Photographer Jenson Cole has a nearly life. His job shooting weddings makes him a decent living, and he answers to no one, but it's not his dream job. He lives in Folkestone near the highly desirable harbour area, but the apartment is small and lacks a garden. And then there's his fiancée Ellie, who is smart, beautiful, and soon to be his wife. An almost perfect life. But for some people, almost perfect isn't good enough.
Jensen has never forgotten the one that got away. Phoebe Miller has haunted his dreams for ten years, and he still thinks about her every day. Ten years on, returning home from a jog one bright spring morning, he spots a couple emptying boxes from a removal van into a recently sold house. Jensen is stunned. Phoebe is back and now living only two streets away. He runs on, but once again, his heart is wild with hope. For the next eight months, he jogs past her house every day, hoping to catch a glimpse, hoping to catch her eye, hoping for any contact to kindle a spark of romance. He loves Ellie, but Phoebe, she calls to him above all others.
One cold October morning, everything changes. During another run past her house, he sees her at the window, paralysed with fear. Jensen goes to her and asks if she needs help? And yes, she does. Her partner is dead at the bottom of the stairs, and she is hiding a terrible secret. Phoebe tells Jensen that bad people are coming for her, including a crazed colleague, Adrian Moore, and she needs to get out of town, fast. It's the moment Jensen has been waiting for.
Four hours later, Jensen has whisked Phoebe away to a safe place, his parent's luxurious annexe tucked deep in the heart of The Mendip Hills, Somerset. Wrongly, he thinks she has clothes in the two suitcases she brought. But Phoebe isn't at all what she seems, and worse, it soon becomes apparent that she is not attracted to him. What will he tell Ellie, and how will he convince his parents that Phoebe isn't a lover? And Adrian Moore is closer than he knows.
Jensen realises he has made a terrible mistake, yet he cannot escape Phoebe's mesmerising hold over him. Meanwhile, Adrian Moore has already tracked down Jensen's fiancée, Ellie and convinced her that her beloved is having an affair. They both hurry to Somerset, one searching for the truth, the other for violent vengeance.
Chapter 1
Jensen Cole ran every day, and he hated it. The relentless pounding of his feet against pavement, passing the same old houses on the same tired streets, dodging the dog walkers with their stupidly long leads and their dangerously marauding mutts. Jensen even loathed other joggers, finding them at best pavement-hoggers, and at worst, a supercilious breed that never tired of boring others with talk of their new personal bests, the correct type of running shoes, and how to avoid nipple rub. Jensen ran because he liked to be lean, and he didn't care too much to be picky with his food, so every day, at no particular time, he jogged a minimum of 5k. Twenty-five minutes, never longer unless he was feeling unwell.
To make things more interesting, Jensen had tried mixing things up, picking alternative routes through the ancient town of Folkestone, with its twisting hills and narrow pavements, but for well over a year now he had remained coastal, winding his way west then back again, the sea always close by. Tonight, the October air had a bitter chill, hinting at the winter to come, and already the houses were glowing with warm, yellow light. Two roads from his apartment block he entered a salubrious avenue, expensive cars parked in spacious drives with well-kept properties either side. Halfway along, Jensen paused the timer on his watch and bent to tie his trainer's lace. There was nothing wrong with the lace, it was adequately secured, but he fiddled with it anyway, and used the opportunity to stare across the road into number 27. The two-storey dwelling was a little shabbier than its neighbours. An iron gate heavy with rust sagged on its hinges, and it was always angled in the same position, open and limp towards the hedge behind it. Plastic double glazing had weathered badly, now a permanent dirty white, and the window openings undersized for contemporary tastes. The attached garage was too narrow for a modern car, and the up-and-over door was dented, with flakes of paint slowly peeling away to reveal the drab grey metal panels beneath. The roof tiles were heavy with moss and seagull droppings, and a chimney stack needed repointing. Jensen had no idea who might have lived their previously, but he guessed it was a senior citizen who had survived there for the last difficult years of their life, with no concern over the state of the house's external appearance. A Seat Ibiza sat alone on the drive, and Jensen knew exactly what that meant.
She was alone inside the house.
He often wondered what she did for a living. She kept regular hours, but some evenings she was home later than others. It had been over ten years since he had spoken to her, and even then it had only been a 'Hi' or a 'How are you doing?' Jensen sometimes spotted her walking home, dressed in what could be either business clothes or casual wear - a skirt, a blouse, never anything provocative, and invariably she appeared tired, often dragging heavy bags of shopping by her side. If she recognised him from all that time ago, she never let on. Jensen frowned. Tonight, the curtains were already drawn. He sometimes caught her in the lounge, walking absently around, the TV alive in the background, but tonight not a sliver of the outside world was being allowed in. Jensen finished his pretend-fiddling with his lace and restarted the timer on his watch, then ran the last few minutes home at a swifter pace, but even as he slid the key into the lock of his front door, he was still thinking about the woman who lived at 27 Kestrel Avenue.