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After ending her engagement, a woman decides to go on a much-needed getaway with her friends to clear her head—but she soon realizes her secret may be the one thing she can’t get away from. “A twisty, tense and claustrophobic tale of secrets, manipulation and soured relationships. I loved it!”—Claire Douglas, author of Local Girl Missing When Lizzie calls off her wedding in the south of France only a week before the big day, not even her closest friends know why. But since the château is already paid for, they figure it’s the perfect place to take Lizzie and get her mind off her suddenly single state. When the group arrives, it’s as if the wedding is waiting for them. The next day, Lizzie wakes to find her friends have drunkenly reveled in the wedding-that-wasn’t—but not all their antics were benign. Someone is set on tormenting Lizzie, and she can’t figure out who. The more the friends try to piece together exactly what happened that night, the more secrets start to come out. The biggest secret of all—the one that must not be revealed—is Lizzie’s. But as intimidating messages appear around the château, it seems that someone intends to pursue her until it is. Will Lizzie ever be able to escape her past, or will it destroy more than one life on this trip?
After ending her engagement, a woman decides to go on a much-needed getaway with her friends to clear her head—but she soon realizes her secret may be the one thing she can’t get away from. “A twisty, tense and claustrophobic tale of secrets, manipulation and soured relationships. I loved it!”—Claire Douglas, author of Local Girl Missing When Lizzie calls off her wedding in the south of France only a week before the big day, not even her closest friends know why. But since the château is already paid for, they figure it’s the perfect place to take Lizzie and get her mind off her suddenly single state. When the group arrives, it’s as if the wedding is waiting for them. The next day, Lizzie wakes to find her friends have drunkenly reveled in the wedding-that-wasn’t—but not all their antics were benign. Someone is set on tormenting Lizzie, and she can’t figure out who. The more the friends try to piece together exactly what happened that night, the more secrets start to come out. The biggest secret of all—the one that must not be revealed—is Lizzie’s. But as intimidating messages appear around the château, it seems that someone intends to pursue her until it is. Will Lizzie ever be able to escape her past, or will it destroy more than one life on this trip?
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Excerpts-
From the book1.
Effie
Effie read the email again and looked down at her fingertips on the computer keyboard in front of her. They were pale and chewed, nails as red-rimmed as her eyes.
Un-f***ing-believable. She had been looking forward to that holiday for months.
When Lizzie—happy, carefree, in-love-with-love Lizzie, lit from within by the sort of glow that comes only from the joy of somebody having weighed you in the balance and decided that, yes, they would like to spend the rest of their existence by your side—had first mentioned her plan to get married abroad, Effie had made all the right impressed, positive noises.
In fact, she had never seen the point of marrying in another country neither of you were from when your own had more than enough venues and your guests all lived in it. Lizzie even came from the sort of commuter belt family for whom home is a village with a Norman church tucked away for the precise purpose of rendering its prodigal City-worker daughters Elizabeth Bennet for a day.
Supposing the couple didn’t fancy that option, there were plenty of municipal buildings near where they lived in London to choose from. Proud borough town halls built in civic red brick that would appear nice enough in the background of the photos as long as you positioned someone in front of the fire escape signs. Deliberately derelict warehouses and deconsecrated chapels gone just enough to rack and ruin to look good on Instagram but not to pose any real health and safety risks, beyond an enduring chill that storage heaters would never quite take the edge off. Wood-paneled rooms upstairs in pubs, where the groomsmen could nip down to catch the football highlights between the speeches.
Or conference suites in five-star hotels that rich tourists paid to stay in and Londoners only ever went to on somebody else’s money, full of regimented chairs with covers that slipped over them to guard against the worst of the stains. Were the covers, Effie wondered, lined with something waterproof? Otherwise, what was the point in providing two different layers of fabric for the inevitable nuptial spillages of red wine, gravy, and stomach acid to soak into?
Effie noted that nobody who got married abroad ever seemed to do it in a climate colder than their own. It was always in a château, a trullo, or a vineyard located in some hot-blooded country, in the hope that the terroir would imbue the pallid Celts who booked them with the same body and top notes—zest, even!—it did the grapes it nurtured.
No, when the time came, Effie had always presumed she would do what most people seemed to: book a registry office, where tidy men and women in bank manager suits presided over efficient, non-Latinate words exchanged between couples who filed in and out on the hour like cuckoos from a clock.
Of course, for this to be any sort of viable option, Effie needed somebody who was interested in marrying her. She closed her eyes at the thought—briefly, but for a beat longer than a blink, in case she started crying at her desk. Again. She had managed not to for a whole month now; it was a record she didn’t want to break.
Especially not now that things might finally be looking up again.
Despite Effie’s initial misgivings, her best friend’s obvious and utter delight had been enough to sell Effie on the idea of a wedding abroad eventually. Over the months, she’d come to see the wedding as the least important part of the holiday anyway—not that she’d let that on to...
About the Author-
Harriet Walker is the fashion editor of The Times (UK) and author of The New Girl. She has been a journalist for more than a decade and has also written for Vogue, Elle, and Harper's Bazaar, among others. Born in Glasgow and raised in Sheffield, Walker studied English at Trinity College, Cambridge, and now lives in South London with her husband and daughter.
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Bahrain, Egypt, Hong Kong, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, the Syrian Arab Republic, Tunisia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen
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