The Summer Holiday

THE SUMMER HOLIDAY AN UTTERLY ADDICTIVE PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER FULL OF SUSPENSE S.E. LYNES BOOKS BY S.E. LYNES The Summer Holiday The Ex The Baby Shower Her Sister's Secret The Housewarming Can You See Her? The Lies We Hide The Women The Proposal Valentina The Pact Mother Available in audio The Ex (Available in the UK and the US) The Baby Shower (Available in the UK and the US) Her Sister's Secret (Available in the UK and the US) 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 Prologue Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter 40 Chapter 41 Chapter 42 Chapter 43 Chapter 44 Chapter 45 Chapter 46 Chapter 47 Chapter 48 Chapter 49 Chapter 50 Chapter 51 Chapter 52 Chapter 53 Chapter 54 Chapter 55 The Housewarming Chapter 1 Hear More from S.E. Lynes Books by S.E. Lynes A Letter from S.E. Lynes The Ex The Baby Shower Her Sister's Secret Can You See Her? The Lies We Hide The Women The Proposal Valentina The Pact Mother Acknowledgments * For Ruth Tross, with love and deep appreciation PROLOGUE A woman in white staggers into the road. She is raging. She is drunk. She has been running for over half an hour. Black eye make-up streams down her face. Her feet are raw, blistered. It is dark, darker than she thought it would be, and there is no one around. Perhaps she shouldn’t have stormed off. Perhaps she should have stayed nearer town. But no, she had to get away – away from them. She stumbles, rights herself. Swearing, she takes off her sandals. Zigzags on barefoot, knuckling away black tears: the damn wonky pavements, the stupid invisible holes. She will walk down the middle of this pathetic potholed street. She will walk on broken glass if she has to. Who cares? Who cares if you’re barefoot? Who cares if you’re walking down the middle of the street? Who cares about where you are versus where you’re supposed to be? She can dance down the middle of this road if she wants to. Wave her arms over her head, shout obscenities at the top of her lungs. She can throw herself under a bus if she wants to, flip two fat Vs to the world as the black tyres flatten her. Or off the top of a building, shout one last to hell with you, to hell with both of you before the tarmac smacks the life from her. Yes, why not? No one cares. No one cares about anyone. Her sandals dangle one from each hand: long, skinny straps, wedges swinging like wooden blocks, like doorstops. She is properly crying now, snotty wails of fury and frustration, alcohol and CHAPTER 1 KATE ‘Jeff?’ Kate calls up the polished oak staircase. ‘Jeff, are you coming?’ She waits, senses rather than hears him shift, his footsteps padding across their bedroom two floors up. ‘Kate?’ She can tell from the squashed sound of her name that he’s leaning over the banister. If she stood in a certain spot and glanced up, she would see him looking down on her, but she doesn’t move. ‘Are you coming?’ In the hall mirror, she checks her appearance, grimaces, pulls her baseball cap low until it almost meets her shades. ‘I’ve just got to finish something,’ Jeff says. He has descended one floor, is standing now at the top of the first staircase. He is wearing his Lycra running shorts, his tanned, muscular legs all she can see, his white sports socks like the paws of a bulldog. ‘You go on ahead,’ the legs say. ‘It won’t take long. I’ll see you at Bar Melitón in… shall we say an hour?’ ‘Really? But it’s the first day of our holiday.’ Kate hears and hates the whining tone in her voice. ‘We only got here last night.’ ‘It’s just a quick thing. I’ll see you at the bar.’ She sighs heavily, hating this noise just as much as her tone of voice, hating him too, a bit. She has been so looking forward to this holiday, their first as just the two of them for seventeen years. ‘OK,’ she says, making an effort now to sound cheerful; it is, after all, just a loose end he has to tie up – understandable at his high career level. ‘I’ll text