E.V. Seymour - Her Sister’s Secret

A division of HarperCollins Publishers

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Harper Impulse

an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2019

Copyright © E.V. Seymour 2019

Cover images © Shutterstock.com

Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2019

E.V. Seymour asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of 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, down-loaded, 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.

Source ISBN: 9780008365806

Ebook Edition © July 2019 ISBN: 9780008365790

Version: 2019-06-24

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page Her Sister’s Secret E.V. SEYMOUR A division of HarperCollins Publishers www.harpercollins.co.uk

Copyright Harper Impulse an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2019 Copyright © E.V. Seymour 2019 Cover images © Shutterstock.com Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2019 E.V. Seymour asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. A catalogue copy of 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, down-loaded, 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. Source ISBN: 9780008365806 Ebook Edition © July 2019 ISBN: 9780008365790 Version: 2019-06-24

Dedication For Fran and Jim

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

Chapter 75

Chapter 76

Chapter 77

Chapter 78

Chapter 79

Chapter 80

Chapter 81

Chapter 82

Chapter 83

Chapter 84

Chapter 85

Chapter 86

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About Harper Impulse

About the Publisher

For Fran and Jim

I did the wrong thing. Just once. And there is a weary inevitability about what happens next; me in a stranger’s car, sunshine tricking, morning heat ticking, with a throwaway look before I leave. Truth is, I slipped off the picture months ago, way before the terror set in.

Maybe it’s connected to the heat, the dog days of summer inducing a kind of craziness but, no matter how hard I try, I can’t catch a break. Can’t . And four fingers of vodka don’t change a thing.

I stare at the lonely road ahead. There’s the odd worker bee but mostly traffic is quiet. Nobody to see or stop me. Checking the rear-view mirror, I take another sneaky swallow, not enough to dent my reactions, but enough to make me bold. Unaccustomed to the rip and burn of booze on an empty stomach, I love it –feels perfect in the circumstances.

Perfect.

And will Nate care? I don’t know. Do I blame him for the sick chain reaction of events? Maybe. Will he feel guilty? Probably.

I’ll be honest, half of me is terrified to tear a hole in an unimaginably beautiful day, the other sad, but it’s the best I can do to keep those dirty little secrets shovelled back into the earth and buried deep. It’s why something so wrong will be so right. You’ll see.

A glance at my watch confirms it’s time. Primed for speed, the four-by-four starts, its throaty engine snarling. Power thrills through my fingers, up my arms, and takes a spin around my brain. In that petrol-charged moment, I picture how it will play out after I’m gone. They will say I was drunk. They will say I was overworked and suffering from depression. Some will scream that I was mad and bad. Out of her mind, my mother will cry. Intoxicated maybe, but the rest is false. I could never feel more sorted. If someone threatens to topple the walls and bring them crashing down, you make damn sure they lie buried deep in the rubble beside you.

Sunshine smashes through the windscreen and briefly blinds me. I take one final slug of booze. For courage. For luck. For endings. Then, stamping on the gas, I drive.

“How many men have you slept with?”

“What?”

I was less concerned with Lenny’s intrusive question than with the fact I still stung from the furious argument I’d had with my sister three days ago. With bitter words and angry accusations, I’d blown my stack. And it hadn’t ended there. The rest was a blur of emotion right outside any normal spectrum. At that moment in time I’d hated my sister for making me feel so bloody inadequate and unloved by my own mother.

“I’ll tell you if you tell me.”

“Lenny,” I puffed, almost skinning my knuckles on the wall. “It’s eight-thirty in the morning. It’s bloody hot and I’ve not long had breakfast.”

Sweat poured off me due to the weight of the hefty set of mahogany drawers we were manhandling down a flight of stairs. You need to be strong in the house clearance business and, although short in stature, I was, but this piece of old tat was proving a right bastard. “We have a full day of humping—’