Not My Sister: A completely gripping psychological thriller with an addictive twist, page 1
NOT MY SISTER
A COMPLETELY GRIPPING PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER WITH AN ADDICTIVE TWIST
ROSIE WALKER
BOOKS BY ROSIE WALKER
Not My Sister
The Bride's Secret
My Husband’s Ex
The Baby Monitor
The House Fire
Secrets of a Serial Killer
AVAILABLE IN AUDIO
My Husband’s Ex (Available in the UK and the US)
The Baby Monitor (Available in the UK and the US)
CONTENTS
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
The Bride's Secret
One
Hear More from Rosie Walker
Books by Rosie Walker
A Letter from Rosie Walker
The Baby Monitor
My Husband's Ex
Acknowledgements
Publishing Team
Raising Readers
For my sister, Emily
PROLOGUE
SEVEN YEARS AGO
CCTV recording: Police Interview Room 1, Leith Police Station
The girl sits at the far side of the interview table wearing a large grey hoodie, sleeves pulled over her hands and hood up, partially obscuring her face. Her gaze remains fixed on the table, rarely looking up at either police officer for more than a moment.
PC Phelps pushes a paper cup of water towards her but she doesn’t move to pick it up. ‘Do you remember what time you woke up?’
The girl glances down. Her shoulders rise in a shrug. ‘It was light outside. I don’t know. My head hurt.’
DS Harper leans forward in his seat. ‘What woke you?’
‘The smell. It was… sour. My chest felt tight.’ She presses her sleeve against her mouth. Her face is pale, her eyes sunken as if exhausted.
‘What did you do?’
‘Nothing. I was scared. Then Mum came in and helped me get out.’ Her hands twist inside her cuffs.
‘What was the source of the sour smell? Did you see that?’
The girl shakes her head quickly. ‘I didn’t go in the kitchen.’
‘Was there anyone else in the house that morning?’
The girl pauses, thinking. ‘No.’
‘You’re sure?’
Her eyes shift towards the camera in the corner of the room, away from both officers. ‘Yeah.’
‘What about your sister?’
She looks up, but still won’t make eye contact with either officer. ‘What about her?’ she says quickly, her tone sharp.
‘Where was she?’
The girl swallows. ‘Out? I don’t know. Sometimes she goes out early.’
‘Did you hear her in the morning? Getting ready, making her breakfast, moving around the house or anything?’
The girl’s foot taps under the table, visible in the lower right of the frame. ‘No.’
‘Look, if you did—’
‘I didn’t.’ Her tone is firm, almost cutting.
There’s silence for twelve seconds. The girl’s eyes dart to the door twice.
DS Harper slides his hand across the table, as if inviting her to take it. ‘If someone wanted to hurt you, we need to know who it was.’
The girl’s voice drops in volume. ‘It wasn’t her.’
Phelps sits up straighter in her seat. ‘It wasn’t who?’
She blinks hard. ‘My sister.’ For the first time, she meets DS Harper’s gaze, eyes reflecting the harsh ceiling lights. ‘It wasn’t her.’
The officers exchange a brief glance before Harper flips his notebook shut.
Recording ends.
1
WENDY
It always starts with a dead body. That’s how they draw in the viewers, the bloodthirsty public sitting at home on their sofas, yearning for gore, more murder, more death. Cosy crime? There’s nothing cosy about murder, despite what the viewing public think.
I switch off the TV, the living room plunging into silence, the room surprisingly dark. The sun has begun to set, so I stand up from my armchair and circle the room, clicking on the lamps and pulling the curtains together.
The doorbell chimes, startling me out of my reverie, and it takes me a moment to gather myself, my heart pounding. I glance around the living room, and of course everything is where it should be. Perfectly acceptable to invite a visitor inside if needed. The whole house is uncluttered, which makes a huge change from how it used to be, back when the girls were small and the floor was permanently littered with toys, discarded socks, scrawled-upon pieces of paper, crumbs ground into the carpet…
I sigh with a little sadness; I miss those joyful, messy days when I’d dread the doorbell ringing and the exposure of our domestic chaos. At the time I was embarrassed if anyone popped round unannounced and I saw their eyes skim the evidence of my failure to keep on top of things. What I’d give to have that back, now my footsteps echo around the empty house most of the time.
It’s a different life now, that’s for sure. A quiet, middle-aged life. Unless Annabel’s having one of her turns, anyway. But right now she’s out of the house, doing god-knows-what, god-knows-where. She said she was going to the Post Office to mail some artwork she sold online, but I don’t know if that’s true. She might still live at home, but she often feels as lost to me as her younger sister.
But I can’t think about that.
I smooth out my blouse as I walk to the front door. A silhouetted figure is visible through the blurred glass, in shadow except for the top of their head, which is illuminated by the porch light. A woman, I think. I hope it’s not a salesperson. Or worse, a politician canvassing for votes.
But when I open the door, I immediately know she’s not a salesperson. There’s no ingratiating grin or faux-friendly patter, just a faint half-smile and an uncertain look in her haunted eyes under her dark-green beanie.
I repress a sigh. One of Annabel’s friends.
The girl shifts from foot to foot, and I scan her skinny frame. ‘Sorry, Annabel’s not home. Not sure when she’ll be back. Maybe text her?’
I make to close the door, but a bony hand shoots out and stops me, her fingertips pressed against the blurry glass. Her black nail varnish is badly chipped. She shakes her head, and her strawberry-blonde hair ripples, catching the light and igniting a feeling in my chest, something I can’t quite place.
‘No,’ she says, her voice soft and reedy. ‘Please.’
I stop, my subconscious knowing before I do. I tilt my head, about to reiterate that Annabel’s not here, that I can’t help. But the words die in my throat as my gaze lands on the wee mole on her jawline, about the size of a sesame seed.
I know that mole.
A mole I pressed a finger to every day since she was born, until that terrible day…
She nods, as if encouraging me to realise the truth. ‘Mum, it’s me,’ she says, saying the words I thought I might never hear again.
My eyes fill with tears, which spill down my cheeks. My knees buckle under me, but I grip the wall and hold myself up.
The girl’s eyes also sparkle, tears threatening. ‘It’s me, Lydia. I’ve come home.’
2
WENDY
It’s me. It’s me, Lydia.
/> An animalistic howl escapes my lips and I pitch towards her with my arms outstretched, the howl morphing into guttural sobs that wrack my body as I bury my nose in her hair and squeeze her tight, pressing her against my chest as if I could absorb her. She sinks into me, her body trembling as her hair muffles my sobs. She wraps her arms around me and it hits me with a wallop: she’s not a wee girl anymore. She’s as tall as I am, her body lean and wiry. She’s a woman now. She grew up without me.
I’ve seen her every day for the past six years. Like a ghost; a movement from the corner of my eye. She walks past me in the street, holding the hand of a sticky-faced toddler. She’s in the line ahead of me at the Post Office, asking for the right form to update her driver’s licence. Her profile catches my eye through the window as I walk past a local hair salon, a towel around her shoulders and her strawberry-blonde hair dripping wet.
I always falter, my breath catching in my throat and my heart aching so hard it feels like it might burst.
It’s never her. She’ll turn slightly and I’ll see it’s an older woman holding the sticky child’s hand, or the girl in the hair salon has brown hair, not Lydia’s russet colour at all. And I’ll have to remember to breathe, keep going with my day as if I haven’t just glimpsed the one thing I want most in the entire world: my beloved daughter, returned to me.
I dream about her return every night and wake up with cheeks wet from tears of relief, of fulfilled hope. And as I emerge from the fug of sleep each morning, reality comes crashing in and my heart breaks anew when I realise she’s still missing; that I haven’t held my youngest daughter in my arms for six years; that she’s growing up without her mother’s love. Almost a third of her life without me.
I called the police station every day. I printed posters, drafted press releases, went on morning television more times than I can count. I set up social media accounts and gathered thousands of online followers, making sure Lydia’s face never slipped out of public consciousness. Anything to keep Lydia in the news, to keep people talking about her and looking for her. And I failed her every single day that I didn’t find her.
Now she stands in front of me on my doorstep. My wee girl returned to me, the answer to every prayer I sent up into the universe.
I cry harder, and over my keening I can hear her whispering in a low voice: ‘It’s OK, Mum. I’m here. Lydia’s back. I’m here now.’
She’s comforting me, like she’s the adult and I’m the child. Our roles reversed.
Slowly, I release her from my grasp and step back, holding her at arm’s length. ‘Let me look at you. My baby,’ I croak, and let my eyes roam over her face.
Last year on the fifth anniversary of her disappearance, the police created and circulated an age progression image that estimated what eighteen-year-old Lydia might look like. They used the last photographs taken of her before she went missing when she was thirteen and combined them with details from photographs of Annabel, Leonard and me. But still, in the new image she looked like an older version of the Lydia I remembered.
But no wonder the age progression image didn’t elicit any genuine leads, even with the amplification boost it got when I shared it across all my channels, exposing it to hundreds of thousands of followers combined. The police didn’t get it right. Lydia looks nothing like that age progression picture; she’s unrecognisable. And of course she is – it’s been six years. She’s been through puberty, her chubby childlike cheeks have elongated, her face becoming more angular. Her nose is longer, her cheekbones more pronounced. There’s a sadness around her eyes that hints at what she might have been through: trauma and loss. She needed love and a family and someone took her away from that.
She is dreadfully skinny, the bones in her wrists protruding and the skin almost translucent. I want to wrap her up in a blanket, feed her fattening things, cuddle her and love her like I used to on sick days, just the two of us huddled together on the sofa watching whatever we wanted on TV. Those days were so cosy and I want them back.
I shudder to think where she’s been. What’s happened to her while she’s been gone. I need to know. I want to help her process and work through the trauma. But there’ll be lots of time for that.
I grab her hands, feeling her fingers in mine after so long.
She smiles and squeezes back, a laugh of relief escaping her lips.
‘You’re home. Lydia, you’re home.’ My voice quivers with emotion and I look over her shoulder for the first time since I realised who was at my door.
Staring through our still-open doorway, I see that Torben is across the street, hovering by the bins. He’s watching us, his tall, skinny frame looming out of the dusk like a praying mantis. The skin on my forearms prickles as the fine blonde hairs rise into goosepimples, reacting to his presence.
I’ve never liked him. Never trusted him, ever since he was a wee lad. Shifty eyes. Dirty knees. Long, spindly fingers.
What is he doing? What has he seen tonight? And – the question I’ve been asking for the last six years – what does he know? I have no answers, but I do know I don’t want him anywhere near my precious Lydia.
Quickly, I pull Lydia inside and close the door.
3
WENDY
‘Where have you been? What happened to you? Are you OK?’ I ask, and immediately regret peppering her with questions as I see the colour drain from her face.
She opens and closes her mouth, but no sound comes out. Her hands are balled into fists in her pockets. I think she’s trembling.
When she doesn’t answer, I stop and shake my head. ‘I’m so sorry. Ignore me. There’s plenty of time for that. Come inside, let’s get you settled.’
I spent years imagining our reunion. Tears would prick my eyes as I visualised her cry of ‘Mummy!’ as she ran towards me and threw herself into my arms. I’d bury my nose in her hair, and our connection would be reestablished in an instant, as if she’d never left. It would be a moment of triumph, of relief, of absolute elation.
But it’s not.
It’s a mixed-up, confusing anti-climax, to be honest. I’m not going to get all the answers straight away, and it’s going to take a long time to find the connection we once had. Six years have passed and the painful truth I have to face is that we must get to know each other again. I don’t know who Lydia is anymore.
As I lead Lydia into the house, I look around and see it through her eyes: nothing has changed. Time has stood still, the house holding its breath until Lydia returned. The floral wallpaper in the hall, once bright and colourful, has faded to pale pastels. The family photos are artfully arranged in frames on the wall up the stairs – yet no new ones have been added for years, and none taken away. A happy family of four grins at me from behind their glass – Mum, Dad and two teenage daughters, frozen in time.
The house looks fine at first glance, but in reality it’s shabby and faded. I see that now.
When Lydia went missing, my life stopped. The bookmark remains in the same chapter of the book I was reading that day. Food rotted in the fridge. Houseplants withered and died, their leaves browning and curling and eventually falling to the windowsill to settle until they were dust.
I lead her from the hallway into the kitchen on shaky legs and, not knowing quite what to do, set about making a couple of hot drinks.
Tentatively, Lydia pauses as if waiting to be invited to sit, like a guest. Then she seems to shake herself and perches carefully on a chair at the dining table.
She’s brought a ratty backpack with her, now slumped down by her feet. It’s not one I’ve seen before so she must have acquired it – or been given it? – since she went missing. Where did the bag come from? Who has she been with? Has she been safe? Did someone hurt her?
Perhaps I should preserve some of her stuff, keeping it uncontaminated so the police can test it for forensics or something. But I can’t imagine how she’d feel if I take away the only belongings she brought with her, talking about the police in the same breath. It doesn’t seem fair, somehow. But surely it’s important to get justice for whatever she’s been through? And not just Lydia, but all of us. The whole family was impacted by Lydia’s disappearance.
