The Beach Hut

by Leah Pitt

Genres: Domestic Thrillers; Psychological Thrillers; Suspense

Synopsis

They told the police it was the perfect summer.
They were lying.

July, 1997. Matilda is killed in a tragic accident on the Dorset rocks, leaving her best friend Sophie alone, wracked with guilt.

Decades later, Sophie is back for the first time since that terrible summer, to sell her family's old beach hut and bury the memories forever.

But on clearing out the hut, she finds evidence that Matilda's death was no accident. What really happened the night she died?

As Sophie edges closer to the truth, the past starts to close in on the present.

Because the close-knit community is still home to a killer, and they want Sophie gone.

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 400

Sample

Chapter One

Now

Sophie

Starlings swoop in the evening sky as Harry heaves my bag onto the faded wooden deck and peers up at me, his thin white hair caught in the salty breeze.

‘Been a long time since I’ve seen you down here, Sophie.’

Twenty years, to be exact, but I don’t say this. My eyes are gritty with tiredness and my neck aches: all I want to do right now is reach for the bottle of middle-shelf Malbec I bought earlier and blur the edges of my life.

Out of the corner of my eye, the row of beach huts stand shoulder to shoulder, flashes of familiarity here and there, even after all this time: the hollow clack of wooden wind chimes from the Parkers’ patio, the black fishing buckets outside old Harry’s. Tom’s hut, painted a soft cream, next door to . . . I tear my eyes away, my stomach giving a painful lurch.

Harry hasn’t moved.

‘Holiday, is it?’

‘It’s being sold. There’s stuff to clear, that sort of thing.’

The long look he gives me says he doesn’t buy this excuse.

‘Seems a shame. Nice hut, this.’

‘It’s never used anymore. Better someone else enjoy it.’ My tone is hard, clipped. I am already longing for the anonymity of London: no one ever asks questions voluntarily. The fresh, briny air is making my head swim with tiredness.

‘Real shame,’ he repeats, with a click of his tongue. ‘­Hardly any of the original owners left anymore, just these City ­people who come down here demanding better phone signal.’ He shoves his hands into his jacket pockets and squints at the shoreline, past the gently rising sand dunes, towards the bottom of the headland.

‘Never been quite the same after what happened to that girl.’

I know where he is looking and I turn away, not ­wanting to see it reflected in his watery eyes. I don’t need to be reminded of how her body was found, lifeless on the sharp rocks. Somewhere, up on the headland, there is a plaque dedicated to her. Matilda.

Harry probably thinks I am cold, not gazing ­mournfully out at the waves alongside him. As if he knew her. The breeze billows inside the hood of my waterproof, flapping against my ears as I stand, waiting.

At last, the old man pulls his gaze away from the shore and gives a sigh.

‘I’ve got fish to see to. You look after yourself.’ He walks away, back towards his hut.

Finally alone, I sit down on the deck and look out at the beach where I spent all my summers as a child. Despite my mood, it is a beautiful evening. Navy-pink clouds hang low over the slumbering waves and the tide is out, leaving a swath of glistening wet sand and clumps of seaweed in its wake. The beach is long, divided at intervals by lines of ­tumbling grey and white rocks, an obstacle course for ­daring children.

For most people, arriving at a wooden chalet on a quiet beach like this would be a balm, a peaceful break. It was once that for me, a long time ago. Now I don’t know what it is. A wave of sadness breaks over me. Stop it. Pull yourself together. Getting to my feet, I rummage around in my handbag for the hut keys. They are still looped through the smooth piece of wood Dad attached them to. After unlocking the stiff doors, I step inside.

She’s back.

I watch closely as Harry sets her bags down in front of the blue hut. No husband, no kids. Just her.

Sophie Douglas. She looks different, but I would have recognised her anywhere. I don’t forget details. Not about her. Not about that summer. The wild brown hair she had as a teenager has disappeared; replaced with a sleek bob. Very London. Her expensive leather brogues are out of place on the sandy deck. I hear she’s a real success now.

The white wine I was sipping on my own deck – so crisp a moment ago – now tastes like acid. Looking down, I am surprised to see I am pinching the skin of my right forearm. There are two small marks there now, like a snakebite.

My gaze turns towards the huts on the left, dotted along the curve of the sandbank. Most of the families who owned huts during that summer have gone. Those who remain seem to have moved on. Forgotten. Tossed into the sea, the memories sinking to the darkest depths, where the light doesn’t touch.

My pulse quickens.

I have not forgotten.

Sophie Douglas will not have forgotten.

Chapter Two

Now

Sophie

When I wake the next morning, it takes me a second to orientate myself. I briefly anticipate the warmth of Nick’s arms; then the sound of breaking waves washes over me, reminding me I am not at home in London, burrowed in my soft sheets. I am alone, under a musty duvet on the sofa-bed I didn’t bother to wipe the sand from. Soon, Nick will be boarding his flight. Perhaps he will be sat next to some attractive, single woman. Will she notice his wedding ring? Or will he have removed it by now?

I swing my legs out of bed. The morning light pushing through the blinds has a pearly quality, promising a warm day. Reaching for my phone, I automatically tap the email icon. Unread messages flood onto the screen and my chest tightens. I go to open the first email, but then notice the ‘Out of Office’ banner at the top of my inbox. The pre-set message reads: I am currently on leave. In my absence, please contact Keith Mansfield. Many thanks, Sophie Douglas, Senior Publicist. I grit my teeth. This is ridiculous. All because of a few chest pains and some shortness of breath that turned out not, as I had assumed, to be a heart attack, but according to the doctor, panic attacks due to chronic stress. Before I knew it, the pushy new HR Director had signed me off with words like ‘wellbeing’ and ‘burnout’. I hesitate. It won’t hurt to check a few emails. Just in case. I was nervous about how Melissa, my over-eager junior, would handle our more demanding clients. We had targets to hit, after all. A bit of help here and there wouldn’t hurt, just to ease Melissa into it.

I am already drafting a response to the first email when I remember Nick’s question right at the end: do you even like what you do, or do you just need to control everything? I put the phone down, angry at his imagined chastising, angry at myself for thinking about him.

Standing in the middle of the hut, I inhale the mildew that clings to chair pads and sleeping bags. All the memories of running into this hut at the start of summer flash around me like tiny, silver fish. While everyone else jetted off to seemingly exotic locations like Corfu, my parents would be waiting for Anna and me at the bottom of the school steps, red Defender groaning with camping mugs, instant hot chocolate and jelly shoes. We would throw off our uncomfortable school loafers as Dad sped down the coastal road towards the sandbank and Mum passed us packets of Haribo, sticky with the July heat. Owning one of these beach huts – the kind you can sleep in for the summer, complete with small kitchens and mezzanine floors – was like living a parallel life a lot of the time. I would finish the school year as boring, uptight Sophie and start the summer as Fee: shell-gathering, fish-gutting merwoman.

Who am I now? In this neglected hut, the window ­shutters still closed. It feels as though only a heartbeat ago I was at home with Nick and his steady, solid presence. Now at the age of thirty-five I am back to where I started, trying, as I was then, to understand where my place is.

Chapter Three

Then

Sophie

‘Stones for sale!’ my sister hollered at the top of her voice. ‘Stop yelling,’ I hissed, embarrassed. Anna ignored me and carried on with her sales tactics. It mostly involved shouting loudly at each passer-by, who would quickly decide that 50p for a hand-painted rock was worth paying for some peace.

It was the beginning of summer, and, though we didn’t know it, the year that everything would change.

I had decided that this was my year: the year I would finally transcend the rank of girl to woman. I had done my time in prepubescent purgatory: I had spent exactly fourteen summers already on this small stretch of beach and this summer I was swapping pigtails for artfully cut-off denim shorts and tankinis for skimpy bikinis. I wanted to be noticed.

I was getting noticed, alright, but in the worst way: hanging out with my little sister while she made extra pocket money and embarrassed me in front of all the new families renting out huts this summer. At ten, Anna had no interest in social status or boys; all she cared about was selling enough painted rocks to tourists to keep her in sherbet spaceships and gobstoppers. I huffed in irritation and folded my arms, wondering why I hadn’t seen any of the older, cooler lot yet. Maybe they were all hanging out together somewhere.

‘Fee!’

Matilda bounded along the beach towards us, kicking up sand as she went. When she reached me, we grinned at one another, breathless with excitement and a touch of ­nervousness. It was always this way with beach friends: come September, we would wave goodbye, returning to autumn school uniforms and new pencil cases, unsure when we would see each other again. I often wondered whether Matilda, so confident and chatty, had changed during the school year. Perhaps she wouldn’t want to be friends with someone like me. It was a relief to see that she looked almost identical to the last time I had seen her, though her blonde hair was longer and she had grown even taller, now towering over my five foot two inches. She was beautiful, but she was still Matilda.

‘Nice hair,’ I said. Matilda grinned, a bright, beaming smile.

‘Thanks. Nice boobs.’

I let out a splutter and crossed my arms, blushing furiously.

‘Tildy!’

She burst out laughing and tugged my arms away from my chest.

‘Don’t be daft! Come here.’ She pulled me against her and lifted the chunky polaroid camera attached to a leather strap around her neck.

‘Why do we always do this before I have a tan,’ I moaned, already readying my face for the camera.

‘So we never forget who we were at the start of summer,’ Matilda said bossily, turning the camera around and pouting at the lens.

‘Cheeeese! ’ we chorused, our faces squished together.

Once Matilda had tucked the polaroid photo into her small keepsake tin, she took my hand in hers and pulled me along the beach. I forgot all about being cool as we ran and cartwheeled through the sand, giddy with excitement as a whole new summer lay ahead.

Chapter Four

Now

Sophie

Without the usual distraction of work, the day ­stretches out uncomfortably before me. I find myself wondering how I used to fill my time, in the years before work became so all-encompassing.

After reminding myself how to replace the gas canister and getting the stove working, I pour a coffee and decide to get on with making the hut habitable. My appointment with the estate agent isn’t for a few days yet, so I have time to get everything ready for the sale. As unsettling as it is to be back here, I owe it to Mum, to all the happy years spent here, to get a good price for it.

It is one of the larger huts along the sandbank – the long ribbon of beach that juts out from the mainland – but unlike many of the other hut owners, my family was not especially wealthy: back in the eighties my then-childless parents were hiking across one of the headland trails and came across the burnt husk of a hut following a gas explosion. It was at the very end of the row, closest to the rugged headland separating the sandbank from the coastal road and main town on the other side. Gripped by the idea they could own this small slice of freedom on the Jurassic coast, they shunned their existing dream of buying an apartment in Mallorca and bought the half-destroyed shell. My dad – a rumpled mortgage advisor by day – spent two years learning carpentry from a book and lovingly renovating it. Like me, my parents became different people when they were down here. No suffocating ties, no school runs: they left all that behind.

Despite the years of neglect since it was last used as a rental, the hut is still postcard perfect. Resting upon three-foot stilts, it is a bright, cornflower blue, with double doors out onto the wide deck. The timber frames are painted a soft, cotton white and a porthole window sits proudly above the doors. The original window blew out in the explosion, but instead of replacing it with plain glass, my dad sourced a piece of glass in a kaleidoscope of colours: when the sunlight filters through it sends pinks, blues and greens rippling across the room. Inside, there is a main living area complete with sofa-bed, table and small kitchen. Under one of the side windows is a cushioned bench where my mum spent hours absorbed in the romance novels that Dad teased her about. There is a curtained-off area at the back with tall cupboards and the bunk beds where Anna and I used to sleep, reading Goosebumps with our torches late into the night and swatting away the mosquitoes that buzzed around our heads.

As the morning wears on, the beach fills with the shrieks of children paddling in sun suits and the hum of boats, off to fish or explore the small coves. I busy myself within the confines of the hut, not ready to face the brightness of the outside world.

By midday, I’ve filled the water tank and managed to remove the worst of the grime inside the small under-counter fridge. In need of a break, I pick up my phone from the ­windowsill, but there is a movement in my periphery, as though someone is on the deck. I cross to the doors and open them, but the deck is deserted. My neck prickles. I’m sure I saw something. I step down onto the sand and peer through the passageway between my hut and next door’s. Just as I decide that I am imagining things, a shadow shifts across the sand at the back corner of the hut.

‘Hello?’ I call. The shadow doesn’t move; it remains a stain on the golden sand. I swallow and take a step forward.

‘Hello?’ I repeat. You’re being paranoid. But there is still no answer and adrenaline propels me forwards. I tip-toe towards the back of the hut.

‘Hel—’

Rounding the corner, I find no one. No hidden figures, no shadows. Just me, feeling like an idiot.

Annoyed, I walk back to the hut, my nerves jangling. I jump when my phone starts buzzing on the windowsill, but my face breaks into a smile for the first time in days when I see the name on the screen.

‘Hey, Anna Banana.’

My younger sister gives a reluctant laugh at the other end of the phone. I find myself pressing the phone harder against my ear, as though it will somehow bring me closer to her.

‘You didn’t call me yesterday, you total shit. I’ve been worried sick. I kept telling Mike you’ll have gone and drowned yourself and it would be all my fault for not coming with you.’

‘Don’t be silly, I’m fine.’

‘Are you fine?’ She sighs and I know she’s thinking about Nick, but thankfully doesn’t mention him. ‘I still don’t know why you’ve gone down to that place.’

‘Who else was going to sort out the sale? You’re on the other side of the world, Mum’s disappeared to Spain with Phil . . . I didn’t have a choice.’ I try to make it sound matter of fact, but the words come out bitter. There is a long pause on the other end of the phone.

‘Dad always handled this kind of stuff,’ Anna says eventually.

‘I know,’ I murmur. I run my finger along the coating of sand on the windowsill. It is almost thirteen months since he died, but I still struggle to think about it for very long.

‘What’s it like down there, anyway?’

‘It feels very surreal . . . hardly anything has changed. Not even Harry.’

Anna gives a snort.

‘That old perve still hanging around, is he?’

‘Anna! He’s not a . . . he’s nice enough.’ A lump has formed unexpectedly in the back of my throat. Recently it has felt as though someone is snipping away at each of the strings that tie me to the life I had defined for myself: husband, snip. Dad, snip. I don’t even have work to distract me, at the moment. With Anna in Australia and Mum in Spain, I have felt an increasing sense of unbalance, wondering if any more strings are going to be cut away, leaving me to buffet in the wind. Perhaps that’s why I decided to return to the place where I spent my childhood before it, too, is gone forever.

‘Have you seen Gary and Sheila?’ Anna asks suddenly.

I swallow.

‘Why would I have seen them?’

‘Well, you’ve not been back to the hut since it happened. I thought you might have wanted to see them.’

‘Anna, I’m just here to sell the hut. That’s all. I doubt they’re even still here.’

‘Well, you should find out. She was your best friend—’

I cut her off. ‘It’s been twenty years, Anna.’

‘So?’

‘So, I’m not here to stir up the past. I’ve got to go; say hi to Mike for me.’

Anna sighs, clearly deciding not to force the issue.

‘I will. Take care.’

Chapter Five

Now

Sophie

After hanging up the phone to Anna, I sit out front with a fresh mug of coffee. The early afternoon sun is now high in the sky, bathing the deck in a warm, buttery glow. I slip a cigarette from the pack in my handbag and light it. Nick thought I had given up, but I often snuck a couple outside the office on more stressful days.

Scanning the beach in front of me, I try to really see it: light, almost creamy sand; rolling waves topped with white caps; beds of seagrass around the dunes that lean gracefully into the wind – but if you get too close, they can slice open your finger.

This focus on my surroundings is something the doctor insisted I try, so-called mindfulness-based cognitive therapy.

‘You need to learn to relinquish control,’ she said sternly, after I told her there was no way I could take time off work. ‘To let go. The world around us cannot be controlled or managed. If we try to conquer the ocean, we will drown.’

Nick had apparently decided he no longer wanted to drown.

We had first met in a coffee shop off one of Holborn’s busiest roads. It was edgy enough to attract a lunchtime crowd of twenty-somethings with cropped fringes and laptops but cramped enough to deter the hordes of tourists and families making their way towards Covent Garden. It was April and the rain had appeared out of nowhere, hammering onto the pavement. I ran into the café, dripping wet, and hurriedly ordered a coffee. Turning away from the counter, I quickly realised that there were no tables. I found myself irrationally annoyed at the barista for not warning me. What am I meant to do, just stand here and drink it?

There was a man by the window, perched neatly on a window bench with a book in his hand. He caught my eye and, apparently registering my harried expression, took his bag off the bench next to him and shifted over. He looked back down at his book as I walked over and sat down on the bench next to him, peeling off my damp trench coat.

‘Thanks,’ I muttered.

He looked up, his expression unreadable. Behind him, the window was steamed up and a line of condensation trickled slowly down the pane.

‘You’re welcome.’ His eyes returned to his book while my eyes stayed on him. Tall, slim frame. An academic type, from his neat, checked shirt to his suede desert boots. But there was an edge of something else, too. Perhaps it was the length of his stubble: a touch too long to be conservative, or the faint piercing scar in his ear, still just visible.

My phone pinged and I glanced at it instinctively: in the PR world, you couldn’t afford to miss a thing. It was a message from my assistant.

Here First has cancelled. Trying to reschedule.

I groaned. Here First was a hugely influential talk show: negotiating an interview for one of our author clients had taken the best part of a year. The client was desperate for the coverage. I picked up my coffee, debating whether to pay the Hear First offices a visit rather than wait around for them to reschedule.

‘Dammit.’ The coffee was almost stone-cold. I scowled at the barista who had served me, ready to get up and request a new one, when the man next to me spoke.

‘Bad day?’

I looked up, alarmed he was speaking to me. His face was completely passive, but I thought I saw a shadow of a smile at the edges of his mouth.

‘You look stressed,’ he added, by way of explanation.

I wasn’t stressed. I was annoyed. There was a difference.

‘I’m fine. Just work.’

He was looking at me a little too knowingly and I turned back to my phone, ruffled. After a couple of seconds, however, I began to feel awkward about my abruptness. Casting around for something to say, my eyes landed on the book in his hand.

‘What are you reading?’

He flipped the book over to show me.

‘Shoedog,’ I read aloud.

‘It’s about the founder of Nike. Have you read it?’

I hesitated. I had been on enough dates in London to know that a poor knowledge of books often came with a big fat uncultured label. But this wasn’t a date. And I got the impression the man next to me would know if I tried to lie.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I think the last book I read was when I was a teenager. Jaqueline Wilson, probably.’

Instead of turning away in disgust, the man leant forwards slightly. My neck grew unexpectedly warm.

‘Why not?’

No one had ever asked me that question before. My phone pinged again, but I ignored it.

‘Work.’ I shrugged. ‘And . . .’ I hesitated, feeling slightly embarrassed. ‘I don’t like not knowing how things end.’

For some inexplicable reason, this comment made him smile.

‘Well why don’t you start on the last page? Then you’ll always know the ending.’ He held out his hand. ‘I’m Nick, by the way.’

Without thinking, I put my hand in his.

‘Sophie.’

A seagull squawks loudly overhead, bringing me back to the beach. I stand abruptly, the chair legs scraping on the patio slabs. If mindfulness therapy means my mind has to be full of Nick, I can do without it.

Chapter Six

Now

Sophie

For the next two hours I work on sorting the contents of the hut. Whenever the temptation to check my emails or see if Nick has messaged arises, I double-down on my cleaning efforts so that by the time I stop for a break, sweat is trickling down my forehead and my back aches. It feels good to do something physical: I haven’t had time to hit the gym in years and I find myself engrossed in the task. My dad’s old wind-up radio is blaring country classics, and all the doors and windows are pushed open, flooding the hut with sunlight. It exposes all the cobwebs and stains, but it also casts light onto the glass wind chimes my mum strung up along the central beam and onto the bowls of deep orange and pearly-pink shells we collected over the years.

So far, I have only tackled the back section of the hut, where Anna and I used to sleep. Every single cupboard or box that I open contains decades of trinkets and knick-knacks: half-finished boxes of matches, bits of twine, bottles of sun cream with the lids crusted over, pairs of binoculars left by eager bird-watching renters.

Finally, only one box remains. At the end of every summer, Mum and Dad would insist on Anna and me putting all our ‘beach’ possessions into our boxes. It was largely pointless: anything worth keeping, like sweets or scented gel pens, would come home with us, so the boxes ended up being filled with rubbish we couldn’t be bothered to take to the bin, or things that we were bored with. At some point I had covered my box with plastic glow-in-the-dark stars.

The box sits on the top shelf of the cupboard and has been pushed right to the back over the years. I eye the flimsy wooden chairs in the kitchen. I’ll have to hunt down a ladder if I want to retrieve it without breaking my neck. Just leave it until tomorrow. The bottle of gin I bought yesterday is calling to me, ready to be mixed with cold tonic in the setting sun . . . only I hate leaving anything unfinished. I know I’ll only sit there, unable to enjoy my drink, while the final unfinished box drives me insane.

Telling myself it won’t take long, I walk outside and around to the back of the hut in search of Dad’s ladder. My bare feet, so beach-hardy when I was a teenager, flinch against sharp stones and the spiky leaves of sea holly.

The three-foot gap at the back of the hut between the sand and the hut’s underbelly was mostly used as a place to store surfboards, and the ladder my dad used to maintain the roof and solar panels. Crouching down, all I can make out is the red and white stern of my dad’s small sailing dinghy, just visible among the shadows. I shudder. Even as a child, the low, dark space spooked me.

Unable to see anything in the approaching twilight, I tap the torch icon on my phone – briefly entertaining the thought of how my dad would react to me using an app instead of an actual torch – and peer into the darkness. The air underneath the hut is dank and cool. Various cracked buckets and empty gas cylinders meet the light of my phone, but no ladder. Crawling into the gap, I hold my phone out with one hand. Something moves to my left and I jerk backwards. Snakes? They aren’t uncommon down here. I wait a moment, but everything remains still.

Taking a deep breath, I move the phone methodically from left to right. It is a relief when, finally, the light falls upon a metal ladder leg. It’s shoved right back, so I have to lean the phone against a bucket and crawl further forward to reach it. Clearing a rusty paella pan off the top of the ladder, I tug on the legs. The ladder s. . .