The Party

THE PARTY A TOTALLY UNPUTDOWNABLE, TWIST-PACKED PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER TRÍONA WALSH BOOKS BY TRÍONA WALSH The Party The Snowstorm Available in Audio The Snowstorm (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 Chapter 56 Chapter 57 Chapter 58 Chapter 59 Chapter 60 Epilogue The Snowstorm Prologue One Two Hear More from Tríona Walsh Books by Tríona Walsh A Letter from Tríona Acknowledgements * For my favourite parents PROLOGUE Monday 11 p.m. Panting and dizzy, Lizzie felt her knees weaken, leaden, just as she needed them most. Lizzie felt Claire’s feet begin to drag. ‘Stay with me, Mam, stay with me,’ she cried into Claire’s ear. ‘Lizzie,’ she whispered back. Lizzie gave in to the hot tears that had been begging to start. Already nearly blinded by the night, they blurred what little vision she had left. The trees closed in around them. Everything conspiring to obscure a fallen branch on the forest floor. They tumbled. Lizzie gasped as the air slammed out of her lungs. Flat on her back, she stared up at the overhead branches, seeing a tiny gap among the treetops. A star, just visible, twinkled at her. Mocking her. Lizzie made a wish. Let us get out of here alive. Summoning her last reserves, she pushed herself over, pain searing through her wounded arm. Lizzie stretched out, feeling for her mother. Listening for her. She crawled towards Claire’s pained mumbles, feeling the forest floor squelch and ooze through her fingers. She found her mother in a heap, put her hands under her arms and dragged her up against a large tree; using touch and smell to find a way in the all-consuming dark. Lizzie leant back against the damp trunk and hugged her mother to her. ‘So s-s-sorry,’ Claire said, quieter still. Holding her, Lizzie traced her fingertips down Claire’s arm to her wrist. Felt the faint, slow, thump, thump, thump of her pulse. So weak. If they didn’t get to a hospital soon, she knew Claire would die. Lizzie let her tears flow unchecked. Silently. She heaved her mother up again, getting little help from her, her chest shaking with her noiseless tears. A sound. Nearby. The crack and clunk of metal. The shotgun being reloaded. 1 THREE DAYS PREVIOUSLY Friday 2 p.m. Lizzie kicked the rucksack at her feet, loaded with a handful of books and a few changes of clothes. All of which she’d read or worn a million times in the six months she’d been here. She hadn’t really known what to pack when she’d gathered it together. Under pressure she hadn’t been thinking straight at all. Now, as she wiped sweat off her brow and tucked those strands of her long black hair that weren’t already stuck to her face behind her ears, she wished she’d packed a sun hat. Unsurprisingly, she hadn’t thought to bring one six months ago, when it was two degrees in the depths of a bitter winter. When the icy rain seemed to soak right down to her bones and her mother Claire had dropped her off here. And driven away without a backward glance. Lizzie looked down the driveway again. No sign of them. She’d felt forgotten in here. But that’s what she’d wanted. Like how you could ask a search engine to wipe all signs of you from their results. A sought-for forgottenness. Lizzie and her mother had agreed they needed time apart. The accident had been the breaking point. Lizzie shook her head, still horrified that she’d driven drunk. And, unforgivably, with her brother in the car. Liam hadn’t been seriously hurt. Just that nasty gash near his chin. But even a tiny scratch would have been too much. Claire couldn’t look at her after that. Their barely hanging in there family, already half destroyed, and Lizzie had done this. Claire had driven her straight here. She’d agreed to let Lizzie know how Liam was – giving in to her tearful pleadings – but that was it. No visits. No chatty emails. A clean break. Lizzie picked up the rucksack and slung it on her back. She’d go down to the road and wait there. She looked over her shoulder at the door to the centre. There was no one to say goodbye to her other than the centre’s cat, a ginger tom, who watched her lazily from the shade. Most of the residents had been much older than her, without much in common other than their addictions. But in a way they’d still helped her, even as she’d kept her distance. Just seeing them, these inmates who were twice her age, stuck in a never-ending cycle of self-destruction. She didn’t want that to be her. She was only twenty-three and filled with so much shame having messed up her life this much already. With a little wave to Castor the cat, she started down the long, dusty drive. At the gates her Doc Marten boots clunked over the cattle grid. She dumped her bag down again, by the large rock with St Brigid’s Farm Rehab Centre etched into it. Catchy name, she thought, laughing to herself. Really rolls off the tongue. It hadn’t been easy, or glamorous. But it had worked. Lizzie was going home, clean. Well, she wasn’t going home directly. They were heading west for the long weekend. She wasn’t exactly