Stolen Read online

  STOLEN

  Tess Stimson

  Copyright

  HarperCollinsPublishers

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2021

  Copyright © Tess Stimson 2021

  Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2021

  Cover photographs: Zhukova Valentyna/ Shutterstock (main image), © Mark Owen/ Trevillion Images (girl)

  Tess Stimson 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 ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, 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: 9780008386054

  Ebook Edition © August 2021 ISBN: 9780008386061

  Version: 2021-06-21

  Praise for Tess Stimson’s books

  ‘Dark. Twisty. Addictive. I couldn’t put it down’

  Lisa Jewell

  ‘More chilling than Gone Girl and twistier than The Girl on the Train, this emotional, raw, dark family drama keeps you guessing until the end’

  Jane Green

  ‘Truly gripping: the opening is heart-breaking and it never lets up, all the way to a genuinely shocking denouement’

  Alex Lake

  ‘Well-drawn characters, believably complex relationships and relentlessly twisting plot keep the reader guessing. Plus, Tess Stimson writes beautifully’

  Debbie Howells

  ‘Tense, twisty, and that ending – wow!’

  Jackie Kabler

  ‘Such a gripping, fast-paced book. I just couldn’t put it down and read it within a day!’

  Short Book and Scribes

  Dedication

  For my sister, Philippa.

  Memory-keeper and best friend.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Praise for Tess Stimson’s books

  Dedication

  the present

  two years earlier: forty-eight hours before the wedding

  chapter 01

  chapter 02

  thirty-six hours before the wedding

  chapter 03

  chapter 04

  twenty-four hours before the wedding

  chapter 05

  chapter 06

  the wedding day

  chapter 07

  chapter 08

  chapter 09

  chapter 10

  chapter 11

  twelve hours missing

  chapter 12

  chapter 13

  chapter 14

  twenty-four hours missing

  chapter 15

  chapter 16

  chapter 17

  five days missing

  chapter 18

  six days missing

  chapter 19

  seven days missing

  chapter 20

  chapter 21

  chapter 22

  eight days missing

  chapter 23

  chapter 24

  twelve days missing

  chapter 25

  chapter 26

  chapter 27

  chapter 28

  chapter 29

  fifty-two days missing

  chapter 30

  chapter 31

  chapter 32

  two years missing

  chapter 33

  chapter 34

  two years and two days missing

  chapter 35

  chapter 36

  chapter 37

  two years and nine days missing

  chapter 38

  chapter 39

  chapter 40

  chapter 41

  chapter 42

  two years and fourteen days missing

  chapter 43

  chapter 44

  chapter 45

  chapter 46

  chapter 47

  two years and seventeen days missing

  chapter 48

  chapter 49

  chapter 50

  two years and eighteen days missing

  chapter 51

  chapter 52

  two years and nineteen days missing

  chapter 53

  chapter 54

  chapter 55

  chapter 56

  chapter 57

  chapter 58

  chapter 59

  two years and twenty-one days missing

  chapter 60

  two years and twenty-five days missing

  chapter 61

  chapter 62

  chapter 63

  chapter 64

  chapter 65

  two years and thirty-five days missing

  chapter 66

  two years and thirty-nine days missing

  chapter 67

  two years and forty-one days missing

  chapter 68

  chapter 69

  chapter 70

  chapter 71

  two years and forty-two days missing

  chapter 72

  two years and forty-three days missing

  chapter 73

  chapter 74

  two years and forty-four days missing

  chapter 75

  chapter 76

  chapter 77

  chapter 78

  chapter 79

  chapter 80

  six months later

  chapter 81

  chapter 82

  Acknowledgements

  Keep Reading …

  About the Author

  By the same author

  About the Publisher

  the present

  The hot sand at the side of the road burns her bare feet. Her lungs are on fire and there’s a really bad pain in her side. Her legs feel like jelly. It’s sheer panic that propels her forward now.

  She saw what they did to Mummy; she knows what they’ll do if they catch her.

  They didn’t find her because she was hiding behind the bougainvillea planter in the courtyard when they came, like she used to do when she was little. We’re going to play a game. I want you to be as quiet as a mouse. She didn’t make a squeak.

  The road ahead of her shimmers and she doesn’t know if it’s because it’s so hot or because she’s exhausted. Sweat trickles into her eyes and she wipes it away. She has no idea where she is. Nothing looks familiar. There are no houses or people anywhere. All she can see is sand and scrubby grassland, stretching for miles in every direction. Nothing she can hide behind if they come after her. No one she can ask for help.

  Terror wells up in her. She knows Mummy is dead. She’s nearly six years old, now. She understands what dead means.

  Mummy told her to run! don’t look back! and even though she didn’t want to leave her, she did as she was told. But she’s so tired now. Her feet are raw and blistered, and her legs are so wobbly she’s weaving drunkenly back and forth at the side of the road. She doesn’t know why they want her, only that she mustn’t let them find her.

  Run!

  Don’t look back!

  She
runs.

  two years earlier:

  forty-eight hours before the wedding

  chapter 01

  alex

  If I’d terminated my pregnancy, I’d be turning left now as I board the plane.

  I’d have room on the small desk at the side of my privacy booth for both my case files and the pad of foolscap paper on which I take notes by hand, the old-fashioned way, because five years of legal practice have taught me it’s the best method to find the loophole everyone else has overlooked. I’d decline a glass of chilled champagne so that I could keep a clear head, and kick off my shoes – cream and camel Grenson brogues, shoes that are businesslike and understated and make clear that I am a woman to be taken seriously.

  But I didn’t.

  So I’m herded right, not left.

  My brogues are from New Look, although you’d really have to know your footwear to detect the difference. I can’t afford highlights and nursery fees, so my medium-length hair is more its natural ginger than the classy auburn I used to favour. At twenty-nine, I’m still on the fast track to partner at human rights law firm Muysken Ritter, but when I get up at 4.30 a.m. these days, it’s not to fit in an hour with my personal trainer before getting to the office by six. I used to love weekends, because it meant I could work straight through without the interruption of meetings and client conferences.

  Not any more.

  The woman in the row ahead of me twists around as the trolley passes, peering between the seats. She’s smiling, but the expression in her eyes is strained. I don’t blame her: we’re less than half an hour into a nine-hour flight.

  ‘Could you ask your little girl to stop kicking?’ she says nicely.

  ‘Lottie, stop kicking the lady’s chair,’ I say, in a tone that gives no hint I might as well be commanding the sun to set in the east.

  Lottie stops instantly, her fat little legs suspended mid-swing. The woman smiles again, more honestly this time, and turns away.

  She’s fooled by the curls.

  My three-year-old daughter is blessed with white-blonde ringlets that reach her waist, the kind of fantasy hair Disney princesses used to have before they got feisty. It misdirects attention from the pugnacious jut of her jaw, the stubborn, bull-headed set of her shoulders. She isn’t conventionally pretty – her features are too quirky for that, and then there’s her weight, of course. But you can tell she’s going to be striking when she’s older: what my grandmother’s generation would call ‘handsome’. She just has to grow into her face, that’s all.

  The curls are nature’s sly sleight of hand. They make people think of angels and Christmas, when they would be better off sharpening stakes and searching for silver bullets.

  Lottie waits just long enough for the woman to relax.

  ‘Please, dear, could you stop that?’ the woman says. There’s no smile this time, pained or otherwise.

  Kick. Kick.

  The woman looks at me, but I’m studiously flicking through the inflight magazine. You have to choose your battles. We still have eight and a half hours to get through.

  Kick.

  Trying another tack, the woman pushes a bag of Haribo sweets through the gap in the seats. ‘Would you like some gummy bears?’

  ‘You’re a stranger,’ Lottie says. Kick.

  ‘Yes, very good, that’s right.’ Another unrequited glance in my direction. ‘Don’t take sweeties from strangers. But we won’t be strangers if we introduce ourselves, will we? I’m Mrs Steadman. What’s your name?’

  ‘Charlotte Perpetua Martini.’

  ‘Perpetua? That’s … unusual.’

  ‘Daddy said I had to have a Catholic name because he’s Italian, so Mummy googled saints and picked the worst one she could find.’

  My daughter and I have no secrets.

  ‘And where is Daddy, Charlotte? Isn’t he going on holiday with you?’

  Kick.

  ‘Daddy’s dead,’ Lottie says, matter-of-factly.

  The nuclear option. Golden princess curls and a dead daddy? There’s no coming back from that.

  ‘Oh, dear. Oh. I’m so sorry, Charlotte.’

  ‘It’s OK. Mummy says he was a bastard.’

  ‘Lottie,’ I reprove, but my heart’s not in it. He was.

  The woman subsides into her seat, radiating the peculiar combination of tongue-tied embarrassment and ghoulish curiosity with which I’ve become so familiar in the fourteen months since Luca was killed when a bridge collapsed in Genoa. He was visiting his elderly parents, who split their time between their apartment there and his mother’s ancestral family home in Sicily. It’s just luck it was my weekend to have Lottie, and not his, or she’d have been with him.

  Taking pity on the woman, I give Lottie my mobile phone. It’s quite safe: at thirty thousand feet she can’t repeat the in-app purchase debacle of last month.

  With my daughter distracted, I flip open my case file, trying to keep my paperwork in order in the cramped space.

  This trip couldn’t have come at a worse time. The asylum hearing for one of my clients, a Yazidi woman who survived multiple rapes during her captivity by IS, was unexpectedly brought forward last week, meaning I’ve had to hand it over to one of my colleagues, James, the only lawyer at our firm with a free docket. He’s extremely competent, but my client is terrified of men, which will make it difficult for James to confer with her at her hearing.

  The case should be open-and-shut, but I worry something will go wrong. If we weren’t going to the wedding of my best friend, Marc, I’d have cancelled the trip.

  I’m midway through composing a detailed follow-up email to James when Lottie suddenly spills a full cup of Coke across my table.

  ‘Goddamn it, Lottie!’

  I shake my papers furiously, watching rivulets of Coke streaming from the pages.

  Lottie doesn’t apologise. Instead, she crosses her arms and glares at me.

  ‘Get up,’ I say sharply. ‘Come on,’ I add, as she mulishly remains in her seat. ‘You’ve got Coke all over yourself. It’ll be sticky when it dries.’

  ‘I want another one,’ Lottie says.

  ‘You’re not having another anything! Move it, Lottie. I’m not kidding around.’

  She refuses to budge. I unbuckle her seatbelt and haul her out of her seat. She yowls as if I’ve really hurt her, attracting attention.

  I know exactly what my fellow passengers are thinking. Before Lottie, I used to think it myself every time I saw a child have a meltdown in a supermarket aisle.

  I hustle Lottie down the narrow aisle towards the bathroom. She responds by slapping the headrest of every seat as she passes. ‘Fuck you,’ she says cheerfully, with each slap. ‘Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you.’

  I stopped being embarrassed by my daughter’s bad behaviour long ago, but this is extreme, even for her. I grab her shoulders. ‘Stop that right now,’ I hiss in her ear. ‘I’m warning you.’

  Lottie screams as if mortally wounded, and then collapses bonelessly in the aisle.

  ‘Oh my God,’ a woman sitting near us exclaims. ‘Is she all right?’

  ‘She’s fine.’ I bend down and shake my daughter. ‘Lottie, get up. You’re making a scene.’

  ‘She’s not moving,’ someone else cries. ‘I think she’s really hurt.’

  The buzz of concern around us intensifies, and a few people half-stand in their seats. A steward hurries down the aisle towards us.

  ‘This woman hit her kid,’ a man accuses.

  ‘I did not hit her. She’s just having a tantrum.’

  The steward looks from the man to me, and then at Lottie, who still hasn’t moved. ‘Does she need a doctor?’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with her,’ I say. ‘Lottie, get up.’

  An older woman a few seats away pats the steward’s arm. ‘It’s the terrible twos. They all go through it.’

  ‘Lottie,’ I say calmly. ‘If you don’t get up right now, there will be no Disney World, no ice-cream, and no television for a week.�
�

  In a battle of wills, my three-year-old daughter is easily my equal. But she’s not just stubborn: she’s smart. She can make a cost/benefit analysis in an instant.

  She sits up, and the concerned whispers around me change to exasperated mutters of disapproval.

  ‘I hate you!’ Lottie says. ‘I wish I’d never been born!’

  I pull her to her feet. ‘That makes two of us,’ I say.

  chapter 02

  alex

  A blast of moist, soupy tropical air envelops us when we leave the aircraft, as if someone has opened the door of a tumble dryer mid-cycle. My sunglasses instantly fog and Lottie’s hair fluffs in a platinum nimbus around her shoulders. I can only imagine the effect the humidity is having on mine.

  We join the crumpled, weary queue snaking towards passport control. When the US border guard asks me whether my visit is for business or pleasure, I’m tempted to tell her neither.

  If you like eating dinner at 5.30 p.m. and wear sandals that fasten with Velcro, Florida is for you. But for those not aged under seven or over seventy, it’s less enchanting.

  We’re here because Marc’s bride is the kind of woman who wants Insta-ready wedding photos of cerulean oceans and sugary beaches, regardless of the inconvenience to everyone else.

  I can’t be the only person who finds the current craze for destination weddings the apogee of entitled narcissism. If it’s romance you’re after, elope. Otherwise, is it fair to expect a brother with three young children, student loans and a mortgage to fork out for five plane tickets or risk becoming a family pariah? And what about elderly relatives whose own life events – marriage, children – are now behind them, and for whom a grandchild’s wedding is one of the few genuine pleasures left?

  For me, flying four thousand miles to enable my daughter to be a bridesmaid at my best friend’s wedding is an expensive nuisance. For the lonely and infirm, unable to travel, such distant celebrations are an exercise in heartbreak.

  It’s the reason Luca and I married twice, once in his mother’s ancestral church in Sicily to please his extensive family, and once in West Sussex for my considerably smaller one. Perhaps a third wedding would have actually made it stick.

  I reclaim our suitcase from the carousel, and Lottie and I join yet another queue, this time for a taxi. We’re both hot, tired and disagreeable by the time we get in the cab, but fortunately my daughter soon falls asleep, her head pillowed in my lap.