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The Widows’ Club
Amanda Brooke
There’s a murderer in their midst… @thewidowsclubIn response to unprecedented media interest, we confirm that the murder victim was a member of our group. We will not be commenting further. When April joins a support group for young widows, she’s looking for answers after her husband’s sudden death. What she finds instead is a group in turmoil. Set up by well-meaning amateurs, the founders are tussling for control of the group, and everyone’s on edge. Added to that, secret relationships springing up between members and another new member, Nick, seems more than a little bit shady… But the most dangerous secret of all? Not all members are who they seem to be. And they’ll go to any lengths to hide the truth…
THE WIDOWS’ CLUB
Amanda Brooke
Copyright (#u7162bcf3-cc48-52d6-a841-0718e2099204)
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London, SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019
Copyright © Amanda Valentine 2019
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2019
Cover photographs © Rekha Garton / Trevillion Images (main image); Ilina Simeonova / Trevillion Images (flowers)
Amanda Valentine asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008219215
Ebook Edition © November 2019 ISBN: 9780008219222
Version: 2019-09-24
Dedication (#u7162bcf3-cc48-52d6-a841-0718e2099204)
For my daughter and my best friend, Jess
Epigraph (#u7162bcf3-cc48-52d6-a841-0718e2099204)
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all.
Emily Dickinson
Contents
Cover (#u949b1b86-f647-5094-8417-320eb88693c1)
Title Page (#ud73f591b-d559-56cd-a129-21e85df88370)
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter 1 (#udd95eed4-14da-5fad-b7b7-203a9ca44149)
Chapter 2 (#uc08e22f6-8c55-550b-9c7c-dbcfee0af0fb)
Chapter 3 (#ua010c4e9-2e54-5a11-ae93-11edfc4d8319)
Chapter 4 (#ue92b8dce-109f-57c4-9298-c98621bc53a7)
Chapter 5 (#u51d20a3a-b11b-5b91-a4a1-7ea6acc8288d)
Chapter 6 (#ue54c8c20-811f-5f3f-8026-413eaae38bac)
Chapter 7 (#u46b5e0b4-a85a-5506-8a5e-4b905e0f5095)
Chapter 8 (#ue67cc524-91e3-53f0-aabb-2eb2fb4a0d16)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 33 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 34 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 35 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 36 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 37 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 38 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 39 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 40 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 41 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 42 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 43 (#litres_trial_promo)
Eight Months Later
Acknowledgements
Keep Reading …
About the Author
Also by Amanda Brooke
About the Publisher
STATEMENT
The Widows’ Club @thewidowsclub
In response to unprecedented media interest, we confirm that the deceased was a member of the group but are unable to comment further. We kindly request that the privacy of the group and its members is respected at this difficult time.
1 (#ulink_e004c93c-0d3e-519e-b8a3-9aa162eac0b9)
As April Thorpe stood outside Hale Village Hall on a damp September evening, she didn’t know if she was ready to join the group she spied through the windows. A dozen or so chairs had been arranged in a circle, but so far no one had taken their seats in the glass-fronted room on the lower floor. They had gathered in the foyer, sipping tea and chatting, and when someone tipped their head back and laughed, it felt wrong. How could they look so relaxed and happy? Who in their right mind would want to be a member of this exclusive club? April certainly didn’t.
She was tempted to scurry away home and scream into her pillow, but she knew from experience that wouldn’t lessen the pain. It was time for a new approach, but April’s feet refused to move. She was scared, and her fear was echoed high above her head in the low rumble of a plane making an approach to land. Hale was directly beneath the flight path for John Lennon Airport and in the darkened sky, the noise carried a sense of foreboding.
‘I don’t belong here,’ she mumbled to herself. ‘I’m too young to be a widow.’
A passer-by might say the same. Widows weren’t thirty years old with bright auburn hair and a feathering of wrinkles around sharp, green eyes. They were older, with laughter lines and watery eyes that captured decades of memories. Such women might point out that a lifetime wasn’t nearly long enough, but it was longer than the five years she and Jason had been married.
Widowhood had been thrust upon April seven months and twelve days ago on a cold, February morning, and whether she liked it or not, she had earned her place here. She imagined Jason prodding her shoulder to get her moving, and her body swayed ever so slightly.
‘Are you coming in?’ someone behind her asked.
April turned to find a smartly dressed woman offering her a smile. She looked like someone April might bump into at the office, someone normal, but her tote bag gave her away. It had the phrase, ‘Hope is the thing with wings’ emblazoned across it.
‘Erm. Sure,’ she replied.
Swept along by embarrassment rather than purpose, April stepped into the foyer to be greeted by the one person who wasn’t a stranger. Tara was in her mid-thirties and reminded April of a tall Audrey Hepburn with her dark hair pulled back into a chignon. The look was completed with a black-and-white striped top and a pair of pedal pushers. She didn’t look like a widow either.
Tara had stumbled into April’s life by chance a couple of weeks earlier when delivering boxes of exquisite cupcakes to the office where April worked as an internal auditor. The cakes were the finishing touch to a lunch-time baby shower the team had organised for one of their colleagues. Sara had had a difficult pregnancy, not least because her boyfriend had dumped her soon after she discovered she was expecting, but on her last day at work, her belly had been taut, her smile broad, and her happiness suffocating. April had no right to spoil her friend’s moment and in her haste to escape, she had almost knocked the cake boxes out of Tara’s arms.
‘Bad day at the office?’ Tara had asked later when she found April shivering outside the building.
April pulled out her earphones. She had been listening to one of Jason’s playlists on Spotify, feeling safe with songs her husband had chosen rather than risk new releases he would never get to hear. ‘I’m sorry about before.’
‘I don’t suppose I can expect everyone to fight over my cakes. I’m Tara, by the way.’
