Available in the UK and the US)

  Contents

  Prologue

  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

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Epilogue

  What She Saw

  Hear More from Wendy

  Books by Wendy Clarke

  A Letter from Wendy

  We Were Sisters

  Acknowledgements

  *

  For my two girls

  Prologue

  The day it happened

  Fingers are on my eyelids, first one then the other, prising them gently open. A circle of light. Too bright and then merciful darkness again. When my hand is lifted, it’s like it’s made of lead. There’s a pressure on my finger as something is clipped to it. The rasp of Velcro, then tightness around my arm.

  I try to remember what happened. Why I’m here. But there’s nothing.

  Through the fogginess of my brain and the pain in my head, I hear voices. A man. A woman. Words moving in and around one another, some coming to the fore before drifting away again: concussion, vital signs, lucky.

  Who’s lucky?

  The covers of my bed are too heavy, and I try to push them down, but the sharp pain in the back of my hand stops me. When I force my swollen eyes to open a slit, I see that taped to the skin is a thin tube attached to a metal stand.

  Where am I? Why am I here?

  Then more sounds. The clink of the side rails being raised on my bed. The metallic slide of a curtain. A small jolt as my bed begins to move.

  Sliding doors. More voices. A cool hand on my forehead.

  It’s a hospital, but why am I here? I’m looking down on my pale face as though from a great height desperately searching for answers, but all my fuzzy brain can conjure is a memory from the distant past – a time when I felt just as alone. Just as scared.

  Instead of a hospital ward, I’m standing in the doorway of a classroom, two other new girls beside me. A sea of faces I don’t recognise staring up at us from their desks.

  ‘Who would like to look after these new girls today?’ The head teacher places a hand on my shoulder and prompts me to step forward. ‘Shall we start with Alice?’

  One girl’s hand shoots up before the others, the smile she gives full of reassurance. She looks older than the others. A head taller than the girl who sits next to her and whose expression is registering hurt. ‘I’d like to look after her, Mrs Talbot.’

  Pushing her chair back, she stands and walks between the desks, her hand outstretched. Tall. Confident. Everything I am not.

  I force my way through the fog that’s enveloping the memory and realise that the little lost girl, with her pale face and ginger ponytail, is me.

  ‘You’re awake at last. Thank God.’

  I’m brought back to the present. There’s a dark shape beside my bed. Someone sitting there. How did I not notice? As they speak again, the warmth of their voice enfolds me, and tears of relief start in my eyes.

  ‘Is it really you?’

  Despite the incessant pain in my head and the memories that hover, refusing to be captured, I know I’ll be all right now.

  ‘Hush. Don’t talk.’

  Her hand slips into mine; the gentle squeeze of my best friend’s fingers is reassuring.

  Through chapped lips, I force the words out.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘You’ve been in an accident, but you’re going to be all right.’

  ‘But I don’t remember.’ I thump my forehead with my fist, sending a jolt of pain through my skull. ‘Why can’t I remember?’

  Reaching out, she takes my hand and lowers it to the bed. The pressure of her fingers warm and reassuring. ‘Hush now and rest,’ she says. ‘There’s nothing to be afraid of. I’m here now.’

  Why don’t I believe her?

  One

  Three weeks earlier

  The feeling that I’m going to die isn’t new to me, but it never gets any easier.

  The first jolt shakes me into wakefulness, bumping the side of my head against the plastic edge of the window. Once. Twice. Three times. The noise of the engine is louder than I remember it being before I’d closed my eyes. Before I’d let sleep mercifully enfold me and blank out the awful week I’ve just had.

  Trying to ignore the fearful twist of my stomach, I cup my hand to the cabin window in an attempt to centre myself, but, outside, the sky is no longer blue. Where earlier I’d been able to see the land spread out like a huge map below me: green fields and clusters of towns bisected with threadlike roads, there is now nothing but blackness.

  Suffocating blackness.

  It’s why I never take flights overnight, but the plane had been delayed, and there was nothing I could do about it.

  The plane shakes again, and I grip the armrests, glad that the middle-aged woman who’s sitting beside me is too engrossed in her Hello! magazine to notice me. Next to her, the man she’s travelling with, Keep Calm and Drink Beer emblazoned across the front of his sleeveless vest, sleeps on, unaware of the turbulence.

  I’m wrong, though; the woman’s seen my white knuckles. She stares at them, and then at me, and I want to scream at her. Stop looking at me. You’re making it worse.

  She’d tried to engage me in conversation when we’d first embarked, asking me where I’d been staying. Was it Corfu Town? Had I enjoyed my holiday? Why was I travelling on my own? I could have told her how my visit to my father in Benitses had been a disaster. How instead of bringing us closer, staying with my father, his partner who’s barely older than me, and their baby, had only served to confirm what I already knew – that even if I’d wanted it, there’s no place for me in their lives. How my fiancé Drew’s idea had backfired.

  Drew. In the week we’ve been apart, I’ve done a lot of thinking. I hope he has too.

  I’d said nothing about my troubles to the woman, though. Why would I? Instead, I’d given innocuous answers, which s
he’d seemed satisfied with, and when I’d given a yawn and closed my eyes, the questions had stopped. I guess she must have got the message.

  It’s the Easter holidays, and the flight is full, but despite this, and my neighbour’s unwanted attention, my growing discomfort is isolating. There’s no one to hold my hand, no one to help quell the growing fear before it overwhelms me. I force myself to look around me. The people who fill the cabin are mainly families returning from their Easter break and groups of teenagers. They look unconcerned. Surely, I can’t be the only one feeling trapped on this shaking plane, the darkness outside pressing in. The only one bothered by the rhythmic bumpiness that pushes my seat belt into the flesh of my stomach. The only one scared the lights might go out, and we’ll be plunged into darkness.

  Our row is near the back of the plane, and the queue for the toilets spreads past our seats. A teenage girl, with pink hair extensions, waits with her friend and, despite my distress, I still notice the band of red sunburnt flesh above the waistband of her denim shorts. Corfu had been unseasonably hot.

  Another jolt and I gasp. The girl lurches sideways, grabbing at the seat of the man on the end of my row. When her shiny pink nails make contact with the skin of his shoulder instead of the chair back, he wakes and glares at her.

  ‘For fuck’s sake.’

  The girl wipes her hand down her shorts as though contaminated. ‘All right. Keep your hair on.’

  Sweat beads at my hairline, and I wipe it with the back of my hand. My fingers are trembling, and I link them before the woman next to me can see. Am I imagining it, or is the plane getting hotter? The night outside blacker?

  There’s a sharp ping above my head. The yellow seat belt sign has come on. Instinctively, I feel for the metal buckle around my waist and tighten it, my heart rate rising.

  Why is it so hot? Reaching up a hand, I twist the air vent one way then another, but it’s not making any difference. In front of me, there’s nothing but heads. All the way to the front of the plane. Row upon row.

  Somewhere near the middle of the plane, a baby cries. Then another, nearer. The woman beside me tuts and shifts in her seat, taking a sip of her wine just as the plane gives another lurch.

  ‘Damn,’ she says, mopping at her top with a serviette.

  Her tray is down, strewn with the detritus of her in-flight meal: the remains of an egg sandwich, its sulphur smell making me feel sick. A small pot, with the foil lid peeled back, offering up a view of the vivid orange jelly that’s stuck to the bottom. Next to her, her husband’s head lolls against the red nylon cover of his fat horseshoe-shaped neck rest, his fingers linked across his large belly. Even if the seat belt sign hadn’t been on, it would be a struggle for me to get out.

  Fighting my instincts, I press my forehead against the Plexiglas, forcing myself to breathe slowly and deeply. The reason I always choose the window seat is so I can pretend I’m a bird, free to fly where I like in the huge expanse of sky – not stuck in a metal tube along with hundreds of people. But there’s nothing to see except the blackness. It’s as if we’re no longer moving.

  Desperately, I search for the red blink of a light somewhere on the wing, but I’m too far back in the plane to see it. My anxiety rises a notch.

  ‘Hot, isn’t it?’ The woman next to me is reaching up, twiddling the nozzle of the air vent as I had a few moments ago. ‘Is this thing even working?’

  She’s dressed in an orange, sleeveless T-shirt, the half-moon of sweat on the stretchy material under her arm disappearing again as she lowers her hand. I don’t want her to talk to me.

  The plane shudders, making the table that’s secured to the seat in front of me rattle, and I wish that Drew was next to me instead of the woman whose bag is wedged on the floor between her legs and mine. He’d know the right thing to say to calm me. Explain how there’s nothing to worry about. That thousands of planes fly through turbulence every year and nothing happens. Only he’d be wrong about the reason for my shortness of breath and dry mouth. It’s the fear of being trapped in the dark with no way out that’s sending my pulse racing.

  If I could just get to the toilet, splash cold water on my face, I might feel better, but there’s nothing I can do as we’re no longer allowed to leave our seats. Besides, it looks like it would take more than a bit of turbulence to wake up the man on the end. A child behind is pushing the back of my seat with his feet and the teenage boy in front has reclined his slightly so that the space I have is reduced. I think of the oxygen mask tucked behind its panel and long to breathe in the sweet air.

  The woman next to me is talking again, wondering how many people it would take to use up all the air in the cabin. I want to scream at her to shut up because the whine of the engines, the shuddering of the plane and the press of the bodies is becoming unbearable.

  The cabin crew are no longer in the aisle with their drinks trolley. It’s been stowed away in the galley. They must be in their jump seats by the emergency exits, their seat belts pulled tight. It does nothing to quell my rising panic.

  There’s a humming in my ears that’s competing with the vibration of the engines, and my fingers are starting to tingle. ‘Please,’ I whisper to myself. ‘Not now.’

  Because I know what’s happening. Recognise it from before.

  As I think of the pressure of air outside the window, I start to imagine the walls of the fuselage crumpling and crushing. The space inside shrinking. I want to get out, but there’s nowhere to go.

  Without knowing it, I’ve unbuckled my seat belt and pushed myself up, one hand on the back of the seat in front of me, the other to my throat, pulling at the neck of my T-shirt.

  I stare desperately at the woman in the seat next to me, nearly falling into her as the plane drops then settles again.

  ‘Please. I’ve got to…’

  She’s staring at me wide-eyed. ‘What are you doing?’

  In front of me, a few heads have turned. They’re wondering what’s happening. Why this red-haired woman is standing up, her eyes wild. Pupils dilated.

  ‘I… I can’t breathe.’

  I feel a tug on my arm. ‘Sit down. The seat belt sign’s on.’

  When I don’t move, the woman stretches, her damp T-shirt brushing my arm, and presses the call button; the ding as the light comes on, causing a physical pain through my skull.

  I don’t remember anything else.

  When I come around, I’m in the aisle seat and a flight attendant is holding out a glass of water to me.

  ‘Here, drink this.’ She wraps my fingers around the plastic cup. ‘You fainted. How do you feel now?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You had a small panic attack, but it’s nothing to worry about, Alice.’

  I don’t remember having given her my name, but I must have done. She’s crouching in the aisle and, although she’s not old, her face is so close to me I can see where her make-up has settled into the creases around her eyes. Her dark hair is scraped back from her face into a rolled bun at the top of her head, tightening the skin at her temples, but her eyes are kind. The light from the reading lamp catches her name badge, and I fix my eyes on it, repeating the mantra. You’re safe. You’re safe.

  ‘We’ll be landing soon. Is anyone meeting you at Gatwick? Can I call someone for you?’

  The words are out before I can stop them. I could have said Drew, but for some reason his name isn’t the one that comes into my head. Instead, another name is on my lips.

  ‘Joanna.’

  Two

  By the time I finally get home, after paying the cab driver the extortionate amount of money he’s asked for the twenty-five-mile trip from the airport, I’ve calmed down considerably. My meltdown on the plane is no longer something life-changing, just an embarrassment I’ll have to put behind me.

  What I don’t understand is how I let myself get into such a state. Over the years, I’ve learnt how to control my claustrophobia by practising the breathing techniques my doctor showed me and
repeating to myself that my fear is irrational. The dark can’t hurt me. But today, it hadn’t worked. Something had gone wrong.

  Of course, I hadn’t let them ring Joanna. Why would I? It was just the stewardess’s name badge that had put her name into my head. A name they both shared. No, it was Drew I’d needed. Drew who I’d really wanted to call, to hear his reassuring voice telling me it was all right to be scared. But I didn’t make that call either. He’d still have been in the warehouse, driving his forklift between the tall metal shelves of cardboard boxes. Doing an extra shift. I couldn’t expect him to drop everything for me.

  And why would he after the things we both said.

  While I was away, I could pretend that it had never happened. Pretend he hadn’t said he wanted to leave. I’d pushed down the hurt and the pain – my anger at my father, and his new family, a good distraction. Now my misery has returned.

  The taxi driver has dropped me on the opposite side of the street from my house. The street light picks out the number on the gatepost and, as I slam the door and watch him drive away, the tail lights disappearing around the corner, I wonder what made me give him the wrong number when he first asked me. 87, the flat I’d shared with Joanna in our university days. It was only when he’d stopped the taxi further along the street that I realised my mistake.