The Family Friend by Claire Douglas

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min read
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The dark and addictive new thriller about murder, memory and the secrets that won’t stay hidden from the No. 1 Sunday Times bestselling author Claire Douglas.

Read an extract of The Family Friend by Claire Douglas below!

Prologue

5 January 2025

If Dorothea had known this was the day she was going to die, she would have spent those precious remaining hours differently. Instead of hiking in the hills surrounding her home in the mud and the rain when it made her ageing joints ache, she would have finally said yes to dinner with Dennis and eaten something rich and creamy like steak with a béarnaise sauce. And she would have certainly spent longer in her studio breathing in the familiar, comforting scent of oils and acrylics, her beloved Golden Retriever Solly at her feet, instead of wasting time on boring admin.

All this filtered through her mind as she lay at the foot of the stairs, her body at an odd angle and her cheek pressed against the cold flagstones. She could already smell the smoke and hear the crackle and hiss of fire, and she pictured the destruction of it all: her paintings and sculptures, the flames licking at the edges of her canvases, turning it all to ash. Her life’s work.

She should have been more on her guard but she’d misjudged the sounds of the intruder for the creaks and groans of an old house. Yet there had been no mistaking the sensation of someone standing too close behind her on that twisty staircase, or the hands that had shoved her, or the flash of a dark-clothed figure as they darted past her prone body and into her studio.

So, he’d come for her, at last.

Solly stood over her now, by her side as he’d always been, loyal to the end. He emitted a low, desolate bark, his breath hot on her ear, and she tried to reach out a hand to comfort him, but she couldn’t move. She wanted to tell him to get out of the house. To run. But the words wouldn’t come. There was a metallic taste of blood in the back of her throat and her legs were numb.

This was it. This was how she was going to die.

And as she closed her eyes for the last time, her final thought was of Imogen and the letter, half-finished, that was now going up in smoke.