The Perfect Son Read online

  Praise for The Perfect Son

  “I thought I knew exactly where The Perfect Son was going and congratulated myself on working it out. But The Perfect Son had my head spinning 360 degrees. . . . Brilliant!”

  —Sandie Jones, New York Times bestselling author of The Other Woman

  “A powerful, unpredictable debut thriller about a mother’s attempt to reassemble her life from the shards of tragedy. Lauren North’s skillful narrative casts everyone as a suspect and keeps the reader guessing until the final, emotion-packed pages.”

  —David Bell, USA Today bestselling author of Layover

  “A captivating, suspenseful thriller that draws you in—with a twist that will take your breath away.”

  —T. M. Logan, author of Lies

  “As satisfyingly intriguing and page-turning as you could possibly want. An emotional read—the end is a shocker!”

  —Emma Curtis, author of When I Find You

  “Beautifully written psychological suspense about the power of love after a life-changing loss. A sense of impending doom and foreboding gripped me from the first page. . . . The ending is stunning and powerful.”

  —Mary Torjussen, author of The Girl I Used to Be

  “A heartrending evocation of grief that packs a devious punch. It left me reeling.”

  —Lesley Kara, author of the international bestseller The Rumor

  BERKLEY

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019

  Copyright © 2019 by North Writing Services Ltd.

  Readers Guide copyright © 2019 by North Writing Services Ltd.

  Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

  BERKLEY and the BERKLEY & B colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: North, Lauren, author.

  Title: The perfect son / Lauren North.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Berkley, 2019.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018058729 | ISBN 9781984803849 (paperback) | ISBN 9781984803856 (ebook)

  Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Suspense. | FICTION / Contemporary Women. | GSAFD: Suspense fiction.

  Classification: LCC PR6114.O7784 P47 2019 | DDC 823/.92—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018058729

  Corgi Books UK trade paperback edition / June 2019

  Berkley trade paperback edition / August 2019

  Cover design by Laywan Kwan

  Cover image of cake by Max Oppenheim; image of Rose flowers by Elena Schweltzer

  Title page art: Abstract Smoke Photo by Lifestyle Studio/Shutterstock

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_2

  For my friend Kathryn Jones

  CONTENTS

  Praise for The Perfect Son

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  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

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Acknowledgments

  Readers Guide

  About the Author

  CHAPTER 1

  Monday, April 9

  1 DAY AFTER JAMIE’S BIRTHDAY

  There is a snippet of time, oh so short, when the morphine in my system begins to fade, but the pain is still fuzzy. Fuzzy enough for me to be certain of four things:

  ONE—I’m in the hospital.

  TWO—I’ve been stabbed.

  THREE—You’re alive.

  FOUR—Jamie is missing.

  Five minutes, is my guess. Five minutes where my heart is pounding with a force that makes my entire body jolt along with it. Five minutes where I know I have to do something. Our son is missing and I’m not sure anyone realizes this. I’m not sure anyone is looking for him. Five minutes before I become a prisoner to the pain that tears through my stomach like I’m being carved up from the inside out, and I have to clamp my mouth shut not to scream out for you and the drugs.

  It is in these five minutes that I realize Shelley is beside me. Her hand is clammy on my skin and I wonder how long she’s been sitting in the plastic chair by my bed. I pull my hand away as my eyes shoot open and lock with hers.

  “Tess. How are you?” She leans forward an inch and I catch the scent of her Chanel perfume. The smell triggers a memory of the last time I saw her, standing in our kitchen beside Ian, the knife from Jamie’s birthday cake gripped in her hand. The only sound the split splat of blood dripping from the knife to the floor.

  The inside of my mouth feels furry. Cotton wool in my cheeks. I can’t find my voice.

  “Do you want some water?” she asks, reading my thoughts in the way she always does, in the same way you do. There’s a jug beside her and she pours water into a plastic glass and holds it up to me, but I shake my head, causing the pa
le blue walls of the hospital ward to spin before my eyes.

  “Where’s Jamie?” The words are shards of glass in my throat, but I force them out.

  Shelley’s head jerks around, a furtive glance to the three nurses at the desk by the far wall. “I’m sorry, Tess. Please, just concentrate on getting yourself better. You’re safe here.”

  I’m safe? Safe from what? From who? Where’s Jamie?

  A bead of sweat forms on my forehead and tickles my skin as it rolls into my tangle of curls. The pain is waking up in the pit of my belly. My breath is shallow—in and out, in and out—as the searing hurt rises up to my chest.

  “You did this,” I whisper. “You and Ian.”

  Shelley shakes her head, swishing her smooth blond hair from side to side. “I only wanted to help you.”

  “Mark has been here. He’ll fix this.”

  “Mark?” Something in her face changes. A split-second shift where her pupils dilate then shrink again. I’ve scared her.

  “Mark is dead,” she says, slowing down her words. “He died in January.”

  That’s not true. Mark has been here. He’s sat where you are sitting. His fingers have stroked the back of my hand, I’m sure of it.

  She doesn’t reply, and it takes me a moment to realize I’ve not actually spoken.

  “Mark is . . . He’s—” The pain is growing like a beast inside me, and all of a sudden I can’t find the words or the certainty. You’ve been here, haven’t you, Mark?

  “Get some rest.” She reaches out and squeezes my hand. “You’ll feel better once you’ve had some rest and seen the doctor.”

  “I want to see Jamie.” I try to move my hand away but I can’t. “Bring him to me, please.” My voice is pleading and desperate but I don’t care.

  “I can’t do that,” she says with another swish of hair. She smiles, but I see the fear lurking in her pretty green eyes. What are you afraid of?

  “He’s my son. You can’t keep him from me.”

  Shelley squeezes my hand a final time before stepping away from the bed. “This was a bad idea. I shouldn’t have come. I’m sorry, Tess.”

  I watch her talk to the nurse with the cherry red–dyed hair at the end of the ward. They both turn to stare and then Shelley is gone. Don’t let her go, I want to scream. Jamie isn’t missing. Shelley has him. I’m not sure which is worse.

  Where are you, Mark? Jamie needs us.

  The nurse bustles toward me. A voice from another bed calls out and she tells them “Just a minute” before reaching me and unhooking my chart from the end of the bed. She makes a note. About what? What did Shelley tell her? What is she writing down? I want to ask, but the pain is crippling me and I can feel the scream building.

  A machine is beeping somewhere. Each piercing screech of noise is a screwdriver jamming into my skull.

  “That’s a good friend you’ve got there,” she says in a strong Dublin accent.

  She isn’t my friend. She never was.

  “My son—” I can’t speak the final words.

  “I’ll get your next dose of pain medication,” the nurse says, slotting my chart back into place. I desperately want to snatch it up and read her comments, but I don’t. I can’t. Everything hurts.

  Only after the next dose has been pumped into my body and I’m sliding down down down into the murky depths of unconsciousness do I hear Shelley’s voice.

  “You’re safe here.”

  Am I? Safe from whom? Where’s Jamie?

  My thoughts, like the pain now, are fuzzy, and I cling to what I know.

  ONE—I’m in the hospital.

  I try to remember the rest, but it’s gone.

  How did I get here?

  How did it come to this?

  CHAPTER 2

  Transcript BETWEEN ELLIOT SADLER (ES) AND TERESA CLARKE (TC) (INPATIENT AT OAKLANDS HOSPITAL, HARTFIELD WARD), TUESDAY, APRIL 10, 4:45. SESSION 1

  ES: Good afternoon, Tess. How are you feeling?

  TC: Me? I’m fine, it’s Jamie you need to worry about. I keep telling you he’s missing and no one is listening to me. I told the other one—the policeman—the young one with the red hair who came to speak to me on the ward this morning. I think Shelley has him, or Ian. She knows something anyway. No one is taking this seriously. Please, Detective Sadler, tell me what exactly are you doing? I have to know what’s happened to Jamie.

  ES: The police are doing everything they can, Tess.

  TC: They just have to find Shelley. She was here at the hospital yesterday, for God’s sake. She knows where Jamie is. If I could just get out of here then I could find her.

  ES: If you want to help, can you tell me what happened two nights ago? It was a Sunday. You were at home.

  TC: Sunday was two days ago? Jamie has been missing for two days? Oh my God.

  ES: What happened?

  TC: It was Jamie’s birthday. He turned eight. We were celebrating.

  ES: Who was there with you? Who stabbed you?

  TC: I (pause) I don’t remember.

  ES: What do you remember?

  TC: I remember Shelley was there. I thought she was our friend. I thought she was trying to help us. She got on so well with Jamie. This is all my fault. Jamie is my whole world. If anything happens to him (cries).

  NOTES: Session suspended due to patient distress.

  CHAPTER 3

  Monday, February 12

  55 DAYS TO JAMIE’S BIRTHDAY

  On the day you died, I lit a bonfire in the garden.

  Yes, really. Your born-and-bred city wife finally adapting to village life. It was that pile of bloody sticks smack bang in the middle of the lawn that made me do it. How long ago had you trimmed the hedges along the road and left the debris in a forgotten pile (another job half-finished)?

  It was before Christmas, I know that much.

  Of course, I didn’t know you were dead. Maybe if I’d stayed in the kitchen, scrubbing the grime from the insides of the cupboards and chatting along to Ken Bruce on BBC Radio 2, then I’d have known before the police knocked on the door. But I didn’t because in that moment, on that morning, the sticks annoyed me more than the grime, and the day was dry—the sky a crystal clear blue—so I marched outside in my slippers with the matches and lighter fuel and the Sunday paper, and whoosh, up it went.

  There was a moment of raw thrill. A moment when the crackling of branches and the smell unlocked memories of hot dogs and wobbly-headed Guy Fawkes dummies. A moment when I wished I’d waited for Jamie so he could see it. I had half a mind to dance around it, I was so blinking chuffed with myself.

  Then the flames started licking the top of the stack, and gray smoke billowed out in dragon-like puffs. All of a sudden the smell was no longer nostalgic but scratching the back of my throat, and I was standing in soggy slippers in a snowstorm of ash. I dashed back into the house, shaking the ash out of my curls, laughing at myself and the stupidity of my devil-may-care moment, scanning the worktops for my phone so I could send you a photo.

  I never did get round to texting you. Not that you’d have seen it. You were dead.

  I try to remember what it felt like to laugh like I did that day, but I can’t. The memory is of someone else now. Four Mondays is all it’s been. Four weeks is a lifetime, it turns out. I wonder if you’d recognize me if we passed on the street. The life-of-its-own mass of strawberry blond curls is now limp and hangs scraggily down my back. I finally lost the extra baby weight too. It took only seven years and your death to do it.

  Four Mondays. Four weeks without you.

  A stream of sunlight finds its way through the lattice pattern of the window, illuminating diamond shapes on the kitchen table and the small box in front of me. I watch the diamonds hit the dark wood of the cupboard doors that hang wonky on their hinges.

  I hate this kitch
en.

  How can a house this big have a kitchen so minuscule and gloomy? I miss the old kitchen. It’s not the same tearing longing I feel when I think about our life, but it’s there all the same—a quick tug, a flash of the gleaming white cupboards, smooth floors, and space.

  My eyes fall to the box on the table, sitting beside a bowl of two soggy Weetabix I couldn’t eat. The box is small and duck egg blue. Fluoxetine is printed in clear black letters above the rectangular label with my name on it: Mrs. Teresa Clarke. 1 x 20mg tablet per day.

  The doctor made it seem so simple.“It’s not uncommon for grief to lead to depression, Mrs. Clarke. From the symptoms you’ve described, I would recommend a course of antidepressants. We’ll start with three months’ worth and then I’d like you to come back and see me. I would also like you to see a bereavement counselor.”

  I wanted something to help me sleep, a drug that could pull me into nothingness without the nightmares, but he said I was depressed. I don’t feel depressed. There are a lot of times when all I feel is cold.

  You don’t need them, Tessie.

  Hearing your voice softens the ache in my chest, but like the playdough Jamie used to love, the ache is putty and stretches across my body. I know you’re dead. I know the voice inside my head isn’t real. It’s just me saying what I know you’d say to me if you were here, but it helps.

  You don’t need them.

  You said that last time when I could barely get out of bed in the morning to take Jamie to preschool. You told me I could power through it, mind over matter—push the sadness and the emptiness away.

  It worked, didn’t it? You did get better.

  Eventually.

  The space behind my eyes throbs with the threat of tears. My thoughts are running away with me. I focus on the sounds of the house, on what is real. There are plenty of sounds to hear. The hot water pipes creak and bang, the wind in the fireplaces howls ghostlike into the rooms, the windowpanes rattle in the rotting wood. But these sounds are drowned out now by the noises of our son. Thud thud thud—his footsteps, heavy with sleep, make their way to the bathroom.