The Visitors Book by Sophie Hannah

Author:Sophie Hannah
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2016-09-10T04:00:00+00:00

At home later that night, I turn on my computer and search the internet for the names Lisa and Harriet Paskin. I find many newspaper articles. In the accompanying photographs, I recognise my new friend from the school gates. Six years ago, Lisa and her daughter Harriet killed a teacher at eleven-year-old Harriet’s school. They never revealed why they did it, though they did immediately confess to the crime, and there was never any doubt that they were guilty. Mother and daughter planned and committed the murder together. The teacher’s husband shot them both dead on the steps of the crown court and is now in prison. This all happened in Cornwall, nowhere near our school.

Why did they do it? There appears to be no answer, at least not on the internet.

Feeling calmer than I have for a long time – almost completely removed from my actions – I search for ‘ghosts who appear during the daytime’ and variations on that theme. I find nothing, but I keep looking.

My hand in a gold envelope . . .

My phone buzzes on the table next to me. I pick it up. A new email has arrived from Jenny Buckley, the words ‘Nice photo from tonight!’ in the subject box. I click to open the photo and see us all sitting around the table: all the other mums in their ridiculous finery and me in my casual shirt with not-entirely-clean hair and no make-up.

Wait. What’s Rachel Taggart doing there, in the picture? She wasn’t there. She didn’t come.

Her face is white, her eyes half closed. She’s dead. I look at the other faces and see that they are all dead, in fact – all propped up at the table like stiff dolls.

Poison in the curry. A private room. Maybe someone’s house, not a restaurant.

Julie, dead. Jenny, dead. Anna, dead. Rachel, dead. All the others, too. Not me; I’m not in this picture.

As soon as I’ve seen the whole story, it’s gone. The photo on my phone’s screen is, once again, the one Jenny sent me: all the mums smiling. All the dead mothers of my daughter’s friends. I can’t wait for our next Long-Overdue Mums’ Night Out.

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