The Bridesmaids: A totally addictive and gripping psychological thriller Read online

  THE BRIDESMAIDS

  A TOTALLY ADDICTIVE AND GRIPPING PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER

  VICTORIA JENKINS

  BOOKS BY VICTORIA JENKINS

  The Bridesmaids

  The New Family

  The Playdate

  The Accusation

  The Argument

  The Divorce

  The Detectives King and Lane series

  The Girls in the Water

  The First One to Die

  Nobody’s Child

  A Promise to the Dead

  AVAILABLE IN AUDIO

  The New Family (Available in the UK and the US)

  The Playdate (Available in the UK and the US)

  The Accusation (Available in the UK and the US)

  The Argument (Available in the UK and the US)

  The Divorce (Available in the UK and the US)

  The Detectives King and Lane series

  The Girls in the Water (Available in the UK and the US)

  The First One to Die (Available in the UK and the US)

  Nobody’s Child (Available in the UK and the US)

  CONTENTS

  Now

  Thirty-Eight Hours Earlier

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Now

  Twenty-Seven Hours Earlier

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Now

  Six Hours Earlier

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Now

  Four Hours Earlier

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Now

  Three Hours Earlier

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Now

  Chapter 30

  Three Months Later

  Chapter 31

  The Argument

  Hear More from Victoria

  Books by Victoria Jenkins

  A Letter from Victoria

  The New Family

  The Playdate

  The Accusation

  The Divorce

  The Girls in the Water

  The First One to Die

  Nobody’s Child

  A Promise to the Dead

  Acknowledgements

  *

  NOW

  SUNDAY

  ‘Wake up! Wake up!’

  Someone is shaking her arm. God, her head hurts. She tries to open her eyes but she can’t at first, a searing pain at the front of her brain keeping them closed. Her arms and her legs and her brain hurt, and everything aches as though her body weighs a tonne, and… Oh God. What happened last night? What has she done?

  ‘You need to come downstairs. Come on!’

  She can hear crying. It pierces the room like the sound of a newborn, but there are no children here. She shouldn’t have come away this weekend. She shouldn’t have drunk so much. Someone is crying. She needs to make it stop.

  Last night begins its gradual creeping return, an assassin in waiting. The party, the drink, the blackmail, the drugs, the photograph, the arguments… they each come back to her in turn, the memories too vivid and too real. Irreversible.

  The pool. Oh God… the pool.

  The grip on her arm tightens. Mumbled words, something about the police. The raging hangover that rips through her brain reduces the noise of everything else, as though the talking, the tears, the panic that is escalating on the ground floor might be muted for a while longer until she’s ready to receive them.

  But she’ll never be ready for this.

  She allows herself to be half dragged from bed, the cold hand closed around her bare arm, and now she realises that it isn’t morning, it is still dark. A hen weekend, but this is no party; they are stuck in a nightmare, and she knows before she gets down the stairs where she is being led to, because she has already seen it for herself, last night, before she fled like a coward and tried to drive from her mind the horror of what had happened.

  When they get there, the room is bathed in a soft glow of purple lighting that reflects off the water. Beyond the bifold doors, a wall of darkness stares back. Less than forty-eight hours ago, the stretch of open field beyond those doors and the wall of woodland that surrounds it made her feel as though they had reached a blessed corner of the earth, cut off from the rest of the world and from the lives they had left at home. It was a good feeling, a temporary escape from the chaos and the rush, and yet now it seems they are stranded here, trapped within this nightmare.

  She focuses on the twinkling stars set within the ceiling above the pool – anything to avoid having to look at the heartbreaking scene that lies before her.

  ‘Help me… I don’t know what to do. Should we move her? I’ve called the police.’

  The crying from the corner of the room intensifies. She has to force herself to look at the water. She is face down, submerged, arms splayed; hair fanned beneath the surface, morbidly beautiful. Ophelia. Her robe, weighted with water, is gathered at her waist, exposing her thighs, and she feels an unsettling urge to get into the pool and cover her.

  ‘Say something! Please!’

  She can’t think straight. She doesn’t know what to do.

  Behind them, a single scream splits the room.

  She can’t turn to its owner; she can’t be expected to be the one who should know what to do, not when one thought has destroyed the possibility of any other. The thought that she is responsible. She killed her.

  THIRTY-EIGHT HOURS EARLIER

  ONE

  Holly

  ‘What time is Claire picking you up?’ Aaron asks.

  I glance at the clock on the kitchen wall. ‘Half an hour.’ A mystery weekend away, the company of friends; the chance to do and think about nothing other than relaxing. At least that’s what I’m hoping for. With Martha having appointed herself party planner, who knows what might happen. Whatever awaits me, though, I’m already grateful for it. Time and effort have gone into preparing for this weekend, and with everyone’s lives as busy as they are, it can’t have been easy to make arrangements. Finding an opportunity when we’re all available at the same time usually proves difficult enough on its own.

  ‘What am I going to do with myself all weekend?’ Aaron muses, tapping idly at his laptop. ‘Impromptu house party? Couple of triathlons? Netflix binge? The possibilities are endless.’

  ‘You could finally get around to clearing out the shed.’

  ‘I don’t think I’ll be that bored.’ He flips his laptop closed and gets up from the table, where the tea he made me has gone cold. My stomach can’t seem to handle anything this morning. I didn’t sleep well last night. I was woken by Joseph, his presence so tangible that he might have been standing beside the bed looking over me. He is always here, but just recently – ever since the wedding was booked and the invitations sent out – he is with me more often, as though he doesn’t want to let go. As though he believes that I am abandoning him, and he’s not ready for it to happen. I couldn’t stay in bed, not while the memory of him was so alive and present, so I came downstairs to the living room, where I sat in the darkness, never quite alone.

  He wouldn’t want you to spend the rest of your life on your own. If I had a pound for every time those words have been spoken, I could afford to leave my job at the surgery. Claire has said it, Martha has said it, even Caleb has said it, though he was too young when his father died to remember him or to know what he might have wanted. This morning, for a brief moment, I forgot my guilt. And then I saw my son. He was standing in the kitchen, scrolling his phone as he waited for his porridge to ping in the microwave. It could have been his father standing there, just as he was all those years ago, the similarities between them so striking that I was transported to another life, a teenager again.

  Aaron’s hand rests on my shoulder and he squeezes it gently. ‘Relax. Enjoy yourself. You deserve this.’

  As though he has read my mind. He seems to know when I need reassurance, and this is one of the things I love about him, one of the reasons why he has stayed in my life for far longer than any of the few men I have known since Joseph. Of course, I could never tell him that I was awake half the night thinking about the man I might already have been married to if things had happened differently.

  ‘Remind Caleb about his interview tomorrow, won’t you?’ It’s just a part-time job at a local pub, but Caleb needs to get himself organised or there will be no work still available by the time his exams end. When he leaves for university in September, there may be a chance for him to get transferred to another pub with the same brewery, so I’m hoping he’ll take it seriously and make sure he gets there on time. He’s already had to repeat a year of college because he spent the last one messing about. ‘I’ve ironed him a shirt,’ I add, gesturing to the utility room.

  I haven’t told Aaron about the drugs I found in Cale
b’s college bag last week. I’ve spoken to Caleb about it, I’m dealing with it, and I trust that my son will make the right choices in future. The wedding is less than a month away, and I don’t want to worry Aaron with anything in the build-up to it, especially not with things that are my responsibility. But my son’s stupidity grates, and I’m trying not to let it set the wrong tone for this weekend.

  Aaron leans forward, his lips against my ear. ‘Stop worrying. Everything will be fine.’ I turn to kiss him, but we are interrupted by the doorbell.

  ‘That’ll be Claire. Have a good weekend.’ We kiss goodbye. ‘See you Sunday.’

  Claire is waiting at the car, boot open and waiting for me to put my things in.

  ‘All set?’ she asks.

  At the sight of her case – large enough for a fortnight’s holiday abroad – I wonder whether I’ve packed enough. ‘I thought we didn’t need very much? Martha said we’re not really going out anywhere, just to bring a dress for tomorrow night.’

  ‘Ignore me. I’m used to packing with three small children in tow… over-preparation is a habit now.’

  ‘So that’s a suitcase of nappies and wet wipes, is it?’

  ‘You have everything you need,’ Claire instructs with mock sternness. ‘Now get in.’

  In the car, I put the postcode Zoe gave me into Claire’s sat nav, for an address in Lawrence Hill, on the other side of Bristol. Claire is quiet as she drives and there are things I want to ask her; things I won’t be able to mention once Zoe is with us.

  ‘Are you okay?’ I say.

  ‘I’m fine. Really looking forward to this weekend.’ She is evading the subject, knowing what I’m referring to.

  ‘The thing with Gareth—’

  ‘Everything’s fine. Honestly.’ She turns to me and smiles, as though this alone is confirmation of just how fine she is. We both know it’s a pretence, although we haven’t been able to talk about things as much as perhaps she needs to. She keeps saying she’s been too busy with the kids to meet up, although sometimes I think she’s using them as an excuse to avoid seeing me and having to talk about what’s been going on. Maybe she’s worried that if she reveals too much, I’ll find out just how bad things have really become.

  ‘You know if you ever want to talk about anything…’

  ‘I know,’ she says, moving a hand to my knee. ‘But not now, Hol. This weekend is all about you, okay?’

  When we reach Zoe’s street we are greeted by three teenagers taking a joy ride on a shopping trolley, two travelling together, wedged side by side, while the third pushes, sprinting down the road as though he’s about to propel his friends down a bobsled course. The trolley misses the front of the car by inches, and the boy shouts something and flicks a V at Claire as though the near-collision was somehow her fault.

  ‘Idiot,’ she mutters.

  ‘Here,’ I say, gesturing to one of the houses.

  She pulls over at the kerb. ‘I didn’t think Zoe lived around here.’

  ‘She’s back living with her mum. Split up with her boyfriend and couldn’t afford the mortgage on her own.’

  A moment later, Zoe appears at the door. She looks gorgeous – dark hair piled high on her head in an effortless way that probably took far longer than it looks, and a smart navy trench coat that cinches in her waist – and I instantly feel that I should have made more of an effort. I have dressed for comfort rather than style today, the forecast saying there’s a possibility of snow later on. Zoe and I have rarely been out anywhere together; she is ten years younger than I am, and work nights out have never really been much of a thing. Our friendship exists within the four walls of the surgery reception area, and now I wonder how the dynamic over the weekend will work and whether she’ll fit in with the rest of our group.

  ‘Hi,’ she says, getting into the back seat. ‘Thanks so much for picking me up.’

  Claire and Zoe have met a couple of times before, when Claire has brought her children to the surgery.

  ‘Do you know where we’re going yet?’ Zoe asks me.

  ‘No idea. But we’re under instructions to meet at Martha’s first.’

  We head towards Bristol’s harbourside, for what Martha has described as pre-party drinks at her waterfront apartment. Both Claire and I know that what this really means is that she would like us all to see her new bespoke kitchen, and we’re happy to humour her enough to delay the start of the weekend by an hour or so. Two of us will need to drive to wherever it is we’re heading after that, so Claire and I have already agreed to use the unfairness of alcohol exclusion as an excuse to get moving as soon as the fittings have been admired.

  Martha lives in an exclusive development overlooking Bristol Harbour, where a two-bed apartment costs in excess of half a million pounds. After her mother died when she was just thirteen, Martha’s father sold the family home in Saltford and bought a dilapidated farmhouse that he renovated and sold for more than five times the purchase price. Twenty-five years on, he has a portfolio of over four hundred rental properties, and Martha is employed by his company.

  ‘Wow,’ says Zoe, as Claire pulls into the private car park. ‘This must have cost her a bomb.’

  ‘Cost Daddy a bomb,’ Claire mumbles.

  We go up to Martha’s second-floor apartment in the lift, and she meets us in the doorway looking as though she is already dressed for the wedding. Despite the cold weather, she’s wearing a short dress that accentuates her impossibly long legs, bare and tanned; the neckline that rises beneath her chin manages to make her appear even taller.

  ‘Wow,’ Zoe says. ‘Amazing dress.’

  ‘Thanks,’ says Martha, and I cast Claire a wry smile. Martha is going to love unsuspecting and admiring Zoe. With any luck, she can be treated to an exclusive tour of the new kitchen while Claire and I hide somewhere and wait for Toni and Suzanne to arrive.

  We follow Martha into the apartment, where a tray of glasses and an open champagne bottle await us in the hallway. Everything Martha does is planned with precision, which can be both a blessing and a curse. I admire her meticulous attention to detail, though it has often meant spontaneity is out of the question. It does, however, mean that nothing is left to chance, and that every get-together with her is regarded as an ‘experience’.

  ‘We could wait for the others,’ she says with a shrug as she reaches for the bottle, ‘but there’s plenty more where this one’s come from.’

  She fills a glass and passes one to me, then one to Zoe.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t mind driving, Claire? I’m more than happy to if you’ve changed your mind.’

  ‘You only have two seats,’ Claire replies, a little too bluntly.

  ‘Two of us in mine, four in Toni’s. It’s doable.’

  ‘It’s fine. I’m happy to drive.’

  Zoe glances past Martha into the open-plan living space at the back of the apartment. ‘This place is like something out of a magazine.’

  ‘Thanks. Come on through.’

  We follow Martha to the kitchen, where she gets Claire a glass of orange juice. She manages to hold back mention of the new kitchen until Zoe passes comment on the worktop, but soon after she begins discussing it, she’s interrupted by the buzzer. She heads into the hallway to let Suzanne in, and while she’s gone, I check my phone. I have a message from Toni.