The Girls' Trip

by Zoe Miller

Genres: Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

'She had it coming. So had the others.'

In 2007, Cora, Faye, Anna and Julia returned home from a week together in Ibiza with secrets to keep. When they agreed never to contact each other again, all traces of their holiday were erased. Or so they thought.

Now, almost seventeen years have passed since that trip and Anna's sister Kim is still picking up the pieces after Anna abruptly abandoned her life to start over in London, the occasional Christmas card her only contact ever since. Kim has always been sure that Anna's leaving had something to do with Ibiza - she'd never been the same afterwards. And when a photo from the trip surfaces, Kim finally has some clues to start looking into what happened to her sister.

Julia, Cora and Faye find themselves forced to come together when they realise someone might be looking into the past. But how far will they go to bury the truth? And what's to stop one of them from letting a 'friend' take the fall, in order to save herself?


See what readers are saying about The Birthday Weekend:

'A suspenseful and an extremely addictive read! It hooked me from the very beginning and made me read well into the night! . . . a fantastic book - if you don't read it you are really missing out!' Netgalley reviewer

'One of the most exciting books of 2024! Filled to the rim with twists, this book can result in whiplash. I ripped through this book in a few short hours that honestly felt like minutes. I was so consumed within the pages, I doubt I even once checked the time.' Netgalley reviewer

'Once you pick up this creepy, menacing book packed full of twists and turns you'll find it very difficult to leave it out of your hands. Zoe Miller has written an excellent, gripping read that is well told and keeps you guessing throughout.' Emma Crowley @emthebookworm

'A serious page turner that I couldn't put down. This book is packed with twists . . . a brilliant thriller and I look forward to reading more books by the author' Netgalley reviewer

'Buy and read!! This is the best book Zoe Miller has written, full of intense mystery and just when you think it's all over there is so much more. I loved it.' Netgalley reviewer

'OMG... I absolutely loved it, couldn't put it down . . . Would definitely recommend!!!' Netgalley reviewer

'Such an intense gripping read, it had me up late into the night reading, could not put it down. I loved the writing style which helped build the tension throughout. Fantastic mystery thriller which I highly recommend.' Netgalley reviewer

'A story packed with twists and many red herrings to keep the reader guessing ... such an interesting and engaging read.' Netgalley reviewer

Release date: April 3, 2025

Publisher: Hachette Books Ireland

Print pages: 384

Sample

The first scream was the loudest. It pierced the air as she tumbled down the stone steps that led from the balcony to the terrace below, shattering the peaceful ambience of the hotel’s leafy courtyard. It was followed by short bursts of quieter cries, diminishing in intensity, as the pain began to surge and her breath faltered. Her head made tiny, jerking movements; feeble, automatic reflexes. Then, finally, came the sound of soulful whimpers, heart-wrenching and hopeless. Her life force was ebbing away and she knew it.

Good. The onlooker witnessed the commotion unfolding as if they were floating above it, the exquisite images burning into their brain, cauterising cells, sealing them there as vividly as possible – the easier to recall and gloat over. She had got what she deserved. How dare she think she could get away with the pain and anguish she had inflicted over the years. The past had finally caught up with her. There was a second of thick silence, loaded with dark menace. Even the sparrows were hushed as though they sensed the horror that had been unleashed. The stillness was broken by shouting coming from inside the hotel, the pounding of running footsteps, the staccato of heels clacking across the tiled conservatory, the jarring scrape along the floor as tall plants in elaborate pots were pushed aside by people jostling for position to see what had happened.

There were horrified gasps as guests pressed out onto the tiny balcony, clutching champagne flutes, all of them in fripperies of silk, satin and lace, looking totally incongruous in this awful moment. A woman’s high-pitched scream. Another woman held her throat, her eyes bulging with shock. A man, two men, vaulted down the steps to the terrace, kneeling over the prone body, shouting, one of them futilely attempting chest compressions, even though it was obvious that nothing could be done to save her. The pool of blood oozing from her head crept silently across the flagstone terrace and soaked into the manicured lawn. Her face was already paling, taking on a waxy sheen. The man abandoned his resuscitation attempts, sat back on his haunches and let out a guttural roar.

Hotel staff appeared, swinging into emergency drill mode, ushering guests back, asking for space, requesting calm. A waitress came forward with a cream woollen throw to cover the body, but the distraught man kept pushing it away until he was finally persuaded to allow dignity to prevail.

In the space of minutes it was all over for her – then the world went about its usual business as though nothing untoward had happened. The sun sent sparkling rays through gaps in the trees, throwing panels of golden light along the old stone walls. There was a fluttering in the thick, glossy leaves as sparrows began to flit between branches once more.

The onlooker drank it all in. It tasted like nectar. May was indeed the most beautiful month.

Apart from the few people gathered around the body, guests shuffled back indoors shepherded by hotel staff, huddling together in a collective daze, some weeping copiously, others murmuring subduedly. There was talk of fortifying brandies to treat the shock. Life was already moving on for them. From the road outside, the wail of an approaching siren signalled the arrival of the emergency services. But the body on the ground was silent and still, her remains shrouded from the world by a fringed woollen throw. Foolish people, the onlooker reflected, they were contaminating the scene. Not that they realised it was a crime scene. Yet. The objective had been achieved. Never again would she dance, sing, laugh, enjoy a glass of bubbly, have sex …

She had it coming.

So had the others.

And they were here, right now.



Kim O’Farrell twisted her fingers through her auburn hair, a comfort habit of hers when she felt spooked. Then bracing herself, she held out her free hand for Liza’s phone.

‘Let’s see that photo again.’

Liza passed over her phone. ‘It’s Anna, isn’t it?’

Kim released her wavy hair and used her index finger and thumb to enlarge the grainy image on the screen. It was a photograph of her sister she’d never seen before. The unexpected shock of it, in a heaving pub in Grand Canal Dock, sent Kim’s head reeling so fast that the mirrored interiors and invasive strobe lights, along with the surging Friday-night noise, faded away. The image showed Anna mid-dance, lost in the moment. She was wearing a yellow halterneck top, her blonde hair streaming, her young, open face lively and happy – it seemed like the rest of her life was just waiting to be written.

‘Where did you get this?’ Kim asked, her fingers shaking as she handed the phone back to Liza.

‘I saw it on a Facebook page earlier this evening,’ Liza said.

‘This evening? Anna looks … so young …’ Kim said faintly, finding it a struggle to breathe, let alone voice the words.

‘Yeah, the caption said Ibiza 2007.’

Ibiza.

After the holiday in Ibiza, Anna had changed from a relatively contented twenty-one-year-old to a nervous shadow of herself. She’d resisted Kim’s gentle encouragements to open up about the holiday or tell her about the people she’d met there, even though she’d mentioned on a couple of occasions that she was still in touch with them. Then, fifteen years ago – eighteen months after Ibiza – Anna had arranged to meet those friends one Friday evening and she’d never come home. She’d cleared out of their house in Dublin and headed to London, having already left her job as special needs assistant in a primary school, leaving behind her almost four-year-old son Sean and a broken-hearted Kim.

Kim struggled to keep up with the flow of Liza’s words. ‘The image is on the tribute page for a guy who just died,’ she was saying, ‘Shay Greene.’

The name meant nothing to Kim. ‘How come you saw this? Did you know him?’ Kim made an effort to breathe slowly.

‘Not really. Shay lived in the same starter estate as us in Clonee about ten years ago,’ Liza said. ‘Then they moved and we moved, but you know the way you have random old connections on Facebook. I saw news of his death posted by his family. Has Anna … has she …?’ Her eyes were a mixture of concern and trepidation.

‘No,’ Kim said, unable to elaborate.

No, I haven’t seen or spoken to Anna since she left.

I haven’t heard from her beyond several Christmas cards bearing a London postmark.

‘I cropped that image to show you,’ Liza said. ‘There are two photos and I took screenshots in case you want to take a look yourself. I’ll forward them to you.’

‘Hey, you two,’ Megan called up the table, ‘ready for more drinks?’

Kim stared at her, totally derailed. She was out with her colleagues from Charlotte Place Medical Centre. A dozen of them were gathered together – in the coolest new venue in town according to Liza – to celebrate Megan’s recent engagement to her fiancé Cian. Kim’s twenty-year career in the multi-disciplinary medical centre in Dublin’s south dockland quarter where she’d advanced from junior receptionist to practice manager had been peppered with a merry-go-round of engagements, weddings, mums-to-be and other send-offs. Not that she’d ever personally celebrated any of those milestones, and she doubted she would now at forty-four years of age. Apart from Liza, a cheerful practice nurse who’d become a good friend to her, nobody else at the table had been around at the time of Anna’s abrupt departure. None of the rest of her colleagues were close enough to know how devastated she’d been in the years that followed.

Kim put her hand over the top of her glass. ‘No thanks, nothing for me.’ She turned back to Liza. ‘Send those screenshots through, will you? Please and thanks.’

‘Sure.’

Kim’s mobile buzzed with Liza’s incoming message. She made her excuses to Liza and the gang and left, scrambling through the heat and clamour of the pub, shivering when she exited into the cold night air and slanting April rain. She hurried across to a taxi to take her home.

Inside her house on St Luke’s Terrace, north inner-city Dublin, all was still. Kim shrugged out of her damp coat, eased off her boots and paused in the hall. Many times, when she’d arrived home in the years after Anna’s departure, she’d longed to see her sister coming up the hallway or skipping down the stairs, to hear her laughter, the sound of her voice, a glimpse of her dancing along to the radio. The empty silence where she’d occupied space still ached.

Kim padded down the herringbone timber floor, switching on warm white lights as she went. In the living area, she took her laptop off a shelf, placing it on the kitchen table. Her stomach tense, as though she was about to dismantle a ticking time bomb, she sat down, opened the lid, logged on to Facebook and began to scroll.

The image of Anna that Liza had shown her had come from one of two photographs posted to a public group set up by Shay’s sisters in tribute to him. Family and friends were welcome to add condolence messages to the page, and many of them appeared to have done so. Kim gathered from the entries that Shay had sadly died aged forty-two after a bravely fought illness. ‘Sorry to hear of your untimely end, Shay,’ Kim said aloud, needing to pay her respects. ‘May you rest in peace.’

The photo featuring Anna had been shared to the page by a woman called Ellie Greene along with another photo, accompanied by the comment Rest in Peace, Shay. Ibiza 2007. Kim saved the images to her desktop, enlarging them and zooming in on various details. The full version of one image showed Anna dancing with a dark-haired guy, and a much- younger-looking Shay dancing with a tall girl who had tight blonde curls and was wearing frayed shorts, a white bikini top and flip-flops. At the top right-hand corner of the photo, Kim could make out part of a neon-pink sign bearing the logo The Sangria … In the background there was a partial glimpse of aluminium tables crammed with bottles of beer and half-full glasses.

The other photograph showed an image of six people standing together on the pavement just outside the bar, the four from the previous photo and another guy and girl. The lighting was fuzzy, garish strobes interfering with the image so that it was hard to make out the third woman’s features properly. To the right and out of focus Kim could see racks of straw hats, flip-flops and cotton sundresses lined up outside a shop, and in the top right-hand corner a glimpse of cobalt-blue skies and palm trees. This time, caught at the top left-hand side, she saw another section of the pink neon sign with the word Bar. The Sangria Bar? Were these the friends Anna had met in Ibiza? The people she rarely spoke about? The people she’d seen before she left Dublin? In an effort to ease the pain of a tension headache, Kim stood up and away from the laptop, rolling her hunched-up shoulders, slowing her breath, moving around the kitchen, allowing the restful familiarity of home to seep into her bones.

She’d lived here all her life, renovating the modest house five years previously. She’d kept the cosy front room as a separate place to relax in, but the contemporary kitchen and dining area was now the centre point of the reconfigured ground floor and it flowed through to a living area with comfortable sofas in a glazed extension that opened out onto the private back yard. The transformation meant the hallway no longer rang with echoes of the warning tread of her father Eric’s staggering footsteps. No memories either of her mother Eilish and the horror of finding her sprawled on the old patterned sofa, an empty syringe on the carpeted floor beside her.

Even though Anna had been gone fifteen years, Kim still saw her everywhere: the soft, pink baby that Eilish had carried in through the hall door when Kim was six years old. She remembered her as the child too young to fully grasp the horror of the guards crowding the room as they relayed the tragedy of their father’s accidental death while intoxicated, or as the pre-teenager who Kim had sheltered from the worst of their mother’s drug addiction. She was forever grateful she’d been the one, and not Anna, to find Eilish’s cold body that sunny August morning. Even if the grinding ache of missing Anna was constant, she hoped that somewhere, somehow, her sister was safe and happy. It was all you ever wanted for people you loved – whatever they were doing, wherever they were – even if their life didn’t include you.

Kim poured herself a glass of wine and switched on the outdoor lights that illuminated the small back yard with its original honey-bricked walls, profusion of colourful garden planters and cheerful bistro furniture. With the rain now abated to a gentle spill pitter-pattering against the glass, she found the sights and sounds a soothing antidote to her pulsing anxiety. Calmer, she went back to the laptop, searching through Facebook and other websites late into the night, looking, to no avail, for more references to Anna or Shay Greene.

She returned to the Facebook tribute page and clicked into Ellie Greene’s name. It showed she had one group post on the page, which was the one Kim had seen, and that she had joined the group on 3 April, two days previously. Kim clicked into her personal profile but there was little to see beyond a dozen posts, mostly shares of hotel deals or beauty bargains. She was self-employed and lived in Dublin. Kim was just about to message her about the photograph when she paused. Ellie Greene was possibly a close relative of Shay’s, maybe even his sister. She could hardly barge in on her grief asking questions about a holiday that took place back in 2007.

She was relieved she didn’t have to explain her sudden social media fixation to Sean. He’d gone straight from school to his girlfriend Ruby’s house and would be staying overnight – crashing on the sofa, he’d said. Years ago, he’d stopped asking questions about his mam. Correction – stopped asking Kim if she knew where Anna was. Although she’d done her best to help soften the gap in his life, and paint his mam in a loving, positive light in spite of her abandonment, she wasn’t privy to Sean’s innermost thoughts. She knew only too well how shards of trauma, no matter how deeply buried, could lie festering and come back to hurt years later. She was glad he had Ruby in his life and wasn’t afraid to put his heart on the line. Unlike her.

She logged on to RIP.ie and took a note of Shay Greene’s funeral details; he was sadly missed by his wife Melanie, his children Tyler and Leah, his sisters Elaine, Evelyn and Kayleigh. She checked the names of those who had posted condolences, but she didn’t recognise anyone. Still, this was a link, however tenuous, to Anna’s time in Ibiza and whatever had happened there, never mind afterwards. She had to follow this up and decided that she would go along to his funeral the next day. Not that she was going to tell Sean anything yet. No sense in getting his hopes up, whatever about hers.



She heard Sean’s key in the door shortly before eleven the following morning. He came into the kitchen where she was sipping coffee, put his rain-slicked backpack on a chair and decanted his iPad, textbooks and ring-binders onto the table before pulling out creased clothes and shoving them into the drum of the washing machine.

‘You’re home early,’ she said, not expecting to see him before she left for the funeral.

‘Yup,’ he said. ‘Ruby is off to a day spa with her mam and sister.’

‘That’ll be nice.’

‘Suits me, I’ve lots of revision to get through.’

Not so long ago, Kim would have had to drag words out of him, those early teenage years rendering him incapable of voicing much beyond a sporadic grunt, or throwing a sheepish glance in her direction while he raided the fridge yet again. He’d come through that angsty time largely in one piece, thanks to Kim’s patience, the small tribe of friends he’d had since primary school and the dedication of committed teachers he’d met along the way. Just before last Christmas he’d met Ruby at a basketball match. He’d grown into a rather handsome guy, if Kim said so herself, with thick sandy hair and a friendly, gentle expression in his bright blue eyes.

Not too gentle or sensitive like Anna had been, she hoped, for the challenging world he was living in. Kim sometimes berated herself for wrapping Anna up in too much cotton wool and had tried to be less protective of Sean. He also carried his father’s genes and Kim thought it was a shame that somewhere in Cork – if he still lived there – a man was going around unaware that he had fathered such a beautiful son. All her sister had told her about Sean’s father was that he had a lovely Cork accent.

Anna had met him during a camping weekend in Galway. She’d gone with a gang of schoolfriends a couple of weeks after they’d received their Leaving Cert results. Kim had encouraged Anna to go, to celebrate the end of her school days.

‘Did he – was it consensual?’ Kim had asked, ready to go down to Cork and tear the county apart to look for him, and tear him and his Cork accent apart, if necessary. That was why, Kim guessed, Anna wouldn’t even give her his name.

‘Yes, of course,’ Anna had said. ‘I met him at a party on the campsite and we got chatting. We hung out together the rest of the evening. It was wonderful, he was lovely, it was his last night there and then we …’ Her face had crumpled.

‘Right. I get it.’ Then, looking at her sister’s face, she’d opened her arms. ‘Oh, Anna, come here to me, we’ll sort this. Between us we’ll manage.’

Anna went on to take a Level 5 training course to qualify as a special needs assistant and beautiful Sean arrived into their lives the following June, filling up Kim’s heart as well as Anna’s. He saved Kim’s sanity when Anna had left, with his need for more cuddles and love as well as his constant chatter and endless curiosity about the world around him. Only yesterday, it seemed, Kim could reach down and ruffle his hair. Now, a foot taller than her five feet nothing, in two months’ time he’d be nineteen and sitting his Leaving Cert. He’d applied to several colleges to study engineering and had given up his weekend gastro-pub job and curtailed his basketball practice so as not to interfere with his studies.

‘You can have the table to yourself if it suits,’ Kim said, nodding at his books, knowing he liked a change of scene from the desk in his attic bedroom. ‘I’m off out to a funeral.’

‘On a day like this?’ he said, glancing out at the rain-washed back yard. ‘Poor sod. Anyone I know?’ he asked, opening a side zip and pulling out biros.

‘No,’ she said. That, at least, was the truth.

The church in Greenhills was packed, the air soggy with the scent of damp clothes. The sobbing woman in the front row clutching two teenage children was clearly Melanie, Shay’s wife. Three women sitting alongside her were more than likely Shay’s sisters. It was easy to pick out Shay Greene’s mates – they were huddled together, of a similar age to him, and dressed alike, wearing dark suits and ties.

She watched those who went up to the altar to recite a prayer of the faithful, studying their faces and memorising their names – Daniel, Phil, Alan. Then Daniel read out a eulogy that spoke of happier times and college escapades, his voice cracking with emotion. Soon enough, the funeral service was over and she found herself being swept out through the door by the wave of mourners. The funeral was proceeding to Newlands Cross crematorium, after which everyone was welcome back to the function room in a local pub where lunch would be served.

Outside the church, she sat in her car watching rivulets of rain pour down her windscreen. She could go home and forget she’d ever been here. Or she could take this further and see if she could glean any information from Shay’s friends about who Anna had been with in Ibiza. Maybe it could give her a clue as to the change in her behaviour after her return. She drove to the shopping centre beside the pub, whiling away a couple of hours until she estimated the funeral party would be in full flow.

In the function room on the first floor of the pub, there was no mistaking Shay’s family holding subdued court in one of the large corner booths. Shay’s friends sat together at a table littered with glasses and bottles, and, divested of jackets and ties, their sombre mood of earlier seemed to have shifted. She hovered around one side of the room, pretending to be occupied with her mobile, waiting for an opportunity. Finally, when the guy she recognised as Daniel got up to go to the bar, she followed him.

‘Hey, Daniel! Long time no see,’ she said, squeezing in alongside him at the counter after he had placed an order.

He did a double take, looking down at her with interest. Up close, with wide grey eyes and a square forehead, a full mouth and defined chin, he was quite attractive despite the shadows she saw in those eyes, the dark circles beneath.

‘I’m so sorry to hear about Shay,’ she said, speaking swiftly to establish a connection. ‘You must be in bits.’

Daniel’s eyes clouded further. ‘The past couple of months have been rough. Still can’t believe it.’

‘You did him proud with your words.’

‘Thanks. Phil was supposed to give his eulogy, he and Shay were great mates, but he was too upset to talk about him, as were Shay’s family.’ He looked at her as though trying to place who she was, too polite to admit he didn’t remember her.

‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘you’ve probably forgotten me. I met up with your gang in Ibiza.’ She didn’t know if Daniel had been there with Shay but it was worth a try.

‘Ibiza?’ He frowned.

‘It was years ago. I’ve seen Shay around now and then. He was someone you’d never forget.’

Daniel’s gaze swept across her face as though registering her properly for the first time. ‘I don’t remember you from Ibiza.’

He’d been there. A shiver went through her.

‘I was with Anna,’ she fibbed, her cheeks flushing under his scrutiny. ‘There was you, and Shay, and another guy …’ She produced her phone, scrolling to the screenshots. ‘See? Good to have this memory of Shay. Isn’t this him, in the bar? Anna’s there too.’

He squinted as he looked at her phone. ‘Where did you get that?’

‘It was on the Facebook tribute page.’

‘Who put it up?’

‘Someone called Ellie Greene. She could be one of Shay’s sisters using a pet name.’

‘Could well be. His sisters weren’t in Ibiza, but I know they were planning this page when he was in palliative care. They trawled their childhood home for photos of Shay and his friends taken over the years, but I didn’t think he had kept any of Ibiza.’

‘I also have this one.’ Kim scrolled to the photo with the group of six.

‘God, yeah, that’s me on the left, with Phil and Shay – my hair was a helluva lot darker then. That was a crazy holiday, the last one we were on together. Best forgotten.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m surprised those photos saw the light of day.’

‘I can’t remember the other girls’ names.’

He frowned. ‘Sorry, nor me.’

‘What’s keeping the drinks?’ Another guy arrived at the counter, muscling his way in.

Daniel half turned. ‘Hey, Phil, I’m talking to—’ He looked at her questioningly.

‘Kim.’

‘Kim, about that time we were in Ibiza.’

Phil guffawed. ‘Ibiza? That time in Ibiza? Yeah, right, I don’t remember much talking.’ He leered at her, half-cut already. ‘Which one were you?’ he asked.

‘Which one were you?’ she quipped back.

‘I was the Duracell bunny,’ he laughed. ‘Lasted longer than anyone else. Geddit? Christ, we didn’t share that memory with any of the missuses when we were chatting about Shay this week. Holy fuck, but those girls couldn’t get enough of us. The Sangria Babes.’

The Sangria Babes. Kim’s stomach lurched.

‘We had some wild nights,’ Phil went on. ‘It was mad, four of them, if I recall, wasn’t there, Daniel? But remember, I haven’t told you this.’ He winked at Kim.

Daniel shrugged. ‘I dunno, I stayed away from that part of the action. I was going out with Tracy.’

‘Do you remember Anna?’ she asked Phil.

‘Anna?’ He frowned, before breaking into another hoot of laughter. ‘Wasn’t she the hot blonde we called Goldilocks?’

He was too sozzled to notice Daniel leaning in and grasping his arm. He didn’t even hear Daniel mutter that he should cool it. Kim shook her head, as though to say it was okay. Even though her gut was twisting at the association of Anna with this man, never mind the sordidness of the conversation, she needed to know what this was all about. They were distracted by the barman piling up drinks in front of them, Phil downing a whiskey chaser.

‘Have you been talking to any of the girls since?’ Kim said, anxious to get as much detail as she could from him before he returned to his table.

‘Jaysus no. They were all from Dublin. As soon as the holiday was over, I moved to Limerick with Shauna to be near her family. Shauna was preggers at the time. So was Shay’s girl. Ibiza was the last of the big sessions. What you don’t know don’t harm you, right? That’s what Shay used to say—’ Phil’s face collapsed, all jollity wiped away. ‘Holy fuck, I can’t believe he’s gone. Give us those drinks,’ he said gruffly. Clutching three pints between his hands, he ambled back to his mates.

‘Sorry about that,’ Daniel said. ‘Not trying to make excuses but Phil is devast. . .