Alice Feeney - I Know Who You Are

ALICE FEENEYis a writer and journalist. She spent fifteen years at the BBC where she worked as a reporter, news editor, arts and entertainment producer and One O’clock news producer.

Alice has lived in London and Sydney and has now settled in the Surrey countryside, where she lives with her husband and dog.

Her debut novel, Sometimes I Lie , was a New York Times and international bestseller. The book has been sold in over twenty countries and is being made into a TV series by a major film studio. I Know Who You Are is her second novel.

Alice Feeney

ONE PLACE. MANY STORIES

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2019

Copyright © Diggi Books Ltd

Alice Feeney asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for 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, downloaded, 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.

Ebook Edition © May 2020 ISBN: 9780008236083

Version: 2020-05-20

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Page numbers taken from the following print edition: ISBN 9780008236083

‘Boldly plotted, tightly knotted – a provocative true-or-false thriller that deepens and darkens to its ink-black finale. Marvellous.’

A J Finn

‘A bold and original voice – I loved this book.’

Clare Mackintosh

‘Expect perfectly imbedded twists and sharply drawn characters. A brilliant thriller.’

Ali Land

‘A gripping debut with a brilliant twist, I loved it.’

B A Paris

‘A tightly written thriller with an ending that demands you go straight back to the beginning.’

Metro

‘Satisfyingly serpentine, and with a terrific double twist in the tale, it leaves you longing for more.’

Daily Mail

‘Intriguing, original and addictive, I can’t wait to see what the author does after this blinding debut.’

The Sun

‘Clever, compelling and masterfully plotted.’

Daily Express

‘ Sometimes I Lie is a rare book, combining helter skelter twists with razor sharp sentences. Make sure you read it in a well lit room, Alice Feeney’s imagination is a very dark place indeed.’

Dan Dalton, BuzzFeed

‘This is a thriller that grabs you and holds you in its thrall.’

Nicholas Searle

For Jonny.

Agents come in all shapes and sizes.

I got the best.

Not everybody wants to be somebody.

Some people just want to be somebody else.

Cover

About the Author

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Praise

Dedication

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two

Thirty-Three

Thirty-Four

Thirty-Five

Thirty-Six

Thirty-Seven

Thirty-Eight

Thirty-Nine

Forty

Forty-One

Forty-Two

Forty-Three

Forty-Four

Forty-Five

Forty-Six

Forty-Seven

Forty-Eight

Forty-Nine

Fifty

Fifty-One

Fifty-Two

Fifty-Three

Fifty-Four

Fifty-Five

Fifty-Six

Fifty-Seven

Fifty-Eight

Fifty-Nine

Sixty

Sixty-One

Sixty-Two

Sixty-Three

Sixty-Four

Sixty-Five

Sixty-Six

Sixty-Seven

Sixty-Eight

Sixty-Nine

Seventy

Seventy-One

Seventy-Two

Seventy-Three

Seventy-Four

Six Months Later …

Acknowledgements

Reading group questions

Keep Reading…

About the Publisher

London, 2017

I’m that girl you think you know, but you can’t remember where from.

Lying is what I do for a living. It’s what I’m best at: becoming somebody else. The eyes are the only part of me I still recognise in the mirror, staring out beneath the made-up face of a made-up person. Another character, another story, another lie. I look away, ready to leave her behind for the night, stopping briefly to stare at what is written on the dressing-room door:

AIMEE SINCLAIR

My name, not his. I never changed it.

Perhaps because, deep down, I always knew that our marriage would only last until life did us part. I remind myself that my name only defines me if I allow it to. It is merely a collection of letters, arranged in a certain order; little more than a parent’s wish, a label, a lie. Sometimes I long to rearrange those letters into something else. Someone else. A new name for a new me. The me I became when nobody else was looking.

Knowing a person’s name is not the same as knowing a person.

I think we broke us last night.

Sometimes it’s the people who love us the most that hurt us the hardest, because they can.

He hurt me.

We’ve made a bad habit of hurting each other; things have to be broken in order to fix them.

I hurt him back.

I check that I’ve remembered to put my latest book in my bag, the way other people check for a purse or keys. Time is precious, never spare, and I kill mine by reading on set between filming. Ever since I was a child, I have preferred to inhabit the fictional lives of others, hiding in stories that have happier endings than my own; we are what we read. When I’m sure I haven’t forgotten anything, I walk away, back to who and what and where I came from.

Something very bad happened last night.

I’ve tried so hard to pretend that it didn’t, struggled to rearrange the memories, but I can still hear his hate-filled words, still feel his hands around my neck, and still see the expression I’ve never seen his face wear before.

I can still fix this. I can fix us.

The lies we tell ourselves are always the most dangerous.