Happily Never After E-Book

Rachel North

• Herausgeber: Corvus
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 450

Beschreibung

'A razor-sharp thriller' Philippa East 'A stonking page-turner' Emma Curtis I wouldn't miss this wedding for the world. It will be my last chance to put a stop to it... A small group of family and friends head to a beautiful, secluded location in the mountains of Mallorca for the wedding of Alex and Maddie. The Finca Incantata is a magical place-a castle with a cobbled courtyard, a deep, cold, fresh-water pool and a high tower that looks out over the surrounding wilderness. The guests arrive bringing with them their pretty dresses, their smart suits and their private thoughts about the upcoming marriage. Among them is one guest who is determined to ensure the wedding does not take place... Who is the malicious presence? Why do they hate so fiercely and so specifically? And just how far will they go to prevent Alex and Maddie tying the knot? 'Engrossing ... compulsive ... enormous fun' Sabine Durrant

Leseprobe

Published in Great Britain in 2024 by Corvus,

an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

Copyright © Rachel North, 2024

The moral right of Rachel North to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

No part of this book may be used in any manner in the learning, training or development of generative artificial intelligence technologies (including but not limited to machine learning models and large language models (LLMs)), whether by data scraping, data mining or use in any way to create or form a part of data sets or in any other way.

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.

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Paperback ISBN: 978 1 80546 055 8

E-book ISBN: 978 1 80546 056 5

Printed in Great Britain

Corvus

An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd

Ormond House

26–27 Boswell Street

London

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www.atlantic-books.co.uk

With love to Val,my Best Girl, then and now.

The Wedding Attendees

Maddie Laughton: the bride

Alex Archer: the groom

Raymond Archer: father of the groom

Marilyn Archer: mother of the groom

Colette Archer: general manager at the Finca Encantata and the groom’s sister

Bobby Fraser: the best man / Alex’s best friend

Louise Haddon: the maid of honour/ Maddie’s best friend

Ruby Davis: Alex’s old school friend, and bridesmaid

Lily Eames: Bobby’s girlfriend

Priya Cahill: friend of Alex, and bridesmaid

Tom Weeton: friend of Alex

Charlie Morgan: friend of Alex

Paul and Yvette Stainforth: Alex’s ‘aunt and uncle’, the Archer family accountant and Letty’s parents

Letty Stainforth: flower girl

Mateus and Natalia Torres: a business associate of Ray, and his wife

Teddy Largos plus one: a business associate of Ray, and his girlfriend

Luther Fleming: general aide and one of Ray’s drivers

I catch my thumb on the edge of the envelope and before I know it, there’s blood everywhere – enough to leave fingerprints. I suck the wound to stem the flow. My mouth fills with saliva and the metallic taste of dirty pennies. Paper cuts are bastards. They might be small and insignificant, but they hurt. They also make one hell of a mess. The blood-smeared invitation lies on the countertop. It looks more like something destined for an evidence bag than a mantelpiece.

I’ve been expecting it.

MR AND MRS RAYMOND ARCHER

request the pleasure of your company at the marriage of their son,

ALEXANDER GEORGE ARCHER

to

MISS MADDIE LAUGHTON

at

Finca Encantata, Sierra Norte de Mallorca on Saturday 25th May

The celebrations will take place fromThursday 23rd to Sunday 26th May

RSVP

by 31st January

Of course I’ll be there. I wouldn’t miss Alex and Maddie’s wedding for the world.

It will, after all, be my last chance to put a stop to it.

Prologue

There has always been a cat at the Finca Encantata. A black cat. It was there long before the fairy-tale castle, with its high tower and cobbled courtyard, was built; and it will, no doubt, still be there when the finca once again sinks back into the dark, whispering embrace of the surrounding forest.

No one has ever been foolish enough to try to get close enough to the cat to ascertain its sex, although the appearance of a litter of mewling kittens every few years would suggest that it’s female. But even the cat’s own offspring never seem to stay around for long. They have a habit of finding themselves stuffed into sacks along with a few carefully selected bricks, or they are eaten by their mother, or they get carried off by one of the red-eyed wolves that periodically come down from the mountaintop to scavenge for food. There are any number of fates available to a small, defenceless creature at the Finca Encantata. Either way, the mewling always stops eventually, the kittens vanish, and the cat returns to its solitary existence. What’s hers is hers and she has every intention of keeping it that way.

The cat has witnessed a lot of change in her time. She has seen the finca grow, mellow stone on mellow stone, spawning ever more rooms and floors and outbuildings, exerting its solid, showy presence on the landscape, until it has become what the guidebooks apparently describe – the cat cannot, of course, read – as ‘an impressive example of mid-eighteenth-century architecture’. The cat is not impressed. Shack, farmhouse, barn or castle – the type, style and number of buildings are irrelevant to her, it’s the human inhabitants that provide her with rich pickings. They are stunningly lax when it comes to food. They leave windows open and dishes uncovered. Not that they are happy for her to take her share – they may be wasteful, but they are seldom generous. If they catch her feasting, they shout and lash out with whatever is at hand. And that’s the other thing the humans afford her – a source of entertainment. They are, with very few exceptions, easy to provoke yet slow to react.

The current incumbents are no different.

They appeared after a blissful fallow period, when the finca had once again been humanity-free and the cat had been able to roam without observation or interference around the buildings and the extensive grounds. Indeed, it had been so peaceful, for so long, that the cat had let down her guard. As a result, she was literally caught napping, in one of the upper rooms in the tower, when this new batch of humanity arrived. It was the slam of a car door that woke her. She leapt onto the window ledge in time to see three large men and one small woman emerge from a sleek black Land Rover with tinted windows. The cat watched the new arrivals. They stood, eyeless behind their dark glasses, sizing up the finca. She knew within seconds which was the king and which the underlings. She also recognised, with a sinking feeling, that these humans meant business and that the peace of the past year was about to be shattered.

She wasn’t wrong.

But there again, the cat rarely is.

When the cooler air of autumn arrived, so did the workmen and the machinery. Once again, the finca was filled with noise, dust and destruction. The cat watched the frenzy of activity from the shelter of the trees. It soon became apparent that this was to be a no-expense-spared reincarnation. The cat looked on in disgust as the lake was dredged of its luscious, fertile mud – a process that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of the juicy snacks that resided there – as the innards of the buildings were ripped out and replaced and as the land around the finca was tamed.

The renovation was overseen, with steely efficiency, by the small woman with the blonde hair and the phone perpetually stuck to her cheek. It was brutal, quick and probably impressive – if you were into luxury accommodation set in a breathtaking location in an area of outstanding natural beauty, which the cat obviously wasn’t. On the day the last workman loaded up his van and roared away the cat breathed a sigh of relief. She waited impatiently for nightfall then emerged from the forest to reclaim her home.

For all the remodelling and refurbishment, the cat was relieved to discover that enough of the original finca remained for her purposes. The gaps underneath the floorboards had largely survived intact so that it was still possible to travel around the majority of the site undetected. And they had, thankfully, left the bougainvillea on the outside walls, which meant that most of the upper rooms remained accessible, with some inelegant scrambling. Therefore, all in all, there was enough natural cover for her to go back to her old ways. Namely: spying, stealing and generally pissing on their parade.

But the cat was wrong about one thing: the nature of her adversary had changed. Because, as she was about to find out, the small woman with the fast walk and the firm voice was different to the other human beings that the cat had come across and bested in the past. This woman was smart, tenacious and much more observant than any of her predecessors. That spelt trouble for the cat, and, as it turned out, for everyone else associated with the Finca Encantata.

Two Days Before the Wedding

Chapter 1

ALEX

Alex woke with the sun on his face. He kept his eyes closed and let the weight of his limbs anchor him to the bed. He watched the colours and shapes dance on the inside of his eyelids. It was blissfully quiet. The sense of inoculation from normal life was profound. He luxuriated in it. Maddie lay beside him, breathing softly, utterly relaxed.

Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere; This bed thy centre is, these walls, thy sphere. Alex smiled. Bobby would be proud of him – poetry in his head and his heart, two days before his wedding. His best friend’s work was done – Alex was no longer a philistine. Okay, one verse, of a short poem, learnt as an early wedding present, did not Renaissance Man make, but it was proof, surely, that he was well and truly in love.

The decision to stay at the finca rather than at his parents’ place further up the mountain had been a good one. He and Maddie badly needed some time alone together after the stress of the past few months. Being tucked away in one of the basic rooms in the annex had turned out to be a blessing in disguise – the much nicer rooms in the main building were being readied for their guests. Their simple box, with its low ceiling and small en suite bathroom, had afforded them the one thing they’d needed most – privacy. Alex glanced at his watch on the nightstand. Their guests would be arriving at lunchtime; they had only a few hours of freedom left. The prospect of sharing the finca with his closest friends provoked mixed emotions in Alex. It would be lovely to see everyone, and to get their wedding properly underway, but he was also aware that, along with their best wishes and their nicest outfits, the guests would be bringing with them their opinions about his and Maddie’s upcoming union.

He and Maddie had been together sixteen months, which, depending on how you looked at it, was either a whirlwind romance or plenty of time to find out if they were ‘meant to be’. People had been surprisingly forthright in their views on his marriage, and on his choice of bride. At work the guys had lectured him on the attributes that made a woman ‘a keeper’ and the red flags that he should ‘run a mile from’. He’d said little in response. Where Maddie rated on their ‘stupid scale’ was none of their damn business. His parents had been a little more circumspect, although not much. Predictably, they’d been very interested in Maddie’s background – more specifically, who ‘her people’ were. Whatever the hell that meant! Their first meeting had been like some sort of ghastly, extended audition. Alex didn’t know how they wanted his bride to sound, act or be – they themselves having travelled quite a long way from their working-class, South London roots to a mountain in Mallorca. Maddie, to her credit, had coped admirably, but it had hardly been a warm welcome to the family. His sister’s passive-aggressive silences hadn’t helped either. Colette normally didn’t give a stuff about what was happening in his life or who he was seeing, so he hadn’t understood her reaction. As far as Alex could tell, him getting married would make zero difference to her. Staying close to the family was her thing, not his. If she wanted to be their father’s right-hand man, that was fine with Alex – it meant he didn’t have to be.

His friends’ reaction had, thankfully, been more positive. Once Bobby had got over the shock of their engagement, he’d been happy for Alex. It had been touching to see how much time and effort he’d invested in getting to know Maddie once they’d made it official. It had mattered. Alex had wanted, no, he needed the two of them to get on. He couldn’t imagine a life where his wife and his best friend disliked each other. These people were his future. Tom and Charlie had also been pleased for him but in a much more blokey way. They’d taken him out for many, many beers to celebrate. When well-pissed, both of them had, individually, expressed a touch of jealousy that he was ‘sorted’. Tom chose the urinal to make his lonely-heart admission; Charlie the queue in the kebab shop. Once sober, their mutual desire for a soulmate had never been mentioned again. And Priya, lovely Priya, she had, as always, been really sweet about his news. As a diehard romantic, the thought of love triumphing across the social divide obviously appealed to her, although she was far too polite to say anything so crass to his face. Priya was, come to think of it, one of the few people he knew who could have an opinion but not feel compelled to share it. As for Ruby, his second-longest-serving friend and confidante, well, her response had been – classic Ruby. When he rang to tell her that he’d proposed to Maddie, the line had gone dead for a second or two, then she’d said, and he remembered her exact words, ‘So, you are bourgeois after all, darling. It’s a shame. I thought we’d have at least another few years before you threw yourself off the cliff with the rest of the lemmings.’ Then she’d laughed, her signature full-throttle laugh, that made unforgivable things forgivable, congratulated him and asked when, and where, the ‘evil deed’ was happening.

Alex rolled onto his side in order to get a better view of his wife-to-be. It was a cheesy phrase, but he’d found himself using it a lot over the past few months. Maddie was still fast asleep, her back to him, the sheet pushed down around her waist. It was already very warm in the room. Although she’d been careful, she had caught the sun on her back. She’d not wanted to get any strap marks – that had to be a clue to the design of the dress. Maddie’s paranoia wasn’t simple vanity. He knew she was worried that the scars on her spine would be more noticeable if she tanned. They were visible, not that he would ever say that to her. The original wounds from her fall had been so deep that some scarring had been inevitable, despite the meticulous application of every type of cream and ointment available. The memory of how badly injured she’d been, how uncertain her recovery, how close they had come to postponing the wedding, made Alex want to reach out, hold her and keep her safe.

No one else’s opinion mattered. Maddie was the woman Alex wanted to marry, have children and grow old with. He’d never been as certain of anything in his life.

Their relationship had begun, predictably enough, with a drink after work. Alex remembered worrying about where to suggest they meet. Maddie already had him marked down as a flash bastard and he hadn’t wanted to confirm that impression by choosing somewhere too ostentatious. Odd as it sounded, the fact that Maddie wasn’t easily impressed was partly why he’d been so keen – he’d taken her flirty mockery as a sign that she was interested in who he was beneath his Armani suit and his six-figure salary. Also, the weird circumstances of their introduction had set them off on a different trajectory to any of his previous liaisons. Getting mugged outside of her place of work and needing her first-aid skills might not shout ‘ideal boyfriend material’, but at least it had made him memorable. His challenge was to turn that flash of intrigue into something more.

In the end he plumped for one of the traditional old boozers on Fleet Street. It was Friday evening, so it was busy, but having pushed their way through to the back bar, they miraculously managed to nab a table. As the City talk swilled around them, they chatted. Initially it was friendly banter, a continuation of their exchange in the coffee shop as he’d sat bleeding on the floor, but by the second drink they started to relax and began to talk properly, taking it in turns to reveal glimpses of their real selves. So absorbed were they in their voyage of mutual discovery that they didn’t notice the crowd around them start to thin. It was only when Alex went to buy another round that he registered the pub was virtually empty. The barman declined to serve him, pointing out that they were shutting early due to the adverse weather conditions. This came as news to both Alex and Maddie, but as they stepped outside, they saw the reason for the mass exodus.

Winter had arrived, and not the usual cold, grey, nonentity January weather that usually prevailed in central London – this was winter wonderland stuff. For the first time in either of their adult experience, snow was falling thick and fast on the city. In the glow of the street lights the flakes looked like a child’s drawing of snow – lacy, intricate, beautiful. They were both delighted.

He doesn’t remember which of them suggested going for a walk, but he can clearly recall her slipping her arm through his as they headed for St Bride’s. Walking along the largely deserted streets was magical. By the time they reached Middle Temple Garden the snow was a good few centimetres thick – unheard of in the centrally heated, glare-lit Square Mile. It transformed everything – even the bins looked pretty iced in white. The whole city was muted, the normally incessant traffic noise muffled, the presence of humanity dialled down. It was perhaps a bit of a stretch of the imagination, but it had felt like they were the last two people on earth. When the cold finally got the better of them, they made their way to the Tube station, and that’s where fate intervened. The entrance at Holborn was dark and shuttered. The handwritten sign inside the grille explained that services had been suspended ‘due to the inclement weather’. Maddie checked on her phone. The whole network was shutting down. The snow swirled around them.

‘Come to mine,’ he suggested, hastily adding, ‘I’ve got a spare bedroom.’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘We can try and get a cab.’ They both looked – the road was empty. ‘Or we can walk. It’s not far.’ He can’t remember her saying yes.

When they reached his block, the shock of stepping into the brightly lit lobby was disorientating. They travelled up to the twenty-first floor in the lift silently. The heat in his apartment was tangible, welcome. He took her damp coat and hung it up to dry. Then he switched on a few lamps, trying to create a relaxed mood. To help, he fetched them both a brandy. They took their drinks and stood at the huge picture window that Alex rarely looked out of. This high up, the snowstorm was dramatic. The flakes swirled down in erratic gusts onto a London that was cloaked in white. They watched the weather, saying nothing, for a long time. They eventually parted with a taut hesitation, but no kiss. She slept in the guest bedroom. He lay awake in his own bed long after the light in her room clicked off, glad she was there.

In the morning he was up before her, by design. He made coffee. Ground the beans. Did it properly. He wanted the opportunity to make a joke – the customer serving the barista – and to impress her, even if it was only in this small way. He had it all worked out. He carried his offering carefully down the corridor to find that her bedroom door, which had been pulled closed the previous night, was wide open. The sun streaming through the window was bright, amplified by the snow. It fell on her like a spotlight. He felt he should look away. She was asleep and vulnerable, in his home.

He couldn’t.

She lay on her side, her knees pulled up to her chest under the covers, her dark hair spread out like an unfurled flag on the pillow. One arm lay across her chest, her hand cupped around her cheek. A sleeping beauty. The sentimentality of the thought took him by surprise. He knocked on the doorframe to break the spell.

She stirred, yawned, sat up and tucked the covers into her armpits. Barriers restored. ‘Is that for me?’ She gestured at the cup.

He smiled ‘Yep’, any attempts at humour forgotten, but what did linger – what grew and had continued to grow ever since – was the desire to keep her safe, even if, as she professes, often, she has no need of his protection.

Stirred by the memory of their first date, Alex reached out and traced his fingertips down Maddie’s spine, neither lingering on nor avoiding the scars. He loved who she was. Her wounds were proof of their love for one another. Battle scars. She stirred and stretched. Alex was fully aware that his family and many of his friends thought Maddie was the lucky one in their relationship, but after everything that had happened, Alex knew it was he who should be grateful. Maddie had stuck with him when the going had got tough. That loyalty and determination were exactly what he wanted and needed in his wife-to-be.

She was awake now.

He whispered into her hair, ‘So what do you want to do with our last few hours of freedom?’

She rolled over to face him and silently gave him her answer.

Chapter 2

LUTHER

Another sodding run to the airport. There were times when Luther felt he was little more than a bloody taxi driver, but at least the job meant he could get away from the finca for a few hours. It was surprising how quickly paradise could become a prison. Their location, high up in the mountains far away from civilisation, or even a crappy bar with flat beer, certainly added to the sense of being cut off from real life. The only people who came to the finca were being paid, badly, to work there, or paying through the nose to stay there. Upmarket came at a price, all ways round.

With typical over-efficiency Colette had already emailed him this weekend’s guest list, complete with the flight numbers, arrival times and confirmation of which gates they were due to come into – twice. Colette didn’t trust anyone to do even the simplest of jobs without checking up on them. Or maybe it was more that she didn’t trust him. That in itself wasn’t too much of a problem, because Ray, Colette’s father, still had faith in Luther, despite the incident in Dover.

Still, her attitude grated, as did the isolation and the sense that he was on the wrong stage, missing all the action. The nature of the work he was given to do at the finca was also doing his head in. It was so menial and mundane – a total waste of his very specific talents. Added to these injustices was the uncertainty. The length of Luther’s sentence on the island was unclear, but he wasn’t fool enough to ask for clarification. He would be allowed back to London when Ray said so – not a minute sooner. So for now he must hold his tongue, and his fists, and endure.

He was sitting on the footplate of the minibus, having a smoke, when Colette appeared. Without so much as a ‘hi’ or a smile, she thrust a printout at him. He didn’t look at it. He simply took it and tossed it onto the passenger seat. Such micro-aggressions were pathetic, beneath him, but they at least made his feelings clear. And despite his reputation, Luther did have feelings. Quite a lot of them, actually.

‘A late cancellation?’ he asked. If there was anything that pissed off the efficient Ms Archer (as she insisted on being called by the staff) more than Luther himself, it was changes to arrangements, especially at short notice. Although she’d be prepared, because, as she repeated ad nauseum in their endless staff briefings, failing to prepare was tantamount to preparing to fail. Christ, she was such a tight-arse.

‘No,’ she snapped.

He got why she was even more stressed than usual. Falling short was not an option at Finca Encantata – not with the prices they charged. Everything had to be the best, the finest, the most tasteful, the most Instagrammable. That’s what they sold – photogenic perfection, on the most important day of your life. And this particular wedding had more riding on it than any they’d hosted before, so it was imperative everything went to plan. If it didn’t, there would be consequences for little Miss – sorry, Ms – Perfect. The thought made Luther feel slightly better. ‘So, it’s just you thinking I can’t count to seven.’

His attempt at humour went down like a two-finger salute, as he’d intended. Colette’s expression hardened, if that was possible. ‘You need to get going. You’re going to be late.’

He wasn’t, but he climbed into the van and put the key in the ignition. If nothing else, the noise of the engine drowned out her further instructions.

An hour and a half later Luther reversed the minibus into one of the pick-up bays at the front of the Arrivals hall. He left the A/C running. It wasn’t his money he was burning. As for saving the environment, oh come on, he was parked at an airport, in a diesel-guzzling people carrier, watching an endless stream of well-off bastards, who didn’t give a toss about climate change, but spent their time jetting around the world to their much-needed ‘few days in the sun’ or to stay in their lovely second homes ‘just down the coast’ or, come to think of it, to attend yet another over-the-top, no-expense-spared wedding that could just as easily have taken place in the UK, where nearly all of the guests came from.

Bored, Luther sat watching the travellers dragging their heavy suitcases along the baked pavement and bumping them precariously up and down the kerbs. He noticed it was often the smallest women who had the largest luggage. Many of the suitcases were big enough to accommodate a body. He amused himself for a while imagining who these ferocious little women had offed, how they’d done it and the configuration of the corpse inside their bags. A foetal curl? A tidy arrangement of neatly severed body parts? Or a modern-art mess of limbs? Human flesh presumably didn’t show up on the X-ray machines, but bones surely would. It was surprising that so many murderous women got through security. Although Spanish border officials were, or so he’d been told by Ray, famously open to inducements to look the other way. There were lots of reasons why so many Brits lived in Spain, and they weren’t all to do with the weather. Luther moved on to thinking about the opportunities for a new business venture – a brand of luggage specifically designed for the easier and more secure transfer of corpses. The stability and quality of the wheels would be a key feature to emphasise, especially for female customers, along with the latest hi-tech anti-theft and anti-leakage features. And his teachers used to say he had no imagination.

Late! Fat chance. He still had half an hour to kill before the first plane touched down. He’d checked – both flights were on schedule, thank Christ. Late arrivals pissed him off. Hanging about for another bunch of whining guests was like waiting for a punch to land. The list of complaints that Luther had been forced to listen to over the past eight months beggared belief. There was the heat – as if that was a surprise, on an island in the Med; the length of the transfer from the airport to the finca – its selling point was its isolation; the angle of the extremely bright light through the shutters in their bedrooms in the morning – they came for to Mallorca for the sun, for God’s sake; the temperature of the water in the lake – an unheated pond; the thickness of the mattresses on the sun loungers, the shape of the ice in their negronis, the noise made by the geckos on the roof of the outdoor bar, the wobble of chair legs on the original eighteenth-century flags in the central courtyard. His response nine times out of ten was to pretend to do something to remedy their complaint and in reality do nothing. The real bastards were the ones who then moaned to Colette. That usually resulted in a bollocking and actual work to do, normally in full view of the fuckers, as they sat on their arses on the dreadfully uncomfortable sun loungers and dangerously unsteady chairs sipping their inadequately chilled cocktails.

Luther knew that this lot wouldn’t be much different. He’d met a number of them before. He’d been part of Ray’s crew – first on a freelance basis, then as a full-time employee – for years, indeed since Alex had been in short trousers. The thought depressed Luther. He was getting old. Even more worryingly, Ray’s need for Luther’s brand of service seemed to lessen with each passing season. The Archers were, largely, legit now, if you didn’t look too closely or in certain directions. Maybe it really was time for him to start looking for another way to pay his bills.

He checked the flight arrivals again on his phone. The Heathrow plane had landed. They’d be clearing passport control soon, depending on the queues. The Rome flight was due in at 12.08. Luther picked the list up off the passenger seat and scanned it.

Mr Robert Fraser: the best man / Alex’s best friend

Miss Louise Haddon: the maid of honour / Maddie’s best friend

Ms Ruby Davis: Alex’s old school friend

Miss Lily Eames: Bobby’s girlfriend

Miss Priya Cahill: friend of Alex

Mr Tom Weeton: friend of Alex

Mr Charlie Morgan: friend of Alex

The amount of formality and redundant detail was classic Colette. ‘Friend of ’: it was like something off Downton sodding Abbey. There was one guest in particular that Luther was interested in seeing again, and that was the lovely Miss Davis. Having first spotted her as a fresh-faced sixteen-year-old at the Archers’ house in Kent, Luther had watched Miss Ruby Davis develop over the past decade into an absolute stunner. Alex’s old school friend? Yeah right, and pigs were aerodynamic! Even as a teenager Miss Davis . . . ‘Call me Ruby. Miss Davis sounds like a maths teacher’ . . . had been way out of Luther’s league – pure class – but perhaps there was a glimmer of a chance now she was older and still, evidently, unattached. Luther gave his fantasies free rein for a minute or two. Miss Davis – he still preferred to think of her by her formal title; that was possibly something to do with Luther’s repertoire of schoolteacher fantasies – might get drunk on the wedding booze. The measures were larger in Spain, she wouldn’t be the first to be caught out. She might be laid low by a touch of sunstroke and have to retire to the shade of her room where he could tend to her needs. Or she might, and this was his best hope, fancy a bit of rough as a holiday treat – she had always been close to Ray. A man could dream. There was no law against it, although it often felt like there was.

Then there was Bobby. Despite his stupid name – it made him sound like a toddler – Bobby Fraser was okay in Luther’s book. Alex Archer and Bobby had been friends since school. Luther remembered him as a quiet kid who’d grown into a quiet man, never demanding, always polite – even to Luther, and that was a rarity. Bobby had been a frequent visitor to the house in Deal. The fact that the Archers tolerated his presence was interesting. Mrs A. was normally as welcoming as a slap in the face, but Bobby had been allowed on the reservation. Over the years he’d become part of the fixtures and fittings, staying for long periods over the summer and rocking up for the big New Year parties that the Archers used to throw. And there you had another reason why the anal Ms Archer was such a total bitch – sibling rivalry. In the Archer household there’d always been one set of rules for Alex and quite another for Colette. And not much appeared to have changed now that they were adults. Sure, Ray relied on Colette, but Luther had never observed what you’d call love or even much affection between the two of them. Families – they were more trouble than they were worth.

Luther looked through the other names.

Judging by the guest list, Bobby had finally snared himself some skirt in the form of one Miss Lily Eames. Good on him! There were two other women on the list. Miss Priya Cahill, another ‘friend of ’ Alex, and Miss Louise Haddon, maid of honour. Luther hadn’t come across either of them before. They were both attending alone. They might be worth a look.

Luther had had the misfortune of meeting Tom Weeton and Charlie Morgan before – when he was based in London, driving for Ray, and by extension for Alex. He vaguely remembered them as chinless wonders, the types that made his fists itch. He’d had to run them to restaurants and bars, listening to them braying like donkeys in the back of the Merc. More irritating still had been the requests to pick them up in the early hours of the morning and take them wherever they wanted to go, stopping off, on occasion, to let them vomit in the gutter. Pointless fuckers, the pair of them.

Luther indulged in another ten minutes of ruminating on what irritations and opportunities might present themselves over the next few days – when the Archer clan gathered there were always tensions – then he accepted the inevitable. He switched off the A/C, climbed out of the minibus, donned his jacket, grabbed the laminated Archer Wedding sign that made him look like a complete dick, and headed into the terminal.

It was time to get this expensive show on the road.

Chapter 3

LOU

Lou’s experience of her best friend’s wedding so far had been little more than a series of stark changes in temperature. The arctic chill of the air-con on the plane had been followed by the slam dunk of heat on the top of her head as they’d disembarked, which had been swapped for the draughty coolness of the arrivals hall that had now been replaced by the choking fumes and heat outside the airport building. Maddie and Alex’s wedding was not ticking any luxury boxes yet.

For some reason the surly-looking driver – who had greeted Bobby like his best buddy, but hadn’t even looked at her when he took her bag – refused to put the air-con on in the minibus, turning it into a furnace. Consequently, to avoid getting on and broiling to death, they were milling around on the concrete, risking sunstroke. Sweat pooled in Lou’s armpits and coursed down her back. So much for glamour. The reason for the delay? Ruby, of course. Lou wasn’t surprised. Ruby Davis was the type for whom being late was a matter of principle.

Lou had met Ruby three times. Briefly at the very awkward get-to-know-each-other’s-friends drinks do the previous summer, up close on the weird wedding-dress shopping trip and, at uncomfortable length, at the disastrous Valentine’s party. Lou had disliked Ruby on first, second and third sight. She’d tried to subdue her instinctive distrust of Alex’s best girl mate, aware that it reflected badly on her sisterhood credentials – hating the good-looking girl was so clichéd – but after a grand total of twelve hours in Ruby’s company it had been impossible to ignore the many and varied signs that this was a woman who was accustomed to the world bending to her will simply by virtue of the distribution of her body fat and her excellent bone structure. It wasn’t Ruby’s self-confidence that bothered Lou – she was a supporter of kick-ass women – it was the assumption of being liked.

Because Ruby evidently believed that everyone who came into her orbit – and this was a woman who had an orbit – loved her. Bar staff, waiters, the general population – male and female, but especially the former – Uber drivers, probably even dogs, cats and wild animals; they were all expected to fall under her spell. The fucking frustrating thing was that they did. At the painful drinks do, Lou had watched the waiter linger at Ruby’s bronzed shoulder far longer than at anyone else’s, and at the Valentine’s party it had been like the parting of the Red Sea when Ruby, finally, went to the bar to buy a round. That was the danger of physical beauty; it blinded people to the faults and flaws of the person in possession of it. If Lou had been late to the pick-up point, she was fairly confident that they wouldn’t have waited for her. They would have been out of there quicker than you can say, ‘Fuck her. Her loss.’ Hence her suggestion that they set off and leave Ruby to make her own way to the villa.

Well, that didn’t go down well. Not one bit. All it served to do was to cast Lou as a selfish cow who was happy to sacrifice another guest for her own comfort. No, the general consensus was that they should wait for Ruby – which they did, standing around in the suffocating heat, for another half-hour.

They were only freed from Ruby’s long-distance thrall when Bobby eventually managed to get a response to one of his many text messages. ‘Something’s come up. She’s had to stay on at work. She’s going to catch a later flight.’ So Ruby wasn’t just late, she hadn’t even set off for the airport. Had she sent a profuse apology for keeping them waiting? Of course she hadn’t. People with the lives and looks of Ruby didn’t say sorry – ever. But at least now they were finally able to get going. It was a blessed relief and, very possibly, a piece of orchestrated theatre, that the climate control in the minibus kicked in just as they struggled free of the urban sprawl of modern Palma and began their voyage into the Mallorcan countryside.

As they sped smoothly and coolly along, Lou put in her earbuds and slipped into the comfortable, familiar surroundings of her own head. Her soundtrack of choice for this trip to the fairy-tale wedding of the year – the Arctic Monkeys and Fontaines D.C. Lou preferred some light and shade in her life. She had thought her best friend was the same, which just went to show how wrong you could be about a person you thought you knew, inside and out. They’d ‘got’ each other from the moment they met – waitressing at some boring-as-sin awards dinner at Olympia. They’d gone out afterwards, got pissed, danced, laughed, talked for hours, liked each other more than was normal, and that had been it – friends for life. Lou had loved Maddie’s energy and been impressed by her. She had a knack of maxing out whatever opportunities came her way. Through Maddie Lou had got onto the books of the same temp agency and as a result she’d picked up work at some seriously upmarket dos, where the tips, and the food, were much better. It had been great working together, good fun, even when the clients were dicks. Lou also discovered that Mads was a skilled blagger. She’d managed to get them into bars and clubs that Lou wouldn’t even have attempted on her own, and once in, scoring free drinks had never been a problem. Together they’d made a great team. Or so Lou had thought, until Alex had appeared on the scene. As Grian Chatten sang about his broken heart Lou revisited her jealousy and found it justified. Maddie might be entitled to fall in love, but Lou still couldn’t wrap her head around why she’d gone for someone as shallow and shiny as Alex Archer. Her old best friend would have dated him, taken him for what she could, and dumped him – not married him. Maddie claimed that it was simply a sign that she’d grown up and that she wanted a more stable, mature relationship. Lou called bullshit. But her coherent and well-argued objections had made no difference. Which was why Lou was now on her way to watch her best friend, or the person who used to be her best friend, throw away her identity, her freedom and her principles – for a cushy life.

Just look at how OTT the wedding was.

This was not going to be some package deal wedding in the sun. No, this weekend would be a good few notches up from that. Lou had gone straight onto Google as soon as Maddie told her where they were getting married. According to the website, the Finca Encantata was a triumph of style and substance, from the luxury rooms in the eighteenth-century finca itself to the bridal suite at the top of a fourteenth-century tower. No kidding, the place was the witch in Rapunzel’s ideal venue. There was also a freshwater lake, which apparently was perfect for a cooling dip, and an olive grove. The surrounding holm oak and pine forest was supposed to contain all manner of wildlife, including snakes, mountain goats, wolves and falcons. Then there were the nearby caverns that were a worthwhile and fascinating half-day excursion for anyone interested in the rich history of the region. And the food! Lou had spent a couple of hours browsing the sample menus. What had been noticeable by its absence was a price list. But this was the land of bespoke wedding services, the implication being that if you had to ask, you couldn’t afford it. Yes, there was no doubt that whatever horrors lay in wait over the coming weekend, they were in for a treat.

The company on this five-star, once-in-a-lifetime holiday – at least, in Lou’s lifetime – might, however, present more of a challenge. Lou knew that she struggled to ‘play nice’ with people she didn’t like, and this wedding was going to be attended by quite a few candidates who fell into that category. But if that was the price she was required to pay to spend some time with the one person she used to love more than any other, then she was prepared to pay it. There was no way that she was ever not going to come.

The minibus slowed, drawing Lou’s wandering attention back to her surroundings. Caution was needed; the road had narrowed. They were climbing now, away from civilisation, up into a pure blue sky, past rocky, sloping fields and a scatter of buildings. It looked like they’d time-travelled into a different century. Lou removed her earbuds and joined the rest of the guests in gazing out of the window.

Eventually the morose driver indicated and they turned right. After about ten minutes there was another sharp turn and they found themselves in a different realm. The change from stark bright light to deep bottle green was like plunging underwater – cooling, refreshing. A transition from one world into another. The flicker of sunlight through the branches added a strobey, trippy element to the last few miles of their journey. Everyone on the bus fell silent. Lou watched the forest oscillating by through the window, half expecting to see a troll peeking out from behind a tree or a unicorn standing in a sunlit clearing. It felt like they were travelling towards some sort of promise, which Lou supposed they were.

Then, just as suddenly, they emerged back into the sunlight. The sky was huge and blue, the mountains looked like a painted backdrop, and in the midst of it all sat the Finca Encantata. It appeared both substantial and ethereal, the classic setting of a thousand storybooks and films and, for the next four days, the exclusive venue of Alex and Maddie’s wedding. The minibus shuddered to a stop and the air-con died with a whisper. For a moment or two, no one moved.

The driver broke the spell. ‘Well, this is it, folks!’

So, this is it. The setting for Alex and Maddie’s wedding. A castle, high up in the mountains, in a land far away from everything and everyone.

It’s perfect.

For their purposes, and mine.

Chapter 4

MADDIE

A crunch of gravel and a spray of dust announced the arrival of their wedding guests. Colette, with her usual efficiency, had been keeping Alex apprised of their ETA by text for the past hour. There must have been some sort of tracker on the minibus. Maddie had struggled to see Colette’s regular updates as anything other than a countdown. The cocktail of excitement and nerves in her stomach was making her feel jittery.

Bobby was the first off the bus. He and Alex embraced. Maddie liked Bobby, liked what Alex’s choice of him as a best friend said about her husband-to-be’s judgement. They were close. She took that closeness as a good sign. It demonstrated emotional maturity – something she’d not expected in two products of a highly selective boarding school in deepest, darkest Dorset. Maddie watched the rest of their guests disembark. Lou was near the back. She was the last off the minibus. There was no sign of Ruby. For a moment Maddie’s heart lifted. She immediately felt ashamed. She’d promised Alex, and herself, that she’d dealt with her jealousy, laid it to rest, like a ghost. But it was the nature of ghosts to linger, and Ruby’s anticipated arrival, and unexplained absence, was enough to blow the dust off the grave. What Ruby was – or had been – to Alex still haunted Maddie. How could it not? Ruby looked like something out of the pages of Vogue, she had brains as well as beauty and she’d known Alex for years. They had history. The question was – what kind?

But any complicated feelings that Maddie might harbour about her fiancé’s ‘other best friend’ were literally knocked out of her by Lou. She ran across the car park, dropped her bag in the dust and hurled herself at Maddie with the exuberance of an excited puppy. Her sweaty hug felt good. Alex had Bobby. She had Lou. It was a perfectly squared circle. As long as they held their shape everything would be fine. Lou whispered in her ear. ‘So, no one’s locked you up in the tower for being insane, yet?’

‘No.’

‘Good, because even your hair isn’t long enough to fashion an escape ladder.’ Lou released Maddie from her grasp and grinned. Her eyes swung around the finca taking in the courtyard, the high walls, the tower and the elegant landscaping and, no surprise, landed on the waitress who was standing in the full glare of the sun, holding a tray of cava. Lou moved towards the drinks at speed. She took a glass, downed it and took another – Lou shared a close and enthusiastic relationship with alcohol. The other guests moved towards the waitress, possibly concerned that if they weren’t quick enough, there wouldn’t be enough to go round. The wedding party had started. There was no stopping it now.

Maddie held back as everyone else gravitated towards the refreshments. Not so long ago it would have been her standing there, in a stiff white shirt and a tight black skirt, with a straight back and a firmly held tray. Server to served – her promotion up the ranks had been remarkably swift. She was acutely aware that she wasn’t the only one finding the transition difficult to acclimatise to. Maddie’s attention shifted, instinctively, to Colette. Now there was a person who seemed finely attuned to the pecking order. Colette was most definitely not in party mode. She was supervising the unloading of the bags from the back of the minibus. Even from a distance Maddie could sense the tension between her future sister-in-law and the driver. Words were obviously being had. Lecture delivered, Colette tugged her skirt straight, turned to face the guests and fixed on a welcoming smile. In doing so she caught Maddie’s eye. They stared at each other, both frozen in an unguarded moment. Despite the heat of the day there was no warmth in Colette’s eyes, but she recovered first. She raised her hand, gave the slightest of waves and went on with her work. Behind her Maddie saw the driver take a last drag on his cigarette, before flicking it on the ground. It was a small but very pointed act of defiance.

Maddie looked for Alex. He was in his element, greeting his friends, directing people to take a glass of cava and guiding them into the shade where a light lunch had been laid out on a long trestle table in the lee of the castle walls. These were his people, his friends. Alex laughed at something Tom, or was it Charlie, said – she never knew which was which. Her husband-to-be looked happy and relaxed.

Maddie followed the group into the shade. She poured herself a glass of iced tea and took a seat at the far end of the table. Not that she was much in demand after the first effusive greetings and hugs were over. Even Lou was distracted – by the glamour of the setting, by the dazzle of the sun high up in the pure blue sky, by the mountains, by the heady scent of pine and bougainvillea and by the baked-in heat that told you you weren’t in England any more. And, of course, by the lavish lunch.

When the guests had all loaded their plates with cheese, sobrasada, coca de trampo, fresh figs and vine-ripened tomatoes and found a seat, Colette began her spiel. ‘Welcome to the Finca Encantata. This place holds a very special place in our hearts and we hope, over the next few days, to share that magic with you.’ The guests, already well on their way to being seduced by the heat and the chilled cava, murmured their agreement.

Colette went on, ‘The finca began life in the early 1400s, when a patch of forest was cleared to make way for a humble farmhouse. The magnificent buildings you see before you came later. A wealthy Portuguese trader called Alvaro Braga was passing through the area in 1754 and fell in love, not with a woman, but with this plot of land. So began a love affair that was to last fifty years and which resulted in many of the beautiful buildings, the landscaped lake and the olive groves that you’re about to spend some time exploring and enjoying. But, like so many love stories, this tale is a turbulent one. Over the intervening years the finca has seen its fair share of high and lows. When my father and myself arrived in the spring of 2018 it had fallen into a sorry state of neglect and disrepair. But, like Alvaro Braga before him, my father was smitten, and so began the restoration of the buildings and the surrounding gardens. A labour of love . . . and considerable cost . . . the result of which is the beautiful hotel you see before you today.’

The end of Colette’s speech was marked with a polite smattering of applause.