Guilt: The Sunday Times best selling psychological thriller that you need to read in 2018

Chapter 143. Sebastian

Chapter 144

Chapter 145. Sebastian

Chapter 146

Chapter 147

Chapter 148

Chapter 149. Sebastian

Chapter 150

Chapter 151

Chapter 152

Chapter 153. Sebastian

Chapter 154

Chapter 155. Sebastian

Chapter 156

Chapter 157

Chapter 158. Sebastian

Chapter 159

Chapter 160. Sebastian

Chapter 161

Chapter 162. Sebastian

Chapter 163. Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Read on for a sample of Amanda’s debut, Obsession.

About the Author

By the Same Author

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

THE PRESENT (#u7eb7f9cb-c54d-500b-bb37-1f24a57f8ffd)

1 (#u7eb7f9cb-c54d-500b-bb37-1f24a57f8ffd)

She presses a tea towel to her wound to try to stem the blood, but it is gushing, insistent. The harder she presses the more it pushes back. She cannot look at her sister, at her clammy, staring eyes. A siren grinds into her mind. Louder. Louder. Her eyes are transfixed by repetitive flashing lights. The doorbell rings and she feels as if she is moving through mercury as she steps to answer it. To open the door with a trembling hand – a hand that smells like a butcher’s shop. Three police officers stand in front of her: two men, one woman.

The woman asks her name softly.

She gives it.

‘Can we come in?’ the female officer asks.

She nods her head.

Two steps and they are out of the tiny hallway. Two steps and her entourage follow her into the living room of their shiny modern flat: stainless steel and travertine, brown IKEA furniture. Two more steps and three police officers stand looking at her sister’s blood-mangled body. At hair splayed across the white floor. At alabaster stiffness.

The larger male police officer barks into his phone, demanding backup, forensics, a police photographer. And someone who sounds like a robot talks back to him.

‘Backup on the way.’

The policewoman turns towards her, puts her hand on her arm. She has soft blue eyes that remind her of a carpet of bluebells hovering like mist on the floor of the woods back home in springtime. Woods where they used to play.

‘You said on the phone that you’d killed your sister. Is that what happened?’ the policewoman asks.

‘I thought she was going to kill me. So I … So I …’

She cannot continue. She cannot speak. She opens her mouth but no words come out. She hears a howl like a feral animal in the distance, and then as the policewoman puts her arm around her shoulders and guides her towards the sofa, she realises that she is the one making the noise.

The policewoman sits next to her on the sofa, smelling of the outside world. Of smoggy city air. Soft blue eyes melt towards her.

‘What happened?’ the policewoman asks.

‘My sister was angry. So angry. I’ve never seen her like that. Never.’

Her words die in the air, like her sister has died. They just stop breathing, without the blood. She moves towards bluebell eyes. The police officer puts her arm around her and she clings to her, sobbing. The woman strokes her back, whispers in her ear, rocks her back and forth, like a baby.

She sits for a while. She does not know for how long. Time has abandoned her. Somewhere in the distance of time that she is no longer part of, her neck stops bleeding. Somewhere in the distance of time her flat is invaded. By people in cellophane suits wearing plastic caps and rubber gloves. By a photographer. By an army of dark-suited people with no uniforms.

Somebody is moving towards her. She cannot see him properly; everything is blurred – nothing in tight focus. He is speaking to her, but she cannot hear him. He looks so concerned, so insistent. Some of his words begin to pierce through the silence that is pushing against her eardrums.

‘Arrest. Suspicion of murder. Something which you later rely on in court.’

And he is pulling her up to standing and cuffing her. The gentle bluebell woman has melted away. As he leads her out of her flat, she cannot bear to turn to say goodbye to her sister. She cannot bear to take a last look.

Into the custody suite. Plastic bags taped to her hands and feet. When did that happen? In her flat? Before she got into the police car? The custody suite is a state-of-the-art tiled rabbit warren. No windows. No corners. No edges. It doesn’t seem real, just as what has happened doesn’t seem real. Voices don’t speak, they reverberate. It smells of stale air and antiseptic.

A police officer wearing rubber gloves and carrying a pile of paper bags escorts her to a cell. The cell is so modern it doesn’t even have a traditional lock on the door. Everything is electronic. Space age.