RATING: OK
SPOILERS!!!
I have to say that I enjoyed the best half of the book much better than the last part when the revelations are disclosed. I think the secrets are too unbelievable, and there are too many dead people in the end.
Kat becomes more and more paranoid as the calls continue and she feels that someone is watching her. Nick is still aloof and doesn’t believe her. Things come to a head when she starts to think that Nick is having an affair with Clare, and Ada, Clare’s daughter, is his.
It has been a while since she last talked to Lisa, so since she is unavailable on her mobile, she calls the hospital where she works, and she discovers that she doesn’t work there. Then in her nursery room, which Kat had prepared for the children she was supposed to adopt, she finds a frame picture she had bought a while ago, and she realises that the photograph is the same as the one Lisa showed her of the alleged baby she had been a surrogate for. Now Kat is convinced that Lisa has just returned to hurt her and there is no pregnancy.
Wanting to find out the truth, Kat calls Lisa and when she mentions money, the latter agrees to come to see her. When they women meet, Kat tells her that she feels bad because she feels they should be paying her more. Then she comments on Lisa’s gaunt looks and suggests she could have a bath. While Lisa is in the bathroom, Kat finds her mobile in her bag, and she reads some emails from Aaron about a secret that Lisa has kept since Jake died. Then Kat writes up an email to Aaron, asking him to meet her in her house, and then she pours water on the SIM card, making it useless, and she also tampers with Lisa’s car. So Lisa can’t go, and when she insists on calling AA, Kat says that her landline doesn’t work, but she can find her mobile in the basement. So since Aaron hasn’t turned up, she locks the door and leaves Lisa in the soundproof basement.
When Nick appears, Kat is very nervous and tells herself that she has to tell him about locking Lisa in the basement. Then Nick sees someone outside and when he goes out, he hits the intruder and the man drops on the kitchen floor. Then comes the moment of truth as both Kat and Nick tell each other about their pasts, which are joined in some morbid way.
Ten years ago Nick returned home to find his mum bleeding. The woman told him that his father had done this to her when he found the money she had saved to escape. Nick and Richard tell her that she needs to leave, and the woman agrees and tells them that she has a sister and should go to her. Richard tells Nick to take his car, and even though Nick has no licence, Richard persuades him to drive as he knows enough to drive his mum to safety.
In Kat’s flashbacks she discovered that she was having Nick’s baby. When her father discovered the pregnancy tests in the bathroom, she hit her and told her that she would have an abortion. When Kat refused to obey him and threatened to escape, he locked her up in the cupboard under the stairs. When the man returned, Kat was incensed and stood her ground. The man said some horrible things about not having wanted her in the first place, but Kat’s mum was Catholic and she wouldn’t dream of a termination. Kat was so angry that pushed him, making fall down the stairs, and to her shock her father remained splayed out there with a twisted leg and a wound in his head. Panicking, Kat ran to find Jake, who was in a pub with his sister. Kat told him that they needed to talk, and despite Lisa’s objections, Jake and Kat drove away together. They stopped at the spot where they first made love, and Kat told him about the baby. Jake was shocked but pleased, and asked her to marry him. Then as they drove towards his house, it was when they had the accident. Jake lost his life, Kat the baby and the chance to become a mother again. It was in the hospital where her mother told him that her father had died, but she had told the police that the staircase carpet was loose and they kept tripping on it. So her mother protected her, but she told her that after her discharge from hospital, she should go to live somewhere else.
What Kat learns now t is that the other car was driven by Nick, and when they had the accident, Nick’s mother told him to run or he would go to prison. After all, he had been arrested before when his father accused him of assault. So he did so, and everybody thought that his mother was alone in the car. Yet, Nick knew who was in the other car, and when he saw her the day he went to the office, he thought he could help her. What he didn’t know was that he would end up falling in love with her. Then the lies pile up as he hid the fact that he knew who she was. His odd behaviour of lately was caused because two weeks ago his mother had passed away. Kat always thought that his mum was dead, but Nick confesses that after the accident his mother suffered a stroke as a result of the collision, and from then on she was never the same. He has never had an affair, and the reason why he talked to Clare lately and sent her flowers was because she was helping him to prepare a party for Kat’s thirtieth birthday. Nick also has an explanation about the cold calls, the footprints in the snow… It is his father who kept calling, but hung up later because he wanted to talk to him, not her.
Kat tells Nick that they should call an ambulance for his father, but Nick needs time. Then they check on Lisa, and find her in labour. It is too late to take her to the hospital, so Kat helps her to deliver her baby boy. When Nick returns, she finds that Lisa has died, and in the kitchen they also find Nick’s dad dead. So Nick tells her to take the boy and flee, and he will shoulder the blame. So Nick is sent to prison for the two deaths, including Kat’s as the police think that he might have killed his wife as well.
In the epilogue we get to know what Lisa told Kat. The baby wasn’t Nick’s as she was already pregnant when she ran into Kat. When Kat mentioned her desire to be a mother, Lisa thought that she could be her solution. The child Lisa was expecting was Aaron’s after they slept together when they met to celebrate her and Jake’s thirtieth birthdays. Aaron was married and didn’t want anything to do with her. So Lisa lied and told Kat the story about a previous surrogacy to convince her that they should do it. Then she invented a decent job because she wanted to have Kat’s admiration. Then Kat forced her to tell her the secret that Aaron claimed she had kept all these years, and Lisa told Kat that the night of the accident she put some of the drug in Jake’s drink as she wanted them to have a good time. So it wasn’t the shock of learning he was going to be a father, but the effect of the drug that made Jake distracted and caused the accident. So in the epilogue as Kat is with Lisa’s child, away from everybody, we learn that Lisa didn’t die a natural death, but Kat smothered her to death with a cushion to punish her for the death of Jake and for denying her the right to be a mother. The last lines are quite scary about Kat and her feelings, and how she watches a mother and her child, and thinking that the woman deserves to be punished for neglecting her baby for a few minutes.
I enjoyed the first half of the book, but the ending was a disappointment. There were too many coincidences, deaths, and I couldn’t believe the events in the book. I can’t see either the inclusion of Kat performing in this drama group – it didn’t add much to the novel. And Nick’s father’s death was a bit too much for me.
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