The Anniversary Party

by Angela Clarke

Genres: Marriage & Divorce; Hard-Boiled; Female Sleuths; Crime Fiction; Domestic Thrillers; Psychological Thrillers; Suspense; High-tech & Sci-fi Thrillers

Synopsis

Champagne. Lies. Murder?

Beth has it all- a beautiful family, a successful career, and plans for a lavish ten-year wedding anniversary party. But when her former high school boyfriend dies in a brutal mugging, Beth's perfect life starts to crack.

Grief turns to fear as Beth receives a message that another of her exes has died in violent circumstances. Followed by another... and another...

Someone's eliminating everyone Beth's ever loved. Someone who knows the awful truth, because Beth isn't even her real name.

As the party looms, Beth must race against time to stop the killer before they strike again...

Or will someone make sure this is the last anniversary she'll ever have?

Release date: October 16, 2025

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 336

Sample

BETH

‘On behalf of my wife and I,’ Danny says with a grin, pausing for the cheer that ripples through fifty of our closest friends and family.

The camera zooms momentarily in on Emma from work (I don’t see her anymore), her hair straightened like we all did in 2009. Then it pans back round to focus on Danny. His dark hair freshly cropped into the close style he still favours, his glistening eyes adding genuine emotion to his gawky boy-next-door good looks. You could believe he was young enough to not need to shave back then. If anything he is more handsome now; time has painted a gravitas onto what was a puppyish face, shading in lines and shadows, building an experienced air of old school glamour, like a 1940s movie heart-throb. A man you can trust.

The onscreen Danny shifts in his tailored grey three-piece, the jacket line tracing his broad shoulders, the flash of a diamanté pin holding his single cream rose buttonhole in place. Traces of nerves melt round his eyes, as his own clear joy is reflected back at him by the room. Only I, the bride, my red hair teased into a generic half updo, a forced smile on my over made-up face, look uncomfortable. People probably put it down to wedding nerves. Danny gives a little laugh. ‘I’d like to thank you for joining us on this very special day.’

The morning frost had burnt off into the soft blue skies of a late March day, Crauford House’s large Georgian windows providing golden light for the videographer’s film. The room full of smiling faces, giddy from champagne sipped from cut glass flutes. And less than five miles away, one thousand people had silently lined the streets of Wootton Bassett, as the bodies of soldiers killed in Afghanistan were carried past.

I can still smell the flowers, feel the sharp bones of my bodice dress pressing into my flesh, as the onscreen Danny says the words I now know are coming.

‘As you all know, Beth is not one to talk about her feelings,’ Danny gives a warm-hearted smile.

My mum’s feathery lilac fascinator shivers above her soft pinched face, as her big pale blue eyes scrunch closed and she titters in acknowledgment. Sat at the end of the long top table, in her carefully chosen matching dress and jacket, her slender manicured hand grips the meaty one of my stepdad, John. Mum at least knows the truth, that there was a before and an after. Two different Beths. A secret shared between only three of us in that room. When you burn all bridges to your past you don’t get to keep those who might have been important to you before. You don’t get that right.

I see the unintended sting of Danny’s words hit me. The thick white tablecloth pulls taut under the gilt edged china plate of my half eaten beef fillet, as I twisted my hands into its long draped folds. Trying to hold on.

Our wedding video large on the flat screen next to the log burner.

‘Why’re you watching this?’ If my voice sounds shaky, neither Danny nor Oscar notice. Oscar’s already snuggled in his favourite fleecy onesie. His mop of unruly blonde hair shines bright against our cobalt blue lounge. A picture-perfect family.

‘For homework,’ Oscar says, his grin revealing the proud gap of his first lost milk tooth.

‘They have to write about “Something That Happened Before I was Born”,’ Danny supplies, holding out the edge of the fringed wool blanket we bought on our last trip to Wales, so I can join them for a cuddle. I force a smile on my lips, shake my head at the offer. Danny tucks the wool back under his jeans with strong fingers. He ruffles our son’s hair, pulling his little body into his own. My husband is still fit, strong, a gym-goer four times a week, the body he has now barely different from the one in the video in front of us. His hasn’t been swelled, stretched, sucked, and wrung out by giving birth. Not that I would change that. I never thought I could experience such happiness till I held Oscar’s tiny unfurling form in my arms. ‘This was four years before you were born. Ten years ago,’ Danny tells him. I allow myself to bask in how happy he sounds, in how much I love the two people in this room. Until the overwhelming strength of that feeling settles into a sharp-edged weight pressing into my insides: I will do anything to protect them.

‘Or it will be,’ Danny continues. ‘On the fourteenth March, when we have our party.’

‘Can I have sausage rolls?’ asks Oscar. Important priorities for a six-year-old.

‘Definitely,’ Danny’s laugh is rich and luxuriant. ‘A ten-year anniversary should be pastry, don’t you think, Mummy?’

I laugh my affirmation. Try to absorb every atom of this moment, the shared giggles, the joy, the light in our cosy front room. Surrounded by photos of our family. The framed print Danny and I bought from the David Hockney exhibition we loved. A squat wooden Buddha from our honeymoon in Thailand, the ice cream swirl of a Cornish seashell found on the beach the weekend my morning sickness told us I was pregnant. A bus rumbles past the bay of our Hackney Victorian terrace, vibrating the floor beneath my feet. A flash of red warning the outside world is still there. Waiting.

‘Again,’ Oscar cries, as on the video the applause for the end of Danny’s speech breaks out. He grabs the remote, his little fingers jabbing.

‘Hey,’ Danny laughs, as the image on screen gets caught in a loop. Me, on my feet, arm raised to join the toast, the delicate lace on the bodice of my dress wrapping round me like suffocating ivy. Turning towards Danny, and away. Towards Danny and away. As if someone else is moving me, an unseen puppeteer twisting me this way and that. Which way will you turn? Which path will you take? The one that leads you here? The one that leads you astray?

I leave them in the lounge. Enid Cat passes me in the narrow hallway, as she jumps up onto the slender console table we dump our keys and post on. I run a hand along her comforting tortoiseshell fur, feel the flex of her strong tail, desperate for something to ground me. But Enid Cat isn’t feeling benevolent today, or maybe she can sense my own guilt. With a knowing look, she undulates out from under my palm, and she and I pad on in different directions. My bare feet navigating the carpeted step that slices an unnatural corner into our hallway. A remnant of the building’s patched past we always meant to fix, but never got round to. Each item of my overdue to-do list hangs on me like a damaged Christmas bauble. Another broken thing I drag along with me.

Our whitewashed kitchen is cold and dark. The sun, usually visible through the glass of the side door, has given up on the day. The brick wall of next door’s extension mud brown from the heavy clouds. A better match for my mood. For what I deserve. As you know, Beth does not talk about her feelings. A failure, even after all this time. I tried so hard to be good. To be fixed. To protect those I love from my sharp jagged edges. I took everything about the before Beth and I buried her deep. Far down, in an iron casket, under six feet of concrete, like she was nuclear waste. To shield everyone around me from the truth. But there’s a crack in the concrete, a rip into my core, and now the corrosive poison is leaking out.

From my pocket I pull the latest ticking bomb, my fingers shaking as I stare at the scrap of lined paper. Blink back tears to read the words that have decimated everything. Told me my time is up. I read them again, though I know the shape of every letter by heart already.

I know who you are.

Someone else knows what I did.

BETH – TWENTY FOUR DAYS TILL THE PARTY

‘No, Rob, I was thinking – as it’s already five thirty – I probably wouldn’t come back into the office,’ I say into my phone. The fence erected along Oxford Street to protect pedestrians from the building work, only serving to funnel hundreds of shoppers into a smaller space. I seem to be the only one trying to go the other way. The bright shopfronts splashes of garish headache-inducing colour in the grey drizzle swallowing the last of the light. Thumping music hurls out of each open door, as people push their way in and out of the city’s busiest shopping street. I am still pissed my boss booked me a meeting in Soho at this time of day. I could’ve easily pitched the potential client – a rather lacklustre pop-up luxe lingerie brand started by the vacant daughter of some ageing rock star – in the morning. Then I would have avoided this scrum. My foot splashes into a puddle. A woman with bleached blonde hair pulls her takeaway coffee out of my way just in time. But I’m not lucky enough to avoid the sharp poke of a black umbrella, wielded by a gormless-looking lad to my right. I scrunch against the cardboard shopping bags of a woman in a shearling-edged jacket who has joined me in the futile attempt to swim upstream towards the Tube. ‘Sorry.’

‘No need to apologise, Beth,’ Rob’s voice says in my ear. ‘We can do this in the morning.’

‘I wasn’t talking to you,’ I say, but he’s already gone. I leave my headphones in my ears, wipe the rain from my phone, and shove it and my hands into the pockets of what is normally my favourite green coat. I like the way the belt cinches in at my waist, how the heavy wool – which is getting heavier as it soaks up water – swings around my legs as I walk. But it doesn’t have a hood, and as another drop of rain works its way over the brim of my black felt hat and down the back of my neck I’m hit by the overwhelming exhaustion you get when you just want the day to be done. I want to be home.

Luck does not look like it’s going to be on my side. I near the entrance to Oxford Street Tube, the crowd starts to bunch. A sure sign the platform’s overcrowded, and they’ll hold us out here. Bodies clump and push behind me. The pavement obscured by a mass of legs, feet, the flapping edges of coats, and that familiar feeling of claustrophobia threatening to seep into my skin with the rain. The feeling that if something happened, I wouldn’t be able to get out. The backpack of the man in front of me catches me on the face.

‘Hey!’ I put my fingers to my cheek. Tall, with his bag on two shoulders, he’s basically weaponised his rucksack. But he either doesn’t hear, or doesn’t care. Just another stony face grimly focused on the now closed Tube entrance. I could get an Uber? But I’ll sit in traffic for two hours at this time of day. I step to the side of the crush, aiming for a space opening, with flashes of blue painted Tube station hoarding, in front of the Evening Standard guy. And that’s when it happens.

I thought I was doing that thing where you see faces where they aren’t. The guy you wave at manically over the road until you realise, mortified, no, that’s not your cousin. The woman walking through the interchange in Bank underground station who looks, just for a second, like your old English teacher. But this time it’s not a trick of my imagination. It’s not wishful thinking. It’s definitely you.

Your hair is longer now, thick curls pushed against your forehead by a black beanie. A slender boxer’s face. That dipped chin, looking up with a cheeky grin: ever the bad boy with the heart of gold. It’s the eyes I recognise first. Dark blue. Intense. They haven’t aged. And it’s been ages. Twenty-four years since I lost my virginity to you. I was fifteen. We were so young, but we felt so grown-up. And here you are, now, a visitor from another life. Staring out from the front page of the Standard: Forty-year-old man stabbed to death in Hyde Park mugging.

I haven’t seen you since my mid-twenties. I’ve done my fair share of internet snooping, of course. A few late nights spent looking at your Facebook page. You don’t have high privacy settings. You have a younger girlfriend, all stylised jet black hair, ruby red lips, and pert tits, like a living cartoon character. There are photos of you at gigs, on tour, sweaty from playing, a beer in one hand, your arm slung casually proprietorial over her shoulder. She looks exactly the type to date the drummer in a band. I thought you lived in Liverpool? But it’s your eyes, your name in the paper. You that has been killed. Despite the noise of crowds around me, I can suddenly hear my own breathing. Loud. Hard. Fast. I take a copy from the stack on the blue stand, not able to talk to the bellowing, puffa jacket wearing seller. First time I’ve held a paper in years. I always read the news online. I could’ve scrolled past you, missed it. But now I have you in my hands. The front page dominated by the threat of a no-deal Brexit. Your photo the human story drawing the reader in for more inside. I flip to page three.

Forty-year-old man stabbed to death in Hyde Park. Michael Armsmith, a musician from Liverpool . . .

I had that right then. Were you here for work? Playing at a pub close enough I could have seen you?

. . . was found in Hyde Park in the early hours of this morning, by a female jogger. Police are interested in talking to anyone who may have been in the area from 6 p.m. yesterday.

What do you do when you discover your first love, your first serious boyfriend, has been murdered, twenty odd years later in a park half an hour from where you live?

You grope for the wall. You sit down. On the wet dirty pavement. Among the stamping, slipping, sweating legs of the passing world. In your favourite coat. And you don’t care because you’re remembering those blue eyes looking at you when they first told you they loved you.

BETH

‘You alright, Miss?’ The man asking is young, early twenties, Eastern European, possibly Romanian. His dark hair shaped into a fashionable quiff. For a second I’m flattered he said Miss, like he thinks I might be young. It’s probably a language issue. Then I remember I’m sitting on the floor.

‘I’m fine, I just . . . ’ I try to push against the hoarding behind me, he gets a strong hand under my arm, helps me up, his face a look of concern. People have started to stare now. The Tube gates have opened, and people are shuffling forwards, passing, side-eyeing the lady who just sat down in the rain. Though no one else intervenes. My skin tingles with heat. What was I thinking? ‘I’m fine.’ I repeat. Because that’s what you say, isn’t it?

‘You’re sure? You want water?’ The young man says.

I extract my arm from his hand. Start joining the lemmings shuffling towards the Tube steps.

‘Thank you. I’m fine. I promise. Thank you. I just need to—’ I point towards the station entrance.

His eyebrows meet, and he looks like he’s about to protest, but I slot between two men in long black macs, into the slipstream of commuters. I just need to get home.

The Victoria line is a welcome anonymous condensation crush. A telling dark patch of dirty water on the back of my coat, visible as I walk through the interchange at Highbury. That was overly dramatic. But no one gives me a second look. Not when I quickly brush tears from my eyes on the overground either. I can feel my phone buzzing: a call – but I ignore it. Can’t talk now.

Enid Cat greets me as my key opens our front door, wrapping round my legs, as if she can sense I need the comfort.

‘Hey there. Good girl, good girl.’ I stroke my hand through her fur. Thankful someone sees me. I need to lock this all down now. I never talk about the past with Danny. I can’t. I’ve never mentioned Mickey’s name. I blink as I remember those intense blue eyes. Mickey above me.

‘Hello!’ I call, hurrying to get out of my incriminating coat, leaving it draped, dry side up, over the folded Standard. Already planning to drop it at the dry cleaners tomorrow. Danny’s expected voice doesn’t greet me. He’s usually back by five. Instead the welcoming open face of Hellie, Oscar’s nanny, appears. Her light curly hair, which never seems to suffer from lack of volume, hangs around her pale cheeks. The outdoorsy, vaguely Nordic vibe that first attracted me to hiring her six months after Oscar was born, is added to by the Fair Isle jumper she’s wearing.

‘Hey!’ She smiles. ‘You’re back early?’

‘And you’re here late – sorry. No Danny yet?’

She shakes her head.

‘Maybe he got caught on the Tube – the Victoria line’s screwed.’ I try not to glance at my coat as she retrieves her own down jacket from her wall hook.

‘It’s all good,’ she smiles. ‘Oscar’s had a fish finger roll and peas. I’ve just sliced him an apple,’ she says. I can hear the distinct tones of Danger Mouse coming from the lounge.

‘You’re an angel – thanks.’

‘Yeah well I did use normal ketchup – Tesco were out of organic.’ She looks sheepish. Before meeting my quizzical eye and cracking up.

‘You know the whole organic thing is just middle-class career mum guilt? When I think of the crap I ate as a youngster – the colour of things – they must have been full of additives and God knows what. Do you remember Slush Puppies?’

Hellie looks at me blankly.

‘God, to be young and innocent.’ I force a laugh. Trying to shake Mickey from my mind. ‘They were the height of the eighties – they sold them in the newsagents. Crushed ice drinks. They came in truly alarming colours. Like drinking plastic.’

Hellie grimaces. ‘Sounds . . . horrid. Eight tomorrow okay?’ She unwraps her rucksack from Oscar’s metal scooter.

‘Not sure about Danny, but usual for me. You doing anything fun tonight?’ I suddenly want to be in my twenties again. Seeing where the night takes me as I head for drinks. Still up at 2 a.m. in a pop-up club under the arches of Waterloo station. Red lights. Sticky cocktails. Flirting outrageously with whoever is nearest. You don’t know what you have till it’s gone. A flash of Mickey smiling at me, sat on the next swing in the park. His hood up against the drizzle. His hand over mine.

‘New series of Queer Eye,’ Hellie laughs, dragging me back to our hallway. The pile of unopened post on the table. Oscar’s wellies at the bottom of the stairs. ‘I know how to live.’

I wave her off, closing the door. Feeling my face drop from its false jollity. I didn’t even realise I was doing it: projecting, being the best version of me. Hellie could have coped with my tears. She’s a friend. She would have hugged me. Put on the kettle. Let me tell her about Mickey. About the first boy I loved. I shake myself. That’s not an option for me. I made my choice long ago. No one is allowed that close. No one’s allowed to know. Details like that – it’s too dangerous.

Oscar’s curled on the sofa, in front of the TV. I remove his empty plate from the upholstery, put it on our reclaimed coffee table and sit down next to him. I can’t help pulling his warm body against mine, smelling his hair. Johnson’s No More Tears, reminding me of the milky sweet baby I’d held in my arms. We’d spent nights awake together in this room while I breastfed him, and watched late night telly. He squirms out of my grasp and folds himself forwards so he’s on his stomach, chin on his fists to get closer to the screen. I content myself with a squeeze of his small strong calf.

‘What’s going on?’

‘Penfold thinks this is the big one,’ he answers.

Fully enlightened, I stare past the screen and let my thoughts roll back through the past. To Mickey. We didn’t meet till we were eleven. Secondary school. I have no recollection of our first encounter. You don’t at that age: it’s just a sea of faces and hormones. It wasn’t until I was fifteen and he sat in front of me in the cold drab Portakabin we had English lessons in, that I became painfully aware of Mickey. The way his blazer stretched over his broad shoulders. The way the right cuff of it was frayed: the black threads turning to fluff his blunt thick fingers snatched away. His hands fascinated me. His nails cut so aggressively low, the skin of his fingers nearly swallowed them. There were blisters and calluses across the pads of his palms from drumming. They weren’t pretty hands. I could feel every part of them when they moved over my skin.

I made the first move. I remember the look of shocked confusion, the slight shadow round his eyes adding to their intensity. Perhaps he too had bought into the teen movie narrative – about boys being the needy sexual ones. About girls being mooning wallflowers who gazed from afar. He caught up quick. And I thought it would last forever. That heady rush of sexuality. The power that comes with blossoming tits and hips. Wolf whistles, cat calls, men turning to stare when you walk into shops. Not that I was anything special, I was just young and female. What you don’t realise at the time, is that what makes you glisten as a teen, fades fast past thirty, and sods off completely by the time you’re my age. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like being harangued in the street. Those first few untroubled walks are a blessed relief. But then you realise what it means. When you pass a building site and are greeted with a resounding silence, it’s not because you’re witnessing a feminist revolution. Today’s builders aren’t more enlightened, you’ve just vanished.

Mickey wanted me like an addict wanted a drug. We were studying John Donne in class, and studying each other out of it. O my America! my new-found-land. We were sexual adventurers, pioneers. It was intoxicating. Sex got better. I got better. But that first taste of lust was enslaving. To be so desired. Come, madam, come.

I jump guiltily when I hear Danny’s key in the door. It’s just my coat – wet from sitting on the floor. It’s just a newspaper – with my now dead first boyfriend on the front. But I don’t want him to see either. Or I do? Part of me longs to open up to Danny. To tell him the truth. But that’s the danger with the past – you pull one loose thread and the whole lot unravels. (I worry for a second about Zayn. But no, he’s my best friend. He’s got my back.)

I find Danny pulling his coat off, his usually laidback face, crunching into annoyance. ‘Bloody tube.’ A shadow of stubble visible across his face. He looks tired.

‘Hey,’ I say, scooping my coat and the newspaper away from him, resting them on the stairs. Out of reach. Out of sight. ‘How was your day?’

‘It always screws up at the worst possible time.’ He’s pulling off his lilac tie.

With everything else, I’d forgotten he was out late last night with a client. It’s usually me who’s caught up socialising. Danny’s work in insurance doesn’t usually call for it. But this one – a sports centre that was looking to get underwritten – was different. ‘Do you want me to do dinner? Oscar’s already eaten.’ I should’ve started already, instead of daydreaming about my old boyfriend. I glance at my coat on the stairs.

‘No.’ Danny scrubs his hand over his face. A strong hand. Dexterous fingers. Clean, shaped nails. No calluses. ‘It’s fine. Besides,’ he adds with a knowing grin, ‘we’re having celeriac – do you know how to prepare that?’

The implication that a vegetable is beyond me rankles, but I keep it from my face. The truth is I hate cooking. And it gives Danny something that is wholly his domain. We’re a team. I pay the bills, he runs the household. ‘Nope,’ I grin back.

‘Didn’t think so,’ he laughs, heading towards the kitchen.

‘I’ll just . . . ’ I look round the hall, settle on the unopened post on the side. Grab the pile and wave it in the air, even though he’s no longer looking. ‘Sort a few things out here.’

It’s just a wet coat. It’s just a newspaper. I’ll put them in the bottom of my wardrobe. My phone vibrates in my pocket, telling me I’ve received a message. It better not be Rob wanting to talk now. But it’s Zayn’s name on the screen. My one friend from before. We knew each other at school. We were friendly but not close. Probably because Zayn was dealing with his own identity stuff back then. We vaguely stayed in contact – just the odd random message or email throughout university, and after. He was in Singapore for a couple of years, then Australia. He does something to do with software. We’d all but lost touch when I bumped into him again when we were twenty-five. He was back in London, and back in my life. We’ve been close ever since. He’s the only person, apart from family, that I speak to from before. Zayn’s ignorance of what happened when he was away finding himself in the Outback of Australia was a gift. The one remaining strand from before, apart from Mum. Someone who really knows me. I had to give up so much. I close my eyes and briefly picture Carmen’s smiling face. I’m only thinking of this – of her – because of Mickey. I open the message:

I’ve been calling you. You okay? Have you seen? Mickey Armsmith has been killed. It’s all over Facebook. I’m so sorry, love. Call me if you want to chat.

I swallow the lump in my throat. Zayn’s a good friend. I fire off a quick response telling him I can’t talk right now. Receive two kisses and a hug emoji back. Flick through the post. A postcard advertising a sale at an exercise brand I once bought some leggings from. And what looks like a marketing circular. An otherwise blank envelope with my name printed on the front. I’m already walking towards the door of the lounge to drop it in the bin, but professional curiosity makes me open the envelope. I slide out a scrap of lined paper – like the type you used to get in school exercise books, and freeze. It’s as if a hand has closed around my throat.

I turn it over. Looking for a brand. Some logo. A signifier that this isn’t what I think it is. I tear the envelope apart, but there’s nothing else inside. The theme tune to Danger Mouse starts up.

‘Can I watch another?’ Oscar calls.

‘Yes. Yes,’ I say too quickly. Just don’t come out here. I can hear Danny chopping in the kitchen. The knife crunching through the celeriac, the snap of the blade as it hits the board. I can’t get moisture into my mouth. Can’t seem to swallow. I feel like I’m going to choke. Cough. Like I’m going to cry. I stare at the words which have been printed on the lined paper. The same font as my name – her name – on the outside. The same fading black ink. The same thin white line, where presumably the printer head isn’t connecting to the nozzle, running through every letter.

I know who you really are.

BETH

I’m concentrating so hard on the note in my hand, Danny makes me jump as he appears in the hallway. His striped chef’s apron over his shirt and trousers, the chopping knife in his right hand. Two wires dangle down from the headphones in his ears. ‘Did you get a chance to look at the catering email?’

Instinctively I shove the incriminating paper in my pocket. Dammit. The canapés for the party. ‘No, sorry – I’ll do it tonight.’ I’d meant to go through Danny’s suggested menu on the way home. Before all this happen. . .