Finding Lucy: A suspenseful and moving novel that you won't be able to put down
Every family has its secrets. None more than this one. Alison’s life has been a lonely one, but now it’s time to change that. With no children in her future there is only one answer – she’ll take one.She’ll rescue a girl who needs a better home. A better mother. A better life.It will be the start of a perfect family, and no one will question who Lucy really is. Especially not Lucy herself…A dark story of psychological suspense, perfect for fans of Kerry Fisher, Liane Moriarty and Linda Green.
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DIANA FINLEY was born and grew up in Germany, where her father was a British Army officer. After a move to London, at eighteen, Diana spent a year living with nomadic people in the remote Pamir mountains of Afghanistan – an experience about which she wrote several stories and accounts. These helped secure her first job, as copywriter and then as writer and editor of children’s information books for Macdonald Educational Publishers.
A move to North East England meant changing direction. Diana took a degree in Speech and Psychology, and worked for many years as a Specialist in Autism, publishing a professional book. In 2011 she completed an MA in Creative Writing with distinction at Newcastle University. In 2014 her debut novel, The Loneliness of Survival, a moving family saga, was published.
Diana enjoys exploring complex and often contradictory characters and emotions in her writing. Finding Lucy, her second novel, is a dark, intriguing, psychological story about every parent’s worst nightmare – a stolen child.
Finding Lucy
DIANA FINLEY
HQ
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018
Copyright © Diana Finley
Diana Finley asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
E-book Edition © September 2018 ISBN: 9780008297749
Version: 2018-11-05
For Harvey, who may read it one day.
Table of Contents
It was after seeing the grave that I finally decided to take a child. There was nothing special about it – the grave, that is. Not one of those ghastly, over-sentimentalised affairs sprouting angels’ wings or teddy bears. Quite plain. A simple stone and a concise message:
In memory of our dearly loved little girl
Lucy Sarah Brown aged 2 years
Born 20-9-1982 – Died 16-10-1984
Safe in the hands of Jesus
Somehow, imagining little Lucy’s life – and her demise – touched me deeply, coming as it did just a month after Mother’s death. How desperately tragic. What might have killed a child so young? A car accident? Meningitis? A hole in the heart? How her parents must have suffered. How they must have grieved for their “dearly loved little girl” – still be grieving, in fact; she’d been gone only two months, after all. So very sad.
As I thought about it, I almost wished I could share my plans with them: with Lucy’s original parents. Let them know that, in a sense, their Lucy was going to be brought back to life; I was going to bring Lucy back to life! Perhaps they would be comforted by that thought. Of course, telling them would never be possible, and anyway, she would cease to be their Lucy. She would become my Lucy. Lucy would be my secret. She would be my daughter, my secret daughter. How perfect! Lucy Brown. A fine, tasteful name – yet “normal”. Not one that stood out too vividly, just like the sad little grave.
It wasn’t as though I had planned the whole thing beforehand, thought it through – not at that stage. The idea grew out of a medley of thoughts that had been swirling in my mind; indistinct, like miscellaneous letter-shaped noodles stirred into soup, sometimes emerging for a moment to make meaningful combinations on the surface, then breaking up and disappearing into the depths of the pot. Stumbling upon the grave that day drew the letters together, began to make order and sense of them. I had decided.
