All Your Fault (eBook)

J.C. Lewin (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2018 | 1. Aufl. 2018
626 Seiten
Bastei Entertainment (Verlag)
978-3-7325-5532-1 (ISBN)

Infos

* Winner of the Janklow & Nesbit 2015 Debut Novel Competition
* Shortlisted for the Luke Bitmead Bursary 2015
'A gripping thriller with an authentic voice' - Luke Bitmead shortlist
'Expect great things from J.C. Lewin'- Julia Crouch

She's saved so many lives. But can she save her own daughter?

Social worker Suzanne Walker has spent her life protecting children from abuse. For Suzanne it's not just a job but a duty. Then one of her young wards is found dead. And her own teenage daughter, Teigan, goes missing. Suzanne's cosy life shatters to pieces.

It's like Teigan vanished into thin air. What really happened that day? The question haunts Suzanne, as she recounts the morning leading up to Teigan's disappearance. They'd had a fight. A normal mother-daughter spat. Did Teigan run away?

Detective Sergeant Anthony Clarke takes on the case, and the clues begin to paint a grim picture of events. Why are there traces of blood in the house? Why didn't Suzanne contact the police sooner? It seems like everyone is hiding something.

As the investigation deepens, one thing becomes clear: no matter who you are, the past always catches up with you.

About the Author

J.C. Lewin loved writing stories as a child, but started writing more seriously in 2014 when she quit her job as a social worker to study a Masters in Creative Writing at City University, London. Her debut novel won the Janklow & Nesbit debut competition in 2015 and was shortlisted for the Luke Bitmead Bursary. J.C. Lewin now manages a care home by day and continues to write by night.

Textauszug

Chapter 1

She was dead. I already knew that.

There she was, her fresh-faced picture all over the East Anglian news, confirming that no one would ever see that sad smile again. She had been my responsibility. I was meant to protect her.

I stood in the middle of the lounge, staring at the television while an overwhelming sense of helplessness washed over me. I’d known it would hit the news today — I’d been awake all night dreading it — but, somehow, seeing her face there in my living room caught me off guard. A slideshow of her life scrolled across the screen. Quirky pictures from her Facebook account. Instagram shots of her posing in school uniform. Selfies with friends in Norwich city. All lies. Emma Beale did not have a happy life.

I looked around at my own comfortable life, a life I often took for granted. My eyes flitted from the pile of mismatched shoes and boots on the floor, to the cherry-vanilla scented candle on the second-hand coffee table, to the cream sofa on which I’d curl up at the end of the day with a glass of cheap wine. It wasn’t the grandest house in the world — a standard two-up, two-down terraced house in Norwich — but it was ours. Teigan and I had everything we needed. She was safe and loved. And that was something Emma never had.

I glanced at the framed photos on the mantelpiece. Mother and daughter. My favourite picture of us on holiday in the Canary Islands, holding our ice creams and beaming like Cheshire cats. Teigan must have been about ten — before she’d become a teenager and determined that smiling in a picture with your mum was lame. My thoughts returned to Emma. She had never stepped foot in an airport, let alone jetted off to the Canaries. And now she never would.

A familiar anxiety started gnawing away at me as the inevitable questions flooded my mind. Could I have saved her? I paced around the room, scrolling through the list of missed calls from just two days before.

• 11:10 Missed call from Emma Beale.
• 11:45 Missed call from Emma Beale.
• 11:55 Missed call from Emma Beale.
• 12:01 Missed call from Emma Beale.
• 12:02 Text message from Emma Beale: Please call me. I need to talk to you.

If only I had called her then. If only I’d known what was going to happen.

I jumped as my phone vibrated in my hand. Hilary Andrews. I should have known it was coming. A call from the boss before eight in the morning meant things were going from bad to worse.

“Hello. I’ve seen it.” I paused as the lump in my throat hardened. “I’m so sorry.”

“I told you yesterday that it’s not your fault the mother’s a delinquent.”

“But I should have got her out sooner. I knew this would happen. I knew it.”

“No, you didn’t. And don’t go saying things like that to the review panel — they’ll have a field day.”

“But —”

“It’s not your fault, Suzanne. If I remember correctly, you actually did raise your concern about two months ago that you wanted to remove Emma from the family home.”

“Yes, but it didn’t happen.”

“Well, it wasn’t your call. You know better than anyone that when senior management says there’s not enough evidence, then that’s it.”

It was true. Nothing put a stopper in the works like a senior manager saying that the threshold hadn’t been met. My mind flashed back to that day when I’d stormed out of the office. Months of hard work, and for what? I’d promised myself I’d do further assessments, gather enough evidence to get Emma out. But before I knew it, my other cases were taking over, and Emma had slipped down the priority list. The forgotten children.

“I should have done more.” My voice came out all thick, trying to fight the tears. The image of Emma’s weary face that last time I had seen her flooded back into my mind. She was turning away from the car after I’d dropped her home, steeling herself for the next round of emotional abuse.

I heard Hilary let out a sigh on the other end of the phone. She was never one for emotion, old Hilary.

“You’ll need to hold it together for the case review. I’ll be speaking to the panel, as well, so you’re not in it alone.” She paused. “What time will you be in?”

I cleared my throat. “Soon. Twenty minutes.”

“Good. The review panel will be here at nine.”

“Okay. Can you ask business support to cancel my interview about The Walker Foundation today?”

“Oh, Jesus, is that today?”

“This afternoon, yes. But, we’ll cancel it, right?” I gripped the phone between my fingers. “I can’t do it today, not after this.”

“Suzanne, do you realise how much all this PR rubbish has cost?” Hilary’s voice was stern and patronising, like an old schoolteacher. “There’s no way we’re cancelling. If it’s not until this afternoon, that’s fine. You can go to it after the review panel.”

“But isn’t that rather insensitive?”

Hilary bristled at my insinuation. “This was your bloody idea in the first place, Suzanne. You’re the one who wanted to come together with Norfolk Children’s Services to do this. Norfolk has invested a lot of resources into it, as well, so we’re not cancelling. All right?”

I sank down onto the sofa, my shoulders sagging in defeat. I knew all too well that you had to pick your battles carefully with Hilary. “Okay … as long as it’s handled sensitively.” I hung up the phone and looked back to the television. You could tell May was coming. Emma Beale’s death would soon be drowned out by all the politicians fighting for power. For most, she would fade into a distant memory, into nothing. But for me, she would always be someone I had failed.

“MUM!”

Teigan’s agitated voice pulled me out of my gloomy thoughts as she thudded down the stairs and sulked into the room. She had a face like thunder.

“Mum, what have you done with my purple scarf?” Teigan stood with one hand on her hip, the other clutching her phone in its rainbow-coloured case. Her long, dark hair fell forward, half obscuring her face.

“What scarf?” I spoke as clearly as I could, trying to hide the muffled tears from my voice.

“My purple one! With the butterflies.”

“I haven’t done anything with it.”

She crossed her arms and huffed. “You always do this. You move things to where you think they should be, then completely forget you’ve done anything.”

My cheeks flushed red with indignation. If only she knew. Teigan clocked the expression on my face and stopped, uncrossing her arms as my stroppy teenaged Teigan gave way to the caring girl underneath.

“Mum? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Just … work.”

Teigan nodded. “Is it to do with that Emma girl that was on TV this morning? Was she one of yours?”

I hung my head, ashamed at the reminder that Emma was mine to protect. “Yes. She was.”

“I’m sorry, Mum.” She shuffled closer and gave me a hug, her long hair tickling my arm. I blinked the tears back, willing myself not to cry.

“Thank you, sweetheart.” I tucked her hair behind her ears as we broke apart. “Try looking in the cupboard under the stairs for that scarf — I think I saw it in there.”

“Ah, so you did move it!” She grinned, triumphant.

“We’ll agree to disagree on that one.”

I walked through the middle room — the dining room turned general storage area — and spotted two loads of Teigan’s washing still hanging on the clothes-horse in the corner.

“I asked you to put these away last night, Teigan.”

“What?” She looked up briefly from her phone, which, now that her scarf had been found, had her full attention again. “Oh, yeah. I forgot.”

Of course she did. I”d been trying to teach her some of the basics, domestic-wise. By her age, I was well-rehearsed in washing, ironing, cleaning, and cooking. I’d had to be. So far, it had been a battle just showing her how to use the washing machine. “Right, well, can you put them away now, please?”

“In a minute,” she mumbled, her gaze not leaving her phone screen.

“Now, please.”

She rolled her eyes and sighed heavily.

I walked into the kitchen to make my lunch for work — it still stank of last night’s fish. The once cheery yellow paint looked tired and grubby. My eyes wandered to the Norfolk & Norwich Festival leaflets I’d been collecting on the fridge. It was coming up again. May always came around so quickly. I grimaced as I remembered last year. We’d managed to get a pair of highly sought-after Speigeltent tickets for the 1920s night, and I’d ended up having to let Teigan down at the last minute because of a work emergency. I’d promised her then that we’d make it this year. No emergencies.

“Teig, would you circle the events you want to go to at the N&N this evening? I’ll start looking at which ones we need to book.”

“Mmm.”

“Go on, otherwise we’ll miss all the...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 10.7.2018
• Verlagsort: Köln
• Sprache: englisch
• Original-Titel: When Petals Fall
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Krimi / Thriller / Horror ► Krimi / Thriller
• Schlagworte: book club • book group • crime books fiction • crime ebook • Crime Fiction • dark crime thriller • Debut • detective books • detective book series • Domestic • Domestic Noir • ebook crime fiction • Entführung • Ermittlung • Familiendrama • fans of clare mackintosh • Girl on the train • Kidnapping • kindle thriller • locked in • Missbrauch • Murder • Mutter • mystery books • mystery novels • Mystery Thriller • new author • Noir • Paula Hawkins • Psychological thriller • psychologische Spannung • Sahri Lapena • Schwester • Sozialarbeit • Spannungsroman • suspense thriller books • Thriller • thriller kindle books • Tochter • Twist • twists and turns • twisty • unzuverlässig
• ISBN-10: 3-7325-5532-1 / 3732555321
• ISBN-13: 978-3-7325-5532-1 / 9783732555321