No Place to Hide
Authors: Susan Lewis
No Place to Hide
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
A Ballantine Books Trade Paperback Original
Copyright © 2015 by Susan Lewis Ltd.
Reading group guide copyright © 2015 by Penguin Random House LLC
Excerpt from
Too Close to Home
by Susan Lewis copyright © 2015 by Susan Lewis Ltd.
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
B
ALLANTINE
and the H
OUSE
colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
R
ANDOM
H
OUSE
R
EADER’S
C
IRCLE
& Design is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.
Published in hardcover in Great Britain by Century, an imprint of The Random House Group Limited, in 2015.
This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming book
Too Close to Home
by Susan Lewis. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Lewis, Susan.
No place to hide : a novel / Susan Lewis.
pages ; cm
ISBN 978-0-345-54955-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-345-54956-3 (ebook)
I. Title.
PR6062.E9546N66 2015
823'.914—dc23
2015020360
eBook ISBN 9780345549563
eBook design adapted from book design by Virginia Norey
Cover design: Susan Schultz
Cover images: © Ilona Wellman/Trevillion (woman), © Andy & Michelle Kerry/Trevillion (pier)
v4.1
ep
Contents
Questions and Topics for Discussion
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all
—
E
MILY
D
ICKINSON
Present Day—Culver, Indiana
So this was what it was like beyond the corn-silk veil.
Others called it a curtain, but she preferred veil. This allowed for a more dreamlike connection between the blue skies and still waters of this hauntingly beautiful town, and the world out there, filled with cornfields, highways, cities, oceans—the world, the family, she’d left behind.
To get here she’d flown through storms and time zones, driven for mile after mile across vast swaths of farmland, forests, and yet more farmland, taking perfectly straight roads through the heart of it all. She’d passed poor and jumbled communities, stopped in flashy highway oases, spotted birds of prey swooping and soaring Icarus-like to the sun, and all the time she’d wondered what kind of a place she was heading toward.
It wasn’t anything like she’d expected. It was a town of many contrasts, hidden stories, troubled history, settled on a lake that glistened like a lost jewel in the middle of nowhere.
It was the second week of September now. Summer was officially over, though the sun continued to warm the immaculate streets, and flowers bloomed as eagerly as the birds sang. The tourists who’d swelled the population to many times its normal size throughout the season had vanished with Labor Day, leaving the place as tranquil, as perfect, as a photograph, and for long moments at a time as still.
Justine Cantrell was standing at the edge of Lake Maxinkuckee, her bare feet sinking into gritty sand, her fine, honey-colored curls bobbing on a wayward breeze. The sunlight was so bright on the water that she had to narrow her green eyes to peer across to the opposite shore, perhaps two miles distant. The magnificent multimillion-dollar mansions nestling among the greenery were barely visible from here.
“Are you crazy?” Matt, her husband, had protested when she’d told him where she was going. “You can’t.”
“Where else would you suggest?” she’d countered quietly.
“I don’t know, but so far…Justine, you’re not thinking straight.”
She could almost have smiled at that. “Are you?” she’d asked.
He didn’t answer, because they both knew he wasn’t.
Neither of them could, and probably never would again.
“It’s been so many years,” he’d stated, as if she didn’t know. “You have no family there now. You don’t know anyone to help you get started.”
“Isn’t that the point? To go to a place where no one knows me?”
She could hear their conversation as though the rippling water spread out before her was carrying it to her across the miles, sighing its meaning, its pain and hopelessness into the very depths of her heart.
Eighteen Years Earlier—London, UK
“They’re here!” Matt called out as the entryphone’s buzzer rang down the hall.
In the bedroom Justine smiled, not only because of how pleased Matt always was to see his brother—he was already opening the front door and shouting down the four flights of stairs to ask if Simon needed any help—but because of the way thirteen-month-old Abby began bouncing gleefully on the bed. It was debatable what Abby loved most in the world: visitors, since she was nothing if not Miss Sociable, or music. And it was music of just about any kind, they were rapidly discovering, for they could play her virtually anything from Dire Straits to Billie Holiday to Blur and she’d either dance in her awkward toddler way, or try to sing along, or simply sit with Matt and listen, appearing rapt.
In spite of being almost nine months pregnant, Justine managed to scoop up their adorable daughter, who instantly shrieked “Dada!” and shot out her chubby arms.
Matt was standing in the bedroom doorway, his deep-set smoky gray eyes shining with love as he took Abby into one arm and put the other around Justine.
He was a little over six feet tall, had a loose, rangy physique, and thick, dark hair that curled willfully around his high cheekbones and slender neck. Though he was undeniably good-looking, at least to her mind, it was his remarkable eyes with their flecks of violet and lazy glimmer of intrigue that had drawn her to him when they’d first met as students. There was also his smile, so captivatingly radiant it had actually made her blink.
She loved everything about him, and knew what he loved about her: the silky honey tones of her hair, the riot of freckles that darkened her creamy skin, the throaty laugh that encouraged his jokes, the way she embraced his impulsiveness, and often matched it with a spontaneity of her own.
Almost since they’d become a couple everyone had wanted to be around them. Their enthusiasm, recklessness, sheer joie de vivre was as infectious as their generosity. By the time they married, at the age of twenty-two, it already felt as though they’d known each other all their lives.
With his degrees in politics and Arabic, Matt’s internship with the BBC news channel had soon resulted in a permanent position, while Justine started her working life as a teaching assistant at a nearby primary school, mainly to fill time until their first child—conceived around the time of the wedding—came into the world. Her qualifications in drama and business studies would always come in handy further down the line; what mattered for now was giving their unexpected little treasure the very best start in life.
Abby was certainly thriving in the love that surrounded her. However, her speedy growth, and a new baby on its way in a couple of weeks, meant there was simply no way this cramped attic flat at the top of a four-story town house in south London was going to be able to contain them all. It didn’t even have a lift, nor could it boast a second bedroom, nor enough space for anything more than was already crowding the open-plan kitchen–cum–sitting room.
“Where is everyone?” Simon shouted, coming in through the front door.
Laughing, Matt planted a kiss on Justine’s forehead and carried Abby out to the sitting room where her aunt Gina was starting to unload her sixteenth-month-old son, Wesley, from the carrier on his daddy’s back.
With no preamble Simon declared, “We’ve got just the place for you guys. OK, I know you don’t want to look right now with the baby being so close, but it’s not going to stay on the market for long.” He shrugged the carrier off and smiled at Justine as she came into the room. “You know where I’m talking about. Have you got the details?” he asked Gina.
“Give me a chance,” she replied, setting Wesley on his feet and watching him make his way straight to Abby’s playhouse. “It’s in the envelope at the top of my bag.” To Justine she said, “How are you? The baby’s going to pop out any minute, by the look of you.”
“Please,” Justine implored, rubbing her massively swollen belly.
“And here’s my little angel.” Gina smiled, taking Abby from Matt.
“Mum, mum,” Abby murmured in response, and gave a whoop of delight as her aunt swung her up in the air.
“You’re such a pretty girl,” Gina said gently, smoothing her wispy blond curls.
Abby drew back to look at her, showed every one of her new white teeth in a beguiling grin, and promptly waved her fists in the air.
“So where is this place?” Matt was asking as he took the estate agent’s details from Simon.
Simon grinned. Unlike his brother, he was almost as fair-haired and blue-eyed as his wife, though his and Matt’s features and height were similar, as was their zest for life. “You tell me.” He chuckled, clearly enjoying the moment.
As he looked at the property details Matt frowned in confusion, before raising his eyebrows in amazement. “You’re not serious,” he said to his brother.
“Absolutely,” Simon confirmed.
Gina gave a laugh of excitement.
Intrigued, Justine took the details from Matt and experienced a bolt of astonishment as she recognized the house for sale.
“You’re kidding,” she said to Gina.