Synopsis

At 2:17 a.m., Claire Bennett answers a call from her husband’s phone and hears her daughter Sophie crying: “Mum, I think I’ve killed Dad.” By sunrise, Daniel is dead and Sophie is in police custody. Then Sophie says she never made the call.

The phone records prove the call happened. There is no recording of what was said. Claire is certain of one thing: she knows her daughter’s voice. But as the evidence begins to pull in different directions, that certainty becomes the most dangerous thing she has.

If Sophie is telling the truth, someone else knew enough about the family to turn her own voice against her. If she is lying, Claire may be helping the person responsible for her husband’s death. Every attempt to prove what happened that night forces Claire to question how well she knew the two people she trusted most.

I Know Her Voice is a fast-moving British psychological thriller about family loyalty, memory, evidence, buried secrets and the frightening distance between what feels certain and what can actually be proved.

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Excerpt

Daniel’s name lit my phone at 2:17 in the morning.

I answered before I was properly awake, still trying to work out why the room was wrong. The curtains were beige instead of blue. The red standby light on the television was on the wrong wall. Then I remembered the hotel, the conference, the name badge I had left on the desk because I would need it again at breakfast.

“Dan?”

“Mum?”

I sat up. It was Sophie. For a second that was all I understood. Daniel’s name on the screen. Sophie’s voice in my ear.

“Soph?”

She made a sound I had never heard from her before. Not quite crying. More like she had been crying for so long that her breathing had forgotten what it was supposed to do.

“Mum, I think I’ve killed Dad.”

I pushed the duvet away.

“What?”

“I think I’ve killed him.”

“Sophie, slow down. Where are you?”

“At home.”

“Your flat?”

“No. Home. Yours.”

I put my feet on the carpet. The bedside lamp came on too brightly and I turned it straight back off, as if the light itself were making it harder to hear her.

“What do you mean, you’ve killed Dad?”

“He fell.”

“Fell where?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know.”

“You do know. You’re there. Tell me what happened.”

“He hit his head.”

There was a noise behind her. A small scrape or knock. I held the phone tighter.

“Sophie, listen to me. Is Dad conscious?”

Nothing.

“Sophie?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Is he breathing?”

“I don’t know.”

“You need to check.”

“I did.”

“What do you mean, you did?”

“I tried. I shouted at him. He won’t wake up.”

I was already standing. My jeans were over the back of the chair where I had left them. I pulled them on one-handed and nearly fell because my foot caught in the hem.

“Go back to him.”

“I can’t.”

“Yes, you can. Put the phone down next to him if you need both hands.”

“No.”

“Soph, go back to Dad and tell me if he’s breathing.”

“Mum, there’s blood.”

The room sharpened around me: the edge of the desk, my shoes underneath it, the little laminated card beside the hotel phone telling me what number to dial if I needed another pillow.

“How much?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where from?”

“His head.”

“All right. Listen to me. We need an ambulance.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No, Mum. You can’t.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I can’t be here.”

I stopped pulling on my jumper.

“What happened?”

“I told you.”

“No, you didn’t. You said he fell.”

“He did.”

“Did you push him?”

She did not answer.

“Sophie.”

“I didn’t mean to.”

I sat back down on the edge of the bed.

I looked at Daniel’s name at the top of the screen. Nothing in the hotel room had changed, but I already knew I would remember every stupid detail of it.

“Sophie, tell me exactly what happened.”

“I just wanted him to stop. He wouldn’t let me go and I pushed him. He went backwards. I didn’t think he’d…”

Her voice disappeared.

“Soph?”

“He’s not getting up.”

“All right.”

“What am I going to do?”

“All right.”

I said it again because it was what I had always said to Sophie when something went wrong. All right. Give me a minute.

Lost PE kit. Missed bus. Boyfriend crying outside our house at seventeen. Bank card swallowed by a cash machine in Barcelona. The scale was unrecognisable; the reflex was the same.

“Mum?”

I looked at the clock again.

2:18.

The hotel was nearly fifty miles from home.

“Listen to me carefully,” I said. “Go out through the back gate, not the front. Go home before anyone sees you. I’ll sort this.”

There was a pause. It lasted perhaps two seconds. Long enough for me to hear the words again.

Go home before anyone sees you.

I’ll sort this.

“Mum…”

“Go.”

“What about Dad?”

That was the moment I came back to myself.

“Wait. No. Sophie, wait.”

The line went dead. I called her straight back. Nothing. Again. Her phone rang and rang.

“Come on, Soph.”

Voicemail. I pressed Daniel’s name. The call failed almost immediately. I tried again and got nothing. Then I dialed 999.

Excerpt © C. M. Vane. Supplied for StoreyBook Reviews spotlight use.

About the Author

C.M. Vane writes psychological thrillers about secrets, suspicion and the unsettling moment when ordinary life begins to feel anything but ordinary.

Drawn to stories in which trust becomes dangerous and the truth depends on who you believe, Vane writes fast-moving, character-driven suspense built around relationships, buried histories and the things people convince themselves they know about those closest to them.

I Know Her Voice is C. M. Vane’s debut psychological thriller.