ADELE PARKS was born in North Yorkshire. She is the author of twenty bestselling novels including the recent Sunday Times Number One hits Lies Lies Lies and Just My Luck. She’s an ambassador for The National Literacy Trust and a judge for the Costa. Adele has lived in Botswana, Italy and London, and is now settled in Guildford, Surrey, with her husband, son and cat. Both Of You is her twenty-first novel.
Also by Adele Parks
Playing Away
Game Over
Larger Than Life
The Other Woman’s Shoes
Still Thinking Of You
Husbands
Young Wives’ Tales
Happy Families (Quick Read)
Tell Me Something
Love Lies
Men I’ve Loved Before
About Last Night
Whatever It Takes
The State We’re In
Spare Brides
If You Go Away
The Stranger In My Home
The Image Of You
I Invited Her In
Lies Lies Lies
Just My Luck
Short story collections
Love Is A Journey
Copyright
An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2021
Copyright © Adele Parks 2021
Adele Parks 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 © May 2021 ISBN: 9780008395582
Version 2021-05-18
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Page numbers taken from the following print edition: ISBN 9780008395599
For Abdu Mohammed Ali.
Tech genius who saved the day.
Contents
Cover
About the Author
Booklist
Title Page
Copyright
Note to Readers
Dedication
Chapter 1
2. Leigh
3. Leigh
4. Leigh
5. Leigh
6. Mark
7. DC Clements
8. Leigh
9. Kai
10. Kai
11. Kai
12. Kai
13. Kai
14. DC Clements
15. DC Clements
16. Fiona
17. Kylie
18. DC Clements
19. Kylie
20. Mark
21. Fiona
22. Oli
23. Kylie
24. DC Clements
25. Kylie
26. Daan
27. Kylie
28. Fiona
29. Kylie
30. Oli
31. Kylie
32. Daan
33. Fiona
34. DC Clements
35. Kylie
36. Fiona
37. Kylie
38. Mark
39. Fiona
40. Kylie
41. Mark
42. Kylie
43. Kylie
44. Kylie
45. DC Clements
46. Fiona
47. Kylie
48. Daan
49. Kylie
50. Fiona
Extract
1. Lexi
2. Lexi
3. Lexi
Acknowledgements
About the Publisher
1
Tuesday 17th March 2020
I am engulfed in emptiness. I’m not in my bed. I am not in any bed.
In the instant my eyes flutter open I know there is something wrong. Seriously wrong. It’s dark. I’m suspended in a threatening, airless blackness. I’m lying down but am disorientated because I’m on a cold concrete floor. A floor that looks as though it’s waiting to be tiled, but something immediately suggests to me it never will be. My mind is lazy and unable to process why I think this. I can’t remember when I last slept on a floor, a million years ago when I was a student and would bunk in another student’s room if I was too drunk to get home. I try to sit up; my limbs feel heavy, my head sore. I try to stand up but as I do so, I am yanked back down, my left hand is tethered. Chained. I hear the rattle of the chain at the same time as I feel the cold tug. Am I dreaming? My head pulses, swells and then bursts, I close my eyes again, my lids are like sandpaper scratching, I open them for a second time, giving them a chance to adjust to the darkness. Is it my dizziness that’s leaving everything unfamiliar? Shaky? I feel slow, behind myself.
How much did I have to drink last night? I try to remember. I can’t. And then – this is terrifying – I realise I can’t remember last night at all. I feel sick. I can smell vomit, suggesting I have already been sick. I should not be waking to the smell of vomit. Where is the smell of my husband’s early morning breath? There is no smell of toast from the kitchen, no traces of the Jo Malone Lime Basil and Mandarin room spray that I sometimes wake to. I’m somewhere dusty, not damp, a little overwarm. Am I in a hospital? No. What sort of hospital makes patients lie on the floor, chains them? There are no sounds. My boys are not arguing in the kitchen, the TV is not blaring, no doors opening, slamming, no demands, ‘Mum, where are my football shorts?’ I wait, sometimes I wake to something more serene. Sometimes it is Radio 4 and the smell of coffee.
Nothing.
Alarm and horror flood through my body. My organs and limbs turn to liquid and I can’t coordinate my movements. None of us are that naive anymore. The news doesn’t always enlighten or inform, often it terrifies. My foggy mind realises I must have been drugged. I have been abducted. The terrible thing that you read about that happens to someone else – someone other – has happened to me.
Panicked, I tug hard at the chain, there’s no give. I scramble about in the darkness. Trying to understand my environment. I can’t move far because of the chain, which is attached to a radiator at one end and through a zip tie that is tight around my wrist on the other. The chain is about a metre long. As my eyes adjust, I see that I am in a room that is about three metres long by just over two, like a standard guest room. The walls are manila. It is clean and bare. I am not in a derelict warehouse or
