The Warning

by Kathryn Croft

Genres: International Crime & Mystery; Thrillers; Psychological Thrillers; Suspense

Synopsis

My little boy’s room was empty, his bed neatly made. Alarm bells should have rung immediately. Then the knock on the door came. All I remember is a thick fog wrapping itself tightly around me. This couldn’t be happening to us. Three years ago, nurse Zoe's son Ethan was found drowned in a muddy river by their home, along with his best friend, Josh. With no witnesses, their deaths were ruled a tragic accident. Heartbroken, Zoe and her family move away from her home. They’re just beginning to get back to some kind of normality when, out of the blue, Zoe receives an anonymous email: "You need to find out the truth about what happened to your son. Don’t let this rest. Don’t believe the lie." Shaken, Zoe starts an obsessive hunt for the truth. But why is her husband so reluctant to help? And why is Josh’s mother so determined not to believe her?

Release date: October 12, 2018

Publisher: Audible Studios

Print pages: 350

Sample

Zoe

I should be used to it by now, the heavy silence that always fills the house, even when we’re all at home. It’s been three years, yet I always have the television or some music on in the background and often speak too loudly, just to remind myself that I’m still here, that I’m not a ghost floating around, in some sort of limbo state because I’ve lost my child.

Nothing prepares you for that.

I close my eyes and I can see Ethan. It’s hard to recall exactly how old he is in this scene playing out in my mind – probably ten – but I remember it clearly. I’m watching them in the garden; Ethan is talking animatedly to Harley, his wide smile stretching across his face. I can’t hear what they’re saying but Harley throws his head back and laughs at something his brother says. Then Harley grabs him into a bear hug and they topple to the grass. That’s Ethan. Always making us laugh. Jake is soon at my side and we smile at each other and clutch hands because we both feel blessed.

The image evaporates as quickly as it appeared. There is no Ethan any more, and I’m standing here alone, in a different house and a different time.

Harley appears at the kitchen door and breaks the silence. ‘Is Dad home?’ he asks, the narrowing of his eyes telling me he already knows the answer. In the beginning, most of his disappointment, when Jake didn’t appear home until late into the night, was because he needed him, needed his father around. Jake had always been there before, when we were a complete family, a constant and reliable figure, until he no longer could be. It must have been hard for Harley to adjust to the sudden change in his dad. Now that he’s nineteen, though, I’m pretty certain it’s more about my son feeling bad for me.

‘He’s got an important meeting with Liam,’ I tell him.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not some spineless woman who lets her husband get away with never being at home; I just know how hard Jake works to make his graphic design business a success. I also know that it’s his way of dealing with the absence we all feel, even though we’re in a different house – a different city, even. I’ve often wondered if London is far enough from Guildford to make a difference, but we came here so Jake could set up a business with his old university friend Liam. Besides, if we’d moved further away I would have felt as though I was betraying Ethan.

Harley raises his eyebrows. ‘Another meeting? Okay.’

I continue stirring the beef stew I’ve thrown together. Harley and I have had this conversation before, and I’ve pointed out to him that he needs to give his dad a break. Yet here we are, always coming back to this place. This time I try to make light of it. ‘Oh, you’ll be the same once you’re a doctor, Harley,’ I tell him. ‘In fact, you’ll be working night shifts and double shifts. That won’t leave much for a social life in the beginning.’ I pat his arm.

He smiles. ‘I know all that. It’s worth it to save lives, though, isn’t it, Mum?’

This is why I’m so proud of my son. After Ethan’s accident, Harley struggled so much with his grief that he had to take a year off before starting his A levels. Somehow, he pulled himself together, and now he’s determined to do some good in a world that can show so much cruelty. I admire his strength and determination; I don’t think, at his age, I’d have been able to focus like he does. I suppose it’s his way of coping.

‘How’s Melanie?’ I ask, aware of how loud my voice is in comparison to Harley’s. He’s always been softly spoken, something that belies his inner strength.

Harley pours himself a glass of milk from the fridge; I’ve never understood how he can drink so much of the stuff. ‘You can call her Mel, you know. No one calls her Melanie – not even her parents.’ He chuckles.

‘I know. Sorry.’ The truth is I have no idea why I address her so formally; she seems a lovely girl and is besotted with Harley. ‘So how are things going with you two?’

‘Well, we’re not planning on eloping to Vegas just yet, so don’t worry!’

I laugh, knowing this is something I’m unlikely to have to worry about. Harley’s head is screwed on too tightly to do something so impulsive.

‘Why don’t you invite her here for dinner tomorrow evening? I’ll make something special, and it’s Saturday, so Dad should be able to come home early. What do you think?’

As soon as I’ve said this, I wonder if I’m pushing too hard. Perhaps they’re not at the stage in their relationship where they want to spend time with each other’s parents. Does any young person ever? It’s been a few months since they met, though, so they must like each other a lot. I study Harley’s face but see no sign of doubt or discomfort.

‘I’ll ask her,’ he says, with a shrug. ‘Not sure what she’s up to, though.’

‘Well, let me know. Anyway, I’d better get on with dinner or there’ll be nothing for tonight.’

‘Want help with anything?’

It’s a tempting offer, but Harley’s been at college all day and I’m sure he could do with a break. ‘Help me tomorrow instead,’ I tell him.

As I watch him head upstairs I feel that familiar ache. He wasn’t supposed to be an only child.

Jake gets home just after 10 p.m. and finds me asleep on the sofa. ‘I’m so sorry, Zoe,’ he whispers. ‘We had so much to get through and I couldn’t leave any sooner.’

I pull myself up and bury my head in his chest, breathing in his comforting scent. It always reminds me how lucky we are to have made it through those dark months together. ‘It’s okay. Have you eaten? I would have saved you some but Harley was extra hungry and wolfed down your portion.’

Jake doesn’t smile at this, even though he should. He would have before. ‘Liam and I ordered a pizza,’ he says.

‘Ah, now I understand why you didn’t come home for dinner. Pizza trumps beef stew any day, doesn’t it?’

We both chuckle but the moment of levity is short-lived. It’s almost as if we feel bad enjoying ourselves and have to stop ourselves laughing too long about anything, even three years later. Ethan wouldn’t have wanted this. He was only fourteen, but he had a cheeky sense of humour. If he could see us now, he’d tell us we were being boring. He would instruct us to laugh as much as we could.

‘Think I’ll have a shower before bed,’ Jake says, standing up. He doesn’t need to explain why; it saves him time in the morning so he can make the most of the day.

‘You should take a weekend off once in a while,’ I say. ‘We could go somewhere with Harley. After he goes off to medical school in September, how many more chances will we get to do things as a family?’

The word always feels strange now that Ethan’s no longer here. We are a family, but an incomplete one.

Jake nods. ‘You’re right, we should do that. We’ll go away somewhere for a weekend. I’ll sort something out.’ Neither of us has to point out that it will be nowhere near a lake or river – nowhere close to a beach, even.

‘Also, I’ve invited Melanie – Mel – here for dinner tomorrow evening. Can you get home earlyish?’

For a second, I think Jake will say he can’t, that he’ll offer up a hundred reasons why it’s just not possible, but then he surprises me. ‘Yeah, that should be fine. So, is it getting serious between them?’

‘You know Harley, he’s a boy of few words, but I think they like each other a lot.’

‘Or she does at least.’

‘What does that mean?’

Jake scrunches his face. ‘Oh, nothing. Isn’t it just the way with young love that one person always falls harder? And every time we meet her it seems as though she’s all over him while he’s a bit more laid-back.’

I tell him I disagree. ‘He’s just a bit more reserved, that’s all. He always has been. Anyway, you can’t be talking from personal experience, as that’s not how it was for us, was it? It may have been a while ago but I seem to remember things being pretty equal between us.’

Jake smiles, and I’m glad that thinking of our early days together can still make him feel happiness. ‘Yeah, you’re right,’ he says. ‘We were lucky, weren’t we?’

He’s right – a blind date set up by my best friend Leanne could have been a disaster, and it had taken a lot of persuading for me to agree to it in the first place, but Jake had quickly won me over with his kindness and sense of humour. For too long, though, the happiness and ease of our early years together has been overshadowed by what came later, when Jake hardly knew what to say to me, when he could barely look me in the eye.

‘Anyway,’ Jake continues, ‘Mel’s a nice girl and I’m happy he’s with her.’ He kisses me on the forehead before heading off to have his shower.

Upstairs, I remember that I haven’t checked my emails since I got home from work. There shouldn’t be anything important; I’m not the emergency contact this evening and I always check work emails before I leave in case a patient needs an urgent query answered. Being a nurse at a fertility clinic means a lot to me and I want to make sure I’m there for the women and men who are going through such a lot to have a family.

On my iPhone, my accounts are merged so I get all my emails in one inbox. I notice there is one from Lynette, a thirty-year-old woman who has been struggling to conceive since she was twenty-six. This is her first IVF cycle and she’s anxious it hasn’t worked after she had her embryo transferred yesterday.

I type a reply, telling her to try and relax, that she probably won’t have symptoms for a while, and when she does they could mean anything. Just hang on until your test day, I advise her, yet even as I send the email I know nothing I say will help her. The waiting is hell for everyone.

The next email is from a patient called Gemma. She’s just turned forty, meaning the chances of her IVF cycle working for her are extremely low, so when I start to read the message my heart feels like it’s jumping inside my body.

It worked, Zoe! I did the test today and I’m pregnant! We’re finally having our baby!

Moments like this are what I live for. To know that amidst all the failure and grief in the world, amazing things can happen. People can have happy endings.

The only other unread email was sent to my Google account, from someone I’ve never heard of: [email protected]. There’s nothing in the subject field, so I expect it to be junk but need to check just in case.

You need to find out the truth about what happened to your son down by the river three years ago. Don’t let this rest. Don’t believe the lie. It was no accident.

Jake

The second he walks into the bedroom, wrapped in his bath towel, Jake knows something is wrong with Zoe. She’s sitting on the floor by the bed, staring at her phone, her skin pale and her hands shaking.

At first he assumes it must be to do with one of her patients, but that can’t be right; Zoe is too strong to fall apart when people are depending on her. He’s only seen her like this one other time, and it was when they lost their son. Not before, or since, has he seen her so shaken up.

He sinks to the floor beside her and pulls her into his chest. ‘Zoe, what’s happened? What is it?’

She stares at him, her eyes wide. ‘Here,’ she says, shoving her phone towards him. ‘Read it.’

Frowning, he takes the phone from her, but the words are a blur without his reading glasses. ‘Just a sec.’ He reaches across to the bedside table and grabs them.

You need to find out the truth about what happened to your son down by the river three years ago. Don’t let this rest. Don’t believe the lie. It was no accident.

Jake is confused. ‘What the hell is this?’

She tells him she has no idea who the email is from. She doesn’t know anyone with the surname Cole. Neither does Jake.

‘They’re talking about Ethan? Why? I don’t get it?’

‘What the fuck, Jake? What the fuck?’

Zoe never swears. Especially not the F-word. Jake grabs her hand and tries to think rationally about this. ‘Look, it’s just some prank. Someone’s being an arsehole, trying to screw with us. It’s nothing more than that. Let’s just delete it.’ He’s about to do this when she grabs the phone from his hand.

‘No! We can’t. It… it might be…’

‘Might be what? True? Zoe, you can’t possibly believe this? We know what happened to Ethan.’

Despite saying this, he has to admit to himself that just for a second – no, less than that, a microsecond – there was a flicker of doubt in his mind when he read those words. But there’s no way. He tries explaining this to Zoe, attempting to be as tactful as he can.

‘Zoe, listen. It was an accident. Ethan and Josh drowned in the river because they were messing around. It was awful and senseless and they shouldn’t have been there, especially in the middle of the night. Ethan would have known very well that he wasn’t supposed to be there. There’s no more to it; there can’t be. The police had no doubts about it and it was fully investigated.’

He remembers that day too clearly, like it was yesterday. Josh had been staying the night and the boys went up to bed at about nine o’clock. He and Zoe had no reason to suspect the two of them had sneaked out in the middle of the night. None of them heard a thing.

Zoe will never say it, but Jake is sure she thinks Josh was the one who convinced Ethan to sneak out. And if he’s honest, he probably believes that too, but neither of them will ever say it out loud. It would feel traitorous to do that. After all, Josh’s parents are grieving just as much as they are, so why apportion blame? Both the boys should have known better.

It’s all thundering back to him now – everything he’s worked so hard to ignore, has tried to section away in a corner of his mind that he keeps firmly shut – delivering hard and fast blows that wind him and take his breath away.

Although he will never admit this to Zoe, and can barely register it himself, he’s aware that he’s been on a constant mission to hide from his grief. Work is the only thing that stops him from feeling overwhelmed – no, suffocated – by the guilt he carries. He couldn’t save his child. He failed him in the worst possible way.

‘Sometimes the police get things wrong,’ Zoe says. ‘It happens, Jake.’

He tries to be the voice of reason. ‘Let’s just take a moment to think about this.’ He pauses, waits for her to object, but she doesn’t, instead staring at him with those wide, beautiful eyes, as if willing him to produce some words that will explain everything and put this to rest.

‘It’s been three years,’ he tells her. ‘If there was any truth to this, why would the person who sent this have waited so long? There are some sick people out there who love to see people in pain and do what they can to mess with them. That’s all this is. We can’t let whoever it is get to us.’

There is silence while she assesses what he’s just said, and then she slowly nods. The calm, rational woman he knows is back. ‘I know you’re probably right, but what if there’s just some tiny chance that it’s true? I think we should show it to the police, just in case. And if it is just someone harassing me, then that needs to be reported too, doesn’t it?’

Jake thought he’d seen the last of the police – or hoped he had anyway. The family liaison officer, Jody, was a nice woman, but it had made him uncomfortable to have her in their house so much, making herself at home as if she lived there, constantly asking them questions. Despite that, though, she really helped Zoe and Harley – when, he has to admit, he didn’t have the ability. He is grateful for that. ‘Okay,’ he agrees. ‘We can go early tomorrow morning, before I go to work.’

Zoe shakes her head. ‘No, I’ll go on my own. I’ll be fine. If this is a prank, why should we let this person screw things up for us? I need you home early for dinner with Melanie, so you can’t afford to go in late.’

He feels awful about this, but Zoe is right. ‘Okay. Just call me after you’ve seen them and let me know what they say.’ He knows she’ll be fine without him there; Zoe is independent, headstrong – sometimes too much. She might have had a bit of a wobble, but she’ll pull it together by the morning. Still, Jake offers her words he hopes will show his support. ‘We’ll get through this together, Zoe. Just like we did before.’

Barely.

As he’s speaking, he feels his thoughts trying to twist to something else. Something he won’t let himself think about.

Harley

Sometimes he doesn’t feel nineteen. He feels more like an older person trapped inside a teenager’s body. This must be what losing your little brother does to you, he reckons, although he doesn’t remember ever not feeling this way.

He sits at his computer, his eyes glued to the website of the medical school he’s applied to. The bright pictures full of young, smiling faces make him believe anything is possible, that he can have a future without his little brother in it, that he will seamlessly blend in with those happy faces and stamp out his grief.

Ethan. He’d been everything Harley wasn’t: the life and soul of any room, confident, brave. But not as academic, Harley reminds himself. That was where he excelled, although he’d never held that over his brother. There was no rivalry between them. It would have been better if we’d hated each other, if we hadn’t been so close. Perhaps then there wouldn’t be such a gaping hole in my life.

You could say they were doing okay now, as a family. They’d been to hell but somehow made it back and now they were just living their lives. Carrying on. Trying to be normal. But scars don’t fade; there is always something left behind. He shudders, not wanting to think about those dark days when they all became completely different people and it felt as though Mum hated Dad, Dad hated Mum and Harley hated everyone.

Now they’d somehow made a new reality for themselves, a quieter, more sedate one, even though Ethan would always exist for them. And Harley was optimistic that the future would be even better, given more time. Dad just needed to get his priorities right and be the person he’d been before: the dad who used to take them out every Saturday afternoon. The cinema. Mini golf. Wherever they’d wanted to go.

But Mum had been weird this morning – distracted, as if she’d been on edge. She’d even managed to burn their scrambled eggs. Her food was never anything other than Jamie Oliver perfect, so he’d known something was going on.

‘Are you okay, Mum?’ he’d asked her, as she’d tossed the charred remains in the bin and started cracking open fresh eggs.

Her answer had been short and to the point. ‘Fine, love. Just feel a cold coming on.’

You didn’t have to be a future medical student to notice she had no symptoms of any type of bug. It was probably something to do with Dad. Mum must be so lonely after work, when he’s never around and there’s nobody to talk to. She never says anything, of course, but Harley sees it. He knows it.

Harley closes down the website and lies on his bed, reaching for his headphones and blasting out Coldplay. Sorry, Ethan, he thinks. I’ll be off to medical school soon – the start of my life. It still cuts me up that you’ll never get to do anything like that. It doesn’t seem fair.

Thankfully Mel texts him, distracting him from these destructive thoughts. She’s checking if dinner’s still on, ending her message with three kisses. He smiles. She’s so warm and affectionate and sometimes he can’t believe she’s actually interested in him.

He replies and tells her he can’t wait to see her later, even though this isn’t exactly true. He’s dreading the dinner with his parents; it seems so formal, and something he can do without. And what will his dad have to talk about? He can barely talk to Harley, so it’s unimaginable to think of him holding any sort of conversation with Mel. But Mum seemed so happy about it and Harley doesn’t want to let her down. Not after everything he put her through after Ethan died. Not only did she lose her youngest son, but her other son began to fall apart right in front of her. He wishes he’d been stronger, that he’d been able to look after her, even though he was only sixteen at the time.

Mel texts again, this time with a picture of her smiling suggestively. Although he’s sure she’s wearing something, the photo is cut off just below her shoulders so it appears as though she doesn’t have any clothes on. He texts back that she’s cheeky and adds some smiley faces.

He knows what she wants and he doesn’t think he should keep her waiting much longer.

Despite Harley’s reservations, dinner was fun. His dad was home early for once and managed to strike up a decent conversation with Mel. In fact, both he and Mum had seemed really impressed with her. Well, what’s not to be impressed about? She’s cool and down to earth, and over dinner she’d made Mum laugh a lot. It was good to see her laugh.

Now they’re lying on his bed, and Mel’s cuddled up so tightly against him he can feel the warmth from her body transferring to his, as if she’s melting into him. She kisses him hard on the mouth then pulls away. ‘Do you like London?’ she asks. ‘I always wonder what people who aren’t born and raised here think of it.’

‘Surrey’s not that far away. Straight down the A3. It’s not like we moved to the other side of the country.’

‘Oh, I know. But even different parts of London can seem alien if you’re used to another bit of it.’

He knows what Mel means. They live in Putney, south-west London, and other than the West End, he feels weird going to the east, north or west part of the capital. ‘London’s cool,’ he tells her. ‘The kind of place anyone can feel welcome and make their home. Eventually.’ Even me. He doesn’t add that he didn’t want to come here, that moving from Surrey felt like they were betraying Ethan. Almost like leaving him behind. Mum and Dad had to make a break, though – it was killing them to live in that house, in that street, to have Ethan’s ghost all around them. Their marriage barely survived it. He thinks they were all a bit surprised when the big move happened and it made little difference.

Now, though, they’re doing okay. They have to be.

‘You’re so right,’ Mel says, stroking his cheek. Her eyes catch on the framed picture of Harley with his brother, which sits on his computer desk. ‘Tell me about Ethan,’ she says. ‘I mean, unless it’s hard for you. I’ll understand if you don’t want to talk about him. He looks like he was so much fun.’

The atmosphere in the room shifts. She’s never pushed him to discuss his brother before. It’s not that he doesn’t want to, it’s just that this has come a bit out of the blue. Harley takes a deep breath. ‘He was… kind of cool, I guess. Really popular at school and full of energy. Confident. Way different from me. Fun, like you said.’

Mel smiles and clutches his hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze. ‘Is that your way of saying he was… cheeky?’

‘You could say that. He wasn’t a troublemaker, he just, I don’t know, had a sense of humour.’ As he says this, he wonders if people’s perceptions of those they have lost get bent out of shape as time passes. Even though he remembers always laughing when Ethan was around, are his memories of his brother correct, or have they become blurred, mixed up with grief and sadness and pain?

He mentions this to Mel, and she smiles. ‘You’re so philosophical, Harley. I don’t think we truly forget what someone was like, although maybe we do only focus on the good. Actually, I feel a bit awful talking about this because I haven’t even lost a grandparent yet. Anyway, I love that about you, that you think so deeply about things.’

His heart almost stops. What is she saying? Surely she didn’t mean that she loves him? He gives her a kiss but ignores what she’s said. ‘Like I said, Ethan was so different to me. I remember always having a book in my hand, while he was more into his bikes or skateboard or whatever the latest thing was.’ His breath catches in his throat as an image of Ethan laughing appears in his head. And then he starts laughing too.

Mel stares at him.

‘Sorry, I was just remembering how he had such a horsey laugh. Honestly, he really did sound like a horse neighing. It was hilarious. And the more he tried not to sound like an animal, the worse it got.’

And then the moment goes and all Harley feels again is a dull ache across his whole body.

‘Growing up, I always wanted a brother or sister,’ Mel says. ‘It’s kind of lonely being an only child. I know that sounds like a cliché, but it really is true. I think I spent too much time with my parents, being their whole world.’ She shakes her head. ‘It’s not good.’ Her hand clamps to her mouth. ‘Oh God, Harley, I’m . . .