In a Cottage In a Wood: The gripping new psychological thriller from the bestselling author of The Woman Next Door
‘Well, it’s the saddest bloody thing I’ve ever heard.’ Neve’s eyes fill with hot tears and she swipes them away, furiously. ‘I wasn’t even that nice to her,’ she says. ‘I was impatient to get home. All I did was say I’d stand her a night bus and ask where her coat was.’
‘Well,’ says Laura, her gaze fixed on Neve’s face. ‘All we can assume is that this is more kindness than she would have had otherwise. Maybe it was enough.’
There’s a pause. Neve swallows and finds a tissue in her handbag, which she uses to blow her nose, more loudly than she intended.
Laura pushes an A4 padded envelope across the table towards her.
‘This really is happening quite legally, Neve,’ she says in a gentle voice. ‘You own Petty Whin Cottage and everything in it. It’s all yours now.’
Neve walks robotically back to the station afterwards, all thoughts of having a wander around Salisbury and finding somewhere cheap for lunch forgotten. She has a strong desire to get straight on a train and try and make sense of what has just happened.
She’s lucky with trains and is able to run for the Waterloo-bound one that is just leaving.
Finding a table to herself, she begins to investigate the contents of the envelope. There’s a bundle of papers, including the details of a lease. At the bottom of the envelope there is a small keyring in the shape of a dog, with a grubby suede covering that is worn away in patches, revealing carved wood underneath. It looks ancient, thinks Neve, spreading out the lease document and studying the address.
Petty Whin Cottage
Briarfield
Stubbington Lane
Cador
Near St Piron
Cornwall
Neve reaches for her phone and taps the Google app, before typing the name of the cottage into the search box. There are no entries for the property, but she learns that the odd name comes from a yellow flowering plant native to the area.
Cornwall.
She’s never been there. She’d wanted to ask Laura Meade if the cottage was by the sea, but it didn’t seem right. It might have sounded as though she actually wanted it. But the very word makes her picture blue skies, roses climbing up the front of a whitewashed cottage. Healthy sea air. Her heart rises a little, despite herself.
There isn’t anything much online for Cador, except, worryingly, a headline from the Cornish Times about a drugs bust. Neve assumes it is too tiny for mention, but St Piron seems to be a small town that’s a few miles from Truro.
Next she Googles the name ‘Isabelle Shawcross’ and after a couple of unhelpful entries about an American law professor she sees a news story from a site called West Cornish Life.
Christmas Suicide of Local Woman
A woman has died after apparently jumping into the Thames on 21st December. Isabelle Shawcross, who grew up in the St Piron area of the county, was 34 years old and left no husband or children. It is believed she had been living in Australia for some time before returning to the UK. The police say they are not treating the death as suspicious, but the coroner has yet to fix a date for the inquest. Her brother, local landowner Richard Shawcross, was unavailable for comment.
Searching further, she finds only a black American woman called Isabel Shawcross on Facebook and nothing else.
Bizarre. Isabelle seems to have been someone with almost no internet presence.
Neve finds herself tapping the words ‘cottages for sale, Cornwall’ into Google.
On the Rightmove site a list appears and she begins to scroll through it, quickly finding an astonishing difference in the range of house prices here, from a run-down two-bedroom cottage at £75,000 right up to places going for several million.
But right now, £75,000 sounds like a miraculous, almost magical amount of money. All of a sudden, Isabelle’s last words appear in her head … ‘And keep it, if you can bear to,’ and the back of her neck prickles.
When the train pulls into Waterloo station, Neve drains the last of the warm gin and tonic, her second on the train, and begins to gather her things.
Over the course of the journey, she has made a series of plans:
1. Sell the cottage immediately. Pay off debts. Get own flat.
2. Say NO to cottage. How can I possibly accept???Find a way of contacting Isabelle’s surviving relative. Hand over cottage.
3. Sell it. Sell. SELL.
Walking across the concourse at Waterloo towards the tube station, at first Neve ignores the man pointedly staring at her, taking him to be a creep. But when she hears her name she looks at him properly and feels her stomach plummet.
It’s Fraser from work, gazing at her with a triumphant expression.
‘Well,’ he says, as commuters stream past them in both directions. ‘Looks like you have made a full recovery.’
‘Does, doesn’t it?’ says Neve. She has to stifle a yawn that rises from nowhere. She’s suddenly very, very tired.
‘I think we’d better have a word tomorrow, don’t you? A little chat about responsibility?’
He’s so pleased with himself that his face has turned the colour of ham. Neve sighs.
‘Bugger off, Fraser,’ she says, just as another man comes to stand right next to him, his expression one of injured puzzlement.
Without waiting to hear a reply, Neve turns away and hurries to the tube.
She can’t face going home.
Everything is buzzing inside her now. The tiredness has turned into a wired energy. She needs to go out, to do something. To find a way to make sense of the mad day she has had.
On the Northern Line, she makes the snap decision to get off at Camden station. She’ll go to the pub where she and Daniel used to hang out. There’s bound to be someone there who wants to have some fun. There might be a live band. Maybe Daniel will even come along. She can pretend it’s just like old times.
It turns out that most of her old crowd are there. By ten o’clock she’s standing outside, smoking a joint with her back against the wall and laughing so hard she almost starts to pee.
She’s with a drummer called Bick, a friend of a couple of years. No one knows where Bick comes from, exactly. He has a strange accent that is part American and part Scandinavian. He is six foot five and his shaved head gleams like polished ebony. Tribal scars nubble his cheekbones and rows of earrings stud his upper lobes. His sexuality is what he refers to as ‘fluid’. He’s the most beautiful man Neve knows.
She has told everyone about the cottage over the course of the evening.
Most agree that she must sell up straight away. A tiny, birdlike girl called Darcy, an ardent clubber, is of the opinion that Neve should go and live there. There was some talk of jam-making and a mass visit from them all at a date in the summer. Also possibly a music festival in the ‘grounds’. Everyone, including Neve, is hazy on the specifics but it sounds like the best idea for a while.
Bick is talking now and Neve smiles soppily up at him.
‘I think I love you, Bick,’ she slurs and puts her hands on his chest, raising her mouth to kiss him. But Bick steps back, laughing.
‘Neve, honey, I absolutely would, don’t get me wrong. But you’ve had a very weird day and I think you need to go home.’
Deflated, Neve stands