Nicola Rayner Untitled Book 1

Nicola Rayner Untitled Book 1
Nicola Rayner

THE GIRL BEFORE YOU

Nicola Rayner

Copyright (#u1f4a6d72-7e69-53bf-92fe-99e654319217)

Published by AVON

A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins 2019

Copyright © Nicola Rayner 2019

Cover design © HarperCollins

Cover photograph © Alexey Karamanov/Getty Images

Nicola Rayner asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008332730

Ebook Edition © 2019 ISBN: 9780008332723

Version: 2019-05-20

Dedication (#u1f4a6d72-7e69-53bf-92fe-99e654319217)

For my mother and for Jason

Epigraph (#u1f4a6d72-7e69-53bf-92fe-99e654319217)

For there is no friend like a sister

In calm or stormy weather;

To cheer one on the tedious way,

To fetch one if one goes astray.

Christina Rossetti

Everything in the world is about sex except sex.

Sex is about power.

Oscar Wilde

Author’s Note (#u1f4a6d72-7e69-53bf-92fe-99e654319217)

Anyone looking at a map will struggle to find the university town of St Anthony’s. In truth, the inspiration for this fictional setting comes from an amalgam of places: it is halfway between Durham and St Andrews, and the town’s history also draws on that of Alnmouth in Northumberland – a place shaped by what it lost.

Contents

Cover (#uc72c9c66-c5b5-5927-973f-b7bc8fe11f62)

Title Page (#u2cd89eb4-3b80-538f-a2a4-b43686e7ee90)

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Author’s Note

Prologue

Alice

Naomi

Alice

Kat

Alice

Kat

Naomi

Alice

Kat