Averil Dean - The Undoing

On a bitter January evening, three people are found murdered in the isolated Blackbird hotel.

Best friends since childhood, Eric, Rory and Celia have always been inseparable. Together they’ve coped with broken homes and damaged families, clinging to each other as they’ve navigated their tenuous lives. Their bond is potent and passionate—and its intensity can be volatile.

When the trio decides to follow Celia’s dream of buying and renovating the Blackbird, a dilapidated hotel that sits on the perilous cliffs of Jawbone Ridge, new jealousies arise and long-held suspicions start to unravel their relationship. Soon they find themselves pushed to the breaking point, where trust becomes doubt, longing becomes obsession, and someone will commit the ultimate betrayal.

An unflinching story of ambition, desire and envy, The Undoing traces the events leading to that fateful night, revealing the intimate connections, dark secrets and terrible lies that wove them together—and tore them apart.

Praise for THE UNDOING Praise Title Page Dedication Quotation August 2014 One Day Earlier January 11, 2009 One Day Earlier Two Days Earlier Three Days Earlier December 24, 2008 Two Days Earlier Five Days Earlier September 2008 December 31, 2007 July 2007 January 2003 November 2002 June 2002 November 2001 July 1998 January 11, 2009 August 2014 Acknowledgments Reader’s Guide Questions for Discussion A Conversation with Averil Dean Copyright

“Beautifully imagined and beautifully written, hypnotically suspenseful and truly chilling…this is a very superior thriller.”

—#1 New York Times bestselling author Lee Child

“Smart, gripping, and thoroughly absorbing. Dean’s The Undoing had my brain twisted for hours.”

—New York Times bestselling author Chelsea Cain

“Averil Dean’s The Undoing is a tense, suspenseful tale that pulls the reader down a twisted path to the spine-tingling conclusion.”

—New York Times bestselling author Heather Gudenkauf

“Dark and haunting…a beautifully disturbing character study. And the writing itself—this isn’t simply good prose. The words are poetic and painful and unforgettable. The Undoing is a superb novel. Dean’s career as a suspense writer is going to be great fun to watch.”

—New York Times bestselling author J.T. Ellison

Praise for ALICE CLOSE YOUR EYES

“Chilling, riveting, intriguing, surprising and compelling, and I can’t think of a debut that kept me turning pages faster or more breathlessly.”

—M.J. Rose, international bestselling author of Seduction

“Alice Close Your Eyes is a crisply written, wickedly suspenseful debut…a dark, sensual nightmare.… Don’t miss it.”

—David Bell, author of Cemetery Girl and Never Come Back

“Alice Close Your Eyes will have readers on the edge of their seats. Promising newcomer Dean spins a web out of the deepest human obsessions…to reveal a haunting story.”

—Booklist

“Dean’s marvelous debut is dark, gritty and relentless… This psychological thriller borders on the erotic as it draws the reader into its web.”

—RT Book Reviews, 4 stars

“A haunting, intense novel that is at once psychologically compelling and emotionally unsettling. Taut pacing and skilled storytelling support a breathtaking plot and characters that are heartbreaking and horrifying yet somehow still accessible and sympathetic. It’s scorching, disturbing and tragic, but well-crafted and impressively written.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“An absorbing, deeply disturbing, darkly erotic psychological thriller of tragedy and revenge. Fans of…Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl)…will love this disquieting novel.”

—Library Journal, starred review

The Undoing

Averil Dean

A NOVEL

www.mirabooks.co.uk

For Andy

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text On a bitter January evening, three people are found murdered in the isolated Blackbird hotel. Best friends since childhood, Eric, Rory and Celia have always been inseparable. Together they’ve coped with broken homes and damaged families, clinging to each other as they’ve navigated their tenuous lives. Their bond is potent and passionate—and its intensity can be volatile. When the trio decides to follow Celia’s dream of buying and renovating the Blackbird, a dilapidated hotel that sits on the perilous cliffs of Jawbone Ridge, new jealousies arise and long-held suspicions start to unravel their relationship. Soon they find themselves pushed to the breaking point, where trust becomes doubt, longing becomes obsession, and someone will commit the ultimate betrayal. An unflinching story of ambition, desire and envy, The Undoing traces the events leading to that fateful night, revealing the intimate connections, dark secrets and terrible lies that wove them together—and tore them apart.

Praise

Title Page

Dedication

Quotation

August 2014

One Day Earlier

January 11, 2009

One Day Earlier

Two Days Earlier

Three Days Earlier

December 24, 2008

Two Days Earlier

Five Days Earlier

September 2008

December 31, 2007

July 2007

January 2003

November 2002

June 2002

November 2001

July 1998

January 11, 2009

August 2014

Acknowledgments

Reader’s Guide

Questions for Discussion

A Conversation with Averil Dean

Copyright

“Be that word our sign in parting, bird or fiend,” I shrieked, upstarting:

“Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore!

Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!

Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my door!

Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!”

Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

Edgar Allan Poe

August 2014

JULIAN MOSS UNFOLDED the note and pressed it over his face with both hands. With his fingertips he molded the paper to his eyelids. His thumbs pushed the edges to his cheeks. The paper smelled like money now, like old leather and sweat. He wished he had a mirror so he could see whether the ink had transferred to his face, the opening line like a blue tattoo across his forehead:

Julian

I know what you did.

He eased forward, the note dangling from his fingers. Gravel crunched under his boot and skidded over the ledge, clattered on the rocky outcropping at his feet, then plummeted in silence to the river far below.

A long-ago conversation trailed through his mind: his father’s voice, describing a friend who had dived from the penthouse suite of a Seattle high-rise. The guy had gone there with a real estate agent as if he were looking to buy the place, making polite conversation throughout the showing, checking the taps, full of jokes about the owner’s choice of flooring and all the mirrors in the master bath. When it came time to leave, the agent glanced back and saw his client’s feet disappear over the railing.

A quick death, according to Julian’s father. From that height it would have been like dropping a water balloon.

Not that it would be that way for Julian. The ravine was not that deep, and the slope dropped off in a series of rocky shelves. There would be no spectacular burst at the end, no terrible, literal emptying of his head. For him it would be more concussive, like a pumpkin tossed down a flight of concrete stairs.

The agent said he’d heard his client laughing, right at the end. Julian could understand the guy’s state of mind. He felt the same giddiness, a lightening of the senses, as if the air itself were pulling him skyward, the pine trees standing like spectators with their arms out ready to clap.