The Last Lie: The must-read new thriller from the Sunday Times bestselling author

‘I was sure I was pregnant this time,’ she said. ‘I felt different, somehow. And I’ve been so regular. I don’t know why my period would suddenly be late.’

‘Stress can do that,’ Alfie said. ‘This is a difficult time for you. For us.’

She wiped a tear from her eyes. ‘I can’t stop crying. It’s the sense of loss. Even though I wasn’t pregnant – so there was nothing to lose – I’d let myself think I was, and I was already imagining a future with us as parents. And now it’s gone.’

‘Only for now,’ Alfie said. ‘We’ll get there in the end, I know it.’

He held her tight, then sat up.

‘I have to get ready for work,’ he said. ‘I’ve got an early meeting.’

In the bathroom, Alfie stripped off. He looked in the full-length mirror. He flexed his pectoral muscles, then turned sideways and admired his flat abdominals. His chest and back were waxed and smooth, unlike the thick, brown hair on his scalp. He kept himself in shape; the only thing he couldn’t do anything about were the pock-marks on his face, the scars left by the acne he’d suffered from as a teenager.

He turned on the shower and stepped in. He let the hot water run over him. He washed his hair, massaging the shampoo into his scalp. The shampoo he used cost over thirty pounds a bottle, but it was worth it. According to his hair stylist, he had the kind of hair that movie stars had. He could be a hair model, she said, and it was worth paying the extra for good shampoo. So he treated himself.

And besides, they could afford it. Claire’s dad was both rich and generous.

When he was finished, he wrapped a towel around his waist and grabbed his razor. As he started to shave the bathroom door opened.

‘Would you take out the bin?’ Claire said. ‘The test is in there. I don’t want to go near it.’

Alfie nodded. ‘OK.’

‘And thanks,’ she said. ‘For being so supportive. I’m lucky to have you. And we’ll be pregnant, one day.’

He smiled. ‘We will. I know we will.’

She closed the door and the smile fell from his face. He looked at himself in the mirror and shook his head.

Stupid bitch. She wanted him to take out the bin. Of course she did. She was too infantile to deal with a negative pregnancy test so she needed him to deal with it for her, like it was a fucking python or something. It was pathetic.

It was typical of her.

As was the way she used ‘we’ instead of ‘I’. ‘We’ll be pregnant, one day.’ He hated that ‘we’. Hated the cloying, saccharine refusal to accept the biological truth of the situation: it was her who would be pregnant, not him.

The irony – and he took great pleasure in it – was that, whatever words she used, she was wrong. They – she – wouldn’t be pregnant any time soon. Ever, in fact.

Because what she didn’t know was that her husband had no intention of having children. They were the last thing he wanted. There were many reasons why, but the main one was because the arrival of kids would render all his careful plans redundant.

They would tie him to the simpering bitch forever, and there was no way he was letting that happen.

But she couldn’t find out he didn’t want them. Not yet, at any rate. He still needed her for a while, which was why he had never mentioned – and did not plan to – the reason why she would not be getting pregnant any time soon.

Her husband had had a vasectomy.

He’d had it done a year after they married – almost exactly two years earlier, now – when she had started talking about having kids in earnest. He’d gone to see the doctor, told him what he wanted – the doctor was surprised given how young he was and had tried to talk him out of it, but he had referred him nonetheless – and then, one morning, Alfie had gone to the hospital and had the operation.

He’d been back at his desk the same afternoon. He was a bit sore, but it was OK.

And it would remain his little secret.

He glanced at the bin. The negative pregnancy test lay there, pointing at him, accusing him.

‘Fuck you,’ he said, then wiped the shaving cream from his face.

Claire (#ulink_9f912094-033f-5766-91a0-b6f078e1f2e3)

Claire picked up her phone from the bedside table and glanced at the time:

Ten a.m.

She lay back on her pillow, her head thick with a nasty hangover. Friday had been awful, but at least it was Friday. She’d gone out with her colleagues to a bar in the West End and drunk away the disappointment of the pregnancy test. She didn’t even mind the headache. It took her mind off it all.

She did mind the cramps. Her period had arrived and the cramps were worse than they had been for a while, each one reminding her of what had happened.

She turned on her front and buried her head underneath her pillow. She heard the muffled sound of the door opening. She smelled coffee. It made her feel sick.

‘Hey,’ Alfie said. ‘Did I hear you moving around? I brought you breakfast in bed.’

She peeked out at him. He was holding a tray with a bowl of something and a mug of coffee on it.’

‘You didn’t have to do that,’ she said.

‘Of course I did!’ Alfie said. ‘It’s your special day! Happy birthday, darling.’

Claire groaned. She’d forgotten it was her birthday.

She’d forgotten they had to go to the party at her dad’s house later.

Claire sat on the bed in her childhood bedroom. It was a single bed with a pink-and-purple duvet cover. On the wall next to it were faint stains of Blu-tack from the posters she’d had up there – David Beckham, Robbie Williams, the usual teenage girl crushes. It was an hour until the party. Her hangover was gone – two ibuprofen and a mid-afternoon nap had seen it off – and Alfie had texted to say he was on his way. He’d been playing golf that afternoon. It was his new hobby, and he’d been spending a lot of his weekend afternoons on the golf course. He’d tried to persuade her to join him, but she couldn’t think of any way she’d less like to spend an afternoon than hitting balls around an over-sized garden.

She’d been hoping the party would be a celebration of a little more than her birthday. Not that she would have announced the pregnancy to everyone this early, but she’d wanted her and Alfie and her dad to know a baby was on the way and to spend the day giving each other secret smiles, the knowledge too momentous to ignore. She’d pictured herself holding a glass of wine (but not drinking it), so nobody would suspect she was pregnant but the baby would come to no harm.

It was not to be. It was a birthday party and no more.

She’d learned her lesson, though. Don’t get carried away with the hope. It only led to disappointment, which was a new and unwelcome shock to her. She had never really had to face not having something she wanted. Her parents had come from humble backgrounds in the North East, but had managed to build up a chain of estate agents together. They had both worked long hours to do it and, in her mum’s case, developed unhealthy ways of coping with the stress. After her mum died, her dad threw himself into the business even more, assuaging his guilt at his absence from the home with extravagant gifts.

And as the years had gone by the gifts had grown more and more extravagant, from the house in Fulham where she and Alfie lived, to the holiday they’d recently had in Cannes, to the Range Rover they drove. In truth, she found his generosity a bit uncomfortable. A few times she and Alfie had discussed telling him they didn’t need any help, but Alfie had persuaded her there was no harm in it. He also pointed out how happy it made her dad, so they kept accepting his gifts.

Apart from in her career. That was the one area Claire refused to let him help her. She was a partner in a design firm, a world her dad knew nothing about, and she had worked her way up from the ground floor.

But now, all pride aside, she would have accepted any help her dad could have given her, but there was nothing he could do. She had everything going for her: a loving dad, a wonderful husband, her career. She was smart, athletic, healthy.

And she would have given it all to be a mother.

But she couldn’t shake the feeling that being a mother was the one thing the universe was going to deny her. She felt almost as though she was in a fairy story, the lucky princess given everything, except the thing she wanted most.

She knew she was getting sick with worry – she’d been losing weight – and it made her want to hide away from the world, but she’d have to put on a brave face for the party, would have to smile and say Oh, no, we’re so busy we haven’t even thought about it yet when people asked her whether she and Alfie were planning to start a family.