The Holiday Home

THE HOLIDAY HOME A COMPLETELY UNPUTDOWNABLE AND ADDICTIVE PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER DANIEL HURST BOOKS BY DANIEL HURST The Holiday Home The Doctor’s Wife The Couple in the Cabin The Intruder What My Family Saw The Accident We Tell No One The Couple at Table Six We Used to Live Here The Wrong Woman He Was a Liar The Woman at the Door The Passenger Til Death Do Us Part Available in Audio The Couple in the Cabin (Available in the UK and the US) CONTENTS Prologue TWO DAYS EARLIER 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 Epilogue The Doctor’s Wife Prologue TWO WEEKS EARLIER One Hear More from Daniel Books by Daniel Hurst A Letter from Daniel PROLOGUE The silence in this part of the world is deafening, the area around this luxury log cabin in the Scottish Highlands so quiet and still that it’s starting to become unnerving. Or maybe it just feels that way because of everything that has happened since I got here. I move around the cabin to distract myself from the incessant silence and, as I do, a floorboard creaks beneath my left foot, the noise so loud that it startles me. And now I can hear my heartbeat thudding in my chest. I suspect I can hear the blood pumping around my body too, or at least feel it, but I know that’s not a normal thing to be aware of. I’m usually occupied enough to not be thinking about such a thing, but here, it’s as if time has stopped and I’m aware of everything. Like the call of the bird in the trees just outside the cabin, its piercing shriek cutting through the quiet like a hot knife through butter. Or like the loud snapping of a branch on the forest floor nearby, perhaps caused by a deer. Or could it be a human? And lastly, the deafening gunshot in the distance, a sound so loud that it causes me to cover my ears and close my eyes. When I open them again, I immediately rush over to the window and look outside, afraid of what I might see but needing to check, nonetheless. All I can see are the trees surrounding me on all sides. But that gunshot is still ringing in my ears, and I won’t forget it easily. I need to know who pulled the trigger. And is anybody hurt? My husband is out there somewhere, and I know this involves him. I also know that by the time I leave this log cabin behind for good, things are never going to be the same again. That’s because too much has already happened since my family has been here. Shocking secrets have been revealed. Precious hearts have been broken. And now that I’ve heard that gunshot, it means something even more terrible has happened. Not everybody who came to this holiday house will be leaving it alive. TWO DAYS EARLIER ONE NICOLA We left England and crossed into Scotland at least three hours ago, but we’ve still not quite reached our destination yet. Not that I’m complaining. Not with views like this passing by on the other side of my car window. Acres of lush, green pine forests surround the skinny stretch of black road as we move along it, and beyond the tops of the trees come the mountains, their peaks protruding up into a dark and moody sky that my husband, Ryan, thinks holds a storm that will unleash plenty of rain at any moment. The drops of water that begin to bounce off the windscreen a few minutes later prove him right, not that I would ever give him such credit verbally because I wouldn’t want to encourage him. He’s already right, though, because he was the one who predicted that going to Scotland might not be the best place to get some summer sun when I first mentioned this trip to him. I was optimistic and assumed the weather wouldn’t be too bad at this time of year, but I’m being proven wrong so far. As the weather worsens and the mountains become obscured by the low clouds, those of us in the car begin to spend less time looking forward to where we are going and a little more time worrying if we’re going to make it to the holiday home intact. That is until the man at the wheel speaks and tries to put our minds at ease. ‘This is nothing,’ Lewis says with a relaxed shrug of the shoulders. ‘You should have seen it the last time we came up here. There was snow on the ground and the temperature on the dashboard told me it was minus eight outside. Ain’t that right, Kim?’ ‘Yeah, it was freezing,’ my best friend confirms from her position beside her husband in the front passenger seat. ‘I’m pretty sure I had icicles coming off my nose at one point.’ ‘It wasn’t that bad,’ Lewis chuckles. ‘Was it, Cole? You enjoyed our trip up here at Christmas, didn’t you?’ I turn to look at the fifteen-year-old boy sitting behind me in the back of this large people carrier, but he doesn’t see me because his head is buried in his mobile phone; the only answer he gives to his father’s question comes in the form of a barely audible grunt. That’s about as much as anyone in this car has got out of Cole since we set off on this trip four hours ago; the typical teenager has made it painfully obvious that he isn’t thrilled about the prospect of spending three days in the middle