Robert reaches the door and glances back over his shoulder at me.
‘Ava?’ he asks with a faint smile. ‘You coming?’ He turns back and offers me his hand, pausing when he sees my expression. ‘Are you OK?’
I blink at him, swaying slightly, then shake my head.
He steps towards me, concerned. ‘What is it?’
I reach for the pin of the grenade. I ready myself for the blast.
Robert takes my hand, frowning.
‘Nothing,’ I say, shoving the pin back in, before following them out the door.
Acknowledgements
Huge thanks are due to my incredible agent Amanda, who opened the door to me writing adult thrillers, after spending the first eight years of my novelist career writing young adult fiction.
I’m also very lucky to have the support and talent of Ruth Tross, an editor with a magic touch, and the whole team at Mulholland, including Hannah, Melanie, Jasmine and Lydia, as well as Lewis who came up with the cover and Helen who was forced to fix my wonky grammar and bastardized spelling. After almost four years living in the US I still mix up wrenches and spanners and pavements and sidewalks.
I moved to Ojai (not a fictitious town!) in 2016 with my husband John and daughter Alula – our third move across continents in as many years. I couldn’t continue to follow my dreams so determinedly without their love and support and I count my blessings every day that not only do I get to live in the most beautiful place on earth, I get to do so with the two best people in the world.
Thanks too must go to my dear friend and hiking partner Clarissa who listened to this story when it was just an idea in my head and whose support has meant a huge deal.
And of course, last but not least, thanks to my girlfriends – Nichola, Vic, Rachel, Lauren, Asa, Becky, Karthi, Sara, Clarissa and Theo – who lift me up, love me, laugh with me, inspire me and teach me, and who are the reason I started writing in the first place – encouraging me before I even had my very first book deal. Thanks for continuing to cheerlead me along through all the ups and downs of motherhood, writing novels and working in Hollywood. I honestly wouldn’t be here without you.
Did you love In Her Eyes?
Read on for an extract from Friends Like These by Sarah Alderson
Transcript of 999 call
Sunday, 10 December, 11.23 p.m.
Female Caller: She’s got a knife. Please hurry.
Operator: The police are on their way. Can you get out of the house?
Female Caller: No.
Operator: Is there somewhere you can hide, somewhere with a door that locks?
Female Caller: I’m in the bathroom . . . Downstairs. Please hurry. I can hear her coming.
Operator: Stay on the line with me.
[0:31:44 – unclear – indistinct crying]
Female Caller: [whispered] I think she’s outside the door . . . I can hear her. Oh god, please, hurry up.
Operator: The police will be there any minute. Stay on the line with me. Can you tell me what’s happening? Who is it that’s got the knife?
[0:44:16 – unclear – series of bangs – followed by a crash]
Female Caller: No!
Operator: Hello? Are you there?
[0:53:33 – screams]
Female Caller: No! Get off me . . . She’s going to kill me!
[1:05:33 – unclear – sounds of a struggle]
Operator: Hello? Are you there? Hello?
Female Caller: Hello?
Operator: Are you OK? What happened? The police are pulling up outside now.
Female Caller: She’s dead. I think she might be dead. Oh god. Oh god . . . please . . . oh my god. She’s not moving. There’s blood. A lot of blood.
Operator: Is she breathing?
Female Caller: I don’t know.
[2:04:16 – whimpering – panting]
Operator: Can you check for a pulse?
Female Caller: I . . . oh god . . . I don’t know. Please can you send an ambulance?
Operator: It’s on its way. You need to stay calm. Can you do that for me?
Female Caller: Yes. Yes, I think so . . . Oh my god.
Operator: What’s your name? Can you give me your name?
Female Caller: She came at me . . . with a knife. She just came out of nowhere. I think she’s dead . . . I think I’ve killed her.
Part One
Partial transcript of police interview with Miss Elizabeth Crawley, subsequent to filing of Missing Persons Report
PC Kandiah – Sunday, 10 December
Have you ever had one of those Facebook friends – more of an acquaintance really, like a colleague or an old school friend – who you accept a friendship request from and then wish to god you bloody hadn’t? We all have, right? You don’t want to unfriend them just in case they realise, even though they’ve got like seven hundred friends so the chances are they’d never know. But if you’re honest, you’re also a little bit intrigued by their life and sometimes, maybe after a couple of glasses of wine, when you’re tired of trawling through Netflix to find something to watch, you find yourself randomly Facebook-stalking them. Admit it, you’ve done it.
Next thing you know, you’re falling down a rabbit hole and feeling like a bit of a voyeur. It’s funny, isn’t it? The whole time you’re scouring their feed, you’re waiting for someone to tap you on the shoulder and shout Ha! Caught you! Even though you haven’t done anything wrong. I mean, they wouldn’t put it all out there unless they wanted you to read it.
You want an example of Becca’s social media posts? OK. She was one of those people who hashtagged every post with something like #gratitude or #blessed or #yolo. Oh, and also, #bestboyfriendever. That was her favourite. You know the kind of person I’m talking about. You’re smiling. You know someone just like it.
She was forever posting selfies of herself at the gym, you know the kind, complaining about having eaten too many pies and needing to work off the extra pounds, while at the same time showing off her abs. Or posting a thousand photos of
