Just Before I Died: The gripping new psychological thriller from the bestselling author of The Ice Twins

Lyla is far away in the distance.

What can I do?

Let them play, I think, let them go. Lyla is clearly still upset about my accident. We’ve tried to talk to her about it, as gently as possible, I’ve told her I hit some ice and veered into deep water. We’ve spared her too many details but she will surely have heard stuff from kids at school, in the papers, on the net. We’ve also told Lyla that my memories are hazy but that they will return. Retrograde amnesia. Common after car accidents, caused by the brain ricocheting inside the skull.

Back in the kitchen I wash the coffee mug in the sink and gaze out of the window. In the distance I hear barking, getting nearer, louder. Then they come bursting through the door, the dogs happy, big and growling. Lyla lingers in the doorway, oblivious, it seems, to the bitter wind at her back.

‘Daddy is on the moor again.’

‘What?’

She gives me one of her blank, impenetrable smiles. ‘He’s out there again like he’s watching us, Mummy. That’s Daddy’s job, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘He’s a park ranger. He has to patrol everywhere, looking out for people.’

Lyla nods and shrugs, and pursues the dogs into the living room. I stare after her, wondering how she saw her father. He’s meant to be working in his normal patch, way past Postbridge. What is he doing down here? Maybe Lyla is just confused or upset. And I can’t blame her for this dislocation, this bewilderment.

Because her mother nearly died. Leaving her alone, forever.

Princetown (#u1511b4cf-7791-5034-a47a-e248e7f84d04)

Monday morning

My daughter is silent, my husband is grimly silent, but the car is making that horrible grinding sound as Adam changes gear. I don’t care. I’m happy. The winter sky over Princetown is sharp, unmarred, and today I get my freedom back.

I’m buying a car for myself, to replace the one still sitting at the bottom of Burrator Reservoir. This is the most intense relief. Living in Dartmoor – especially somewhere as remote as Huckerby Farm – is almost impossible without transport of your own. There are barely any buses; the railway lines were ripped away in the 1960s, and in winter on the lonelier roads you might not see a car from one cold morning to the next, so you couldn’t even hitch-hike.

During these weeks of recovery since my accident, Adam has been driving me around in his knackered old National Park Land Rover, ferrying me to work, helping me do the shopping, and it’s been a source of friction. Adam can be taciturn at the best of times but when he’s had to take me all the way to the Aldi supermarket in Tavistock I’ve sensed a certain repressed seething.

But today I’m buying myself a secondhand Ford, from a cousin of Adam’s. We bundled together some cash from God knows where, as Adam argues with the insurance people. Adam does everything to do with cars and engines and plumbing and stoves; and I like the masculine way he handles all that.

Turning in the passenger seat I look at Lyla, in her grey-and-white school uniform. She is staring out at the dull housing of Princetown outskirts.

‘Hey, sweetpea. From now on I’ll be able to take you to school again, isn’t that good?’

She says nothing. Her face is averted. She is gently tapping the window with her fingernails. I don’t know why she does this. Perhaps it’s another sound she likes. She calls them tinkly-tankly sounds. Crackling, jingling, light metallic sounds, things like the silvery rattle of coins, or keys.

My daughter once told me, when we stood in the summer hayfields over Buckfast, how she loved the sound of butterflies.

There are also sounds that she hates. City sounds. Traffic. Sirens. The jostle of people in crowds. It’s one of the reasons we moved to the remoteness of Huckerby.

‘Lyla?’

She turns, her blue eyes wide. Distant. ‘Mmm?’

‘Did you hear what I said?’

A shake of her head. She offers me a reserved frown: as if I’ve done something wrong, but she is too polite to say. I feel a pang of pity. She is a nine-year-old girl with troubles and issues and dreams, and laughter I sometimes do not quite hear; she’s a girl who has personal names for flies and rocks and frogs, who collects wild lilies and trembling violets from Nine Maidens and Seven Lords’ Land and presses them in books. My girl, my only girl. The idea that I could have died and left her behind fills me with a terrifying sadness, that threatens to make me cry, but I fight back the emotion.

I’ve been getting these sudden spates of sadness, or anger, ever since the accident, but I do think that I am getting the hang of them. Coping. And today I am definitely happy. Or happier. Determined to be positive: yes, it’s winter but winter is the womb of spring.

The car grumbles.

‘Darling, I said today Mummy is getting a car, so that’ll make everything easier, and Daddy won’t have to do all the driving.’ I turn to him, ‘Which will be a relief, won’t it, Adam? I know you’re bored of carting me around.’

Adam nods, wordless, in the driver seat, and takes the left turn on to Princetown’s main road where it descends, literally and aesthetically, from Georgian coaching inns and the glossy new National Park offices, to the grim black outline of the prison, which broods and menaces even in sharp sun.

‘Here we go.’ Adam yanks the brake hard as he parks outside the school. He turns around, ignoring me, and addresses Lyla. ‘All right, Tate and Lyle. Give us a kiss, before you go.’ Lyla sits there, inert.

Adam tries again. ‘Come on, sweetheart, big kiss for Daddy.’

She shakes her head, and grimaces. This is unlike her. She and Adam are close; sometimes I envy their relationship, exploring the moor together, watching the birds of prey riding summer thermals over Blackslade.

Abruptly, she opens the door. Her hands clutch her Jungle Book lunchbox and school bag tight to her chest. ‘I’m going now,’ she says, without looking at me or at Adam, as if she is announcing this to the world, not to us.

‘It’s OK, darling, off you go. We’ll have a special tea this evening. Those fishcakes you like.’

She nods, blank-faced. Not really looking at us. Then she turns, and walks towards the grey school gates.

Adam puts his hand on the ignition key, ready to move off. But I put a hand on his. ‘No, wait. I want to watch.’

‘Watch what?’

‘You know. How it goes.’

He sighs. ‘You always do this.’ But he takes his hand off the key and the two of us watch Lyla entering the school gates.

For a second she hesitates.

I’ve seen this scenario before, so many times. She is trying to be normal. Getting ready to interact as best she can. Perhaps she is slowly improving? In the car, we are helpless observers.

There are lots of kids in the schoolyard, excited by the first day of the week. They are playing and scrapping, boys and girls, dark and blond; they are laughing, chasing, greeting each other: swapping stories and jokes.

Into the middle of them all walks Lyla. Solitary, unnoticed. She pauses and looks around, her pretty face pale and unsure. I know she wants to join in, but she is too shy, too socially awkward to begin a conversation.

And she doesn’t understand random play.

So she looks up and down, fiddling persistently with a button on her cardigan. I guess she’s hoping someone will simply come up to her, start something off. But the kids run right past her, ignoring her entirely.

‘Christ,’ Adam says, quietly.

Lyla makes a big effort: she walks back to the gate and looks directly and hopefully at some taller girl who is late arriving. I think I know this new girl. Becky Greenall. Popular, good at games, socially confident; everything Lyla isn’t. My pity and anxiety surge. Don’t do the smile, I think to myself, please don’t do that smile. Lyla walks closer to Becky and of course she does the smile, that strange rictus grin, that special silent monkey shout that Lyla thinks looks like a smile, but isn’t. She gives Becky a thumbs-up.

It makes her look utterly mad.

Becky Greenall stares at Lyla, and she puts a hand to her mouth, trying not to laugh, or sneer.

Lyla tries once more. She does a little jump, up and down, waving her hands like a bird.