My Husband's Killer

by Laura Marshall

Genres: Holiday books; Domestic Thrillers; Psychological Thrillers; Suspense

Synopsis

'Gripping . . . the pages actually turned themselves' Holly Willoughby

Three couples. One murder. A holiday to die for . . .

We arrived at a villa on the Amalfi Coast, ready to enjoy a sun-soaked weekend with our oldest friends - and one new face.

By the end of the weekend, my husband is found dead.

But how can I mourn him, when on the day of his funeral I discover he was having an affair?

The only suspects are the women we went on holiday with. My oldest, closest friends.

I really want to dig into my husband's secret? Do I really want to know who betrayed me?

____________

'A classic whodunnit worthy of Christie. Proper "miss your stop" stuff' ERIN KELLY

'A compelling plot interlaced with a growing unease I couldn't shake off - so clever!' MARION TODD

'I couldn't put it down! Such a clever and thrilling read' KAREN HAMILTON

'Only the need to sleep stopped me reading it in one sitting. Such a page-turner with no let-up in pace' LISA CUTTS

'A pacy, twisty page-turner' JOHN MARRS

'Brilliant . . . I couldn't put it down. So cleverly written that the pages are turning themselves' FIONA CUMMINS

Release date: November 29, 2022

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 90000

Sample

SATURDAY NIGHT, VILLA ROSA

What an absolute disaster of an evening that had been. Andrew knew he hadn’t covered himself in glory but it wasn’t purely his fault. Todd was an arrogant arsehole, there were no two ways about it. Even if Todd hadn’t stolen his best friend’s wife, Andrew wouldn’t like him. He wished he hadn’t allowed Liz to persuade him to come on this stupid weekend away. Watching Todd and Saffie swanning around like the lord and lady of the manor had been grinding his gears since he arrived, and it made it worse to know that Todd had paid for every morsel of food and every drop of expensive wine. Liz and Andrew had offered to pay their share, but Saffie had said Todd wanted to pay. Liz had thought it a nice gesture, but Andrew had known all along that Todd wanted to be in control, and paying for everything was the best way to achieve that. He wouldn’t be so smug when Andrew told everyone what sort of a man he really was.

He was still reeling from the weekend’s revelations. His life was going to change beyond recognition. He couldn’t bear the thought of explaining it to Liz. It was one thing to upend his own life, but doing the same to hers was a different matter. He would do anything to avoid hurting her – although, thinking of Trina’s anguished face, he knew he already had. He wondered whether Trina and Julian’s relationship would survive.

Underneath the sharp pain of tonight’s events was a low-level, nagging worry about the business that had been dogging him for months. It was becoming harder and harder to work alongside Poppy, and he couldn’t see any prospect of that improving. He should never have gone into business with his wife’s best friend.

The evening had already become a blur thanks to the copious amounts of alcohol he had consumed. Initially he’d been drinking in an attempt to appease Liz by being sociable and pleasant, but by the end it had been the only way to block out the noise. He sat at the very far end of the garden, near the top of the steps that led down to the beach, watching as the lights slowly went off in the house. First the downstairs windows switched from yellow to black as everyone took themselves off to bed, and then one by one the bedroom lamps clicked off, leaving the house in darkness.

Andrew swigged from the bottle of whisky he’d snaffled as he left the drawing room. Usually, he’d wince at the strength of it, but tonight he guzzled it down like water.

A twig snapped and he turned, tension leaching from his body as he saw the figure he’d been expecting.

‘Thank God,’ Andrew said. ‘I’ve been dying to talk to you all night.’

FRIDAY NIGHT, VILLA ROSA

Saffie smooths an imaginary hair back from her forehead and readjusts the studded leather belt artfully slung around her cream linen shirt dress. If you didn’t know her as well as I do, you’d think she was sublimely relaxed and happy. What does she have to be nervous about, after all? She and her gorgeous, rich boyfriend are playing host to her oldest and dearest friends in a luxurious villa on the Amalfi coast to celebrate said boyfriend’s fiftieth birthday. There’s enough champagne in the capacious wine fridge to sink a fleet of ships. The food for tomorrow night’s party will be delivered by the caterers in the morning. Tonight, Trina’s husband Julian is going to a nearby trattoria that does amazing pizzas to take away. Saffie, like Andrew and I, has sensibly left her young children with their grandparents, allowing her to have a real break – although what she needs a break from is unclear.

She and the boys have moved into Todd’s amazing seven-bedroom house with swimming pool, where she spends most of her time instructing the interior decorator and posting the results on her wildly successful Instagram account. It started when she was doing up her and Owen’s former home, posting helpful tips about home improvements on a budget along with astonishing before and after shots of their fixer-upper. Since she moved in with Todd, things have stepped up a gear and she and her immaculate home – with its butler’s pantry, its his and hers marble countertop basins – are now the envy of every middle-class yummy mummy on Instagram. And it’s not as if we haven’t met Todd before – we don’t know him well, but she’s hosted dinners at his house for us all – the odd barbecue, a couple of parties. And yet she is nervous.

Trina and I sit at the artistically battered oak kitchen table, enjoying our first glasses of champagne. We’re decanting olives and ricotta-stuffed cherry peppers into earthenware bowls hand-painted in jewel colours and studded with turquoise. Saffie flits around us, doing unnecessary job after job. She arranged a food delivery from an outlandishly expensive website that the rich use when they go on holiday, which arrived shortly after we did. We unpacked it all straight away, but now she’s rearranging it, crossing the kitchen with armfuls of a fancy Italian Kettle Chip equivalent and honey-roasted cashews.

‘What on earth are you doing, Saff?’ Trina throws back the last of her champagne and reaches for the bottle that we didn’t bother to return to the fridge.

‘I think it’d be better if all the snacky stuff was in one cupboard. Otherwise we won’t know what we’ve got left, and it’ll make it harder to know if we need to go out for more supplies.’

‘More?’ I say. ‘Jesus, we’ve got enough salty snacks to last us a lifetime, haven’t we? We’re only here for three nights.’

‘You know what it’s like,’ Saffie says. ‘You always need more than you think.’ She stoops to retrieve a dropped bag of root vegetable crisps and stuffs them into a low cupboard in the marble-topped island. ‘So all that stuff is in here now. I’m going to put the breakfast cereals where the nuts were, because some of them are too tall for that cupboard you put them in, Liz.’

‘OK.’ I bite my tongue and shake my head at Trina who’s about to take the piss out of Saffie. ‘Why don’t you take these out to the terrace, Trina? There’s a tray on the side there.’

Trina loads up the tray with snacks and moves towards the door.

‘Hold on,’ Saffie says. ‘Can you take a few beers as well?’ She nips to the utility room and comes back with a handful of bottled lagers. ‘Todd might want one. Or someone else.’ She adds a bottle opener to the tray.

‘No problem, mein Herr,’ Trina says, leaving the room.

‘Do you think there’s enough booze?’ Saffie opens the wine fridge that’s set into the end of the island and surveys row upon row of Veuve Clicquot and Laurent Perrier champagne. The top shelf of a wooden butcher’s block to the left of the larder groans with Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot and the shelf below it houses several different gins, vodkas and a variety of spirits earmarked for specific cocktails. There’s another enormous fridge in the utility room stuffed with beer, white wine and mixers.

‘Enough? If we get through the weekend without one of us being hospitalised with alcohol poisoning, it’ll be a miracle.’

‘Oh God, is it too much?’

‘Saffie, it’s fine. Come and sit down a minute.’

‘But there’s so much to do.’

‘There isn’t! You’re inventing tasks. Grab a glass and sit here with me. Tell me what’s going on.’

She sighs and her shoulders drop. She takes a champagne flute from the cupboard, slumps down opposite me, and picks up the bottle.

‘It’s … organising this weekend, for one thing. It’s been quite stressful.’

I swallow down what I want to say. Aside from updating her Instagram, Saffie doesn’t work and now she’s with Todd has endless cash at her disposal. How stressful can it be?

‘I want Todd to have a good time,’ she goes on. ‘And Kitty.’

‘I’m sure they will.’

She takes a swig of champagne.

‘Kitty won’t. She’ll have a terrible time to spite me.’

‘Is that still not going well?’ I know Todd’s twenty-four-year-old daughter had trouble accepting Saffie when they got together six months ago, but I thought things had improved. When I think about it, though, Saffie has never actually said so. She just stopped talking about it.

‘Worse than ever, if anything.’

‘What does Todd do about it?’

‘Sod all,’ she says, uncharacteristically unguarded, although almost as soon as the words are out of her mouth, she’s taken them back, taking refuge in her usual ‘everything’s fine’ mode. ‘No, that’s not fair. It’s hard for him. Kitty’s his daughter, he loves her.’

‘Yes, but he’s with you now. He needs to back you up a bit more.’

‘He does, he does,’ she protests. ‘I dare say it’ll get better in time. Todd always gets what he wants in the end. The problem is he’s always been so keen on her making her own way, didn’t want her to be one of those entitled rich kids who had everything handed to them on a silver platter. She gets resentful when she sees me … you know … spending his money, as she sees it. But I’m his partner. We live together. It’s our money. And it’s not like I don’t contribute anything – the advertising revenue from my Instagram is going up all the time.’

That’s undoubtedly true, but it must be a drop in the ocean compared to Todd’s income as a hedge fund manager.

‘What does Kitty do for money?’

‘Events organising,’ she says. ‘Parties, launches, that kind of thing, I think.’

‘That must be fun. Nice job to have at her age.’ It’s similar to what I used to do, although mine were boring business events. I imagine hers are a lot more glamorous. ‘I suppose she gets to meet lots of interesting people.’

‘Yes, I suppose that’s one good thing about it. So … I was going to ask you … ’ Saffie says, uncharacteristically uncertain. ‘Have you seen Owen?’

Saffie’s ex-husband Owen and Andrew are best friends, the longest-standing of the group, having known each other since boarding-school days and gone on to university together. Owen and I have always been close, too, and both Andrew and I have done our utmost since the split to make sure he doesn’t feel betrayed by us, or that we’ve abandoned him in favour of Saffie and Todd. The others in the group haven’t made any significant efforts in this regard. It’s not been easy for Owen, being shut out from a group of friends he thought of as his, who have turned out to be on Saffie’s side.

‘Of course we’ve seen him. He’s Andrew’s best friend.’ I take a mouthful of my champagne, stifling a cough as it burns my throat. Although I like the fuzziness it bestows, and I’ve learned to ooh and aah over it, all wine tastes sour and vinegary to me. I often wonder if anyone genuinely likes it or whether it’s a big conspiracy – the Emperor’s new pinot. My mum and dad used to drink cheap wines that I’ve since learned to sneer at – Blue Nun and Liebfraumilch – but I don’t think they’re discernibly different to what I’m downing now, especially after a couple of glasses. What I don’t tell Saffie is the extent of Andrew’s issue with her and Todd’s relationship. I know he feels he’s betraying Owen when we spend time with Saffie and Todd. I had to work hard to persuade him to come on this trip at all.

‘How are things with you and Andrew?’

I put my glass down in surprise. I can’t remember the last time anyone asked me that. When you’ve been with your husband for almost twenty-five years, it’s not a question you get asked. Everyone is hungry for the details of a new relationship – the passionate embraces, the first declarations of love – but nobody ever wants to know how a long-married couple are doing, even though it’s more pertinent. Naturally ‘things’ between new lovers are good, otherwise they wouldn’t be together. What’s the point of a new relationship, if it’s not full of long afternoons in bed exploring each other’s bodies and lives, leaving only to top up wine glasses or fetch a decadent snack from the fridge? In long-term relationships, you had all those meaningful conversations in those long-ago afternoons in bed and now all you have left is mundanities. There are peaks and troughs, but the light is not always distinguishable from the shade and there are periods of grey nothingness. I don’t say any of this to Saffie.

‘Good,’ is all I manage. It’s not a lie. Things are fine. Andrew is stressed at work, but that’s nothing new, and between our jobs and the children there is little time for ‘us’, but that’s every working parent, isn’t it? We’re not remarkable. Nothing to report. Hopefully this weekend will give us a chance to unwind and spend some proper time together.

‘Just good?’ Saffie says with a touch of pity.

‘I mean … ’ I’m fumbling my way towards expressing these thoughts when Trina’s husband Julian bursts in wearing the classic ex-public-schoolboy-abroad uniform of chino shorts, a striped shirt rolled to the elbow and deck shoes, holding a pad of paper and a pen.

‘Here you are, girls! What pizza are you having? Have you looked at the menu?’

‘Why don’t you get a variety and we can share?’ Saffie says. ‘Don’t get an individual one for everyone, though. How big are they? Would a large one be enough for three? Or even four? Because everyone’s been snacking, so they might not be that hungry.’

‘Yes, yes, don’t worry your head,’ he says. ‘Better to have too much than not enough, though. What about you, Trina?’ he says to his wife as she comes in with the empty tray. ‘Happy with anything?’

‘Yes, whatever you like.’

She stands at the sink, wiping invisible marks from the tray’s surface and drying it elaborately with a tea towel.

‘Good girl,’ he says. ‘I’ll see you in a bit.’

‘Will that be enough, d’you think?’ Saffie says when he’s gone. ‘If he gets one pizza between four?’

‘It’ll be fine, Saff. Don’t stress. Is everything OK, Trina?’

‘Yes, why?’ she says, but doesn’t wait for an answer. ‘I’d better get back out there and check on the drinks.’ She gives the tray one final wipe and leaves the room.

‘Sorry, Liz.’ Saffie turns her attention to me. ‘What were you going to say before all that?’

She looks at me enquiringly, but the moment has gone.

‘Nothing!’ I say brightly. ‘Let’s take our drinks outside.’

‘Can you bring some more crisps?’

I grab a bag of hand-cut, skin-on slices of organic potato fried in extra virgin olive oil, assailed by an unaccountable longing for the neon orange dust and claggy maize of the cheesy puffs of my childhood, and follow Saffie out to the terrace.

Todd’s daughter Kitty has taken up residence at one end, sipping moodily on a glass of champagne. She’s intimidatingly attractive, all endless brown legs and sleek honey-blonde hair. It’s the first time the rest of us have met her, but she’s not troubled herself to engage with us. Todd himself is sitting with Poppy, on the steps that lead down to the lawn, drinks in hand. Andrew is at the far end of the terrace, deep in conversation with Trina. I see him as a stranger would – tall, dark and broad, not classically handsome, but ruggedly attractive – and experience a twinge of a long-buried jealousy that I thought was ancient history. Andrew and Trina went out together at university for a year or so, and had broken up not long before I met him. At first I had found it difficult that he had such a friendly relationship with his ex, although in retrospect it reflects well on both of them that they were able to stay friends. Not long after he and I got together Trina had gone off travelling the world, at which I was secretly relieved. When she got back he and I were so happy and secure that it had never been a problem, and she’s ended up being one of my closest friends.

When she spots me and Saffie, she comes bustling over.

‘Let’s sit and have a drink. You’ve been on your feet since you got here, Saff.’

The two women cross the terrace to a wooden bench and sink down onto it. I stand for a few seconds, surveying the scene. It’s a beautiful early summer evening, the air still warm, the scent of elderflower drifting across the lawn from nearby woodland. Champagne fizzes in my glass, crisp and cold. The prospect of a weekend spent in the company of my dearest friends stretches ahead of me. I want more than anything to be able to loosen up and enjoy it, but something is stopping me. I tell myself I’m being silly, give myself a mental shake and go and join Saffie and Trina on the bench.

FRIDAY NIGHT, VILLA ROSA

Todd stands up to go and get more champagne. Poppy surveys the garden which is just on the right side of wild – manicured would be too vulgar for this house. The grass is neatly cut, but around the edges brightly coloured flowers and feathery grasses riot, artfully clashing. The lawn stretches down to a low stone wall, beyond which a path leads to the house’s own private cove, a picture-perfect confluence of white sand and azure sea framed by a dramatic, craggy rockscape that plunges seawards from the cliffs above. She’s never stayed anywhere like it, and is unlikely to ever again so she might as well make the most of it.

How is it that Saffie has ended up with all this at her disposal, and Poppy always seems to be scraping by? Her daughter Scarlet (the result of a brief fling in her twenties, the father long gone from both their lives) is at university, but when she was younger Poppy was always the one who forgot to pay for school trips and sent her PE kit in on the wrong days. On several occasions she’d forgotten to pick Scarlet up and had to endure the humiliation of being phoned by the school secretary who colluded in the fantasy that Poppy had been merely held up, ostentatiously calling her Mrs McAdams, when she knew she was nothing of the sort.

Saffie’s heart doesn’t sink like Poppy’s as the end of the month approaches and next month’s bills loom large. She probably doesn’t have a clue when the direct debits go out, if rich people even pay their bills that way. Poppy hasn’t told anyone how bad things have got. They wouldn’t understand – she gets a decent salary as a partner in her and Andrew’s PR business, after all, although there haven’t been any bonuses to speak of for a long time. What they don’t know is how many times she’s re-mortgaged the house to get herself out of trouble – there’s barely a square inch of it that doesn’t belong to the mortgage company and the last time she called them they point blank refused to lend her any more. Just as well because the mortgage payments take up an unsustainably large chunk of her salary as it is.

She tries to force what she has done to the back of her mind, as if not thinking about it will make it go away. She knows it’s a mistake and she’s going to rectify it. She just needs a little more time. Or a miracle.

She slips her phone out of her pocket to check there hasn’t been another text from Scarlet. She’d sounded wretched on the phone last night. Poppy had begged her to confide in one of her friends about how unhappy she was, but Scarlet said she hadn’t got any friends, and she refused to access the mental health services available on campus. She’d barely left her room for days. When she started at university last October, she’d appeared to settle in quickly, but how much of that was a charade for Poppy’s benefit? She could see which way this was heading. Scarlet had already missed most of the last month’s seminars, and the more she missed, the harder it would be to catch up. The best thing for her would be to leave and apply again next year to a different university. To come home. A shiver runs down Poppy’s spine. What if there is no home?

She watches Saffie taking a selfie with the honeyed stone of the house in the background, the latest in an endless stream of carefully curated photos for her Instagram. She’s been playing the dutiful hostess but Poppy has seen how tired and drawn she is in the odd moment when she thinks no one is observing her. If anyone asks, Poppy knows Saffie would blame the stress of organising this weekend – ha! As if Saffie has any idea what stress means. She wouldn’t last a single day living Poppy’s life, dealing with what she has to deal with. . .