Blog Tour: An extract from Facade by Helen Matthews

Here on The Crime Warp we are delighted to offer you the chance to read a Sneaky Peek from Façade, a psychological suspense novel by Helen Matthews.

Huge thanks to Rachel's Random Resources and Helen for inviting us to participate in this blog tour.

But before you get your Sneaky Peek of Facade, here's the blurb

Façade

A drowned child. Estranged sisters. A once-perfect home.

Silence echoes louder than truth.

When seventeen-year-old Rachel’s baby brother drowns and her older sister, Imogen, escapes to live abroad with Simon, her musician boyfriend, Rachel must face the family’s grief and disintegration alone.

Twenty years later, Rachel is a successful businesswoman, with a daughter of her own, supporting her parents and their elegant Georgian home, The Old Rectory, that shackles them to the past. 

Simon’s sudden death in Ibiza brings Imogen back, impoverished and resentful. Her family owes her, and she will stop at nothing to reclaim what she believes is rightly hers.

The rift between the sisters seems permanent. While Imogen has lived a nomadic life, filled with intrigue, in Spain and Tunisia, Rachel’s has appeared stable and successful but, behind the veneer, cracks are appearing. Now, she is vulnerable.

As the wall of silence and secrecy crumbles, danger stalks Rachel’s family. She must re-examine her baby brother’s death, find out what happened in Tunisia, and fight to hold onto everything she’s achieved –or risk losing it all.

Façade is a gripping tale of loss, guilt and danger.

Purchase Link - mybook.to/facade

 Now that you're appetite has been well and truly whetted - here's the Sneaky Peek 

 with a brief introduction by the author:

 

The main action of Façade takes place in the year 2019 when estranged sisters, Rachel and Imogen meet again after two decades when they’ve rarely seen one another. The novel opens with this chapter, set twenty years before, in May 1999, when a family tragedy sets off a chain of events. As the wall of silence crumbles we discover the events of that day had roots in the recent past and repercussions extending long into the future …

Chapter One

 Rachel

May 1999

 When Rachel tried to recall that day, a fog descended. It was as if someone had interfered with her memory, superimposing their own view and erasing hers. Sometimes fragments came back to her: the heat and the clamour; screeching magpies; a pneumatic drill ripping up the main road into the village making it impossible to concentrate on her revision.

She had a hazy memory of tramping across the lawn, away from the house, towards a secluded copse near the boundary wall. The dappled shade of the trees beckoned her in. She sank down on a wooden bench and began memorising the King Lear quotes she’d scribbled on index cards as revision for her A level exam.

What happened next? Did someone call out to her?

More noise. She froze. The voice was barking orders and instructions. Why couldn’t they leave her alone? What did they want now?

With an effort, she heaved herself to her feet, preparing to leave the sanctuary of the wood and return to the house, but then stopped. Surely, whatever it was could wait? She’d do it later.

The last thing she remembered was snatching up her earphones and jamming them on; the foam covering was peeling off and black plastic scratched her ears, but she turned the music on her Walkman up louder. The jerky beat of My Name Is drowned the clamour and Eminem’s lyrics took on a trancelike effect. Sunshine slanted through the leaves, stinging her eyes. She closed them and leaned her head back against the trunk of a silver birch. Just for a few minutes.

A shout woke her, then a scream – awful, curdling – loud enough to penetrate the flimsy earphones. She pulled them off, the wires curled like a tangled necklace. Footsteps pounded on the stone steps that led from the upper terrace of The Old Rectory to the gravel courtyard below. The scream morphed into a wail, followed by more shouting and her mother’s voice, shrill and desperate, shrieking, “George, Georgie. Wake up, baby.”

Rachel shivered. She crept to the fringe of the copse and peered across the lawn towards the house. Her view of the lower courtyard was blocked by figures bending over something. Above their heads she could see the top tiers of the ornamental fountain: the statue of a nymph, balancing an urn on her head and holding a fish with herringbone-etched scales, under her other arm. The fish’s lolling head spouted water into the deep pond beneath.

The air stilled; the birds fell silent. Her mother was cradling a bundle in her arms; her father pulled off his shirt and spread it on the ground. As they both knelt on the grass, Rachel had a clear view of her parents bending over the inert figure of her baby brother, George…

Heart hammering, Rachel shrank back into the shelter of the trees. She shivered, then she ran, her bare feet carrying her rapidly, not towards the scene. But away.

Author Bio

Helen Matthews writes page-turning psychological suspense novels and is fascinated by the darker side of human nature and how a life can change in an instant. Her first novel, suspense thriller After Leaving the Village, won first prize in the opening pages category at Winchester Writers’ Festival, and was followed by Lies Behind the Ruin, domestic noir set in France, published by Hashtag Press. Her third novel Façade will be published by Darkstroke in September 2020.

Born in Cardiff, Helen read English at the University of Liverpool and worked in international development, consultancy, human resources and pensions management. She fled corporate life to work freelance while studying for a Creative Writing MA at Oxford Brookes University. Her stories and flash fiction have been shortlisted and published by Flash 500, 1000K Story, Reflex Press, Artificium and Love Sunday magazine.

She is a keen cyclist, covering long distances if there aren’t any hills, sings in a choir and once appeared on stage at Carnegie Hall, New York in a multi-choir performance. She loves spending time in France. Helen is an Ambassador for the charity, Unseen, which works towards a world without slavery and donates her author talk fees, and a percentage of royalties, to the charity.

 

Social Media Links –

Twitter - @HelenMK7

Instagram - @helen.matthews7

Follow the rest of Helen's Blog Tour here