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Boldwood Books - Valerie Keogh

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195 pages

English

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‘Keogh is the queen of compelling narratives and twisty plots’ Jenny O'Brien

The brilliant new psychological thriller from bestseller Valerie Keogh.

'A wonderful book, I can’t rate this one highly enough. If only there were ten stars, it’s that good. Valerie Keogh is a master story-teller, and this is a masterful performance.' Bestselling author Anita Waller.

His prized possession....his greatest mistake?

From the moment I saw Ann, I knew she was perfect for me.

Her beauty and her social connections would make my miserable life so much better. It didn’t matter that I didn’t love her. I would give her the lifestyle she craved, and she would give me the life I deserved...

But soon my marriage vows were a noose around my neck.

I longed to escape my beautiful, horrible wife.

And then I saw her and I knew there was only one way out…

Don't miss the brand new thriller by Valerie Keogh! Perfect for fans of Sue Watson, Shalini Boland and K.L. Slater.

What people are saying about Valerie Keogh...

'This is an amazing book, just buy it, and sit back and enjoy the ride. A massive five shiny stars from me.' Bestselling author Anita Waller

This book was previously published as Exit Five From Charing Cross

Sujets

Policier & Thriller

Policier

Thriller

Mashups

Psychological

Thrillers

Women

Suspenso

Psychological thriller

Domestic

Woman

Psychology

The Women

City Life

Crime

Family Life

Suspense

Fiction

Informations

Publié par	Boldwood Books
Date de parution	02 janvier 2023
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781804835548
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,1500€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

THE TROPHY WIFE

VALERIE KEOGH
For Karen, Donnchadh and Maria, with love
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

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

Chapter 75

Chapter 76

Chapter 77

Chapter 78

Chapter 79

Chapter 80

Chapter 81

Chapter 82

Chapter 83

Chapter 84

Epilogue

More from Valerie Keogh

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also by Valerie Keogh

The Murder List

About Boldwood Books
PROLOGUE

If… it’s such a big word. You hang your dreams, aspirations, hopes on it, then it topples over and pins you down, leaving you squirming like a worm. A sad word, full of regret for what might have been. A melancholic word hinting at missed opportunities, at wonderful lives almost lived.
A life like mine.
Day after day, hour after hour, I sit in my small hospital room going over the life I’ve led, the things I’ve done, the lies I’ve told and the one I’ve lived.
Desperately trying to understand exactly where it went wrong, to pinpoint the very moment: was it when I left home? When I met Adam? Or Jane?
Perhaps it was when I discovered the truth about my parents.
Maybe it was… not when I met the stunningly beautiful Ann… but the moment I decided she’d be the ideal wife. The cherry on top of a life that had seemed so perfect.
Maybe I’ll never understand and will simply have to live with the truth – that thanks to me, three people died.
Lies, secrets, regrets, and loss… this life of mine.
1

I grew up in a dreary town filled with small minds and tiny expectations, where our grey terraced house blended in seamlessly with rows of the same. But worse than having tiny expectations was my parents’ pride in the fact.
‘We’ve got no pretensions to be anything other than what you see,’ my father would tell people if they enquired about plans for the future. Some people escaped, moved to bigger homes in better towns. Others stayed and extended, building out into the long back garden or up into the attic. They prettified the drab post-war build and gave their home some character, some expression. ‘Ideas above their station,’ my father would remark, and my mother would nod silently.
I’d applied for a scholarship to the University of Oxford without consulting them, forging their names where needed without compunction, never really believing there was a chance. But then my A-level results surpassed my expectations and I thought, maybe .
When the letter came, my mother handed it to me with raised eyebrows but no questions. I stuck it in my jeans pocket and waited an interminable few minutes before leaving the kitchen and heading to my room. My heart thumping, almost painfully, I prayed to any god who would listen and pulled the letter out. Held tightly in my none-too-clean hands, I stood there, staring at it, my grubby thumb brushing over the letters of my name, leaving a smear of dirt over the Mr Jake Mitchell printed in bold typescript. Finally, with clumsy fingers, I tore it open and pulled out the thick creamy paper that lay inside. I read it slowly, stunned to learn I had been awarded a full scholarship. Unbelievable, life-giving words of hope and promise.
I held the letter to my chest, pressing it there, wrapping my arms around it, as if it were a child I needed to protect. Holding it out now and then, ever so carefully, to read again. And with each reading, long-held dreams suddenly became attainable, my future filling with countless unimaginable possibilities. Because now I truly felt that anything could happen.
It was two days before I told my parents. Two days, while I read and reread and shivered with innocent pleasurable anticipation, putting off the telling because I knew it would result in derision, even ridicule, knew my father would see it as an idea way above my station . And in those two days of reading and rereading, I suppose there was a little part of me, festering deep inside, which agreed with him, and when that part came to the surface, I took out the letter and was tempted to tear it up, to settle for what I was supposed to, to stop my stupid dreaming. Then I would read the letter again, and think… why not?
Mealtimes in our house were generally the best times to broach anything contentious. We sat around a small table in the kitchen, my parents’ necks craning to watch the television that sat on a shelf slightly too high for comfort.
My father would watch anything, but he especially loved programmes where he could show off his moral superiority. That night it was Escape to the Country , a favourite of his; he’d sneer at the couple who were trying to find a country home, pass comment on their accents, their clothes, their aspirations, would thump his hand on the table and wave his fork at the television when presented with the presenter’s choice of country house. This episode, the house in question was a beautiful, thatched cottage overlooking a river near the Cornish city of Truro.
‘Rats,’ he said, startling my mother, who was in the middle of dishing up the cottage pie she had cooked at least twice a week, every week, for as long as I could remember.
She spun around, spoon-hand wavering, globs of watery potatoes dropping onto the floor. ‘Where?’
My father chucked his head toward the television. ‘Cornwall. Rats in the thatch, rats in the river. Wouldn’t buy that bloody house!’
‘I’m going to Oxford.’ My bald statement interrupted my father’s diatribe on Cornwall and rats. It drew a glare from one set of eyes, and a blank look from the other.
‘What are you on about? It’s Cornwall, that, not Oxford.’
What? I looked at my father, momentarily confused, but his eyes had already returned to the television . ‘No,’ I said, my voice loud, drawing their eyes, their faces, their giraffe-like necks toward me.
‘IappliedforascholarshiptoOxford.I’vebeenaccepted.I’mgoingtoreadbusinessstudiesandeconomics.’ It all came on a whoosh of breath, incomprehensible even to my ears. I looked down at the congealing mess on my plate, focused on it, afraid to look up and see what would be written clearly across their faces.
‘What?’ My mother’s voice, puzzled.
Looking up, I caught her frown, met her eyes. ‘I applied for a scholarship to Oxford. I’ve been accepted. I’m going to read business studies and economics.’
She looked blankly at me, swallowed. ‘Oxford?’
‘Nonsense,’ my father said, shoving a forkful of food into his mouth, continuing to speak around it. ‘I’ve talked to the boss. There is a place coming up at the factory, now that that fat, lazy bastard Sam has been given his marching orders. He told me any son of mine would be sure to get the job.’
Yes. Of course, they would say that. My father was fourteen when he started in the factory, working up from sweeping floors to a mind-numbingly boring job on the assembly line where he still worked. He suffered from a total drought of desire. Had never gone on strike, never made demands. Had no ambition, in fact, to be anything more than he was, and no ambition for me but to be what he was. An endless cycle of boredom. A perpetuation of a species that shouldn’t. Survival of the grimmest.
A place in the factory… a life like theirs, every spark crushed by dull grinding monotony. I wanted more and was determined to get it. No matter what I had to do.
2

My mother, her mouth full, mangled cottage pie on view with each word, had little to contribute. ‘Stop staring into space and eat your dinner.’ Only after several minutes did she shake her head and mutter ‘Oxford’ under her breath as if I’d said I wanted to go to the moon.
‘We should go to Cornwall,’ my father said, as if I had never spoken.
She nodded. ‘That’d be nice.’
I knew they’d never go. They knew they’d never go. The aspiration was as far as they got. Sometimes they got as far as going into a travel agent and having a look at brochures, having a chat with the friendly agent who would try to steer them towards the better parts of wherever they were enquiring about. A fool’s game. They were never interested in anywhere but the cheapest bed and breakfast, in the cheapest part of the cheapest place. And when they had all the information and brochures, they would stand up, say they’d have to think about it, and head off. The brochures would sit on a shelf and gather dust for months before eventually being used as paper to light the fire.
Had my mother always been this way? I looked closely at this woman who had borne only one child, who had accepted the future mapped out for that child without question or comment. Had there been a time when she felt the stir of a breeze through an open door and wanted to run, get away from the dull plodding of her life? Had marriage to my father numbed her brain? I desperately wanted to believe that, at some time, one of my parents had had a dream, wanted to believe that in the genes, in the DNA I inherited from them, the seed of that dream existed, and all I had to do was get