The Proposal

An unputdownable psychological thriller

S.E. Lynes

Books by S.E. Lynes

The One to Blame

The Housewarming

Can You See Her?

The Lies We Hide

The Women

Valentina

The Proposal

The Pact

Mother

Available in audio

The Housewarming (Available in the UK and the US)

Can You See Her? (Available in the UK and the US)

The Lies We Hide (Available in the UK and the US)

The Women (Available in the UK and the US)

The Proposal (Available in the UK and the US)

The Pact (Available in the UK and the US)

Mother (Available in the UK and the US)

Contents

Chapter 1

Blog post

Chapter 2

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Chapter 3

Audio excerpt #1

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Chapter 4

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Chapter 5

Audio excerpt #2

Chapter 6

Blog post

Chapter 7

Blog post

Chapter 8

Audio excerpt #3

Chapter 9

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Chapter 10

Audio excerpt #4

Chapter 11

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Chapter 12

Audio excerpt #5

Chapter 13

Blog post

Chapter 14

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Chapter 15

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Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Audio excerpt #6

Chapter 18

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Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Blog post

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Blog post

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

The Housewarming

Hear More from S.E. Lynes

Books by S.E. Lynes

A Letter from S.E. Lynes

The One to Blame

Can You See Her?

The Lies We Hide

The Women

Valentina

The Pact

Mother

Acknowledgements

*

For Paul, my love.

We seem normal only to those who don’t know us very well.

Alain de Botton

One

Pippa Gates: private journal

The first thing you should know, dear reader, is that I am dead.

Not now, writing this, here at the farm, obviously. But if you’re reading these words, then the most likely reason is that this journal has been published posthumously. If that’s the case, it means that the events at Cairn Farm have made it into the press. Excerpts from this very document may well have graced the various rags and broadsheets, or been read aloud in breathless gushes by some excited TV reporter. I suppose parts of what I’m about to recount are likely to have been presented in more sober, respectful tones, as evidence at the inquest.

So if you’ve followed all the coverage in the media and are now reading this private account, I’m guessing you’re after the inside track on what I imagine will have been called the Wiltshire Murders. You want the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God.

Readers – or, dare I say, fans of my books – will also be aware that I am romantic novelist Pippa Gates. If you were interested enough to flick through any interviews I might have done, or perhaps caught me on the radio, you’ll have gleaned that I used to be an English teacher and that I lived in a suburb of south London before moving out here, to Cairn Farm, Wiltshire. You might think, perhaps, after all your reading, that you know a little about me.

But let me tell you right here, my friend: you know almost nothing.

Still, none of that matters now. Not the version of events out there in the public domain, not my social-media feed, which I cannot access currently for reasons I will explain later; not even my new book, which I may of course never finish. Only this matters. The secret journal that I started at my desk just moments ago, this private account that will become – indeed has become, if you are reading it – public. In a world of alternative stories and fake news, this journal is the one, the only truth.

You see, as Pippa Gates, I would never be able to publish the kind of material I intend to include here, because my books are love stories, life-affirming novels designed to make people feel good, not ill or troubled for days afterwards. My books don’t contain strong swearing or violence or sinister presences in the dead of night. They are optimistic. They bring joy. Pushing Up Daisy, the one I’m working on just now, will be no exception. It would be unfair to my readers to do otherwise.

This other story, well, this one is different.

A straightforward happy ending will not, I fear, be possible. As I have said, if you’re reading this, then my sorry tale has most probably ended in my own demise. For the fans of puns among you, you might say I’ve bought the farm.

So much for endings. Beginnings are another matter. Pushing Up Daisy begins with the arrival of octogenarian Daisy Philips at the Grange retirement home, where she finds herself reunited with her teenage sweetheart, Bing. Their break-up was acrimonious, and they have not seen each other in fifty years…

My real-life tale, an altogether darker, not to mention murderous affair, begins, thinking about it now, with that stalwart of stories the world over: a knock at the door.

It was a Thursday near the end of term. June, back when I was still teaching at St Matthew’s Comprehensive and hating every moment of it. On Thursdays, I had 10J immediately after lunch, and they were nothing short of hideous on an almost-bearable day, but this was the scrawny end of a particularly thin week. Plus, I’d had a Tinder date the night before that had finished up in a late bar off Tottenham Court Road and a vague memory of some man with a shiny bottom lip whose name I can’t bring to mind right now bundling me into an Uber, having, I presume, somehow got my address out of me. In those days, my address was of no interest to anyone. In those days, I didn’t live in fear of my life. In those days, I barely cared about my life, to be honest. In fact, my life, for want of a more elegant word, sucked, and the only way out of it that I could see – and this is really embarrassing – was by writing a bestseller.

Yep. That was my plan. Up there with the lottery win, the knight in shining armour and the hidden treasure at the bottom of the garden.

To say I was hanging by a thread that fateful Thursday is an understatement. To make it worse, my great Plan A – you know, the one where I write the bestseller? – was hardly coming along nicely, as it were. In fact, it was not coming along at all. I know, I know. And you’re right. Why didn’t I just get the flip on with it? You’d think, wouldn’t you, that, considering I’d put all my hopes for escaping my tedious reality in the follow-up to my heroically failed first novel, I would have been working towards actually writing it and, oh, I don’t know, trying to make it half decent this time. But alas, no, I was not. I had reached the very eve of my third deadline extension. My new idea had to be nailed to the page and sent to my editor by the following morning or my contract would be terminated. Which was fair enough. My editor, Jackie, had been beyond patient, especially given the utter bomb that was my first book. But still I had nothing. Nada. Diddly squat.

So, yes, all that was weighing on my decidedly fuzzy mind when one of the boys in 10J lit a joint in the classroom and the final straw fell on this rather grumpy camel’s back. You might even say I got the hump (sorry).

You can, I’m sure, appreciate why, by the time I got home, I was in need of a large glass of something chilled. The dreaded day job, the all-day hangover, the shady memory of yet another date with yet another perfectly nice bloke who had made about as much of an impression on me as a hand plunged into a sack of lentils… well, thank God I had poured a drink, frankly, because at 4.45 p.m., my phone buzzed, as I had absolutely known it would whilst simultaneously denying that this would ever happen. On the screen I read the name I had known would be there in bold white letters: Jackie West; saw the familiar face of my editor smiling up at me, a picture taken during a lunch many months ago when she’d thought I could actually deliver. Yes, I had anticipated this call, and yet somehow not prepared for it. What? Don’t shake your head and frown. We’ve all done it, haven’t we? And what better place to admit to it than here in the safety of my private journal?

Anyway, I fixed a smile to my own face, squared my shoulders and pushed my thumb to the green circle.

‘Jackie,’ I said, infusing the word with a level of pleasure more suited to hearing from the organisers of the National Lottery on rollover week.

‘Hi, Pippa. How’re you getting on?’ Subtext: Please don’t make me fire you.

‘Good. Really good, actually.’ I’d wandered into the hall and now leant into the mirror, my attention taken momentarily by a sliver of shadow on my top lip. Was that a whisker? I wondered. Jesus. What fresh hell was this? I was only thirty-four.

‘Pippa?’

‘Yes, still here, sorry. You’ve just caught me at my desk.’ I meandered back into the living room, where on the coffee table my laptop gaped, open as an oyster, hoping for pearls. I drained the last of the bottle into my glass. ‘I was just finishing my outline.’

‘Good, good. We said tomorrow, didn’t we, so good – that’s good.’

Despite the stress pain in my chest, I said nothing.

‘So,’ she said. ‘Listen, when do—’

‘Tomorrow morning,’ I interrupted. ‘I’ve already written half of Chapter One. I just need to tweak it, have one last look, and then…’ I made myself stop.

‘OK, cool. Great. Well, listen, I’m off home soon anyway, so send it as late as you like tonight. Literally midnight is fine, because I’ll still have it first thing, all right?’

‘Sure,’ I said, thinking that literally midnight was at best optimistic. Three a.m. was more likely. Let’s face it, not at all was looking favourite. ‘I’ll have it to you at some point this evening, guaranteed.’

Guaranteed.

It’s always hard to know which was the first domino, so to speak, but looking back, they fell like this: bad date, bad hangover, bad day, large wine, call from editor, me blurting out ridiculous promise, me getting into borderline psychotic state with stress at the thought of my dream turning to dust, me opening the door.

And the whole surreal story followed from there.

By seven o’clock, I’d been staring at the blank screen for an hour. I’d tried to call my best mate, Marlena, but she’d been too busy with her kids and her slob of a husband, as per. I’d drunk more wine, eaten a packet of Kettle Chips (one of my five a day because potatoes) and had a long shower. I’d googled every millimetre of celebrity gossip in the hope of finding a troubled love life to mine for dramatic gold. I’d run through the entire teaching staff at St Matthew’s looking for a suitable template for a romantic lead: Science Kevin was possible if I lengthened his trousers and put him in better shoes; French Jean-Pierre had nice eyes and a good name, but I’d once seen him dance at a Christmas drinks and hadn’t been able to scrub the scorch marks of that image out of my mind; and Geography Dave was – well, no… just no. I’d rummaged through my own back catalogue: all the dates I’d had over the last two years, the Tinders, the Guardian Soulmates, the date-me dot coms; even cast my mind back to before I met Bill. But nothing.

What about the news if you’re looking for inspiration? I hear you cry. Plenty of stories in there, surely? Well, that’s the thing. I’m not really a current affairs kind of gal. Not a great fan of factual information per se. The news is always, by definition, awful, and there’s never anything I personally can do about someone else’s war, the latest mass shooting, or some food that I’ve been blithely munching for the last thirty-four years that is now apparently carcinogenic. But this is how desperate I was: I had resorted to reading the news. And reminding myself why I never do.

Too much reality, thank you very much.

I was pretty much at the end of my incredibly frayed rope, not to mention the Pinot Noir – the last dregs of the white had long since travelled down red lane – and was segueing into my second packet of Kettle Chips when, as they say, there was a knock at the door.

This wasn’t due to any dramatic staples – my doorbell had actually recently died and I had no clue how to replace the battery, but let’s suppose I’d engineered the event myself.

Reader, there was a knock at the door.

‘Who the hell is that?’ I asked no one at all, dashing into the hallway. I have no idea why I rushed in this way, because at 7 p.m. it was only ever going to be a canvassing politician, a charity worker looking for a monthly direct debit or a door-to-door salesman.

And sure enough, I opened the door to a cadaverous man with a painfully prominent Adam’s apple and greasy, slicked-back grey hair, deep grooves scoring his forehead and the empty folds of once fuller cheeks bracketing his thin lips. He looked to be in his mid fifties. An old green parka (in June) hung from his skinny shoulders, stone-washed jeans sagged around his legs and his trainers, which in a past life had been white, were frankly unspeakable. In front of him he held the obligatory tray of cleaning products. I fought to stop my face from betraying the fact that with every fibre of my being I wished I’d pretended to be out.

‘Good evening,’ he said with the strained cheer of the desperate. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you but my name is Ryan Marks. I’m just trying to get back on my feet and wondered if you’d be interested in any household cleaning products at all?’