Melanie Golding - Little Darlings

MELANIE GOLDINGis a graduate of the MA in creative writing program at Bath Spa University, with distinction. She has been employed in many occupations including farm hand, factory worker, childminder and music teacher. Throughout all this, because and in spite of it, there was always the writing. In recent years she has won and been shortlisted in several local and national short story competitions. Little Darlings is her first novel and has been optioned for screen by Free Range Films, the team behind the adaptation of My Cousin Rachel .

Copyright

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2019

Copyright © Melanie Golding 2019

Melanie Golding 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 2019 ISBN: 9780008293697

Praise for Little Darlings

‘Chilling story, beautiful prose. Little Darlings is stunning’

Clare Mackintosh, number one Sunday Times bestseller

‘Dark, richly evocative, tense and thought-provoking. Taps into every woman’s fear thath she will not be believed’

Mel McGrath, author of Give Me The Child

‘Melanie Golding tells the truth about motherhood like no other writer since Sylvia Plath … It delivers on all fronts and will continue to rattle you, long after you have put it down’

Felicity Everett, author of The People at Number 9

‘Deep. Dark. Utterly addictive … Be warned – you can’t unread this story. It will haunt you’

Teresa Driscoll, author of I Am Watching You

‘A story that is in turn enthralling, creepy and downright sinister, Melanie Golding turns fairy tales on their heads in Little Darlings … A brilliant, heart-pounding read’

Lisa Hall, author of Between You and Me

‘ Little Darlings is brilliant – beautifully written, disturbing and deliciously creepy’

Roz Watkins, author of The Devil’s Dice

‘Riveting, terrifying and at times heartbreaking … Melanie Golding’s disturbing portrait of a new mother’s paranoia is superbly written, cleverly plotted and gruesomely beautiful in an unforgettable way’

Annie Ward, author of Beautiful Bad

Dedicated to the memory of Amber Baxter (née Fink)

1979-2012

Contents

Cover

About the Author

Title Page

Copyright

Praise

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

Acknowledgements

Author’s Note

Quotes and Sources

About the Publisher

August 18th

Peak District, UK

DS Joanna Harper stood on the viaduct with the other police officers. On the far bank, across the great expanse of the reservoir, a woman paused at the water’s edge, about to go in, her twin baby boys held tightly in her arms.

Harper turned to the DI. ‘How close are the officers on that side?’

Dense woodland surrounded the scrap of shore where the woman stood. Even at this distance, Harper could see that her legs were scarlet with blood from the thorns.

‘Not close enough,’ said Thrupp. ‘They can’t find a way to get to her.’

In a fury of thudding, the helicopter flew over their heads, disturbing the surface of the reservoir, bellowing its command: Step away from the water . It loomed above the tiny figure of the mother, deafening and relentless, but the officers on board wouldn’t be able to stop her. There was nowhere in the valley where the craft could make a safe landing, or get low enough to drop the winch.

Through the binoculars, Harper saw the woman collapse into a sitting position on the dried-out silt, her face turned to the sky, still clutching the babies. Perhaps she wouldn’t do it, after all.

A memory surfaced then, of what the old lady had said to her:

‘She’ll have to put them in the water, if she wants her own babies back . . . Right under the water. Hold ’em down.’

The woman wasn’t sitting at the water’s edge anymore; she was knee-deep, and wading further in. The DS kicked off her shoes, climbed up on the rail and prepared to dive.

Chapter 1

The child is not mine as the first was,

I cannot sing it to rest,

I cannot lift it up fatherly

And bliss it upon my breast;

Yet it lies in my little one’s cradle

And sits in my little one’s chair,

And the light of the heaven she’s gone to

Transfigures its golden hair.

FROM The Changeling

BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

July 13th

8.10 p.m.

All she cared about was that the pain had been taken away. With it, the fear, and the certainty that she would die, all gone in the space of a few miraculous seconds. She wanted to drift off but then Patrick’s worried face appeared, topped by a green hospital cap and she remembered: I’m having my babies. The spinal injection she’d been given didn’t just signal the end of the horrendous contractions, but the beginning of a forceps extraction procedure that could still go wrong. The first baby was stuck in the birth canal. So, instead of allowing herself to sink inside her glorious, warm cocoon of numbness and fall asleep – which she hadn’t done for thirty-six hours – she tried to concentrate on what was happening.

The doctor’s face appeared, near to Lauren’s own, the mask pulled down revealing her mouth and most of her chin. The woman’s lips were moving as if untethered to her words. It was the drugs, and the exhaustion; the world had slowed right down. Lauren frowned. The doctor was looking at her, but she seemed so far away. She’s talking to me, thought Lauren, I should listen.

‘Ok, Mrs Tranter, because of the spinal, you won’t be able to tell when you have a contraction – so I’ll tell you when to push, ok?’

Lauren’s mouth formed an ‘o’, but the doctor had already gone.

‘Push.’

She felt the force of the doctor pulling and her entire body slid down the bed with it. She couldn’t tell if she was pushing or not. She made an effort to arrange her face in an expression of straining and tensed her neck muscles, but somewhere in her head a voice said, why bother? They won’t be able to tell if I don’t push, will they? Maybe I could just have a little sleep.