The Darkest Summer Read online

  Dee nodded. ‘You’re right. Leo, we’re going.’

  He didn’t argue, but got up and followed Dee and Mum out of the kitchen, stopping at the door to give Henri and me a brief look. The heat of Henri’s leg against mine was comforting and I was deeply grateful for his return to the house. Neither of us spoke. He placed his hand over mine and kept it there until we heard Leo’s voice from the first-floor landing.

  ‘He is a dangerous man, Sera.’

  I nodded. ‘I realise that now. I’m so relieved you came here tonight. Do you mind not informing the police about what happened to your father?’

  He shook his head. ‘It is in the past and they were children. I have been able to solve the mystery of my father’s disappearance, and for me, right now, this is enough.’

  I heard footsteps coming down the stairs. ‘Thank you,’ I whispered.

  ‘Thank me when they’ve gone.’ He hesitated, staring at me intently. ‘Sera, what is wrong?’

  I pointed towards the open doorway. ‘I’ll tell you later.’

  I went to the kitchen and waited while Henri joined Mum and the others. She said her brief goodbyes to Dee and Leo mainly to witness their exit before they left with Henri for the station, hurriedly closing the front door and locking it behind them.

  ‘I thought they’d never leave,’ she said, coming back into the kitchen and resting against the worktop. She looked drained, her shoulders drooping. ‘Henri is a good man, Sera, I misjudged him terribly.’

  ‘All I care about right now is that they’ve gone, Mum. I hope he makes sure they get on to a train – any damn train – and leave Southampton for good.’

  She stifled a yawn with the back of her hand. ‘Would you mind if I went to bed now?’

  ‘No, of course not. I’ll stay down here for a bit.’

  She closed her eyes for a moment. ‘You should try and rest if you can,’ she said. ‘Henri told me he’d come back in the morning. He said you should get some sleep.’ She sighed. ‘Who knows what we’ll have to deal with tomorrow.’

  I dreaded to think. ‘I’m shattered too.’ I walked up to her and gave her a hug. ‘I’m sorry for inviting them into our home.’

  ‘You didn’t know what would happen, darling.’ She linked arms with me and, leading me out of the kitchen, stopped to wait while I switched off the light. ‘I can’t believe they’ve actually left.’

  ‘Nor can I,’ I said, hoping I didn’t wake up and discover this was all a misleading dream. I decided to wait until the morning to tell her what I’d discovered about Ashley; she had coped with enough shocks for one day. It wasn’t as if I could do anything much tonight anyway, I reasoned. I checked the house doors were locked and we went upstairs.

  I was about to get into bed when I remembered the small photo I’d taken from Hazel’s room of her and Jack in 2003. I walked over to the corner of the room and knelt. Dragging back the edge of the carpet I lifted the small end of the floorboard to reveal my childhood hiding place where I stored all my secret bits. I rummaged around with my hand until I came across the silver frame and pulled it out. Wiping the dust from the glass against my pyjama shorts, I lifted the picture and studied it. Would it be the right thing to do to offer this to Henri? Or should I take the picture out of the frame and cut Hazel’s body from the photo? Unsure what to do, I decided to let him choose.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  2018 – Oakwold, New Forest

  Sera

  I barely slept and was washed and dressed by the time Henri rang the doorbell at 8.30 the following morning. Mum took the girls out to the shops so that we could chat about him dropping Leo and Dee off at the station.

  ‘Where could they be now?’ I asked, willing him to say Outer Mongolia, or better still, Mars.

  ‘East, although they might have got off at the next stop, or any after that,’ he said, looking as exhausted as I felt.

  I would have loved proof of their destination, but that wasn’t going to happen. Eventually Mum came back with the girls and we left them to go upstairs to play in Katie’s room. She joined us and I finally told them what Ashley had said to me the night before.

  Neither of them spoke. I waited until they’d digested this latest shock.

  ‘She’s an odd child, Sera,’ Mum said. ‘Are you certain she wasn’t just messing with you?’

  ‘Mum, she’s five, supposedly,’ I argued, realising how little I knew about the child upstairs with my daughter. ‘How would she think up something so weird? She has a French accent.’

  ‘She’s grown up there, so that’s not surprising,’ Mum said. ‘Henri, what do you think? Should we take this seriously?’

  He looked surprised at her question. ‘Of course. If it is not true then we have lost nothing, but if it is, this child must be returned to her parents immediately.’ He rubbed his stubbly chin. ‘I will contact my ex-colleagues. Maybe they can find information about a missing child. Do you recognise her accent?’

  ‘No,’ I said, aware I had no idea about different accents in France. ‘I suppose it could help narrow down the search for her family,’ I said. ‘I wish I could help.’

  ‘She has never spoken in front of me, so I cannot tell,’ he said, giving me a reassuring smile. ‘I’ll find out everything I can. We must act immediately, before they return and try to claim her.’

  Mum looked horrified. ‘Thank you, Henri,’ she said. ‘I’m incredibly grateful to you for this and for being so generous about not pressing charges against those fiends. I don’t think I could have stood having them here for a moment longer than they were.’

  He tilted his head in a half nod and left. I spent several hours catching up with my work. I had forgotten it was my day to have a stall at the market and decided that even though I was hours late starting, it would still be better to spend some time there than none. Mum was happy to have the children, saying it was too hot for her to go out anywhere.

  * * *

  Despite the humidity of the ongoing heatwave, I needed something else to take my mind off everything that had transpired over the past twenty-four hours. I took the photo of Hazel and Jack with me, pushing it carefully into my back pocket, so I could drop it off to Henri on my way home from the market.

  I usually preferred to be somewhere in the middle, but had missed the opportunity by being so late to arrive at the town square, so ended up being at the far end of the pitches.

  ‘Ahh, Sera, we thought you weren’t coming to join us today,’ the elderly lady with the fruit stall said, as I gave the change to my first customer of the day.

  I laughed. ‘I forgot what day it was,’ I admitted, which was partially true.

  The heat was unbearable and because I’d only got the last stall in the market, the canopy didn’t shade me as much as I would have liked. I drank some water from a bottle and fanned my face with one of the booklets I gave away with each of my sales to advertise the rest of the stock.

  I lifted the signs down at the end of the day, wrapping each one carefully and placing them in a box ready to take home. When I stood up I spotted Henri moving slowly through the thinning crowds.

  ‘Henri,’ I shouted, standing on my tiptoes to wave at him. ‘Over here.’

  He stopped and held his hand up, moving as quickly as he could towards my stall.

  ‘Any news?’

  He nodded. ‘It is not good.’ His tanned face was strained. ‘I am sorry.’

  ‘So, Ashley was telling the truth?’ His distress was obvious. ‘What do we do now?’

  He came around to my side of the stall. ‘I’ve spoken with your mother. She has packed up Ashley’s belongings and is taking the girls to a soft play centre for the morning and then to pre-school for the afternoon. She is getting them away from the house in case Dee and Leo return. The pre-school leader has been informed and will keep the children there with your mother until the police arrive.’

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ I said, stunned at how low Dee had sunk in my estimation. ‘Let’s go.’<
br />
  He helped me pack my signs into the back of my car. ‘We must not go to your house, not until this has been sorted. We have no way of knowing if Leo and Dee will be there and I cannot take the chance they might follow us to Ashley.’ He was so in control and I realised what a loss he must have been to the police service.

  ‘I’ll drop these off at the studio. You follow me there and then I’ll come to the school with you.’

  On the way to the school he filled me in on the rest of what had happened since I last saw him. It was hard to imagine that only four hours had passed since then.

  ‘Her real name is Sophie.’ He barely contained his emotions as he explained more of what he’d discovered. ‘Her parents moved to France a couple of years ago, so didn’t know many people there. Dee was a volunteer at the school; she helped the little ones with their reading.’

  ‘That’s how she got to know Ashley, I mean, Sophie,’ I said almost to myself.

  ‘Sophie’s mother recently started a new job, I am told. She worked long hours, sometimes arriving late to collect her daughter. Dee always offered to stay behind with the child. One day, the mother arrived late to collect her and they had both vanished.’

  I pictured the horror on that poor mother’s face discovering her child missing. ‘Poor woman.’

  ‘Yes.’

  An icy tingle ran down my spine making me shiver. ‘How didn’t we know about her being missing? Wasn’t the story reported in the international papers?’

  ‘No. The papers probably printed something about it, but they’re mostly publishing stories about this heatwave and fires, deaths caused by the situation. No one was looking for a kidnapped child around here. It’s not your fault you didn’t know.’

  ‘What happens when we get to the school?’

  ‘Her mother is on a flight. A benefactor is flying her on his private jet to the nearest airport. She arrives in an hour.’ He put his foot down harder on the accelerator. ‘We must hurry.’

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  2018 – Oakwold, New Forest

  Sera

  I held Katie in my arms as we watched Sophie clinging to her mother’s neck being carried to a waiting car. This little girl looked completely different to the one who had stayed at my home for the past few weeks. Her mother turned and mouthed a thank you to me. I could see how like her Sophie was. Sophie waved with one hand, holding tightly onto the teddy Katie had given her with the other. I didn’t care that tears were running down my face as we waited for them to get into the car and drive away.

  Henri went to speak to two of his ex-colleagues who had accompanied the mother on the plane. I hugged Katie, unsure how I would ever be brave enough to leave her at pre-school again.

  ‘She’s fine, darling,’ Mum said, reading my thoughts and stroking my arm. ‘And so is Sophie, now she’s back with her own mother.’

  ‘I can’t believe Dee could do such a thing.’ I swallowed the lump restricting my throat.

  ‘Or Leo, he covered for her all this time.’

  ‘We’ve been harbouring two fugitives and a kidnapped child.’ I choked on the last words. Thinking I was going to be sick, I handed Katie to Mum and I ran inside to the bathroom. I leant over the sink resting my forehead on the cool tiles behind, trying to come to terms with the fact that I’d inadvertently helped keep Sophie from her mother.

  ‘Sera, Sera,’ Henri called from the hallway. He must have heard me because the next thing I knew he was in the Ladies with me, hugging me tightly. ‘It’s okay now. Sophie is back with her mother and will be home soon.’

  ‘But I should have realised something was wrong. I knew she was withdrawn and unhappy, it just never occurred to me it could be because of something this horrendous.’

  He held me close to him. ‘Chérie, you looked after her. Katie was her friend and you discovered the truth in the end. The child trusted you enough to confide in you, that is a good thing.’

  I sniffed. ‘Her poor mother.’ He handed me a tissue and I blew my nose. ‘What about Dee and Leo?’

  ‘They are looking for them now. The police believe Dee became obsessed with the little girl after her own baby died.’

  ‘I can’t believe she did such a thing.’ As soon as I’d spoken, I couldn’t help hoping that Dee would manage to find some other way to cope with the loss of her own baby.

  ‘Maybe their past helped make them act this way.’ He placed a finger under my chin and lifted it slightly. ‘I will be prosecuting them now for what they did to my father, Sera.’

  ‘I know.’ I didn’t blame him at all.

  ‘Before, I assumed Papa’s death had been a tragic accident. These two people have proved how cruel they can be by taking the little girl, so now I am happy to press charges against them. The authorities are also checking out my theory that Leo started the fire at the barn.’

  I couldn’t believe it. ‘But why would he do something like that?’

  Henri shook his head. ‘I believe he started the fire to cover up any tracks left behind from the killing, when he realised he needed to hide Dee and Sophie at your home. He hoped to dispose of any evidence before bringing them.’

  ‘And in the process ended up causing Jack’s body to be discovered,’ I concluded, aware of the irony of his actions.

  ‘Yes.’

  Did I ever know Leo at all? I wondered. ‘So you think he meant for me to see him that day in Southampton?’

  Henri nodded. ‘Do you take the same route each time?’

  ‘Yes, several times a week, and usually at the same time, too.’ I thought about the plans Leo must have made to cover up what his sister had done, all the lies. ‘I’m pleased you’re prosecuting them for your father’s death,’ I said honestly. ‘Which reminds me.’ He watched silently as I pushed my hand into my back pocket to retrieve the picture. ‘I didn’t know whether to cut Hazel from this, or not, but your dad looks very happy and I didn’t want to ruin the picture. I’ll leave it up to you to decide.’

  He took it from me as if I was handing him the most delicate trinket and stared silently at his father’s image. ‘Thank you, Sera,’ he whispered, looking down at the photo cupped in his hands.

  ‘I took it from Hazel’s house after they disappeared,’ I admitted. ‘It’s been hidden in my room since then.’

  He smiled at me. ‘We have many of the answers now.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Answers to questions we didn’t know we should be asking.’ It was all too surreal. ‘It’s going to take a long time for me to trust my instincts again. I thought I knew those people.’ I didn’t add I’d also thought I’d known my mother, but she’d turned out to be capable of far worse than anything I ever imagined. ‘How can we ever be certain we truly know the people closest to us?’

  Henri hugged me tightly. Placing his right hand behind my head, he kissed me. My upset and fear caused by everything that had happened instantly dispersed. I kissed him back, confident that with him in my life everything was going to be all right.

  He moved back slightly. ‘To answer your question, we can’t ever be sure who to trust,’ he said. ‘But we need to be brave and I promise you can trust me.’ He kissed me again as if to further reassure me. ‘Don’t let what happened change you, Sera. You have me. I will not let anything bad happen to you ever again. Be brave. Enjoy your life and the people in it.’

  ‘You know what, Henri?’ I said, finally free from my past. ‘I think I will.’

  A Letter From Ella

  I would like to thank you for reading The Darkest Summer.

  This story was initially inspired by my own experience of losing a teenage friend who disappeared from my life one summer’s night with her family many years ago. Her story is nothing like this one, thankfully, and we did meet up again years later. One day I was thinking about how I felt when she had gone and used this as the basis for Sera’s story.

  I hope you enjoyed reading The Darkest Summer. If you did, I’d love to hear what you think. Please consider writing
a review as they can also help other readers discover new authors and their books. Or maybe you can recommend The Darkest Summer to your friends and family…

  I’m fascinated by people’s pasts and how what they experience changes them as they grow older. I love losing myself in my characters’ emotions and imagining why they react in the ways that they do.

  This is the story of two friends, Sera and Dee and how their experiences and the choices they make taint their futures. Sera has had to cope with the loss of her best friend at a vulnerable time in her life and the unexpected death of her husband when she is only in her twenties. She has returned to live in her childhood home with her mother and her little girl and everything in her life is settled until the night of the fire at a neighbour’s farm and her reunion with her two closest childhood friends.

  Thank you for joining me for Sera’s story.

  I love hearing from readers – so please get in touch on my Facebook or Goodreads page, twitter or through my website.

  And if you’d like to keep up-to-date with all my latest releases, just sign up at the website link below.

  Thank you very much for your support, I really appreciate it.

  Ella Drummond

  https://www.herabooks.com/authors/ella-drummond/

  https://deborahcarr.org/contact/

  https://www.facebook.com/DeborahCarrAuthor/

  https://twitter.com/DebsCarr

  Acknowledgements

  Many thanks to everyone at Hera Books, especially Keshini Naidoo, Lindsey Mooney and editors Jon Appleton and Jennie Ayres, it’s been a wonderful experience working with you all on this second book, The Darkest Summer.

  Thanks also to my extended family, but especially to my husband, Rob and children, James and Saskia.