The Anniversary

by Laura Marshall

Genres: Domestic Thrillers; Psychological Thrillers

Synopsis

YOU'LL BE HOOKED BY THE FIRST PAGE, AND SHOCKED BY THE LAST . . . THE TWISTY NEW THRILLER FROM THE #1 BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF FRIEND REQUEST

'Laura Marshall is queen of the irresistible premise' ERIN KELLY, author of HE SAID/SHE SAID

Don't miss Laura Marshall's addictive new thriller, MY HUSBAND'S KILLER. Pre-order now!

*****

Eleven murders. Twenty-five years ago.
Are some truths better left buried?

On 15th June 1994, Travis Green - husband, father, upstanding citizen - walked through the streets of Hartstead and killed eleven of his neighbours. The final victim was four-year-old Cassie Colman's father.

As the twenty-five year anniversary approaches, Cassie would rather forget the past - even as her mother struggles to remember it at all. Then something hidden in her mother's possessions suggests those eleven murders were not what everyone believes.

Once Cassie suspects she's been lied to about the most important event of her life, she can't stop digging up the past.

But someone will do anything to keep it buried . . .
____________

'Compulsively readable. Laura Marshall's best yet' CHRIS WHITAKER, author of WE BEGIN AT THE END

'I was genuinely unable to put it down' KAREN HAMILTON, author of THE PERFECT GIRLFRIEND

'A tense, twisty one-sitting read' TAMMY COHEN, author of THE WEDDING PARTY

'Fascinating' SUNDAY TIMES

'A poignant and unsettling page-turner' SUN

'A brilliant, twisty thriller you'll want to race through' FABULOUS MAGAZINE

'The perfect compulsive summer read' FIONA CUMMINS, author of WHEN I WAS TEN

'Sensitive, intelligent and hugely entertaining' CAZ FREAR, author of SWEET LITTLE LIES

'Clever, pacey and compelling. A cracking thriller' EMMA CURTIS, author of INVITE ME IN

'Utterly gripping' WOMAN'S OWN

'Grabs hold of the reader and digs in its nails' NIKKI SMITH, author of ALL IN HER HEAD

'The twist at the end is delicious' AMANDA REYNOLDS, author of CLOSE TO ME

'A twisting tale that stuns you' RACHEL EDWARDS, author of DARLING

'Gripping, tense and addictive' OLIVIA KIERNAN, author of THE MURDER BOX

Release date: August 5, 2021

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 90000

Sample

Travis sits in the front room, running his hands back and forth over his semi-automatic rifle, cool and smooth beneath his calloused fingers. He is calm, his heartbeat slow and even. In a few hours’ time, eleven people will be dead.

He can hear the gentle clink of crockery from the kitchen. Elaine is emptying the dishwasher, closing the cupboard doors softly so they don’t bang. He had thought about killing her too, but he wants her to know what he has done. He wants her to understand why. That will be a worse punishment for her than death.

Death. He hasn’t thought much about it, although he’s known all along it would be inevitable. He’s not frightened, because he knows it will be a nothingness, like before he was born. If anything, he’s looking forward to it.

She made him fried eggs this morning without being asked, the edges brown and frilly, just how he likes them. He wonders if she senses that something is coming. She can be like that. Her grandmother was supposed to have had the gift – people used to come to her to have their fortunes read, right up to the end of her life. People can be fucking stupid. As if knowing what’s going to happen can make any difference, make things any better. If he had known what was going to happen to him and Elaine, could he have changed things? If he could, then that makes a mockery of the whole thing. No, we’re in control of our own destinies. Elaine has sealed her fate as surely as Travis has his own.

Paul has left for school, and Travis is glad he is out of the way. He wouldn’t want him to see anything. He’ll be OK. Maybe in time he’ll come to understand. Travis senses in him a certain quality, a quiet watchfulness that reminds Travis of himself. Last week, he caught Paul looking at him intently, almost as if he knew what Travis was planning. Their eyes locked for a moment, until Travis pulled his away and busied himself elsewhere. If he hadn’t been so preoccupied with his plans, he might have been frightened.

There are folk in this town who think Travis is a joke. He’s seen them laughing behind their hands, talking about him when they think he’s not looking, whispering this and that, swapping rumours about why he lost his caretaking job at the school. They certainly won’t be laughing when this day is over. Some of them will never laugh again.

The radio is on in the kitchen and he can hear the faint strains of Elaine singing along as she stacks the breakfast things into the dishwasher. It’s been a while since he heard her singing. His resolve hardens as he thinks about what might be lifting her spirits.

In a few hours’ time, eleven people will be dead, and it will be time to turn the gun on himself. And if everything goes to plan – and surely Travis has done enough to ensure that it will – nobody except Elaine will ever know why.

He stands up and tightens his grip on the rifle. It’s time.

It’s the most innocuous of questions, but it makes my insides shrivel, curdling them like sour milk: Where did you grow up? If the person asking is under the age of forty, it’s not so bad. Sometimes there’s a flutter in their eyes, a brief microsecond of recognition – they know there’s something significant about my home town, but they can’t recall what it is. That’s OK. But if they’re older – ten years or more older than me – they’ll wince and in an instant it’s there between us, as if another person has joined the conversation. Only it’s not a person, it’s a place: Hartstead.

Sometimes – and these are the times I prefer – they won’t say anything; they’ll simply move the conversation on to safer ground. What I hate is when they say, Hartstead? Oh, God, I remember that day so well. I know exactly where I was when I heard the news. If they’re around forty years old, it’s often the first news item they recall with any clarity. They would have been in their mid-teens, beginning to engage with the world, to understand that what was happening out there could affect them. I was frightened to go out for ages afterwards, a woman at a party once said to me. Me and my friends were obsessed with it.

This I can cope with. I nod and smile, and say I was very young, keeping my fingers tightly crossed behind my back, hoping they don’t probe me any further about it. Where I struggle is when someone goes further and says, What about that terrible story? Of the last one before he . . . you know. It happened right in front of his wife and daughter; she was only about four years old. I do my best to arrange my features into a semblance of calm and say, Yes, of course, but it was a long time ago and our town has moved on. It’s no longer defined by a tragedy that took place twenty-five years ago.

This, of course, is a lie. How could we not be defined by it, when it’s all the general public remember about us? There’s nothing else memorable about Hartstead. If it weren’t for what happened here on the 15th June 1994, nobody would have heard of the place. It doesn’t have a cathedral like nearby Salisbury, or the coast. It doesn’t even have any boutiquey little shops selling handmade pepper pots and bottle-openers shaped like otters. There’s a Tesco Metro, a small W.H. Smith’s and all the other faceless shops you would expect to find on the high street of a run-of-the-mill small town in the south of England. The only thing it has that you won’t find in other towns is the memorial plaque in St Thomas’s church: a sombre, discreet brass plate with the names of the eleven victims engraved on it. It doesn’t list the other casualties, though – the witnesses, and those left behind. There was talk at the time of something bigger – a community hall, or a memorial park – but those plans were swiftly shelved. It turned out the residents of Hartstead didn’t want a daily reminder of the worst day of their lives, and it seemed futile to attempt to build something positive out of a tragedy in which no light could ever be found.

That can be the end of it and the conversation moves on; but, other times, a shadow falls over their face and they say, I’m sorry, you didn’t . . . lose anyone yourself, did you? They slacken in relief when I say no. But I am lying again. I lost everything the day Travis Green took a semi-automatic rifle and made his way around our town, indiscriminately pulling the trigger. The man they all remember, the very last person to be killed, was my father. The wife that looked on in horror was my mother. The child, clinging to her, distraught and blood-spattered, was me.

Friday 17th June 1994

ELEVEN PEOPLE WERE KILLED on Wednesday when 38-year-old Travis Green took a semi-automatic rifle and rampaged around his home town of Hartstead, before turning the gun on himself. The community has been rocked by the tragedy, and police and Social Services are working around the clock to support the families of the victims and other residents who watched the terrible events unfold.

The gunman’s first victims were husband and wife Peter and Jane Frogmore, both aged 82, shot in their garden. The couple lived next door to the gunman, and were said to have had a civil, neighbourly relationship with him. They were due to celebrate their diamond wedding anniversary later this year.

Another married couple, Richard and Sheila Delaney, aged 45 and 43, were next in the firing line, killed on the pavement outside their house as they left for a shopping trip, followed by 54-year-old Graham Mooney, a driving instructor, mown down as he waited for a client. The gunman continued his rampage, shooting dead David Wilkes, 42, an estate agent, and 19-yearold Manisha Mehta, killed outside her parents’ hotel where she worked part-time.

Travis Green then moved on to the high street, the news of the massacre not yet having spread. He killed Suzanne Persimmon, a 28-year-old case worker at the Citizens Advice Bureau, and Melissa Bradshaw, also 28, solicitor at a small law firm. At the end of the high street, he turned onto the recreation ground and shot a pensioner walking her dog, Maureen Featherstone, 65.

The gunman’s last victim was 39-year-old Gary Colman, shot dead in his home in front of his wife, Sylvia, and their 4-year-old daughter.

As the police closed in, the gunman placed the gun in his own mouth and ended his reign of terror.

Neighbours of Travis Green described him as a loner. One, who preferred not to be named, said he had worked as a caretaker at St Margaret’s High School in Hartstead until recently. ‘He was asked to leave,’ the source said. ‘No one knew why, but he hasn’t worked since.’ Another local resident, who also chose not to be identified, said that Green was a regular in the Lamb and Flag on Hartstead High Street. He often drank with Dennis Glover, a local farmer said to be his only friend. Mr Glover has so far been unavailable for comment.

Hartstead residents are left shell-shocked by the traumatic events, and have been laying flowers and tributes at the sites of each murder. Teenager Hilary Masters, a schoolfriend of Manisha Mehta, laid a wreath and a card outside the hotel. ‘It’s just so awful,’ she said, choking back tears. ‘I can’t believe what’s happened. I feel so terrible. Manisha was supposed to be going to Cambridge. She had her whole life ahead of her.’

Outside the house of the last victim, Gary Colman, flowers are piling up too. The Colmans’ next-door neighbour, Doreen Flitwick, told our reporter that the little girl was ‘screaming and crying, soaked in blood’ when the police arrived.

Green is survived by his wife Elaine and son Paul, 13. Sources close to the family suggest Mrs Green is being cared for at a psychiatric hospital and Paul has been taken into temporary foster care. Neighbours said she had always been polite but kept herself to herself. Paul was described as being a quiet boy with few friends, who spends a lot of time up at the disused quarry on the Farnwood Estate, the grounds of a stately home close to the town. It has been closed to the public since 15-year-old Adam Groundswell died there four years ago after experimenting with drugs and falling into the pit.

Today is one of Mum’s bad days. I’ve noticed since I moved in a few months ago how frequent they are. When I was in London, still working, it was easier for her to hide it from me, I suppose. She’s always been so keen for me to be independent, to get out there and live life, that keeping the extent of her growing confusion from me came naturally to her. I was so busy all the time that I couldn’t see what was going on – correction, I thought I was busy. If it wasn’t so awful, I’d laugh now to think about how hard I thought it was to be pregnant and working a full-time job, moaning all the time about how tired I was. Jesus. I didn’t know the meaning of the word. I didn’t know that once I had a baby I would live in a fog where everything is off-kilter, where my limbs are so heavy it seems impossible to lift them; where my eyes sting all the time, as if several tiny insects have taken up residence in them.

Bedtime used to be my favourite time of day, but I dread it now. There is no pleasure in it when you know, without a shadow of a doubt, that you will be awoken two hours later, often less. It’s not even Amy’s crying that rouses me. I wake as soon as she stirs, a familiar dread settling upon me before I’m fully awake. It can be almost nothing – a squirm, a snuffle – but there’s no chance, none at all, that she will settle herself back to sleep. I’m in for at least an hour of feeding, rocking, pacing up and down the landing, rubbing and patting, until it’s all I can do not to hurl her down the stairs.

Can’t your mum help? Aisha said, when she came to see me soon after I had Amy. I wanted to scream at her, No, she can’t bloody help, she can’t even look after herself any more! But it wasn’t Aisha’s fault that she didn’t understand. When I moved back here shortly before Amy was born, I told everyone I was doing it so my mum could help with the baby. I think I’d even had some idea myself that she could, that we would be able to help each other out. It took less than a day for me to realise that I had seriously underestimated how much she had gone downhill, and that not only would I be looking after Amy alone, I’d also be caring for Mum.

I try so hard not to resent Mum for it, because of course – of course – it’s not her fault. But when Amy’s had a particularly bad night and my body is heavy with exhaustion, and Mum asks me the same question for the tenth time that morning, or is refusing to eat, adamant she’s already had her breakfast, it’s hard. It’s hard not to get angry, and at times I do, because if I swallow it down, if I move beyond anger, there’s utter despair, and I can’t allow myself to go there because then I’ll be no use to anyone. It surfaces, unbidden, in the dead of night, when the house is finally still and I’m alone. When it’s quiet, with nothing to drown out the voices that whisper to me about what it must be like for Mum to be like this. Mum, who has always been so independent, so strong. How does she feel inside? Does she know what’s happening to her? Is she frightened? I can’t stop myself imagining what it would have been like if she hadn’t got dementia. She loves Amy, she really does, but I don’t think she always knows she’s her granddaughter. And Amy will never know her, not the real her. I let myself succumb briefly to these thoughts, weeping silently into my pillow, but after a while I have to force myself to stop, to think about something, anything else, in order to get back to sleep. I don’t have the luxury of lying awake all night, tossing and turning and emoting. I need to squeeze in every drop of sleep I can while Amy’s down, because, if I don’t, there’s no way I will get through the next day, and the next, and the next, each one more draining and monotonous than the last.

I think wistfully of my two best friends from school, Stella and Bec. If only they still lived here, I know they would help. But they’re scattered to the four winds – Stella loved-up with Pete in Edinburgh, and Bec teaching scuba-diving in Australia. Even before Amy they weren’t the greatest of correspondents, caught up in their own lives, just as I was in mine, in London.

I try not to think about Before, because a hole opens up inside me, threatening to swallow me. I try to think of that Cassie as a separate person: the Cassie who had well-cut suits and wore heels, who spent her days in a building made of glass and steel, holding meetings and issuing instructions. That Cassie had friends, and evenings in the pub, and cinema trips, and a boyfriend, even if he was married to another woman. She had a mother she could chat to on the phone, who was interested in her daughter’s life and who had stories of her own. She had a life that existed outside this bubble of feeds and naps and cooking and cleaning and shopping. Amy only sleeps for a maximum of thirty minutes at a time during the day, and when she’s awake she’s never happy. She doesn’t lie burbling in her pram like the other babies I see out and about. She’s always crying, or writhing as if she wants to get out. I bought a bouncy chair for her but the longest she’s ever sat in it without screaming is seven and a half minutes. It doesn’t bounce any more, because one day I threw it across the room, hard, and the mechanism jammed. Amy wasn’t in it.

What about Guy? Aisha had said next. Amy’s his daughter too. But she’s not, not in any real sense. He cried, when I told him. I’d never seen him cry before. I thought it meant he’d realised it was time to leave his wife. I should have known that an unborn child could never compete with a living, breathing one. That whatever I could offer him could never compete with a ten-year relationship, a shared history, a life inextricably intertwined. What did Aisha think I was going to do, call him up and ask him to take Amy overnight? Even when we were together I was only allowed to call him at prearranged times when his wife wasn’t there. Aisha had had that conversation about Guy with me too many times to pursue it, so she’d ended up giving up and just wishing me good luck.

I should feel that I’m well rid of him, I know. I want to feel that. But I don’t. I long for him. Not only to share the burden of caring for our baby, which would be amazing, but just him. Talking for hours about anything and everything. Burying my nose in his neck and inhaling the scent of him. Curling up together in bed, knowing that despite everything I was finally in the right place, precisely where I was supposed to be.

Today, the doorbell goes and I pick Amy up as usual, hoisting her against my stomach. It’ll be Mum’s carer. I had intended to cancel them, but actually it’s the only time I can leave the house without feeling any guilt. As the door swings open, I note without much interest that it’s a new one, a woman of about my age, her glossy brown hair smoothed into a high, tight ponytail. Her eyebrows are thick and dark, immaculately groomed, like two fat slugs.

‘Cassie!’ Her face creases into a smile under the mask of foundation.

‘Yes?’ I say, uncomprehending.

‘It’s me, Chloe! Chloe Riordan . . . from school?’

‘Oh, my God! I’m so sorry I didn’t recognise you. You look so different.’

‘Better, I hope,’ she says.

At school she’d been mousy and spotty, her clothes always slightly too small or too large, and not quite hitting the mark fashion-wise. Unsure of how to answer without offending either her past or present selves, I fall back on a compliment. ‘You look great.’

‘Thanks – so do you! It’s so good to see you!’ She really does seem happy to see me, which gives me a guilty feeling. We were close throughout the five years we were at school together, although once she left at the end of Year 11 to study social care at college, and I stayed on to do A-levels, we drifted apart. Or, more honestly, I allowed us to drift, taking longer and longer to return her texts, coming up with excuses not to meet up – too much homework, Mum wouldn’t let me go out . . . In reality I was busy with Stella and Bec, having got to know them better since she’d left, and finding I had more in common with them than with Chloe, who I’d unfairly begun to think of as dull and provincial.

‘I thought you might be here – I heard you’d moved back to look after your mum, bless her. She’s no age for it, is she? What is she, early sixties?’

‘Sixty-three.’

Mum had had so many plans when she’d taken early retirement a few years ago from her admin job at the local council. When I was young, we had an ancient caravan that we’d hitch up to our equally ancient Ford Fiesta. We’d spend the summer holidays driving around the UK coast, pulling up at caravan parks and beaches, and, one memorable night, in a lay-by on the A21 near Hastings. The caravan is long gone, but I know she’d been looking at second-hand camper vans, planning to spend this next stage of her life footloose and fancy-free, letting the wind take her. That was all stolen from her when, just a few months after retiring, she got the devastating diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer’s.

I used to wonder as a teenager whether she’d ever meet anyone else. A stepfather for me – big shoes in the hall, a razor in the bathroom, a deep voice asking what time his dinner would be ready. From time to time I’d ask her if she’d like to meet someone, and she always said she was happy as we were – the two of us against the world. I guess my dad must have been a hard act to follow. So it never happened, and now it never will.

‘And who’s this?’ Chloe chucks Amy under her chin, eliciting a rare smile. ‘Isn’t she gorgeous?’

I suppose she is, but I never spend any time doing what the mothers in books do: staring adoringly at her, drinking her in.

‘What’s her name?’

‘Amy.’

‘How old?’

‘Fifteen weeks.’ Fifteen weeks of constant motion. Fifteen weeks of every single thing I do being for someone else. Fifteen weeks where every decision has been taken away from me, where everything I do is viewed through the filmy lens of motherhood.

‘Oh, bless. My Phoebe’s six months; we should get them together,’ she says.

What for, so they can lie next to each other, unknowing, occasionally flinging out a hand wet with saliva and bopping the other in the face?

‘I go to a baby group at St Thomas’s church hall, it’s on a Tuesday afternoon – why don’t you come tomorrow?’

‘Yes, maybe.’ Not in a million years.

‘What about her dad? Is he staying here too?’

‘No,’ I say shortly.

Mum was never a huge fan of my relationship with Guy, although she supported me, as she did in everything. If she could have met him it would have been different, I’m sure. She couldn’t have helped loving him. He’s charming, but not in a fake, smarmy way. It sounds crazy given that he was having an affair with me, but he’s a genuinely good person. He just found himself in an impossible situation.

‘Come through.’

She follows me into the front room.

‘Hello, Sylvia!’ she says to Mum. ‘I’m Chloe! You won’t have seen me before; I’ve been off on maternity leave.’

Mum looks at her without speaking, eyes glazed.

‘She’s not so good today,’ I say to Chloe.

‘Oh, bless,’ she says again. ‘I’m a bit out of practice, to be honest. It’s my first day back after maternity leave. I hate being away from Phoebe – you know what it’s like.’

I fix a smile to my face, but I’m consumed by a fierce jealousy of Chloe, who is going to get whole days on her own, away from the ceaseless demands of her baby. She may spend it wiping geriatric bottoms, but it’s a trade I’d gladly make.

‘I’d give anything to stay home with her,’ she continues blithely, ‘but we can’t afford it. I’m missing out on so much. Thank goodness I’m only part-time, though. I couldn’t leave her every day like some do.’

I can never rekindle my friendship with Chloe, that much is already clear. I bet she has never sat on the floor sobbing while her baby screams and screams in her cot, the battery-powered mobile turning above her, plinking out its interminable tune. Twinkle twinkle, little star. I bet she’s never pulled too roughly on her wriggling baby’s arm when dressing her.

‘What about you?’ she goes on. ‘Will you be going back to work?’

I think longingly of my quiet office, and of my assistant, Shanice, who would bring me coffee at regular intervals, huge coffees that I could drink in their entirety while they were still piping hot.

‘No, I’m taking a bit of a break.’

‘Oh, lucky you.’

Lucky me. Except I’d give anything to be able to go back. I’d be there tomorrow if I could. Amy would be better off at nursery – they’d know what to do, how to play with her. But I can’t, not while Guy’s there – and he loves that job. Used to say it would see him through to retirement. There’s no way I could cope with seeing him every day and then going home to our child whom he refuses to acknowledge.

I’m going to have to do something, though. I was never able to save any money living in London, and the carers’ fees are ripping through Mum’s savings. Once they’re gone, I suppose the house will have to be sold to pay for her care – and I can see the day coming, sooner than I thought, that she won’t be able to live here, carers or no carers. Then I’ll be homeless, with no job and a child, and a mother who doesn’t know who I am.

‘Right, shall we get you washed and dressed?’ says Chloe loudly to Mum, who ignores her and continues to stare out of the window. Chloe takes her elbow, and Mum allows her to help her out of the chair.

‘Did you hear?’ she says to me. ‘There’s a journalist doing a big piece on Hartstead for the Sunday Times, to coincide with the twenty-fifth anniversary.’

‘What? Who?’ Jesus Christ, can they not gi. . .