A Good Place to Hide a Body by Laura Marshall

Author:Laura Marshall [Laura Marshall]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Thrillers, Crime, Mystery & Detective, General, Suspense, Domestic, Humorous, Black Humor, Family Life
ISBN: 9781399729659
Google: hVXKEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Hachette UK
Published: 2024-07-03T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 23

‘Come quickly. The garden . . . the . . . body. We need you, Penny.’

Dad’s words echo through my mind as I speed back to my parents’ house, blood still seeping from the cut on my thumb. What does he mean, the body? My brain tries to come up with different scenarios that would fit his words, but they are all too disturbing to contemplate so I close my mind and concentrate on not crashing the car.

Light spills out of the annexe window at the side of the house as I park in the drive. If I’d known Mum and Dad were coming back tonight I would have been here, but once I’d established that Cooper was no longer there, I couldn’t stand to be on the property a second longer. My plan was to come back in the morning and attempt to clear up the mess.

I can’t worry about that now though, I’m thinking only of Mum and Dad. I don’t know how they’ll ever recover from the destruction of their beloved garden. The driver and passenger doors of their car are open, the internal light still on. As I close them to prevent the battery going flat, I see their suitcases on the back seat.

As I let myself in to the house, my ears are assaulted by a high-pitched keening coming from the kitchen. Dad shuffles out into the hall without his stick, one hand on the wall, grey-faced, wordless. I take him in my arms like a child, expecting him to fold and weep but he holds himself rigid in my embrace for a few seconds and then extricates himself. I follow him into the kitchen. Mum is sitting at the table, rocking back and forth, an unearthly wail pouring, unstoppable, from her. I kneel next to her.

‘Mummy.’ I haven’t called her that since I was a child. ‘Look at me.’

She continues to stare blankly into nothingness, arms wrapped tightly around herself.

‘You need to come out to the garden and see,’ Dad says in a low voice.

‘No, I don’t. I was here earlier. I know . . . what happened. I would have warned you if I’d known you were coming back from Norfolk. Why didn’t you let me know?’

‘It was a last-minute decision. Marie’s lovely but we’d had enough of staying in someone else’s house. We wanted to get back . . . home.’ He chokes on this last word. ‘Come out and see.’

‘I don’t need to, Dad. I told you, I know what’s happened.’ Mum’s the more manifestly in shock but Dad doesn’t seem to be taking in what I’m saying at all.

‘You don’t understand,’ he says, pulling at my hand. ‘You need to come outside and see.’

I don’t want to see it again – it was bad enough the first time – but Dad’s not going to take no for an answer, so I allow him to lead me back into the hall, where he grabs a torch from the hall table. As we go down the front steps I realise he’s less leading me than holding onto me for support.

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