Sam Hepburn - Her Perfect Life - A gripping debut psychological thriller with a killer twist

This is entirely a work of fiction. Any references to real people, living or dead, real events, businesses, organizations and localities are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. All names, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and their resemblance, if any, to real-life counterparts is entirely coincidental.

Harper

HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published by HarperCollins Publishers 2017

Copyright © Sam Hepburn 2017

Sam Hepburn asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

Cover design by Dominic Forbes © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2017

Cover photographs © Scott R Barbour/Getty Images (townhouses);

Shutterstock.com(broken glass)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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 e-books

Ebook Edition © FEBRUARY 2017 ISBN: 9780008209599

Source ISBN: 9780008209582

Version 2017-01-09

To James, Charlotte, Murdo and Lily

Table of Contents

Cover

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

Acknowledgements

About the Author

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About the Publisher

Hard heels clack across the floor above Juliet’s head. One way across the sitting room to the window. Then back the other – clackety bloody clack – to the door. Juliet slides her legs off the sofa, blinking groggily into the gloom as she gazes from the pale flicker of the television to the timer on the cooker – 02.13.

She stretches to ease the crick in her neck and feels the first throb of a hangover behind her eyes. She checks the bottle on the floor beside her. It’s empty. She searches the fridge and the cupboards, wincing at every stab of sound from upstairs – the judder of water into a kettle, the yank of a drawer and the endless clack of those bloody heels. She grabs hold of the broom, about to thump the handle on the ceiling. Then she laughs – not much of a laugh – and lets the broom drop. It’s been a bad day but not bad enough to turn her into the mad old woman in the downstairs flat. At the back of the cupboard under the sink she finds a half-bottle of whisky. She doesn’t usually drink spirits, just on nights like tonight, when it all gets too much. She pours half a glassful, fills it up with orange squash and takes it back to the sofa, lighting a cigarette as she goes. She reaches for the remote and flicks through the channels. An impossibly shaped blonde in silver lamé spins a roulette wheel – ‘be lucky, lucky, luckeee …’ – a cheese-ball preacher begs her to find a place in her heart for Jesus, a lizard darts its tongue to catch a fly and – fuck – there she is. Our perfect pocket-sized Gracie Dwyer. Clean, clean, clean in her perfect kitchen. She’s leaning ever so slightly towards the camera, a come-on-we-can-do-this together smile on her lips while her nimble little fingers beat flour into a pan of yellow gloop on a spotless stone worktop. ‘The trick to perfect choux pastry,’ she is saying, ‘is to keep beating until every fleck of white has gone from the mixture.’

Juliet tries for the off button but her clumsy fingers hit the pause. Gracie freezes on screen. She stares at the face. Always if you look long enough at a frozen frame you can find something – some imperfection: a spot, a patch of caked makeup at the hairline, a drag in the skin at the throat. If not that, then something gormless and off-guard in the eyes or in the halted movement of the mouth. Something.

But there’s nothing. Nothing at all. Gracie Dwyer is perpetually perfect. Even frozen.

This time Juliet finds the off button. She stubs out her cigarette, lurching a little as she totters to her bedroom.

Gracie keeps count. She can’t help it. She’s doing it now. While the passengers around her sip their drinks and flick through the in-flight entertainment she’s skimming the dates in her diary. It’s been nearly five months – one hundred and forty-three days to be exact – since she’s received an anonymous package, a taunting message or a silent phone call. She’s hurrying on through the pages, adding to the ‘to-dos’ on her list and scoring through the tasks she’s completed when a jolt of excitement puckers her cheeks into a smile, her first real smile for days. She’s going home. No more dawn risings to go over her filming notes. No more missed calls from Tom. No more juggling shooting schedules and time zones to Skype Elsie at bedtime, only to wave at her and tell her silly jokes, when all she wants is to fill her lungs with the after-bath smell of her skin. She snaps the elastic around the diary, lays down her pen and gazes at the syrupy oval of sky framed by the cabin window, almost breathless at the thought of that small damp body pressed against hers.