33 Women: A gripping new thriller about the power of women, and the lengths they will go to when pushed... Read online

  Praise for Isabel Ashdown’s Writing

  ‘Fiendishly clever’ – Red, Best Crime & Thriller Novels Autumn 2019

  ‘So atmospheric’ – Crime Monthly

  ‘Had me gripped throughout, with a heroine worth rooting for’ – Ian Rankin, author

  ‘Beautifully crafted and satisfying’ – Mari Hannah, author

  ‘Satisfying on every level’ – Elly Griffiths, author

  ‘Tense, edgy and nerve-wracking. I loved it!’ – Helen Fields, author

  ‘Beautifully written … original and compelling’ – Howard Linskey, author

  ‘A dark, unrelenting psychological thrill ride’ – Publishers Weekly

  ‘A gripping read’ – Sunday Independent(Ireland)

  ‘A heart in your mouth read’ – Red

  ‘A taut thriller’ – Nina Pottell for Prima

  ‘It’s action all the way and a compulsive read’ – The Sun

  ‘This tautly written thriller will make you question everything’ – Stylist

  ‘A gripping, twisty thriller’ – My Weekly

  ‘Gripping, clever and beautifully written, Ashdown’s star is about to soar’ – Phoebe Morgan, author

  ‘Beautifully-written, and ultimately very moving … I loved it’ – Steve Mosby, author

  ‘Twisty, gripping, and utterly unpredictable’ – Will Dean, author

  ‘A tense and claustrophobic read’ – Lesley Thomson, author

  ‘A craftily plotted, intricate read. Highly recommended’ – Mick Herron, author

  ‘Kept me up three nights in a row’ – Holly Seddon, author

  ‘A stylish, confident thriller … hard to put down’ – Kate Rhodes, author

  ‘Had me gripped from start to finish’ – Louise Candlish, author

  ‘A great story … and a thoroughly satisfying ending’ – Katerina Diamond, author

  ‘Draws you in, right from the first page’ – Sam Carrington, author

  For all the good women I’ve known, and all the good men

  Contents

  Praise for Isabel Ashdown’s Writing

  Dedication

  Title Page

  Author’s Note

  Epigraph

  The Sisters of Two Cross Farm: Code of Conduct

  1. VANESSA

  2. CELINE

  3. BRAMBLE

  4. CELINE

  5. BRAMBLE

  6. CELINE

  7. BRAMBLE

  8. CELINE

  9. BRAMBLE

  10. CELINE

  11. BRAMBLE

  12. CELINE

  13. BRAMBLE

  14. CELINE

  15. BRAMBLE

  16. CELINE

  17. BRAMBLE

  18. CELINE

  19. BRAMBLE

  20. CELINE

  21. BRAMBLE

  22. CELINE

  23. BRAMBLE

  24. CELINE

  25. BRAMBLE

  26. CELINE

  27. BRAMBLE

  28. CELINE

  29. BRAMBLE

  30. CELINE

  31. BRAMBLE

  32. CELINE

  33. BRAMBLE

  34. CELINE

  35. BRAMBLE

  36. CELINE

  37. BRAMBLE

  38. CELINE

  39. BRAMBLE

  40. BRAMBLE

  41. CELINE

  42. CELINE

  43. CELINE

  44. BRAMBLE

  Acknowledgements

  Read on for a sample from Beautiful Liars by Isabel Ashdown…

  Credits

  About the Author

  By Isabel Ashdown

  Copyright

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  When I wrote this novel back in 2019, the world was a very different place.

  33 Women is a story about families separated by circumstance, set, in part, in an isolated community. It is a secretive place; an unusual way of life. But, beyond the walls of the commune, the day-to-day goes on. Shops and cafés are open for trade. Rush-hour train carriages offer standing room only. Old friends embrace in public places. Lovers meet in secret rendezvous. The normal stuff of normal life – or, I reflect now, life as we once knew it.

  The story takes place in May 2020, which (as I write this) is the present day, and it is clear that the backdrop I imagined a year ago bears little resemblance to society as we recognise it now. In 33 Women, there is no pandemic, no social distancing and no lockdown. My characters move about unrestricted, free of face coverings, absent of the caution we have all lately been forced to adopt.

  And so, I ask you to suspend what you know about this strangest of times and read on as though this dreadful virus had never visited at all. I hope you enjoy reading 33 Women as much as I enjoyed writing it.

  Isabel Ashdown

  May 2020

  ‘I ask no favors for my sex. I surrender not our claim to equality. All I ask of our brethren is, that they will take their feet from off our necks, and permit us to stand upright on that ground which God designed us to occupy.’

  — Sarah Moore Grimké, 1837

  THE SISTERS OF TWO CROSS FARM:

  CODE OF CONDUCT

  Come as yourself, sister, whoever that may be.

  No man shall enter through the gates of our community.

  In all things, sisters are equal.

  Trust is implicit, loyalty a given.

  33 will be the number at our table.

  6 will be the number of our Founding Sisters, the caretakers of our community.

  All who dwell here must first shed their limpets, who or whatever they may be.

  Come for a day or stay forever, but all must come in the spirit of sisterhood.

  Every sister will be afforded a week to weep and a lifetime to grow.

  Each sister will rise with the sun and rest with the moon.

  She will labour six days out of seven for her weekly shelter.

  Banishment is final.

  1. VANESSA

  March 2005

  There is a moment in which pain and fear slips into acceptance.

  I am there now, and all around me is still, a midnight hush of shock and awe. No more can I feel the weight of fists slamming into my jaw, or the snap of my ribs, or even the gasping pressure of fingers closing around my throat. In fact, I barely feel a thing, just the frost-damp grass beneath my palms and the cool white whisper of my breath as it slips through my broken lips. Above me, the stars are out, the indigo sky quite lit up by them, and, as white wings soar by, it occurs to me that they are silent witnesses to my passing. I wonder if I should feel afraid.

  But then I am sixteen again; I see Celine and Pip shrouded in sunlight at the kitchen table, laying out bread for cheese on toast, and Celine is cutting the crusts off Pip’s because she won’t eat them, and drizzling Worcester sauce on mine because that’s how I like it. And I’m standing there in the doorway in my school uniform, biting down on my lip because I love these two so much – I’m feeling too much – and it’s chaos inside my head; and now we’re sitting on the back steps, arranged like pot plants, one-two-three, eating our toast and looking out across the courtyard, naïvely planning summer day trips and meal rotas, and Celine is saying ‘Delilah who?’ and the light is radiating through Pip’s scruffy blonde hair and she’s sticking two fingers in the air, blowing raspberries and we’re laughing, all three of us through tears, and we have each other and we’ll cling to
that, and we’ll never walk away …

  A sound, a thud like iron against hard earth, brings me back to this starry night, and even through my inertia fresh panic grips me. How will they know how to find me? How will my sisters know where to look?

  The night sky is obscured as women gather over me, their faces lined with age, eyes moving closer, closer, closer still, testing me for life. Whether they see it or not, I wish them only love in this final breath, before their eyes, like the stars, fade to nothing.

  2. CELINE

  Present day, May 2020

  From behind dark shades, Celine’s eyes skate over the shimmering harbour as she hurtles along the motorway, briefly glimpsing the jaunty sway of yachts and dinghies on the water. It’s a fleeting scene that appears entirely unreal to her, like a frame from a movie. She takes a deep, conscious breath and tries to anchor herself in the present, all the while sensing herself as though viewed from afar: glossy-curled, thirty-something, crisp white sleeves rolled back, her businesslike appearance strangely at odds with the 1970s camper van she drives.

  As the harbour gives way to industrial units, Celine feels time both slowing and speeding up, but the sensation is not unpleasant and there is no real panic attached, just a sort of low-level sadness or regret. Derealisation, a therapist once described it to her, this feeling of detachment, but Celine’s not convinced. She doesn’t go in for labels, and her time with the therapist came to an end after just two or three sessions, the experience leaving her feeling worse than when she’d started. She prefers to think of herself as just very slightly fucked-up, a diagnosis which is far less complicated, being one which requires no particular treatment. It isn’t that she doesn’t feel things, more that she doesn’t always allow herself to react to them or let her feelings be seen. She’s found life to be easier that way, and it’s not a big deal.

  Now, she squints against the sunlight and concentrates on the fast-moving traffic ahead. She’s on her way to her mother Delilah’s place in Arundel, and she swallows the reality of it like a stone, masochistically forcing herself to recall the last time they met, in a café in Tarrant Street ten years earlier, on a warm May day not unlike this one. On that day, despite a two-year gap since they’d last seen each other, Delilah had skirted around difficult topics like her abrupt departure from Celine’s life, or Vanessa’s death, instead making polite conversation across artfully mismatched teacups and a pretty tower of scones. At one point Celine had tried to broach the subject of the police investigation, to find out if her mother had heard anything more about her sister’s now cold case, but Delilah had waved the unpleasant subject away, her fixed poise never once giving any clue to the inner workings of her mind. If anyone looked through the window and saw us now, Celine had thought at the time, they would view us unmistakably as mother and daughter, so alike with our dark eyes and curls; and they would think, how lovely. Just as that thought had landed, there’d been a rap on the glass beside them and there really had been someone looking in at them – a man in a smart coat and hat – and it was as though Celine had conjured him up by her thoughts alone. ‘Oh, darling, time to go,’ her mother had sighed, breathlessly grazing Celine’s cheek with hers, the mere scent of her Shalimar perfume flattening any objection Celine might have made. ‘Let’s do this again, shall we?’ she’d said, and, just like that, she’d vanished. But for the twenty-pound note lying crumpled on the lace tablecloth, she might never have been there at all.

  Desperate to get out of that café, Celine had left without waiting for her change and navigated her way down to the river, where she’d sat on a bench overlooking the pleasure boats and wept. These would be the last tears she ever shed for Delilah, she had sworn, the woman she’d once called Mum.

  At some point along this interminable stretch of road, a sign welcomes Celine from Hampshire into West Sussex, and a glance at her phone’s satnav confirms she has just thirty-four minutes until she arrives – just half an hour to get her emotions in line and work out what she’s meant to feel. It’s at times like these that she wishes she were more like her younger sister, Pip. Pip, who will be waiting for her at the end of this journey, neither judging nor feeling judged, just being who she really is, feeling what she really feels. Right now, Celine feels close to nothing, and yet, physically, she is acutely aware of every sensation: the sharp, blinding glare of the sun’s rays; the stretch of her jeans over aching knees; the irritable prickle of rosacea across her cheekbones as her skin responds to the unseasonal heat of the van. More than anything, there’s the thud of her heart, which seems to grow in volume and momentum as the miles tick away.

  She skirts past the market town of Chichester, rumbling along the A27 in her van, passing signs for Sussex hamlets and villages with mouthful names like Crockerhill and Walberton. Where the roads begin to narrow, the signposts become more local in theme – the arboretum, the trout farm, the castle and lido – and when the satnav directs her off the main road, down a secluded country lane, she knows she must be close. She knew the place was out of town, but she hadn’t anticipated this. The lane quickly becomes an unmade track, and she finds herself driving at a snail’s pace to protect the camper van’s suspension, her stomach clenching at every pothole, lurching at every bump. When she reaches a large gated property, she lets the engine idle a while, wondering if this is the place, as she takes in the impressive façade of the red brick building, its carved wooden bargeboards painted a deep forest green, the door to match. Spotting activity beyond the house and front gardens, she lifts her sunglasses as her gaze lands on a group of women tending the flower borders at the rear. One of them turns in her direction. Pale, scarf-headed and tall, the woman strikes an imposing figure as she plants her hands on her hips like a challenge, and Celine feels immediately caught out, a voyeur. She quickly turns away, and drives on, another mile down the lane, until she finally arrives at the tree-shrouded entrance to another grand property that can only be her mother’s. Yes, the name plate on the gatepost confirms it: ‘Belle France’. Only Delilah would name a house so ostentatiously, a reference to her French grandparents, the fragrance tycoons responsible for her comfortable lifestyle. Celine wonders how those hard-working pioneers would have viewed Delilah’s choices: the houses, the holidays, the jewellery, the endless stream of men. The desertion. And then, with shame, she wonders what those same ancestors would make of her, if they could hear her harsh thoughts now, at a time like this.

  Turning in through lion-and-unicorn-topped pillars, Celine takes the long tree-lined drive towards the house, knowing her mother will hate the fact that she hasn’t upgraded her vehicle from this ‘abominable monstrosity’ in all these years. Would, she corrects herself with a shake of her head. She would have hated it. As she skirts the final tree, a large house comes into clear view, a red-brick statement standing tall against the riverside backdrop and manicured gardens. Celine doesn’t know what she was expecting, and the scene is so entirely unfamiliar to her that it seems impossible to imagine that Delilah, the woman who was never without a man on her arm, had been living here all alone.

  That she died here all alone.

  3. BRAMBLE

  1976, Two Cross Farm

  It was late, a still, muggy full-mooned night, and in my forty years on this planet I’d never felt more alive.

  In the living room at the back of the house, all the ground-floor windows were flung wide, and in the absence of furniture Fern had covered the parquet floor with throws and scarves and cushions, on which we now sat in a circle so that all five of us might view each other and connect.

  ‘The eyes are everything,’ Fern explained, her soft American accent lingering over the last word. Drawing her dark hair into a long rope coil, she dropped it carelessly over one shoulder and opened up her hands. She was wearing a tiny crocheted bikini top and bell-bottomed flares that hugged her lean thighs and frayed around her bare, conker-brown feet. ‘I once took a series of photographs of a blind man I met in Calcutta. He had the most generous of hear
ts, the deepest wisdom, and yet I never got over the profound sadness I felt at not being able to look inside him, to see through his eyes.’ She studied us each in turn now, intensely, and I could swear I felt the shudder of my spirit as she did so, as though it knew it was being scrutinised and decoded. ‘The eyes are everything,’ she repeated. ‘Do you understand what I mean by this? Susan?’

  Alert, young Susan sat a little more upright, leaned a fraction further forward over her crossed legs. ‘You mean like how, if you look into someone’s eyes, you can see what they’re feeling? What they really mean?’

  ‘Yes!’ Fern clapped her hands together. ‘Yes! You see, we live in a warped kinda society where we’re taught to not always say what we feel – but the eyes can’t lie, can they? They don’t know how to – not like our lying mouths and minds and hands and bodies! Because the eyes are connected to the soul.’

  ‘Like your photographs,’ Kathy said, earnestly pushing her glasses up her nose. At thirty-five she was only a few years older than Fern, but she had a frazzled quality about her, her hair a greying blonde frizz, her brow already deeply lined. ‘33 Women. That’s what I really felt your exhibition was about. Truth.’

  She was talking about Fern’s show in London, where we’d met for the first time on that night when I’d been invited to join in this most marvellous of ventures. Where, for the first time in my life, with no one to direct me otherwise, I’d allowed myself to be reckless and abandoned, and simply said yes.

  ‘We were looking at thirty-three naked women,’ Kathy continued, ‘stripped back to their true form. But it wasn’t the bodies I was drawn to, it was the eyes. How do you do that? Whenever my husband takes a picture of me, my eyes aren’t my own.’ She frowned a little, gazing off beyond the group into the darkness outside. ‘It’s like I’m not even there.’

  Fern placed a hand over her own heart, and was silent for a while. It had been this stillness and certainty that had drawn me to stay back and talk with her at the gallery that day, and, when she’d invited me to join her and the others for after-show drinks, I’d been captivated by their talk of equality and patriarchy and emancipation and release. I was the oldest in the group by a good few years, but somehow it didn’t matter. I had something to offer, and, like the rest of them, I had something to escape. My tormentor was now dead, but I couldn’t go on living the way I was, holed up in the prison of my family home, alone and decaying. I was certain this chance meeting had great significance; after all, I’d only stepped inside the gallery for a few minutes’ respite from the scorching afternoon sun, and there she had been to welcome me – Fern, offering up a glass of cool wine and a smile. It had to be fate at work.