Erin Knight - Perfect Strangers - an unputdownable read full of gripping secrets and twists

What a journey it has been for ERIN KNIGHT. In January 2013, she happened to see ITV’s Lorraine Kelly announce the search for the next big thing in contemporary women’s fiction. She sent in her 1,000 words and beat over 2,000 entries, winning the competition live on national TV on Valentine’s Day. Her books have since gone on to be published in fifteen countries worldwide.

Away from the ITV sofa, she is currently surviving a hefty Victorian renovation in Staffordshire with husband Jim, their three boys and badly-behaved Hungarian Vizsla.

Copyright

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018

Copyright © Anouska Knight 2018

Anouska Knight 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 © March 2018 ISBN: 9780008180249

Version: 2018-02-26

For Sarah, Emma, Kirsty and Steph, who loved our girl too.

Contents

Cover

About the Author

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

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

CHAPTER 87

CHAPTER 88

CHAPTER 89

CHAPTER 90

CHAPTER 91

CHAPTER 92

CHAPTER 93

CHAPTER 94

CHAPTER 95

CHAPTER 96

CHAPTER 97

CHAPTER 98

CHAPTER 99

CHAPTER 100

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

About the Publisher

1

The first lie Isobel told her parents was that she was going away to forget it all.

She lifted her face to the sun beating down on the armchair in which she’d stationed herself in the corner of the café window, the worn leather warm and hospitable beneath her forearms. The tourist board’s website had promised hospitality . Other promises included a flourishing cosmopolitan atmosphere and some of the best surf and lobster in the British Isles! Fallenbay looked good in writing, but then Isobel knew better than to be suckered in by anything she read online. If she’d learnt nothing else, she’d learnt that much.

Fallenbay . . . Bay of the Fallen . Aptly named by the pirates who’d once besieged it. Now Isobel’s holiday destination. Her time out. A pretty distraction . She’d pitched it to her parents with those very words. They’d tripped right off her tongue and into her mother’s hopeful ears, easily as a damning rumour. Fallenbay was a just lucky hit. A random spot on the map Isobel had stuck her pin into. That was the second lie she told.

Isobel straightened her back and drained the last of the tea gone undrinkably cold while she’d been carefully observing the world passing by the windows of Coast, one of the harbour’s many eateries jostling for position beneath an intense blue sky. It was almost too bright to look outside, but still she watched.

Come back refreshed, Isobel. Renewed! Uncle Keith’s job offer will still be here waiting for you. You were wasted in teaching anyway, love . Her mum had jollied this encouraging prospect around a chewed lip while they’d all pretended that proofreading orders of services at Uncle Keith’s printers wasn’t a cataclysmic sidestep from Head of English at St Jude’s secondary. The bottom line was, Uncle Keith wouldn’t ask for references.

She took a breath and cleared her thoughts. A young mottled seagull bobbed along the pavement outside the café, eyes beady and accusatory. Isobel looked out over the ocean instead.

The aroma of newly warming pastries reached through Coast. Metal kitchen equipment clanked and rattled in the background. The coming summer would be glorious here, and Isobel could stay that long if she wanted to; she had time and money to burn now. The universe’s idea of a laugh. All that effort and hard work to save for their mortgage deposit. Months of overtime and cheap food. Nathan’s motivational speeches when all Isobel wanted was a half-term in Mexico. Renting is so temporary! Turned out, so were they. Isobel scratched Nathan’s name from her head and let her lungs fill and release. Okey-doke, Isobel . . . you’re here. Now what?

She didn’t have to go through with it. Home was only two hours away. Two hours and she could be back in her parents’ semi, penning hopeless red circles around job adverts, or filling the spot left by Uncle Keith’s last tea girl.

The growl of a flashy little coupé across the promenade knocked her thoughts nicely off course. The driver confidently nipped into the last parking space beside the ocean lookouts, interrupting the view she’d been sporadically enjoying of a lonely sailboat marooned from the world. The driver hopped out, rounding the meaty nose of his sports car, and Isobel watched the thirty-something casually stride towards the sandy, bleached decking running up to the café doors. Perhaps he was older. A youthful forty-something with a nice, stress-free existence and resulting unhaggard complexion. He might’ve held her attention in her former life – Nathan shared a similar blend of chiselled features and casual corporate composure – but she’d already lost interest, her pen retracing the same letters over the notepad lying expectantly on the table in front of her.