The Other Guest - Softcover

Cooper, Helen

 
9780593422595: The Other Guest
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0593422597 ISBN 13: 9780593422595
Verlag: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2022

Inhaltsangabe

After a shocking death at a luxurious Italian resort, two very different women must question everything—and everyone—they love in order to untangle truth from lies in this twisty, captivating read.

One year ago, Leah’s feisty 21-year-old niece, Amy, mysteriously drowned in the beautiful lake near her family-owned resort in Northern Italy. Now, Leah’s grief has caught up with her, and she decides to return to Lake Garda for the first time since Amy’s death. What she finds upon her arrival shocks her—her sister, brother-in-law, and surviving niece, Olivia, seem to have erased all memories of Amy, and fought to have her death declared an accidental drowning, despite murky circumstances. Leah knows she must look beyond the resort’s beautiful façade and uncover what truly happened to Amy, even if her digging places both her family ties and her very life in danger.
 
Meanwhile, in Central England, thirtysomething Joanna is recovering from a surprising break-up when she is swept off her feet by a handsome bartender. But when she learns that he is on the run from something in his past, and that their meeting may not have been a coincidence, Joanna realized that he may just a bit too good to be true.
 
What follows is a propulsive cat-and mouse game set against the Italian lakeside as the two seemingly-unconnected women are caught up in a dangerous conspiracy.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Helen Cooper is the author of The Downstairs Neighbor. She is from Derby and has a MA in Creative Writing and a background in teaching English and Academic Writing. Her creative writing has been published in Mslexia and Writers' Forum; she was shortlisted in the Bath Short Story Prize in 2014, and came third in the Leicester Writes Short Story Prize 2018.

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Prologue

I’ve seen so many storms rage over this lake. I know how the water blazes as if it’s on fire, how the rain blows in huge pillars between the mountains. I’ve watched flaming arrows of lightning dive towards the surface, and I’ve felt my hands clench in recognition of all that anger and energy. Like the wildest punk anthem I’ve ever heard, like a band trashing their own instruments, swept up in the anarchy of the moment. I’ve even shouted at storms the way a fan might scream during a gig – the closest I can get to that kind of freedom.

But I’ve never been stupid enough, before tonight, to find myself on a tiny boat in the middle of it all.

I did feel this storm approaching. The thrum and taste of it in the air. But the day escalated faster than the weather – confusion, arguments, suspicion, panic. By the time the sun began to set and the rain closed in, I’d run out of choices. Now I try to see the storm as a transition, washing away all the bad moments, or even as my ally, my disguise, if I can just get through it – get away – and not look back.

Two lightning bolts rip downwards. The jagged shapes of the mountains are briefly backlit – and something else is illuminated at the edge of my eyeline, too. My heart thuds as I turn to squint at it. Another small boat looms out of the spray, like a mirror image of mine, lurching towards me with a silhouetted figure on board.

1.
 
Joanna

Despite everything that had happened, there were times when Joanna loved living alone. When she woke to nothing but birdsong in the morning, and yellow light through her new curtains, and she could starfish across her bed into patches of coolness. Or when she came home after a busy day, poured a glass of wine, and sat in her shady little garden without having to talk or think. Nobody to gate-crash the quiet, to complicate that hard-earned sip of sauvignon blanc.
 
Then there were the other times, of course.

The nights when she would wake in chilly darkness to a house full of creaks and too much space in her bed. The weekends when all her friends were busy with their families or partners, and her Spotify kept landing on songs that were spiked with memories.

Or the evenings like this one, when a glass of wine and the last rays of June sun weren't enough to lift the darkness of a truly harrowing day.
 
Joanna burrowed her bare feet into the grass of her garden, trying to focus on the tickly sensation between her toes. But her head was too full of the awfulness, the guilt. The failings in her department that had almost caused something unthinkable.

Almost, she reminded herself, clenching the stem of her glass.

Still, the image blared again: a figure on the roof of the university's tallest building, on the wrong side of the safety barriers. The marks his palms had left behind on the railings from gripping so tight.
 
Joanna shook her head and reached for her phone, instinctively opening the WhatsApp group she had with her closest friends. She could write something and there would be a flood of compassion, reliable and lovely friends that they were. But then she'd feel guilty for attracting so much attention, and she'd start backtracking, saying oh, it wasn't really that bad, and surely they'd all had much more stressful days with their teething babies and hectic school runs. Somehow, she felt she'd used up her quota of sympathy during her breakup with Luke. Her friends had been heroes throughout those hideous few months, but now she shied away from mentioning other troubles, even from admitting that Luke still plagued her thoughts. She'd had her unwanted limelight.

Pushing aside the phone, she took another cold gulp of wine. There were several sensible things she could do for her mental state. Things she'd recommended to many of the students she'd counseled over the years. But meditation and mindfulness now seemed much less appealing than going to a pub and getting drunk among strangers.

Joanna left her glass on the bench and ran to fetch her purse.

***

She had called into the Last Junction a few times since moving to this part of Derby. It was a red-brick pub next to the station, usually full of people who were either waiting for trains or had just got off one, their suitcases parked next to their tables as they drank. Part of its appeal was that there was never anybody she knew. Although Derby was a city, it felt tiny sometimes. Joanna had been part of the same crowd, hanging out in the same places, since she was sixteen. And almost every memory from those two decades circled back to Luke.

But in this pub, as usual, she didn't recognize a single person under the dim lighting. Even the barman wasn't somebody she'd seen working in here before-he was younger than the other staff, though he had a face that could've put him anywhere between late twenties and early forties. Boyish dimples but crinkly eyes. Curly, soft-looking hair, but a tinge of silver in his blond stubble. He blinked as if she'd startled him, then studied her face as though there was something strange about it. There probably was. Smears of mascara always transferred themselves to her upper eyelids when she was stressed, like two extra brows. There would be sweat patches under her arms and her long skirt would be crushed from hours sitting in hot rooms chairing crisis meetings. She felt too tired to fix herself, though. Too tired even to drag a finger over her lids.
 
"Rum and Coke, please," she said.

"Which rum?" the barman asked.

Joanna looked at him in surprise. She didn't want to have to make decisions; she'd spent all day doing that, or failing to. This wasn't the kind of pub where she expected to have to show knowledge or preference.

"Any's fine."

"Shall I choose for you?"
 
"Please." The idea of relinquishing responsibility, even for this minor thing, was a relief.
 
"Something with a bit of spice?"

"Something strong."

He raised his eyebrows. Joanna flushed at how she must look, marching in alone and demanding strong alcohol. The barman scanned the shelves, swooped in on a bottle, and poured amber liquid into an ice-filled tumbler.

"You sure you want Coke in it?" he asked.

She nodded but then saw that he was grinning, that it was a joke. Joanna gave in to a small amount of banter: "But only because neat rum on a Thursday teatime isn't socially acceptable."

The barman opened a miniature glass bottle of Coke, surprising her again because she'd expected it from a pump. When he sloshed some into her drink before handing her the rest of the bottle, she couldn't help twirling it in her hands, a nostalgic feeling rising in her. Picnics when she was young. Being allowed a bottle of Coke as a treat. Mum, before her illness, opening one at arm's length in case it had got fizzed up on the way there. That blue and yellow checked blanket they used to have, which they would shake out afterward, sandwich and cake crumbs flying. What had happened to the blanket? It was exactly the kind of thing Joanna had been filling her new house with: artifacts from a pre- or post-Luke world, bracketing the chunk of her life that had been snipped out from the middle.

She realized the barman was waiting with the card machine. Not impatiently, though. He seemed to be watching her drift into a reverie about the Coke bottle as if he understood. Maybe everybody got nostalgic about those glass bottles. That was probably the idea.

"Sorry," she said, tapping her card.
 
"No problem. He smiled at her again. "Enjoy."

The only spare table was so close to the toilets it got bumped every time somebody passed in or out, so she decided...

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Verlag
G.P. Putnam's Sons
Erscheinungsdatum
2022
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0593422597
ISBN 13 
9780593422595
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
388
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
preigu
mail@preigu.de

Lengericher Landstr. 19
Osnabrück
49078
Deutschland

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