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Home Truths
Susan Lewis
Pre-order the new novel from Sunday Times bestselling author, Susan Lewis.Praise for Susan Lewis’ bestselling novels:‘Susan Lewis has a gift for telling warm family stories that also take you by surprise. One Minute Later will make you savour every second’ Jane Corry
Copyright (#u9d520ee3-d24a-57b6-97ef-407f5777c447)
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019
Copyright © Susan Lewis 2019
Cover design by Claire Ward © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019
Cover photograph © Alison Archinuk / Trevillion Images
Susan Lewis 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: 9780008286781
Ebook Edition © August 2019 ISBN: 9780008286804
Version: 2019-07-09
Dedication (#u9d520ee3-d24a-57b6-97ef-407f5777c447)
To Rachel Parfitt
and to everyone who gives
so selflessly of their time and expertise
to help those in need
Contents
Cover (#u26a50bcd-e466-52a6-8e78-d0dadefcdc5b)
Title Page (#ua4e8560e-3529-54a7-b797-ac423490406b)
Copyright
Dedication
‘Don’t go! Please … (#u003a4a34-a96a-5a9b-b5df-0d61846c7d45)
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Acknowledgements
Keep Reading …
About the Author
Also by Susan Lewis
About the Publisher
‘Don’t go! Please … Oh God, no, please don’t …’
‘I can’t take any more, Angie. I swear … If you’d seen what I just have …’
‘Whatever it is …’
‘Our five-year-old son had a syringe in his hand,’ he raged, almost choking on the words.
‘Oh my God. Oh Steve …’
‘I need to find Liam, and when I do I’m turning him in to the police along with every other one of those lowlife bastards …’
‘No! No!’
He could still hear his wife screaming down the phone, begging him to stop as he tossed his mobile on to the passenger seat and steered the van, almost on two wheels, out of the street.
He’d had enough. He didn’t care about the danger he was putting himself in, or what might happen after, he was too enraged for that. You bastard! How dare you … He’s a child, for God’s sake … The words circled endlessly through his head.
It took a while to get across town. He barely even saw the traffic, or the red lights that tried to delay him, as though giving him some time to think. He didn’t want it. He was past thinking, past caring about anything other than the need to make this stop.
When he reached the hellish streets, the sore at the heart of the sprawling estate, he screeched to a halt on the infamous Colemead Lane and leapt out. He was so pumped with fury that his fists were already clenched, his muscles tensed for attack. His rationale had fled, along with his temper and sense of self-preservation.
He looked around, his eyes fierce. The mostly destitute houses with boarded-up windows and padlocked doors were as silent as graves. The tower blocks at the end with graffitied walls and urine-soaked stairwells rose drearily towards a patched grey sky. Even the pub looked deserted, its sign dangling from one hinge, its barred windows telling their own story.
‘I know you’re here,’ he roared at the top of his lungs. ‘Liam Watts! Get out here now!’
His rage echoed around the silence like useless gunshot scattering over a ghost town.
‘Liam Watts! Show your face.’
Everything remained still.
Seconds ticked by as though the world was holding its breath, waiting to see what would happen next. He sensed he wasn’t alone, that he was being watched, that this was a charged hiatus before the storm broke.
He was ready for it. His whole body was primed to take it.
There was a scuffling behind him, sharp yet muffled, and he spun round, heart thudding thickly with fury and fear, eyes blazing.
‘Go home,’ a wretched young woman hissed from a nearby doorway. She was thin, shaking, her eyes seeming to bleed in their sockets. She waved feebly in no particular direction before stumbling into a side alley and disappearing.
He didn’t see them coming at first, he only heard them: faint, deliberate footsteps crunching, pounding, almost military in their pace. He peered around, trying to get a sense of where they were. How many they were.
‘Liam Watts!’ he roared again.
The sun slipped its cover of cloud, dazzling him, throwing a rich golden glow over the street, as though to paint this purgatory into something glorious.
He listened, hearing his heartbeat, hectic, scared; the sound of a dog barking, a scream cut suddenly short.
Then he saw them emerging from the shadows like ghouls, closing on him from each end of the street, slowly, purposefully, faces wrapped in black balaclavas, baseball bats and iron bars slapping into palms, chains rattling through brutal fingers.
