The Anniversary Party: A completely gripping psychological thriller with a killer twist that will take your breath away by Angela Clarke

Author:Angela Clarke [Clarke, Angela]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Published: 2025-10-16T00:00:00+00:00

BETH

The queue in Starbucks is long, but the seats are mostly empty. It’s right in the heart of the City and I guess people just want to get their drink and go. The street outside is still a steady catwalk of people, heads bent against the weather and the reality of the rat race. Perhaps we would have been better out there? More discrete. Most people in the queue are plugged into headphones, or staring at their phone screens, but they are all silent. Only the orders being taken, and the repeated gritty whir of the coffee grinder can be heard above the background music.

Wade has taken a seat, thankfully, far away from the counter. He’s picked one of the oversized wingbacks that face each other over a squat dark wood table. He’s leaning forward, resting his elbows on his knees, hands clasped. He’s not distracting himself with his phone, in fact he looks all too present, glancing up nervously every thirty seconds or so, as if I might have produced a child from my handbag. I hate him. I’m not sure I’ve hated anyone before. Or, rather I’ve not felt hate for someone I didn’t also love. There are those moments of pure rage when I could throw something at Danny. But just as quickly he can obliterate my defences, and I’ll find myself unable to stop giggling at his jokey reaction. I can’t help but smile when I think of Danny mimicking Oscar’s terrible twos tantrums: the grown man stamping his feet, clutching his fists, screwing his face up, until he too dissolves into laughter. That razor-sharp line between two extremes of emotion when you love someone. I think of my anger when Oscar was little and he ran out between two parked cars into the street. I was so furious he could have been killed I smacked him hard, then cried too when he burst into tears. And I think of Mum and Dad, and what they did to each other before the cancer. The rows, the passive-aggression. While all the time, to the outside world, they were the perfect couple, dealing with it all effortlessly. Perhaps they were. I think of Danny and me. Danny and Beth. Beth a fake person, a cipher for any good left in me. Just another version of me who took the bad and buried it. Perhaps all couples are like that.

Wade glances up again and I feel the destructive revulsion in me. I never loved Wade. I’m not sure I even liked him. He was just sort of there in the background, until he forced his way into my consciousness. I don’t remember seeing him much after we successfully avoided each other for the remaining three years of uni. Was he embarrassed by what he’d done? Or was it a ‘smash and dash’? ‘One and done’? He only saw me for my parts – like Matt sees Treasure. It wasn’t long after that I got together with Tobi. That whole period of my life a shaken box of biscuits.

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