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  THE PUPIL

  Dawn Goodwin

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  About this Book

  About the Author

  Table of Contents

  www.ariafiction.com

  About The Pupil

  One moment of carelessness. Four shattered lives.Psychological suspense that explores a labyrinth of lies, manipulation and revenge. Perfect for fans of Louise Jenson and Katerina Diamond.

  Literary agent Viola Matthews is sure she’s met Katherine Baxter before.So when her husband and bestselling novelist Samuel Morton introduces Viola to the quiet, unassuming woman he has offered to mentor, she knows their paths have crossed before.The question is where?

  As their worlds collide and the bond between Samuel and Katherine deepens, Viola realises she must take control. If Viola is right, then Katherine needs to pay for something that happened twelve years ago

  Contents

  Welcome Page

  About The Pupil

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Acknowledgements

  About Dawn Goodwin

  Also by Dawn Goodwin

  Become an Aria Addict

  Copyright

  For Ted

  1

  This is it, Katherine. One more day, then it’s back to reality tomorrow. Come on, you’ve got this.

  My pale hands gripped the basin as I stared, unimpressed, at my reflection in the mirror. I’d pulled my long, dark hair into a low ponytail in an attempt at professional chic, but instead it accentuated my sharp cheekbones and made my ridiculously large blue eyes seem cartoonish. I’d only put on a tiny bit of mascara for embellishment, but all I could see staring back at me were eyes like Betty Boop.

  I looked away. The wind whistled through the little bathroom window and rattled the door in its frame. In harmony, my stomach groaned hollowly, but I felt simultaneously nauseous at the idea of eating.

  I pulled out the hairband holding my ponytail and wrapped it around my wrist. My hair would have to be au naturel today. Okay, that worked better – much more like my plain self. No need to draw extra attention. With a deep breath and one last look, I pushed away from the basin and pulled open the door.

  The cacophony of noise filtering up the stairs assaulted my ears instantly.

  ‘Give it back!’

  ‘No, it’s mine!’

  Thank goodness Paul had left for work already. Besides the racket, he’d hate that I was wearing jeans again.

  I rushed downstairs to find Jack and Lily wrestling over a book, the pages of which were close to exploding from the spine, while Bo, our overexcitable cocker spaniel, lay in the corner of the room chewing on a stolen trainer.

  ‘Hey, hey! What’s going on?’ I positioned myself between the kids and grabbed the book before any long-term damage could be inflicted.

  ‘He stole it from my room!’

  ‘I need it for school!’

  They both shouted over each other, Lily’s ten-year-old voice reaching a pitch that even a world-class soprano would be proud of, while her eight-year-old brother looked close to infuriated tears.

  ‘Okay,’ I said, switching into mediator role. ‘Lils, I’m sure he didn’t mean to take it without asking, but, to be fair, you haven’t read this book in months.’ Lily began to object, but I shushed her with a glare. ‘And Jack, you should’ve asked Lils first if you could take it. You would get upset if you found her rifling through your stuff. Now, can we just pack our bags and get off to school please. You cannot be late today.’

  I cannot be late today.

  My earlier nerves forced aside for now, I wrestled the soggy trainer from Bo and got on with the insurmountable task that was the school run so that I could make my train and then concentrate on me for one last, blissful day.

  *

  I slapped the typed pages onto the desk, aware of the stupid smile playing at the edge of my lips. Not only had I written those words, but I’d swallowed my anxiety with a gulp of tepid water and read them out loud to a room full of relative strangers.

  I skimmed the faces around the boardroom table, looking for signs that they liked it, but was greeted with indifference.

  Oh god, they hated it.

  I pulled myself up a little straighter in the hard chair, donning my well-worn armour against the inevitable criticism.

  ‘Okay, thanks Katherine,’ Samuel Morton said with a smile from his position at the head of the long table. Was that pity I could see? Was it as bad as that? I’d stopped openly fangirling over him on about day three of this writing course and, truth be told, I was still a little captivated by him, so the last thing I wanted to see on his lovely lips was pity. ‘Thoughts, anyone?’ He ran his hand over his brow.

  ‘Um, yeah, it’s… Can I be brutally honest?’ The American man sitting opposite me leaned forward. I think his name was Carl, but I couldn’t be sure.

  ‘That’s why we’re here,’ Samuel replied on an exhale. He looked like he wanted to roll his eyes.

  Carl was staring at me with contrived intensity. ‘It’s just that not much happens.’ He scrunched his face up like a gnome. ‘There’s a lot of beautiful words and imagery, but no real journey or plot that I can figure.’ He accentuated the words while his hands punctuated the air.

  I chewed on my lip.

  ‘Yes, I agree.’ A middle-aged woman in a loose-fitting floral blouse and navy-blue trousers that could only be described as ‘slacks’ interrupted the man I had now mentally dubbed ‘The Gnome’. ‘You need more action, less talk. There’s a lot of unnecessary dialogue and not enough story for the readers to get their teeth into.’

  She reminded me of Fiona from the film Shrek, not helped by the fact that she had introduced herself to the fifteen-strong group as ‘Foo’ at the beginning of the week. Giving someone a moniker so that they appeared less threatening and intimidating to me was a trick I had learnt in therapy. It was coming in useful today.

  ‘I quite like it.’ I looked across the table to where a quiet voice had chimed in. ‘It’s… lyrical.’ A mousey, bespectacled woman called Shelley looked sheepishly at the many eyes turned towards her. My husband Paul would describe her as being ‘a few meals ahead’, but she seemed harmless and, so far this week, had been the most reasonable and objective in her comments.

  There was silence. I looked down at the pages in front of me, willing myself not to take it all to heart. What else had I expected?

  ‘Anyone else?’ Samuel pushed.

  Apart from Foo tapping her pen on the table, the room remained quiet.

  ‘Okay, well, for what it’s worth, I think there is promise here,’ Samuel said.

  I looked up. Samuel Morton. Award-winning author of intellectual crime thrillers; critics’ favourite; darling of the publishing world. He could see promise!

  ‘There is some beautiful imagery and I agree that it could be toned down, stripped back a little, but the bones of the plot are there. Pacing is a little… erratic, but it just needs a sharp edit to pull it tighter and reveal the underlying narrative arc.’

&nbs
p; I wasn’t entirely sure what all that meant, but he was smiling and there was something in the way he was looking at me that made the floor drop out of my stomach. I raised my eyebrows in what I hoped showed the right degree of gratitude rather than in a weird facial tick kind of way. God, what was the matter with me? I was back to acting like a schoolgirl with a crush.

  ‘Right, coffee break I think, then it’s Greg’s turn as the last critique of the course.’ Samuel pushed his chair back with a rasp of metal on tiles and headed towards the coffee station.

  *

  I contemplated a thin line of dirt under my short nails before looking around the table. This was day five of the creative writing course, during which we had listened, shared, compared and evaluated our starter novels. Each of us had come to the table with something different – from romcoms to historical fiction to crime – and, so far, it had hands down been the best week of my life. Five days to put myself front and centre, doing something I loved with people of a similar mindset for a few hours. No talk of children, schools, secondary transfer days, healthy eating. No hiding.

  And then there was Samuel. Meeting him had been worth digging into my savings to pay for the course in the first place. This afternoon we had run through Greg’s novel about a man caught up in a fight with the mafia, debating his use of first-person voice and the time jumps he had included, but now Samuel was drawing the course to a close. I zoned in on his lips as he spoke.

  ‘Writers are selfish creatures. We take our inspiration from everyone and everything around us without permission. Not necessarily asking for anything in return except that little bit of the Muse’s soul to pepper our narrative with life. They say it’s a lonely profession, but I disagree. We create our own companionships, whether the token of our attention is willing or not, whether real or fictional.’ He paced backwards and forwards as he spoke, then stopped and leaned on the table, his fingers splayed.

  He scanned the room before letting his gaze fall on me just as I licked my lips. The heat of a blush fanned over my skin.

  ‘We are always observing, taking notes in our head, wondering if the scene playing out before us can be used and manipulated into plugging that gaping plot hole. We are predators, stalking the lives of others, using and abusing, bending and shaping at will.’ Pulling his eyes away from me, he continued pacing again, his hands embellishing his sentences. I hung on every word. ‘Use what goes on around you, the people, smells, tastes. Use the conversations you overhear or the arguments you witness on a train. Use the taste of your lover’s skin or the physical pain you feel when they leave you. All of it is useful. Make your writing come alive with what you experience and then add a dash of imagination and it will sing.’

  A lock of greying hair had fallen over his eyes. I felt compelled to reach out. He swept it casually to the side, then turned back to his audience.

  ‘Now, without further ado, there is a pub next door and it’s calling out for us to have a celebratory drink before we all go our separate ways. Who’s in?’

  A titter of amusement swept around the table before the rest of the group got to their feet and began to pack up, chatting amongst themselves and throwing on coats.

  I hesitated and looked at my watch. I was already cutting it fine to catch the train that would get me home in time to collect Lily and Jack from my friend Helen’s house before Paul got home from work. He’d agreed to me taking this week to do the course as long as I could fit it in around the kids’ schedule and Helen had been a godsend in picking them up from school and letting them hang out at hers for an hour or so every day.

  But I also didn’t want this week to end just yet and a drink in the pub talking all things literary seemed like an irresistible idea on a Friday afternoon. Perhaps I would get the opportunity to talk to Samuel a bit more too.

  As I stuffed my notebook and folder into my bag, internally debating whether it was worth calling in another favour with Helen, I felt something brush against my arm and I turned to see Samuel next to me.

  ‘You will join me for a drink, won’t you, Katherine?’ he said.

  I wasn’t about to say no, since he had asked so nicely. I picked up my phone and made a hasty call to Helen to arrange a sleepover for the kids.

  2

  Situated as it was near to Soho, there were already a number of suits spilling out of the bar and into the street, enjoying their first cigarette post-work. Late September leaves swirled about their feet, waltzing with cigarette butts and empty crisp packets.

  A long, polished bar dominated the room, illuminated by the rows of multicoloured bottles standing to attention behind the bar staff. Artisan gins and trendy rum brands stood shoulder to shoulder with cheaper spirits in eye-watering hues. The air was heady with a bouquet of aftershave, alcohol and naked ambition, making me almost nostalgic for the days of my youth when bars up north would reek of cigarette smoke, beer and regret.

  The writing group congregated around a few tables to the side of the room. I hovered on the periphery, holding my coat in front of me like a shield. The group looked at each other for a moment, no one wanting to be the first to offer to get a round in, not for so many of them in one go. Eventually, The Gnome couldn’t hold out any longer, the pull of the pint proving too much for him to bear.

  ‘What’s your poison, everyone? I’ll get the first one in.’

  Relieved mutterings of ‘make it a pint for me’ and ‘a small white wine please’ filled the air. Conscious of the rumbling of my tummy after a day of little food and too much free coffee, I asked for a gin and tonic, then positioned myself next to Shelley – close enough to follow the conversation, but peripheral enough not to have to engage too thickly. I generally wasn’t one for small talk; I was never sure what adults talked about if not their kids.

  I scanned the faces for Samuel. He was standing further away to my left, his back to me, deep in conversation with a man whose name I couldn’t recall. I tried to make out what they were talking about, but their voices were indistinct in the pub clamour.

  ‘Did you enjoy it? The course I mean?’ Shelley leaned in and whispered at my side. ‘I’m Shelley Low, by the way. We haven’t really been introduced properly.’ She was holding out a pudgy hand to me. I shook it firmly. Her grasp was limp.

  ‘Katherine Baxter.’ I smiled. ‘I did enjoy it. I’ve come away with a lot of great ideas, although I wish it could’ve been longer. I was essentially looking for validation that I can actually write more than anything else. I didn’t necessarily get that though. We spent so much time talking about everyone else’s work and perhaps we could’ve had more time working on our own stuff, you know? Maybe some more one-on-one time with Samuel?’

  ‘True.’ Shelley looked like she was dithering over whether to say the words forming behind her lips, then she ploughed in. ‘Please don’t take everyone’s criticism of your work to heart.’ She flushed. ‘I could tell by your face that you were hoping to hear something different.’ She shuffled her feet and avoided looking me in the eye.

  ‘Was it that obvious?’

  Shelley smiled, just as The Gnome began to dish out the drinks. ‘I personally think your novel is really promising and we have to remember that there is an element of competition here.’ She looked at the others standing around us. ‘They’re all looking at each of us and seeing the books that may get published before theirs, so it’s self-preservation to tear others down before building theirs up.’

  I felt myself exhale. ‘You know, you’re right, Shelley. We pour ourselves into the words on the page and to hear that the reader is left feeling complacent at best is disheartening. But I agree – they can say what they want because they won’t be the ones offering me a publishing deal.’ I looked pointedly at where Samuel was now holding court over the main group. He looked over and caught my eye. My cheeks warmed. I nodded my head subtly in his direction. ‘That’s who we should be impressing.’

  Shelley followed my eyeline. ‘Yes, he’s lovely, isn’t he?’ she said. I w
atched him as he chatted, the way he used his slim hands for emphasis. ‘You know, they say his wife is quite a force to be reckoned with too,’ Shelley added, then took a sip of her drink.

  I dragged my eyes back to her. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, she was the one who got him published in the first place apparently.’ Her voice was little above a conspiratorial whisper and I had to lean in closer to catch the syllables. ‘Viola Matthews?’ The name meant nothing to me. ‘Apparently, she supported him financially while he locked himself away writing failure after failure. He fell into the bottle and she propped him up, by all accounts, because she recognised a latent talent. Then he wrote Muses and Starlings, thought it was rubbish and threw the whole thing away in a drunken rage. She salvaged it, sent it to a publisher friend and the rest is history.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’ Of course he’d be married. But I never would’ve had him down as having struggled. He exuded such confidence when he spoke about his work. My glass was almost empty already and I could feel the gin fizzing in my veins.

  Shelley pushed her glasses up her nose. ‘I did some background reading on him before the course and came across an interview he did years ago with the New York Times just after his third novel was published. Have you read any of his books?’

  ‘I’ve read Muses and Starlings, a long time ago now.’

  ‘I’ve read them all. He’s very good at the thinking man’s thriller, I guess you could call it. He writes with such lyricism and clarity when it comes to character definition. He won the lifetime achievement award at the National Book Awards recently, you know. They don’t give those out to just anyone.’

  I narrowed my eyes at her wistful tone. ‘Ooh, Shelley, anyone would think you have a crush on our esteemed tutor,’ I teased.

  She giggled lightly. ‘Well, I was rather star-struck when I met him on Monday.’ Her cheeks flushed to a deep beetroot shade. ‘He has a way about him, doesn’t he?’ She was gazing at him now. ‘Of course, it’s been a while since he published anything new. Rumour has it he’s close to finishing his next bestseller.’