The Bad Mother: The addictive, gripping thriller that will make you question everything

Christine swiped at her son-in-law. ‘You can’t call a pregnant woman fat, not ever,’ she said, her smile softening the hard stare she was giving him over the rim of her spectacles.

Her mum’s glasses were her only nod to older age. Her spikey dark locks showed no sign of the grey her hairdresser artfully disguised, and her skin glowed from a strict beauty regime. Lucy hoped she would look as good in her fifties, but she had inherited her pale complexion and ginger genes from her dad, so there was no knowing how she would age.

Wiping the dust from her white shirt, Lucy attempted to work out her next move while fearing it was time to admit defeat. Even if she did manage to find what she was looking for, there was no way she would be able to reclaim it without emptying the entire garage. Her mum and dad had moved into their semi-detached house in Liverpool when they had married some thirty years ago, and that was probably the last time anyone had seen the back wall.

Wilfully ignoring her doubts and doubters, Lucy continued on her quest. As she squeezed past a pink metallic bicycle with torn and tattered tassels hanging from its handlebars, it began to move and she put out her hand to stop it from rolling. From the shadows, the orange reflector on the rear wheel shone out like a beacon, drawing her back in time.

She could see her dad kneeling in front of the upturned bike repairing a puncture. He had turned the pedal with his hand so fast that the wheel had become a blur and the reflector transformed into a glowing orange circle. Lucy recalled how her stomach had lurched when the spokes had turned so fast that it looked as if the wheel had magically changed direction. The memory alone made her queasy and threatened to resurrect the morning sickness she hadn’t quite left behind in her first trimester.

‘Can you see anything?’ Adam called.

Lucy had gone as far back as she could reach without taking unnecessary risks. ‘Not yet,’ she said as she peered into the gloom, searching for the faintest suggestion of white painted spindles. It was there somewhere and she wouldn’t leave until she had settled her mind.

‘Seriously, Lucy,’ Adam said. ‘Your mum’s right. It probably isn’t there and if you go any deeper, you don’t know what’s going to fall on top of you. Come out. You’re scaring us.’

‘I’ll be careful,’ she said, not daring to look back. ‘Please, give me one more minute.’

As Lucy swiped at ancient cobwebs covered in dust, a particularly heavy clump clung to her fingers. Shaking it free, she glimpsed the carcass of a giant spider caught by its own web and let out a yelp.

‘Fetch her out, Adam,’ Christine ordered, panic rising in her voice.

There was the creak of furniture being moved and when Lucy turned, she found Adam standing on the other side of the dresser. He had buttoned up his checked shirt to protect his T-shirt and could probably squeeze through the gap at a push but the sight of the dead spider dangling from Lucy’s index finger stopped him in his tracks.

‘Not funny,’ he said.

At thirty-six, Adam was eight years older, but in that moment, he could so easily have been a sulky younger brother. She could still win this argument.

‘Don’t come any nearer,’ she warned.

‘I know why you’re doing this,’ he said, without returning the smile she offered. ‘If you say it’s there, I believe you. And truthfully, do we really want a battered old cot that would probably fail every modern-day health and safety test?’

‘It’s not any old cot, it’s my cot and I’m twenty-eight not fifty-eight. They had health and safety in the nineties too.’

Shaking the dead spider free, Lucy took one last look at the remaining junk. There were boxes piled on top of each other in a leaning tower of decayed cardboard. If Adam were to challenge her, she could describe the contents of each one. They contained her dad’s life, from the manila files kept from the advertising business he ran with his brother, to his sketchpads, his worn-out slippers, and his second-best suit. His best suit had been burnt along with his remains and the picture an eight-year-old Lucy had drawn of him teaching the angels to paint as he had once taught her.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Adam said. ‘None of this matters.’

Lucy pulled her gaze from the boxes and was about to retrace her steps when something caught her eye. ‘There it is, look!’

The cot had been dismantled and she could see only the two side sections. The wooden spindles were spaced a couple of inches apart and, as Adam had predicted, the wood was splintered and the paint chipped. It wasn’t much of a family heirloom and although her dad had been a gifted artist, the rabbits and squirrels she recalled on the headboard were factory transfers. Her mum was pretty sure they had bought it from Argos.

When Lucy turned, Adam had his lips pursed tightly. She knew what he was thinking and although she wanted to feel vindicated, what she actually felt was foolish. ‘OK, you’re right. I don’t want our baby in some out-of-date deathtrap, and I certainly don’t want to get buried beneath an avalanche of boxes.’

When Adam continued to offer his silent judgement, it was her mum who broke the tension. ‘I don’t know about you two, but I’m freezing out here. Are you leaving it there, or what?’

Lucy reached out for Adam to take her hand but to her horror, he leant backwards. ‘Sorry,’ she gasped, but then followed his gaze and realized how stupid she had been to think, even for a moment, that he was rejecting her. She wiped her hand on her shirt to leave a trail of sticky cobwebs before waggling her fingers. ‘Look, no spiders.’

Adam held her hand as they slipped past the trinkets from her childhood, travelling through her teenage years and towards the most recent additions. There were the stacks of polythene-wrapped canvases she had accumulated at art college, not to mention the camping equipment that had survived several music festivals. A thick layer of dried mud covered the tent she had brought home from Leeds and, with hindsight, it would have been simpler to abandon it, but eighteen months ago she had been unaware that her free and single festival-going days were about to come to an end.

‘Well, that was a waste of time,’ Christine said after returning to the house.

They were huddled in the small galley kitchen that felt cosy rather than cramped, or at least it did to Lucy. Adam had his shoulders hunched, unable to relax in the space that had been exclusive to Lucy and her mum until he had stolen her away.

‘Not a complete waste,’ he said, giving Lucy a wry smile that was warm enough to chase away the chill that had crept into her bones during her ill-conceived search.

With cheekbones a little too sharp and a chin not sharp enough, Adam wasn’t classically handsome, but it had been his pale blue eyes that had captivated Lucy when she had first spied him over the smouldering embers of a barbecue two summers ago. He had looked at her as if he could read her thoughts and then, as now, whatever he saw amused him.

‘Go on, say it,’ he told her.

Lucy pouted. ‘I knew it was there.’

‘And I believed you,’ replied Adam.

‘I could have sworn I’d given it away,’ Christine muttered as she opened the oven door. A cloud of steam rose up to greet her and the smell of rosemary and roasted lamb filled the kitchen. ‘But what was so important about finding it anyway? You obviously didn’t want it.’

‘She was trying to prove a point.’

‘Ah, that’s our Lucy for you,’ Christine said, wiping the steam from her glasses as she crouched down to baste the roast potatoes. ‘I thought you would have worked that out by now, Adam. She likes to be right.’

‘Except when I’m wrong,’ Lucy said, dropping her gaze.

‘But you weren’t wrong,’ Christine said. The light from the oven underlined the confusion on her face as she turned to her daughter. ‘Is there something I’m missing?’

‘I’ve had a few … lapses lately, that’s all.’

Her mum closed the oven door and straightened up. ‘What do you mean, lapses?’

Lucy wasn’t sure how to describe them. They were silly mistakes that might pass unremarked if it were anyone else, but not Lucy. Her brain stored information like a computer and when information went in, it was locked away until it was needed, and she could retrieve it in an instant. She had known precisely where the cot was and she had been proven right. ‘They’re memory lapses, I suppose. I get confused for no reason at all,’ she offered.

Adam cleared his throat. ‘We were late this morning because she couldn’t find her car keys and her car was parked in front of mine so I was blocked in. I found the spare set, but you know what she’s like …’

‘I always leave them on the shelf in the kitchen, or sometimes in my coat pocket, but they weren’t in any of the obvious places,’ Lucy explained. She scrunched up her freckled nose when she added, ‘They were in the fridge beneath a bag of lettuce. I must have kept hold of them when I unloaded the shopping yesterday.’

A bemused smile had formed on Christine’s lips. ‘Welcome to my world,’ she said. ‘I almost put a loaf in the washing machine the other week.’

In no mood to be appeased, Lucy felt the first stirrings of annoyance, not liking that her mum should take the matter so lightly. ‘And do you find things in the wrong place when you have no recollection of moving them?’

Christine took a step nearer until she was close enough to lift Lucy’s chin. ‘No, but I live on my own.’

‘And I work from home, alone. I’m talking about when Adam’s at work.’

‘Have you mentioned it to the midwife?’ Christine asked, looking to Adam.

‘I wanted to raise it at our hospital appointment last week,’ he said, shifting from one foot to the other. ‘But I was overruled.’

Confusion clouded Lucy’s expression and she was grateful that no one was looking at her. She would like to think that she had laid down the law, but Adam was mistaken if he imagined she had been the one to decide against voicing her concerns. It was true that she had been reluctant, but it was Adam who had convinced her that her blunders would be laughed off. So far, he alone knew how unsettling the episodes had become.

‘You still should have mentioned it, Adam,’ Christine said, her smile persisting.