The Running Club

About the authorAli Lowe has been a journalist for twenty years. She has written for bridal magazines, parenting titles, websites and newspapers in London and then Australia, after she moved to Sydney sixteen years ago on a trip that was meant to last a year. She was Features Editor at OK! in London, where she memorably stalked celebrities in Elton John’s garden at his annual White Tie and Tiara ball.Ali lives on the northern beaches of Sydney with her husband and three young children. The Running Club is her second novel. Also by Ali LoweThe Trivia Night ALI LOWEThe Running Clubwww.hodder.co.uk First published in Great Britain in 2023 by Hodder & StoughtonAn Hachette UK companyCopyright © Ali Lowe 2023The right of Ali Lowe to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.Cover image: @ Getty Images @ Shutterstock.comAll rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British LibraryHardback ISBN 978 1 529 34885 9eBook ISBN 978 1 529 34886 6Hodder & Stoughton LtdCarmelite House50 Victoria EmbankmentLondon EC4Y 0DZwww.hodder.co.uk For Joey. ‘There’s nothing like a sister to understand the real you.’ CONTENTSAbout the AuthorAlso by Ali LoweTitle PageCopyrightDedicationPart One: JealousyPart Two: RevengePart Three: RebirthAcknowledgements PrologueI turn left onto the pavement, always left. Glance down the hill towards Esperance Reserve, stop at the lights to tighten the laces of my brand-new running shoes. The rules of the running club are the same as they have always been: keep your breath steady, keep your mind sharp, record your laps! Only now there’s a new one: don’t get killed.I slow down as I reach the seafront, turn to admire my slender silhouette in the French window of Esperance’s most extravagant beachside home. A polished red sports car in the driveway just adds to the grandeur, sitting pretty on the verge of the expansive front lawn with a gaudy designer water feature as its centrepiece. Next, a large, white-fronted home with bottle-green Italian-style shutters and out-of-control jasmine creeping up the façade, wily in its efforts. Worth six million dollars, I heard. Every house comes with a hefty price tag in Esperance. You pay for paradise – for neat front lawns and infinity pools; for snaking, flower-lined pathways and white picket fences; for polished bus-stop windows and fancy lattes: soya milk, rice milk, oat milk, goat milk!You Part One: JealousySix Weeks Earlier MONDAY Chapter OneCaroleThe house is a hive of activity.I find it easier to dedicate a particular day of the week to tradesmen, since it lessens the general household upheaval. Today the cleaners are here, and the gardener, too. I am very particular about Summerfield’s lawn. I must have the stripes, in alternating shades of green, and Ryan is the only tradesman who knows this. Lottie would flinch at the word ‘tradesman’ – apparently they are ‘tradespeople’ these days – but I don’t have time for any of that.Ryan has been doing our lawn for a long time. He travels all the way down the peninsula from Shivers Beach (there are no tradespeople living in Esperance, they’re rarer than hens’ teeth here), but the money is worth it. We pay him a lot, because good staff are always worth the extra dollars.‘I’d like it to look like Wimbledon,’ I told him when he first started gardening for us, five years ago. That’s the way the lawn has always been, even before my parents handed this house over to Max and me. Alternating stripes in