From the #1 internationally bestselling author of The Murder Rule comes an emotional novel of suspense about two families at war.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Dervla McTiernan’s What Happened To Nina?, which is out now.
Nina and Simon are the perfect couple. Young, fun and deeply in love. Until they leave for a weekend at his family’s cabin in Vermont, and only Simon comes home.
WHAT HAPPENED TO NINA?
Nobody knows. Simon’s explanation about what happened in their last hours together doesn’t add up. Nina’s parents push the police for answers, and Simon’s parents rush to protect him. They hire expensive lawyers and a PR firm that quickly ramps up a vicious, nothing-is-off-limits media campaign.
HOW FAR WILL HIS FAMILY GO TO KEEP HIM SAFE?
Soon, facts are lost in a swirl of accusation and counter-accusation. Everyone chooses a side, and the story goes viral, fueled by armchair investigators and wild conspiracy theories and illustrated with pretty pictures taken from Nina’s social media accounts. Journalists descend on their small Vermont town, followed by a few obsessive “fans.”
HOW FAR WILL HER FAMILY GO TO GET TO THE TRUTH?
Nina’s family is under siege, but they never lose sight of the only thing that really matters—finding their daughter. Out-gunned by Simon’s wealthy, powerful family, Nina’s parents recognize that if playing by the rules won’t get them anywhere, it’s time to break them.
Prologue
My name is Nina Fraser. There’s a good chance that you know who I am. You’ve probably seen my picture online, and heard my story, and if you have I guess you’ve already judged me. I mean, not in public, because victim-blaming is a bad look, but in the privacy of your own head, some quiet part of you probably thinks I was stupid or weak or both. Maybe you think that if I’d just stood up for myself, if I’d just walked away, everything would have been okay. I’m not going to argue with you or try to convince you that you’re wrong. I just want to say, a thing can be crystal clear with hindsight, but just about as clear as mud when you’re actually living it.
Also, sometimes it’s the walking away that gets you in trouble.
So. Like I said, I’m Nina. I’m twenty years old. I have a sister, Grace, and two parents. And I’m a climber. You know all of that already if you’ve read my story online. Here’s some stuff people don’t know. I have calluses on my fingertips, a scar on my knee and another on my elbow, both from falls. I love to climb. When I am on the mountain, I can’t think about anything except my fingers wedged into a crevasse and my feet balanced just so and the route ahead. I never think about what lies beneath me. When I reach the top I sit and I breathe and I look out over the valley. I look back over the route and I work out how I could have climbed it better.
I have a boyfriend named Simon Jordan. Simon and I met in school when we were five years old. In middle school we became friends. When we were sixteen we fell in love. It’s important to me that you know that it was really good between us. I won’t say that Simon was perfect because no one on this earth is perfect, but if there was such a thing as a perfect first boyfriend for an awkward girl who did not know who she was, then he was that. He laughed at my jokes. He was always interested in what I had to say, even when his friends were around. He never played games, never made me feel like some other girl was better. With him I felt pretty, which matters, way too much, when you’re sixteen. We slept together for the first time on his eighteen birthday, and it was awkward and a little painful but also funny and beautiful and I was sure, down to my bones, that I would never love anyone the way I loved him. After things started to go wrong I spent a lot of time thinking about the way we used to be. I looked at our old photos, and spent time with friends who had known us from the beginning. I needed to believe that I hadn’t imagined everything. That I was holding on for something real.
When we finished high school Simon went to Northwestern, and I stayed at home in Waitsfield and went to UVM. Simon and I didn’t think the long-distance thing would be a problem for us. We were solid. And the first year was okay. We came home a lot, and we Facetimed every day, sometimes two or three times a day and we emailed. My friend, Allie, told me that it couldn’t last. She said Simon was too good-looking, plus his parents were loaded. He’d meet a hundred girls who wanted him, a hundred girls who were more sophisticated, more experienced and more exciting than the girl next door. Allie can be a bitch like that. I didn’t want Simon to dump me, but I’m the kind of person who likes to prepare for the worst so I put a lot of mental energy into getting ready for the inevitable. I studied hard, and tried to make new friends and went climbing pretty much every weekend and I kept waiting for the axe to fall.
But instead of dumping me, Simon just seemed to get more intense. Instead of calling me a couple of times a day, he started calling four or five times. Sometimes he wanted me to ‘carry him around in my pocket’. Which meant Facetiming him and then muting my phone and taking him with me to lectures or just propping the phone beside me on my desk while I was studying.
Simon came home every other weekend and he wanted to pay so that I could fly out to Illinois to see him too, but I couldn’t do that. I had to work in my mom’s inn on the weekends. Also, taking his money and spending it like it was mine would have felt weird. He didn’t understand. He was really angry and really upset. Looking back, I can see that that was when our relationship started to change. After I said no to coming to Illinois, Simon had a permanent attitude. Like he had the moral high ground. Like he was the perfect boyfriend and I was the bad, unreliable girlfriend. He made jokes about it, but I could see that behind the jokes his feelings were hurt, so I did everything I could to reassure him. Nothing seemed to be enough. He was rougher with me, in bed, and out of it. He would grip my shoulders or hips so hard that I had bruises — purple fingermarks on my skin. He bit me, a few times. It really hurt but I didn’t tell him to stop. This is going to sound insane, but I was worried about embarrassing him. I figured that he thought it was sexy or something (it so wasn’t) and because everything was weird between us I was afraid that if I told him I hated the biting, that would hurt his feelings too. I told myself that Simon was just going through an insecure stage, that I knew the real him and that we’d get back there, again, if I could just make him understand how much I loved him. I was stupid, but then, I was a lobster in a pot. The water warmed up so gradually that I didn’t realize I was boiling until it was too late.
Simon came home for the October vacation during our Sophomore year. He’d wanted to go to Hawaii with friends, and I had to stay home to work, so he came home too, but he was really angry about it. Nothing I did seemed to make him happy, until I finally agreed to blow off my work at my mom’s inn, and take a week’s vacation with him. I called my mom and of course she was upset and angry but Simon seemed to finally be himself again and the relief of that was so intense. I hadn’t realized how much I was stressing about us until I thought I could stop.
Simon’s parents had just bought a new house near Stowe. It came with four hundred acres, a small lake, unmarked trails and climbing routes. He wanted us to go there, just the two of us, to really focus on our relationship. So we went. We hiked and climbed and walked and talked and things really weren’t any better. I felt like we were faking things. Pretending to be close but not really. I wanted to talk to him about the bruises and the hurting but every time I tried my throat closed up. On Friday, Simon wanted to go climbing again. My body was complaining. My fingers were sore, and my right shoulder was hot. I felt like I needed a rest day, but I said yes anyway.
‘Let’s climb that crag we saw on Wednesday,’ Simon said. We were eating breakfast. He reached over and smoothed my hair back, tucking it behind my ear. He cupped his hand around the back of my neck. His hand was warm and dry and gentle. For some reason I wanted to cry.
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘That looked good.’
We ate, we dressed and we hiked out. It was a short hike to the crag. Simon chatted the whole way there and I smiled and answered and took his hand when he offered it but I had tears just under the surface the whole way. I hated feeling like that and I tried to shake it off. I started to cheer up when we got to the crag. It really did look like an awesome climb, maybe eighty feet of granite, with some nice holds at the beginning to get us started. And the weather was good. It was chilly but sunny and there was no real wind. I dropped my pack and started to take out my gear.
‘This was such a great idea,’ I said. ‘I’m so glad we’re here.’
‘Better than cleaning another bathroom?’ He gave me a little jokey shove that set me off balance.
‘Understatement,’ I said. He picked me up, put his hands on my butt and pulled me in close. He kissed me. I kissed him back. The messed up thing is that the kiss felt good. Simon let me go, we both did our prep and started our climb. I didn’t think about us as I climbed. I just zoned out and thought about my holds and my route and I started to feel like me again. I felt stronger.
We got to the top, sat on the edge and took in the view.
‘You okay?’ Simon asked.
‘Sure. Yes. A little tired. Hungry, too.’ I searched in my pack for the sandwiches I’d made that morning. They were chicken salad, which was his favorite. He unwrapped the sandwich, took a couple of bites, made a face, and handed it back to me.
‘Think the chicken might be off, babe. Got any chocolate?’
I had chocolate. I handed him a bar, silently. He ate it. There was nothing wrong with the chicken salad. I’d cooked the chicken myself the day before and made up the salad with all fresh ingredients. I started to feel pissed. A small ball of fuck-you showed up at the bottom of my stomach. I kept eating my sandwich.
‘You can’t eat that,’ he said. ‘You need to throw it away.’
‘It’s fine.’
He stared at me. ‘Okay, but when you’re puking tonight don’t call me to hold your hair.’
I shrugged. His shoulders stiffened, and he turned away from me. Which was my cue to pack up the sandwich, to say sorry and kiss him and thank him for looking out for me. But no.
The fuck-you wasn’t going anywhere. In fact, it was starting to grow.
‘It tastes good, actually. Mmm.’ I thought he might lose it. Maybe I wanted him to. But he just stood up.
‘I need to take a piss.’ He walked away and took a leak up against a tree. I finished my sandwich and packed everything up in my bag again. Simon started to prepare for the rappel down.
‘Let’s simul-rap,’ he said. He had a gleam in his eyes. A challenge. Simultaneous rappelling is when two climbers use one rope to rappel, relying on each other’s body weight, with the single rope rigged through a central rappel anchor. It can be dangerous, if one climber loses focus or control, but people do it sometimes if they want to get down quickly. We weren’t in any rush. We had the whole afternoon to make our descent and I could have just said that but I saw that challenge in his eyes and I didn’t feel like backing down.
‘Fine.’ I tied on, then tied my stopper knot, which would make sure that my end of the rope couldn’t slip through my gear; always the worst case scenario with this kind of rappelling. If the rope slipped through my gear it would also slip through the rappel anchor which would mean that Simon would fall. I watched him prep.
‘Did you tie your stopper knot?’ I asked.
‘Of course,’ Simon said, mildly. He showed it to me.
We started down. It wasn’t fun. Simon’s progress was jerky and unpredictable which meant that, on the other end of the rope, mine was too. He was doing it on purpose. I gritted my teeth. Decided that I was done pretending that things were okay. When we got to the bottom we were going to get everything out in the open. The rappel didn’t take that long. Half an hour, maybe, including the time we needed to detach our gear as we progressed. Simon reached the bottom first. I had about twenty-five feet left to descend. I kicked off, landed and bounced lightly off the wall, letting the rope slip through my gear. I pushed off again, the rope slipped through, and then it happened. The rope went slack. Completely slack. I had nothing to hold on to. I was falling.
It’s the most sickening thing in the world, losing the support of your rope. It had happened to me only once before, in a rock-climbing center in Boston, when an auto-belay apparatus failed. But that was indoors, and I’d only been about five feet up, and there’d been foam mats below me. This was different. I just … fell. There was no scrambling, no grabbing for a tree branch or an outcropping. There was nothing to reach out for but air. I fell, I think, maybe ten feet. Not far, but far enough. I landed on my back, on dirt. There were rocks either side of me. Any one of them would have broken my back if I’d landed a foot to my left or right. My head hit the ground hard. I was wearing a helmet, which saved me, I guess, but I still blacked out for a minute. When I woke up, I couldn’t feel my body, which must have been shock, and then the pain came flooding in and with it the need to vomit. I couldn’t roll to my side. My body wouldn’t obey me. I was sure that I was going to choke, and then Simon was there.
‘Oh my God! Nina. Jesus.’
He turned me onto my side, one hand supporting my neck the whole way. I vomited up my chicken sandwich. When I was done, he rolled me back and ran his hands down my shoulders and arms, and my legs down to my feet.
‘Are you okay? Is anything broken?’
I tried to take a mental inventory. Everything hurt. Had I broken anything? Maybe some ribs. My ribs were on fire. I tried to move my legs. They responded. I clenched my fists. That worked too.
‘I think I’m okay.’
‘Don’t get up,’ he said. ‘Don’t even think about it. My God. What the hell were you thinking? You just let go. Did you think you were down already?’
I hadn’t let go. Had I let go?
‘Can I roll you back on your side again? I want to check your back, that you didn’t land on anything.’
I said okay, and Simon rolled me. His hands were very gentle, but everywhere he touched hurt.
‘Jesus, the back of your helmet is completely fucked. It’s cracked right across. Good thing you were wearing it.’
I started to cry, though it was a weak sort of noise, a kind of whimper. I was too sore for howling. Simon rolled me over again and took off my shoes and my helmet. He gave me orders — wriggle my toes, my fingers, touch my nose, follow his finger. He was completely confident, like he knew exactly what he was doing, and I did everything he told me to do. At last, he sat back.
‘I think you’re going to be all right. You got so lucky. You scared me. You really did.’ He asked me to sit up, and I did. He packed away my climbing shoes and put my boots back on my feet and laced them up tightly. He picked me up off the ground and asked me to try standing. I was sore and shaky, but I could do it. He picked up both packs, took my hand, and led me away from the crag. I think I was still in shock. The pain in my ribs and head were pretty bad, but I just held on to Simon’s hand and kept limping along while he chatted and made soothing noises. His mood had changed completely. He was … cheery. At the house he brought me upstairs, helped me undress and tucked me into bed. He brought me painkillers and water and kissed my forehead and told me we would have to go to the doctor the next day but for now it would be better to rest.
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I’m really sorry.’
‘I’m just glad you’re okay.’ He leaned down to kiss me and then he left the room. And left me with something to think about. When he’d leaned down, I’d caught his eye, and in it I’d seen not concern, but … pleasure? Just a tiny hint of joy? Or triumph? I couldn’t nail it down.
I rubbed at my forehead with my left hand. With my right I cradled my sore ribs. What had happened on the mountain? I hadn’t let go of the rope. For sure, I hadn’t. Could the rappel anchor have given? Yes, a possibility, but hadn’t I seen the rope, hanging slack but still suspended, from my place on the ground? So the anchor couldn’t have given. The only other explanation was that Simon had completed his rappel, then let the rope go from his end. He would have had to untie his stopper knot first. It couldn’t have been a mistake. Could he have done it on purpose? Had he wanted me to fall? I told myself that was ridiculous. I told myself that I was being crazy and of course Simon hadn’t done that, would never do that, would have no reason to do that. But it was like I was going through the motions in the privacy of my own head, for no-one’s benefit. Because I knew, for sure, that he had.
I got out of bed and went to the bathroom. I took off my top and looked in the mirror. There were marks on my body, old and new. A lot of them. Bruises on my shoulders. A bite mark on my left breast. I pushed my pants down. The bruise on my hip was yellowing. I turned, twisting to look over my shoulder. My back was a mess of black and blue. There was blood too, from a new cut on my shoulder-blade that I hadn’t even felt.
I put my top back on and walked back to the bed. I sat there for a long time, looking down at my toes. I thought I had a decision to make but when I sat down I realized the decision had already been made. All that remained was to decide how to do it. I searched for the fuck-you deep in my stomach, found it, and fed it. I wanted to be angry. For months, for half-a-year, he’d made me dance around, trying so hard to please him, trying so hard not to upset him. He’d wanted me to be afraid and I was done with that. I started to get dressed. I put on my jeans and my boots and my sweater. I tied my hair back. I took my clothes from the wardrobe and my toiletries from the bathroom. I packed my bag. And then I went downstairs to tell Simon that we were over and that I never wanted to see him again.
