Two Little Girls: The gripping new psychological thriller you need to read in summer 2018
Two little girls walked to their deaths and nobody noticed…A gripping new thriller featuring the brilliantly complex psychologist Dr Jessie Flynn, who struggles with a dark past.Two bodies on the beach. One killer out for revenge.Two years ago, a young girl was murdered while playing on the beach and left in a heart of shells, a doll by her side. Now another girl is found on the same stretch of sand, another heart, another doll, and psychologist Jessie Flynn is called in to assist the investigation.But she’s being led into a web of lies and deceit by a new patient, Laura – a deeply disturbed woman who wants Jessie as her friend. When links emerge between Laura and the two dead girls, Jessie’s worst nightmare becomes reality. For in the dark world of a twisted killer, she begins to realize just how treacherous friends can be…
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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.
HarperCollinsPublishers
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London, SE1 9GF
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018
Copyright © Kate Medina 2018
Cover design by Claire Ward © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018
Cover photographs © Idiko Neer/Trevillion Images (shoes in sand); Joana Kruse/Arcangel Images (sea foam). Back cover © Rachel Ennis/Arcangel Images (girl paddling)
Kate Medina 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
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Ebook Edition © MAY 2017
ISBN: 9780008214029
Source ISBN: 9780008214005
Version: 2018-09-25
For Isabel and Anna, my two little girls
Table of Contents
Though the summer holidays had ended for most, there were still a few children playing on the sand, their parents – holiday-makers, she could tell – setting out windbreaks and unpacking the colourful detritus of a family morning at the beach. Others, local mothers in jeans and T-shirts, walked barefoot with friends and dogs, keeping a roving eye on their offspring.
The sun was shining, but the air felt laden with the threat of rain and Carolynn could make out the dark trace of a sea storm hovering to the south of the Isle of Wight, misting the horizon from view. Would it rain or would the sun win out, she wondered. Would the storm come in to shore or blow out to the English Channel? Who knew; the weather by the sea, like life, so unpredictable.
Raising a hand to shade her eyes from the sunlight knifing through the clouds, she watched three little girls in pastel swimming costumes throwing a tennis ball to each other, a small dog – one of those handbag dogs she’d never seen the point of – running, yapping between them.
It was a good sign that she had brought herself to West Wittering beach this morning when she knew that families with children would be here. Evidence of her growing strength, that she could stand to watch little girls playing, listen to their shouts and their laughter.
She was healing. Except for the nightmares.
On the edge of a carefully constructed calm, aware though that her heart was beating harder in her chest – but still softly enough to ignore, and she would ignore it, she could ignore it, she wouldn’t have another panic attack, not now – she slithered down from the dunes feeling the talcum-powder sand between her bare toes, the warmth that it had soaked up from the long summer. A ball streamed past her feet, followed, seconds later, by a little girl, the youngest of the three, nine years old or so from the look of her, just a year younger than Zoe had been. She bent to pick up the ball, flicked a sandy knot of hair from her face and smiled up at Carolynn as she walked back to her sisters. Carolynn watched her go, transfixed by the shape of her body in the pale pink swimsuit; still pudgy, no waist, puppy fat padding her arms and legs – just how she remembered Zoe’s limbs, a perfect dimple behind each elbow.
She realized suddenly that the little girl had stopped, was looking back over her shoulder, pale blue eyes under blonde brows, wrinkling with concern. Carolynn forced a quick smile, felt it flicker and fade. She dragged her gaze away from the girl. She wouldn’t want her to think that there was something wrong with her, that she was anything other than a mother out for a walk on the beach, just like the little girl’s own mother. That she was someone to be feared. A danger.
