The Parents

by Claire Seeber

Genres: Psychological Thrillers

Synopsis

It seems like they have it all. But we all have something to hide…
Moving to this village was supposed to be a fresh start for me and my thirteen-year-old son Harry. After the tragic death of my husband, it was a chance to leave everything bad behind and make better memories at Primrose Cottage, the postcard-perfect house with honeysuckle around the door.
However, things haven't exactly been easy since we arrived, and after what we've been though, I'm scared of letting anyone new into our lives.
But when one of the local dads asks Harry to join the weekend sports club, I find myself saying yes. The smile on my son's face gives me hope that I might have made the right decision in uprooting our lives.
All the other parents seem so kind in welcoming me into the fold. At least, they are to begin with… Until someone begins anonymously exposing secrets about everyone in the group.
As betrayals surface and the claws come out, I see how imperfect these people really are; and how far they'll go to hide the truth. Then when one of the parents ends up dead at the end of a party, I realise that it's not just lies and scandal they're covering up.
Too late, I realise that I should have stayed away…
Fans of Big Little Lies, Lisa Jewell and Louise Candlish will be absolutely hooked by this pacey listen with a jaw-dropping twist you just won't see coming.

Release date: October 25, 2021

Publisher: Bookouture

Print pages: 350

Sample

The thing was, people agreed later, it was almost impossible to see the movement, the camera footage was so dark and grainy.

But once you knew it was there, once you knew what you were meant to focus on, it was impossible to stop looking.

It was the object bobbing in the black water, of course, that drew the eye first. An old wooden pallet? Or actually, maybe a big sports bag, which would make sense, given the setting.

No, it was definitely an old Puffa jacket, arms spread, made puffier and swollen from the weight of the water it had taken on.

Only… if you stared hard enough, you could definitely see, there in the left-hand corner, just at the edge of frame, a figure, moving into the trees. Yes, definitely a figure.

And then, slinking from the shadows of the dense woodland behind, a huge animal – a dog, presumably, fur glinting in the moonlight, almond eyes flashing white on the grainy film. Although… no, it couldn’t be a wolf… Could it?

The animal glanced at the water briefly, and then up, as if it knew exactly where the camera was.

Then it too disappeared into the trees.

In the club shop, hearing about the CCTV footage, Mrs Jessop passed little Sheila the box of salt and vinegar with a typically wry comment about someone leaving the scene of the crime, and Sheila, pausing in her replenishment of Mars bars, nodded calmly, exactly as she always did when the elderly lady said something wise.

It was only later that Mrs Jessop, having learnt the truth, felt a small pang of conscience.

‘Once I knew what the object in the water was, you know’ – she slid the cuttlefish through the bars to Hopping Stan – ‘it felt… wrong.’ The budgie cocked his head as if he completely understood.

In Mrs Jessop’s world, being agreed with made all things right and harmonious – but it didn’t make the truth any more palatable.

Ingrained indelibly on the footage, the object in the water floated into the flare of moonlight, meaning the pale thing attached to the main bulk eventually became clear.

It was a hand, extended as if it was mid-stroke: a hand that would not move again of its own accord.

And the object? It was a body.

Which wasn’t a huge surprise, Mrs Jessop murmured darkly the following day, waiting for the police to arrive. ‘It was only a matter of time,’ she said, indicating that Sheila should flip the kettle switch.

No, none of it was much of a surprise really, given recent events at the club. That one of those nasty parents from Saturday’s drunken debacle should end up face down, floating in the lake, dead as the proverbial doornail… although whoever said a doornail was dead? It made very little sense.

‘I’m sure I saw those nice girls, the Welsh one, Patti, and her American friend,’ Mrs Jessop passed the mugs, ‘here late on Saturday.’

‘The American?’ Sheila plopped the teabags in. ‘I don’t think so. And Patti took her drunken husband home. Plus, everyone was in costume, weren’t they? Hard to tell who was who, among all the werewolves and witches.’

Given the history of Tenderton village, where all things to do with evil enchantment had become a huge draw during the past few decades, putting it firmly on the necromancy tourist map, it seemed almost apt that witchcraft might have been involved.

Mrs Jessop passed Sheila the milk. ‘I’m sure the police know who was here, and who was not. Not our business, is it, dear. Unless it gets’ – she paused, a snap of something discernible in her faded eyes – ‘out of hand.’

Patti Taylor was an even-tempered woman by nature, but even she was riled by the events of that Wednesday morning.

Truth be told, Patti wasn’t having the best of months anyway, let alone weeks or days. Only to be expected really, given that the moon was in Virgo – always a disaster for her. Plus, she’d begun to really rather hate Wednesdays: a sort of nothing day that just had to be got through, without the fuel of a fresh Monday, or the delicious excitement of a Thursday or – even better – a Saturday.

Although Patti couldn’t actually remember when anything exciting had last happened to her on a Saturday – or any day really – other than a takeaway from Pizza Pizazz, or the Strictly final.

Her last proper excitement had probably been a Take That concert with Linda and Hazel a few years back. They’d treated themselves to a triple room in Brighton’s Premier Inn and then, in a desperate bid to relive their twenties, one too many Sex on the Beaches in a bar under the pier, before unwisely choosing to… well, get a little bit too close to the real thing…

Patti drew that memory to a swift and necessary close.

And of course, she sighed to herself, nothing ever happened in Tenderton.

Other than last night’s huge row at the Tenderton Tigers, of course: her son Ethan’s Sunday League football club. It had been brewing for a while now, the tension mounting between a few of the dads, but Patti had still been deeply shocked by the vitriol unleashed.

Somehow it seemed worse because everyone – all the club parents – had been so chuffed about the new signing: Hunter Fullerton, son of Dez Fullerton, former Premiership and Wolves striker: the first real celebrity they’d had in Tenderton, like, ever. And with lineage like that, it stood to reason that Hunter would be a brilliant player, and an asset to the Tigers – didn’t it?

But actually, for Patti, the real problems had already started the previous spring, with Ethan only ever getting half a game. Neil, the under-14s manager, had said he got too moody on the pitch, and that had wound her husband Sam up no end—

A voice cut through her thoughts. Not even a voice, in fact: more of a bellow. Good Lord! Who on earth was that loud at this time of day?

Clacking round the corner into Church Street, salon keys in hand, Patti reached the source of the ruckus.

She might have known! Neil Forth, her current nemesis and the aforementioned manager of the under-14s, was trying to physically hoist a car away from the driveway of his small commercial garage, thumping it so loudly she felt the vibrations through her whole body.

From the safety of the far pavement, Patti gazed at the man she’d recently begun to find the most annoying in the world. Apart from her errant father, and Sam of course – but then that went without saying, didn’t it? Dear Sam: once her Adonis, whisking her away from everything she knew in her home town of Cardiff, promising if not undying romance, then at least salvation.

Sadly, not living up to any of that promise in middle age.

Sweaty and ever hairier as the years passed, his belly pushing out rather than in, with a tendency to nod off over Match of the Day, mouth unattractively slack. And, good Lord, the snoring!

Patti sighed again as, across the road, Neil swore even louder.

His temper reminded her of Sam and Neil sharing such strong words on Sunday that Patti had had to avoid his wife Linda, her oldest local friend, at Monday night’s Cub Scout AGM.

Although that was nothing on the blazing row Neil had had with the referee at the final cup game last season. Patti inhaled sharply at the memory. Monumental, that row had been, really set the tongues wagging, after Neil had mocked the ref’s foreign accent when questioning a free kick.

‘That was a bit much.’ Mild-mannered Tony Burton had led Neil away to take a moment. ‘Don’t want to get a rep for that sort of thing, mate.’

Usually known for his benevolence, Neil was clearly affected by the stress of being in the local A League, the other parents agreed from afar.

And, of course, Patti knew that both he and Linda were currently distracted by their young daughter Angel’s worsening health.

Plus, Patti wasn’t one for grudges.

Her breezy ‘Morning, Neil!’ was met with a loud grunt. ‘In your way, is it, the poor car?’

Another grunt as the stocky mechanic rammed his shoulder once more into the old Land Rover, which didn’t move. Patti didn’t recognise the car: perhaps it had been abandoned. Now that would count for high drama in their neat little village.

‘I generally find a key works better than a shove, Neil.’ She awarded him her biggest twinkle, fully aware it was likely to fan the flames of his fury. He was like that, Neil, these days.

With a half nod, he continued his shunting attempt, his overalls at half-mast at the waist.

‘Should you even be doing that, with your back?’ Truth be told, though, Patti didn’t care about his back, and she was about to hurry on when her eye was caught by something in the upstairs window of Primrose Cottage. A young lad, watching the unfolding scene with something like horror on his face.

But surely Primrose Cottage was empty, since Mrs Grable had fallen on the stairs last winter and been carted off in an ambulance, never to return.

Patti thought absently of the old rumour about the cottage being haunted by one of Tenderton’s long-dead witches. But it was meant to be a benign spirit, according to legend, and Mrs Grable had always said she found the presence comforting…

Don’t be so bloody stupid, Patricia Taylor! Patti heard her mam snort, and she checked the window again. No one.

‘It’s blocking the bloody entrance to the garage.’ Neil straightened, red-faced, hoisting his overalls back up. Thank God, thought Patti, averting her eyes before she saw something she could never forget. ‘None of my customers will be able to get in or out.’

In and out. Patti had a horrible vision of Neil and Linda in bed together. Although surely they didn’t actually do it anymore? She and Sam had definitely gone off the boil the past year or two; not that surprising, given the longevity of their marriage. But still.

‘Whose car is it?’ Patti glanced back at the cottage, but the boy hadn’t reappeared. Perhaps there hadn’t even been a boy. Sam kept saying she should get an eye test, though her vanity had so far precluded it.

‘That woman in there.’ Neil jabbed a stubby finger at Primrose Cottage. ‘Who flatly refuses to come out and move the bloody thing.’

‘Oh? I thought it was still empty?’

The window where the boy had been was definitely empty, just stiff yellow curtains standing to attention behind the mullioned windows. But of course, Patti thought with a shiver, the troubled spirit would have ensured no one came to view the place when Primrose Cottage went on the rental market last Christmas.

‘No. I saw her.’

‘Are you sure, Neil?’ Patti used her best patronising voice, long learnt from Sam. ‘Mrs Grable moved to her sister’s ages ago.’

Hang on a tick! That was a definite flicker of curtain in the cottage’s front room.

‘Right!’ Neil banged open the gate. ‘That’s it!’

Squinting down at her moon cycle watch – a birthday present from her eldest, Luna, who shared her fervent love of all things astrological (Geddit, Mum! the tag had read) – Patti gave a third deep sigh.

Her first appointment was at 8.15 a.m., an early, especially for Dez Fullerton’s gorgeous wife Nancy – and Patti really didn’t want to keep her waiting, given that it was a new booking. The lovely Nancy usually got all her beauty done up in London on her modelling shoots, and truth be known, Patti had a bit of a crush on her. Almost as big a crush as she had on Dez himself.

She’d planned to open early, get the best rose and honey candles wafting, the whitest robe warmed, ensure her new mood music was playing gently throughout the salon.

Except now Neil was marching up the cottage path.

Patti had long believed Neil to be a bit of a bully. A little like his wife Linda – her dear friend, of course, but who had also become rather passive-aggressive lately.

With a final huff, she followed him to the gate.

With my third coffee in hand since 6 a.m., I was trying my utmost to keep out of sight of the street – not easy in a house this size – and cursing myself.

If I hadn’t parked so badly last night after collecting Harry from Heathrow, leaving the old Land Rover too near the MOT garage’s drive, my new neighbours still wouldn’t have known about us.

After all, I’d been here for almost a week already, since my brother Gray dropped me off in the dead of night, and no one had noticed the cottage was inhabited.

Which was exactly how I had wanted it to be.

Later, of course, I might ask myself if I was disconcerted not to have been spotted during that entire time. Images of my decomposing body at the foot of the stairs, or burnt and electrocuted by my hairdryer, lying in the 1970s avocado bath, sprang to mind.

But I’d been happy enough to unpack the few cases and boxes of belongings I’d brought with me from America, pottering around, sorting things out for the children’s arrival.

Well. Happy might be an exaggeration.

I’d missed the children desperately, and yet I was relieved to have had these few days to gather myself, and to begin to make plans about…

About the rest of my life. Our lives.

Because everything was on me now.

Since Gray had left, I’d found that thought so overwhelming that, most nights, I’d pulled the hairy blanket off the small settee and dragged myself upstairs wrapped in it to sit in the dark window of the empty back bedroom.

The street was chocolate-box pretty. At one end, a small olde-worlde pub – the Witch’s Head – bedecked with jewel-bright window boxes and crowned with an alarming sign, featuring a warty-nosed crone in a bonnet. Opposite that, the old Georgian vicarage. (What did the Church of England have to say about witchcraft? Nothing good, I suspected.)

The rest of the road, apart from the garage, consisted of rows of neat little red-brick houses, much like the one I found myself in, the postage-stamp front gardens decorated with a variety of garden gnomes and stone squirrels, some more hideous than others. The only anomaly was that in the front window of every house except mine hung heavy silver, glass or gold baubles. Someone had forgotten to tell the locals that Christmas was over, it seemed.

Luckily for me, Primrose Cottage was detached from the rest of the row by a narrow side return to the small garden. Somehow that made it feel slightly less claustrophobic; assuring me no one was listening through an adjoining wall.

The far end of the street, opposite a tranquil duck pond, was punctuated by a handsome old house, Tenderton Manor, white-shuttered and red-bricked, honeysuckle and ivy tumbling over the walls that kept it solitary.

All in all, the whole village was beyond pretty – and none of it fitted my mood.

And yet, there was a darker undercurrent. On our way into the village that first night, we’d passed a contraption in the middle of the village green, a long plank with a crude wooden chair attached, surrounded by iron railings and a placard I couldn’t read from the car.

‘Bit inaccessible for kids,’ I’d murmured, wondering where the rest of the playground was, to go along with that old see-saw.

‘It’s an ancient ducking stool.’ My brother had slowed so I could see it. ‘For naughty housewives. Drowned if you were innocent, hanged if you survived the dunking. Not sure which fate was worse.’

‘God, how awful.’ I felt the throb of misogynistic tradition right there in my gullet. ‘Did it happen much?’

‘Tenderton’s famous for its seventeenth-century witch-hunts. More dead witches than you could shake a stick at makes a great tourist attraction apparently. Wait till you see the iron boots round by the church hall.’

‘Boots?’

‘Yep. They heated them up and shoved them on the supposed witch till she confessed her sins.’

‘Dear God.’ The village’s appeal would have been fast dimming – if I’d had any choice of where to go.

‘Yep, they’re certainly proud of their history,’ Gray pulled up outside the little house his new wife Stacey was now in charge of for her elderly aunt. ‘Not entirely sure why. All feels a bit Wicker Man to me.’

It was only much later that Gray admitted the village’s ‘ancient witchcraft as tourism’ shtick was one reason his wife had eschewed moving in, although deepest Kent had never featured in my brother’s plans.

At least they’d had options – which was more than I did.

But I mustn’t be ungrateful. Without Stacey’s generous loan, we’d be homeless, or still staying with my mother-in-law – and frankly, like either the witch’s dunking or the gallows, I wasn’t sure which fate was worse.

Thankfully, there was some calm to be had here too, I’d come to realise in the oncoming days.

The upstairs back room, with its view onto a landscape of woodland and hop fields, gave me far more comfort than the chocolate-box vista at the front.

Unseen by anyone, I’d gaze down towards the river, just visible through the tall beech trees. Staring at the silvery ribbon in the Kent country night, I’d dream about where exactly the water led, and whether I could go there too.

It was something I’d been wondering since the tragedy in America; since I’d returned to my homeland for the first time, without my husband.

Since I’d returned a widow – and an impoverished one at that.

Now, entirely due to my own stupidity, we’d been discovered.

I’d finally lost my focus last night at Heathrow after my son Harry’s flight was delayed. Sitting in Costa Coffee by the arrivals gate, I’d watched tanned girls trot through with shiny carry-ons, or couples clasped in unwieldy embraces whilst gazing blankly over their partner’s head. It was, by and large, nothing like Love Actually would have us believe.

But then a tearful reunion distracted me – a big family squealing into each other’s arms, smiling and sobbing – and I almost missed my boy arriving.

Almost, but not quite…

Beyond delighted to see him, I could have picked Harry up and swung him round and round, holding on for ever. But that wasn’t on when you were thirteen, I realised sadly; plus, he was getting taller and heavier, so I settled for a hug and a chaste peck on his pale freckled cheek.

Reaching Tenderton after midnight in the dark, both bug-eyed with exhaustion, keen to get him to bed quickly, I’d parked haphazardly.

Once, I must have known they didn’t do proper street lights out in the sticks, but it was as if I’d forgotten England in the past ten years; used to the bright lights of the lands I’d followed Fraser to, most recently those of America.

And this morning it was time to pay the fiddler, as a thickset, balding guy in blue overalls clomped up my path looking like he wanted to kill someone. Me, most probably…

Behind him, a small, neat woman with a tumble of brown curls followed as far as the gate, dwarfed in a fluffy pink coat. His wife? She certainly looked irritated enough to be a spouse.

‘I know you’re in there.’ The man banged on my front door. ‘You need to move your car – NOW!’

Panicking, I plopped myself down cross-legged in a corner of the empty room, out of sight. For some reason, my hands shook on my cup.

‘Open the door!’

I clutched it harder.

What the hell was wrong with me? Unable to open the door to a man who – perfectly reasonably – just wanted me to move my car; a car inherited from my brother that I was still struggling to drive.

This was not the time to give in to tears. No way, Jose.

Bang bang bang went the door. ‘I know you’re in there.’

Footsteps in the hallway.

‘Hal…’ I scrabbled to my feet. ‘Wait!’

‘All right, mate?’

Too late. My son had opened the front door. Harry and his effervescent verve for life.

‘Is your mum here?’

I froze.

‘Or your dad?’

‘My dad?’ Harry sounded uncertain, and I felt that new but already familiar dive in my stomach. I could picture him, ball under arm, freckled face smiling; tentative but friendly.

‘Either of them’ll do.’ The man was snappy, and my hackles were rising protectively. ‘Can you hurry up about it?’

‘Oh, sorry, sure.’ My ever-affable boy. ‘I guess my mum is in.’

I was already moving towards the door.

It was hard to be angry with Harry for long. Still, right now, in this very moment, I found I was fuming – with whom, I wasn’t exactly sure, but I suspected it was my late husband Fraser.

I didn’t think I was ever going to be able to forgive him for dying the way he had.

Given how hot under the collar (literally) Patti felt by the time she reached the door of Beauty Bound, it was fortunate that gorgeous Nancy Fullerton was fifteen minutes late for her facial. Especially as Patti realised, letting herself into the freezing salon, that no one – i.e. herself – had switched the heating on to its timer.

Good Lord, how much she irritated herself these days with this new, apparently middle-aged brain fog.

And although Nancy’s lateness would have repercussions – the girls fiddling with the diary all day to play catch-up – it did at least mean that Patti hadn’t kept the nearest person to a star in Tenderton waiting on the doorstep.

Turning on the fan heater, putting the lights on ‘sunrise’ setting in Room 1, Patti wasn’t sure how she felt about what had just happened in Church Street.

The tow-haired kid who’d answered Neil’s irate knock had seemed sweet: all melty eyes in a triangular pixie face, and skinny as a rake.

His mother? Attractive too, fair and tall-ish – though not as tall or slim as the gorgeous Nancy. Nice-looking enough, but far less sweet than her son, given how reticent she’d been.

In fact, the woman had pretty much refused to talk at all, shoving bare feet (definitely no nail polish) into old trainers to shoot past them, muttering that she’d move the Land Rover, which left Neil expostulating at no one.

Or rather, at Patti instead.

‘Give it a rest, mate,’ she’d snapped eventually, relinquishing the idea of giving a warm Taylor welcome to this new arrival. A new arrival now crunching her way through her gears in the most painful way.

While they’d waited, the boy had come back out with a football, which he’d kicked a little forlornly around the tiny front garden, until Neil had calmed down and said, ‘Not bad, mate. Enjoy the game?’

For all his pugnacious nature with adults, Neil was great with his team. He enjoyed their company and wanted to help them shine, talent or none. He’d never had favourites; he was fair to them all. Or at least he had been, until last season.

‘Sure.’ The boy looked up. ‘But I’m not that good at the rules.’

‘Why’s that then?’ Neil looked at the lad like he was from outer space. How could you not know the rules to the best game in the world? Patti could literally hear him thinking.

‘They didn’t really play soccer in my last school.’ The boy shrugged beneath his sandy mop.

‘Soccer? All schools play football these days, don’t they?’

‘Not in America.’ He attempted a wobbly keepy-uppy.

America? Now he’d said that, Patti heard the gentle twang to his accent.

‘Only one rule you need to know, isn’t that right, Neil?’ She had winked at the boy. ‘The offside ru. . .