Claire Seeber
The Girl with The Fragile Mind
AVON
A division of HarperCollinsPublishers
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www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain as Fragile Minds by HarperCollins Publishers, London, 2011
This edition published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2015
Copyright © Claire Seeber 2011
Claire Seeber 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, down-loaded, 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.
ISBN-13: 9781847562074
Ebook edition © MARCH 2015 ISBN: 9780008142421
Version: 2016-03-12
‘An intense psychological thriller’
OK!
‘An absorbing page-turner’
Closer
‘A powerful and sensitive treatment of every parent’s worst nightmare’
Laura Wilson, The Guardian
For Fenn and Raffi, again.
All my love, always.
And in memory of my beloved grandpa,
Roy Livingstone Holmes.
Lemonade lollies forever.
‘Whoever takes one life, takes the world entire,
Whoever saves a single life, saves the world entire.’
The Talmud
‘No rescue? What, a prisoner? I am even
The natural fool of fortune. Use me well.’
King Lear, Act IV, Scene VI
There are plenty of beginnings, but only one end to my story.
At the police station in the small country town, they brought me tea and toast, but I didn’t touch it; I pushed it away. I didn’t trust them. Any of them, any more.
My feet were cut and bleeding; I didn’t care. They matched my sore hands. In my head I was still running, and the road was cold and rough beneath my naked feet and I didn’t care. The pain pushed me on. I was a streak of white light in a black surround, and then you were beside me, only you couldn’t keep up, so I leant down and carried you, light as thistledown, in my arms. No one could stop us; I would run and run and run—
Someone was behind me. I could feel my heart beating, I could hear the blood thumping in my ears, I could feel the breath squeezing through my ribs and out of me; I couldn’t outrun them.