The Push Read online

  PRAISE FOR CLAIRE McGOWAN:

  ‘A knockout new talent you should read immediately.’

  —Lee Child

  ‘A brilliant, breathless thriller that kept me guessing to the last shocking page.’

  —Erin Kelly, Sunday Times bestselling author of He Said/She Said

  ‘Absorbing, timely, and beautifully written, What You Did is a superior psychological thriller from a major talent.’

  —Mark Edwards, bestselling author of The Retreat and Here to Stay

  ‘What You Did is a triumph, a gripping story of the secrets and lies that can underpin even the closest friendships. Put some time aside – this is one you’ll want to read in a single sitting.’

  —Kevin Wignall, bestselling author of A Death in Sweden and The Traitor’s Story

  ‘Hitting the rare sweet spot between a satisfying read and a real page-turner, this brilliantly written book deserves to fly high.’

  —Cass Green, bestselling author of In a Cottage In a Wood

  ‘I absolutely devoured What You Did. Claire McGowan has created the ultimate moral dilemma in this timely and gripping psychological thriller. I can’t recommend it highly enough.’

  —Jenny Blackhurst, bestselling author of Before I Let You In

  ‘McGowan writes utterly convincingly in three very different voices and she knows how to tell a cracking story. She will go far.’

  —Daily Mail

  ‘One of the very best novels I’ve read in a long while . . . astonishing, powerful and immensely satisfying.’

  —Peter James

  ‘Funny and perfectly paced . . . chills to the bone.’

  —Daily Telegraph

  ‘Plenty of intrigue makes this a must-read.’

  —Woman & Home

  ‘A complex, disturbing, resonant novel that remains light on its feet and immensely entertaining.’

  —The Irish Times

  ‘Page-turning.’

  —Guardian

  ‘Highly satisfying and intelligent.’

  —The Bookseller

  ‘Will keep you riveted until its breathless finish.’

  —Sunday Mirror

  ‘A meticulous thriller full of twists and false turns.’

  —Crime Time

  ‘Creepy and oh-so-clever.’

  —Fabulous

  ‘A fantastic and intense book that grips you right from the very first line.’

  —We Love This Book

  ‘McGowan’s pacey, direct style ensures that the twists come thick and fast.’

  —The Irish Times

  ‘A riveting police thriller.’

  —Woman (Pick of the Week)

  ‘Taut plotting and assured writing.’

  —Good Housekeeping

  ‘A gripping yarn you will be unable to put down.’

  —Sun

  ‘A brilliant portrait of a fractured society and a mystery full of heart-stopping twists. Compelling, clever and entertaining.’

  —Jane Casey

  ‘A keeps-you-guessing mystery.’

  —Alex Marwood

  ‘A brilliant crime novel . . . gripping.’

  —Company

  ‘A compelling and flawless thriller . . . there is nothing not to like.’

  —Sharon Bolton

  ‘Ireland’s answer to Ruth Rendell.’

  —Ken Bruen

  ALSO BY CLAIRE McGOWAN

  The Fall

  What You Did

  The Other Wife

  Paula Maguire series

  The Lost

  The Dead Ground

  The Silent Dead

  A Savage Hunger

  Blood Tide

  The Killing House

  Writing as Eva Woods

  The Thirty List

  The Ex Factor

  How to be Happy

  The Lives We Touch

  The Man I Can’t Forget

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2020 by Claire McGowan

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542019996

  ISBN-10: 1542019990

  Cover design by Heike Schüssler

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Alison

  Jax – ten weeks earlier

  Alison

  Jax – ten weeks earlier

  Alison

  The day of – Monica

  Jax – ten weeks earlier

  Jax – nine weeks earlier

  Alison

  The day of – Cathy

  Jax – nine weeks earlier

  Alison

  The day of – Aisha

  Jax – nine weeks earlier

  Alison

  The day of – Chloe

  Jax – eight weeks earlier

  Alison

  Jax – eight weeks earlier

  Alison

  The day of – Kelly

  Jax – seven weeks earlier

  Alison

  The day of – Anita

  Jax – seven weeks earlier

  Alison

  The day of – Jax

  Jax – seven weeks earlier

  Alison

  The day of – Kelly

  Jax – six weeks earlier

  Alison

  Jax – six weeks earlier

  Alison

  Jax – five weeks earlier

  The day of – Jax

  Alison

  Jax – five weeks earlier

  Alison

  Jax – five weeks earlier

  Alison

  Jax – four weeks earlier

  Alison

  The day of – Monica

  Jax – four weeks earlier

  Alison

  Jax – four weeks earlier

  Alison

  The day of – Cathy

  Jax – three weeks earlier

  Alison

  Jax – three weeks earlier

  The day of – Aisha

  Jax – two weeks earlier

  Alison

  Jax – two weeks earlier

  Alison

  The day of – Chloe

  Jax – two weeks earlier

  The day of – Jax

  Jax – two weeks earlier

  The day of – Anita

  Jax – one week earlier

  Alison

  The day of – Cathy

  The day of – Jax

  The day of – Aisha

  Jax – now (one week after the barbecue)

  Alison

  The day of – Jax

  Jax – now

  The day of – Jax

  Jax – now

  Alison

  The day of – Chloe

  Alison

  The day of – Monica

  Alison

  One day later

  BOOK GROUP QUESTIONS

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Prologue

  The babies all look the same. They lie in a circle on a patterned rug, heads in, legs fanning out like a star. They will grow up to be so different; some rich some poor, some happy some sad, some hearty some sickly. Their lives will be determined by the job
s of their parents, the street where they live, their skin colour, their gender. But for now they are the same, despite the different skin tones and disparity in the cost of their clothes. Chubby blank canvasses, for the world to stamp its print on.

  It is Monica’s idea to take the picture, of course. Her clamouring Instagram followers need to be fed. She calls it a flat lay, only with children instead of books and cups of coffee and flowers. Some of the group don’t want their babies in the shot – Hazel raises an objection, we didn’t want his picture online yet, and Aaron surprises everyone with his dislike of social media, and at his age too! But Monica rides roughshod over them all, and so the babies in their blue and pink and yellow are arranged and the shot is taken, and Instagrammed and Facebooked and hashtagged, out there forever in the world, the children at two weeks old appearing in more digital impressions than recent ancestors would have in their lifetimes.

  The picture was taken at 2.35 p.m., the timestamp helpfully showed. The police would later have the task of trawling through every image taken that day, which was a lot. By 3.02 p.m., the murder had taken place, though of course it would be some time before they could even prove that’s what it was.

  Alison

  ‘There were twelve adults here?’ said Alison to the PC guarding the crime scene. It was a boiling-hot day, just her luck to catch on-call duty during a heatwave. She’d grumbled about it as she headed to the car from her flat, her skin a slick of suncream and the sky denim-blue, but part of her was pleased, despite the sweat pooling behind her knees. This was a big one. A death at a barbecue in this suburban corner of South-east London. A fall from a high, glass-sided balcony. A multi-million-pound house with blood spatter all over the rockery, and a dozen suspects screaming and complaining and having hysterics at various locations in the house and garden. Not to mention the babies.

  The babies. Alison was trying hard not to look at them, but they made themselves known, howling little bundles of pure need. She counted four dotted around the house, held tightly in arms. Some kind of antenatal group reunion. There’d been six couples in the group, she had gathered. Shouldn’t there have been six babies for six couples? She made a mental note to find out. She could hardly take witness statements from the babies, however, which was a shame, as she wasn’t getting much sense out of the adults either.

  If you counted the teenager, thirteen adults had been here for the barbecue. Alison’s mam, a Catholic from Cork, would consider that unlucky – one year at Christmas Alison’s brother Liam had been made to eat his dinner in the kitchen, to avoid having thirteen at the table. And it was true it hadn’t ended well here. Someone was dead, on a Saturday afternoon in June, a perfect sunny day, at a barbecue, a reunion of a baby group. It should have been a happy event. Alison didn’t often get called out to houses like this.

  The house was massive – five bedrooms – ultra-modern with marble and glass everywhere. The back garden was overhung by the balcony, which looked on to a collection of rocks and plants tumbling down a hill to the lawn, which in turn backed on to a park and even had a gate leading out to it. Bright green grass. Hot blue sky. A smell of recently cooked meat, and clumps of people standing about wild-eyed and shocked. Alison was doing sums in her head – a million quid at least, for the size, for the location. Most likely more.

  She took a breath. What do I do with this? It was overwhelming for a moment, all these hysterical people who couldn’t seem to answer a straight question, many of them crying, babies grousing, the heat, the dead body on the rocks. Then sudden cloud drifted over the garden, and instantly it changed everything, the flowers now less jewelled, the food less appetising, the people paler and more shocked. Even the dead body, crumpled on the rocks, suddenly looked smaller. More manageable. The blood less scarlet. As the heat dissipated from her head, Alison felt more in charge. She straightened up, adjusted her sweaty polyester suit. ‘Right,’ she said, to the constable guarding the body, who looked very young and unsure indeed. ‘Who owns this place? I’ll speak to them first.’

  Jax – ten weeks earlier

  I used to be proud of my body. I wasn’t obsessive about it, I still ate cake and roast dinners, and lay on the sofa on Sunday afternoons watching old Poirot re-runs and posting M&M’s into my mouth. But it was reliable. I rarely got sick, I could hike up Munros and swim across lakes and survive an advanced spin class with Leslie, who’d made more people cry than Toy Story 3. That was before.

  But since getting pregnant, I seemed to have lost control of it. It would arbitrarily start to leak or weep or flush red or demand to pee, despite being literally on the way out of the loo. Maybe it was overwhelmed coping with what my GP called ‘a geriatric first-time pregnancy’. I didn’t feel geriatric. Before this, I still wore miniskirts and went to festivals. Until meeting Aaron I had stayed up all night at least once a month. I got IDed in Sainsbury’s often enough to carry my driving licence in my wallet. But despite all these things, despite the years I’d held time at bay, I really was thirty-eight, and my body was showing me this by slowly crumbling around me with each new day of my pregnancy.

  The morning of the first group meeting, Aaron found me on the bathroom floor, weeping. ‘What’s happened now?’ He hunkered down beside me.

  I hiccupped. ‘Can’t get my shoes on.’ I had overbalanced and almost fallen trying to tie the laces.

  ‘Come here, I’ll help you.’ He was so good. He’d grown up helping foster siblings, younger kids in the care homes, and now me, his geriatric pregnant girlfriend. ‘Babe, it’s OK.’ I let him prop me on the side of the bath, not as easy as it used to be when I wasn’t enormous.

  ‘Do we have to go?’ I bleated, pathetically, as he eased my feet into my Converse.

  ‘We’ve paid for it now. And it’ll be good, come on. Meet other people in the same boat, yeah?’ It was true we had paid for it, and money was tight at the moment. The flyer had come through the door one day, a stock photo of happy pregnant ladies and their partners, standing around some medicine balls. Antenatal group. Meet other new parents and learn what to do! That sounded good to me. I had no idea what to do. But all the same, now it was time, I felt afraid. Nervous, in some way I didn’t understand. Like I was about to take a test, one I hadn’t studied for and wasn’t at all sure I would pass.

  Aaron had a way about him, gentle but steadfast, that could get me to do almost anything. Soon I had my shoes on and was in the car heading to the community centre where the antenatal group was held.

  I’d never liked groups. Even at school I was the rebel who’d refuse to join in with the shared Home Economics project, making a pair of curtains or whatever (why?). My mother had always despaired of that. Changing my name from the decorous Jacqueline to the ladette Jax. Running out on my wedding to my ex, rich and terminally dull Chris, and then getting pregnant at thirty-eight with a guy fourteen years my junior. But I didn’t care. Offending my mother meant I was on the right track, that I’d escaped my middle-class fate of listening to The Archers and getting really into gardening.

  When I walked into the community centre, I could tell right away that this, the baby group, was not my kind of thing. A group of men and women sat in a semicircle on plastic chairs, in a dingy hall with parquet flooring and high, dirty windows. There was a trestle table with some paper cups and a tea urn, a Tupperware container of professional-looking cupcakes, which someone had clearly brought with them. No one was talking, like people in a new and unsure social situation. I hung back, hands on my bump. Aaron indicated two free seats and I shuffled towards them, not making eye contact. A quick glance around told me there were two clearly not-pregnant women in the group, and I wondered why – gay couples? Hysterical pregnancy that everyone was too polite to mention?

  ‘Hello there,’ said another woman, brightly. She was forty or past it, wearing a lot of diamonds. Her voice was authoritative, as if she might be the group leader, but she was pregnant and seemed to be with the man beside her, a Riviera type in cream slacks, fingering wha
t I hoped what his phone through his trouser pocket. ‘I’m Monica. We’re just waiting for the facilitator.’

  ‘Jax,’ I muttered, sitting down, or rather collapsing, which was what I did these days. Aaron, politer, shook hands, and there was some murmur about setting up an email group to keep in touch. I could see them register us, how young he was, how old I was, perhaps wondering briefly if I’d brought my grown-up son as my birth partner. But then, everyone had something. No one’s life was simple. I didn’t have to make any small talk, thank God, because the door opened then and the facilitator came in, clinking jewellery and swishing a long print skirt, and she was so slim and tanned and beautiful I immediately felt like a cow. She even had a toe ring. I hadn’t been able to reach my toes for months. Her eyes, bright blue, swept over us all. Her voice was husky, sexy.

  ‘I’m Nina. Welcome, everyone, to your exciting journey.’ Three seconds in and someone had already used the word journey in a non-transport sense. I was going to hate this.

  It was amazing how different we all were. All we had in common was we lived in the same part of South-east London, Beckenham-Penge-Crystal Palace, and we were all having babies. Well. In a manner of speaking.

  The youngest person there, even younger than Aaron, was Kelly, who was twenty-two. That seemed an almost indecently young age to be pregnant nowadays, but I reminded myself that was how old my mother had been when she’d had me, already married for a year. Did we just grow up more slowly these days? The oldest mum was Monica, the lady with the diamonds, resplendent in her flowered Boden smock. She was forty-four, she told me proudly. It wasn’t IVF, she was at pains to point out. All natural! ‘This is Ed, my beloved.’ Ed looked like a boiled ham that had wandered down Jermyn Street.

  Then there was Cathy, who looked a few years younger than me, and Hazel, her partner. Wife, maybe. Hazel kept her hand on Cathy’s bump all the time, as if an alarm might go off were she to remove it. I wondered how they’d done it, wondered if they were thinking the same about me, if I’d needed IVF at my age, why Aaron was even with me when he was so young and so ridiculously handsome. There was Aisha, pretty underneath a headscarf, who I guessed was about thirty, with her handsome husband who wore what looked like a paramedic’s uniform. And then there was Anita.