A novel by crime-thriller author
Sophie Hannah and the fourth instalment in
The Spilling Series. Ruth Bussey knows what it means to be in the wrong and to be wronged. She once did something she regrets, and her punishment nearly destroyed her. Now Ruth is rebuilding her life, and has found a love she doesn't believe she deserves: Aidan Seed. Aidan is also troubled by a past he hates to talk about, until one day he decides he must confide in Ruth. He tells her that years ago he killed someone: a woman called Mary Trelease.Ruth is confused. She's certain she's heard the name before, and when she realises why it sounds familiar, her fear and confusion deepen - because the Mary Trelease that Ruth knows is very much alive...
Contains the following tropes:
- Abusive Parents: Aidan's father, good lord. Forcing the boy to sleep in his bed with him (up to when Aidan was nearly a teenager), making him stay out of school because he couldn't stand being on his own, being violent towards both him and his other children that they left as soon as they could and it's implied there was some sexual abuse going on.
- Ruth's aren't great either, being psychologically abusive towards their daughter and refusing to take her side during the aftermath of the trial. Ruth tells them she never wants to see them again.
- Asshole Victim: Gemma ends up shot and then has her teeth knocked out post-mortem and replaced with nails. Considering what she did to Ruth, there isn't an iota of sympathy for her.
- Becoming the Mask: Mary initially befriended Ruth because she wanted to get closer to Aidan, but in the climax she genuinely refers to Ruth as her friend, even after shooting her.
- Big Damn Heroes: Simon and Charlie in the climax when Mary has both Ruth and Aidan trapped with her in the cottage and both of them have been shot.
- Cold-Blooded Torture: Gemma decides to punish Ruth for trying to seduce her husband by tying her up to a statue in her back garden, starving her, forcing her to eat gravel and pelting her with rocks - Ruth even states that had the gravel been the larger sized one, she would have died. The book does not shy away from the damage done to Ruth, particularly from eating the gravel and even now she cannot say the word 'stone'.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Both Aidan and Ruth, which is partly what draws the two of them together.
- Fingore: Mary smashes her hand with a hammer in the climax, saying it doesn't matter because it's not the hand she paints with.
- Foreshadowing: Simon mentions that when he showed Mary a picture of Aidan and asked if she recognised him, she said no and he suspects she was lying. He's right.
- Hero-Worshipper: Ruth turns out to be one for Charlie, though initially it looks like she's a Stalker without a Crush.
- Precision F-Strike: "Waterhouse, get the fuck out of my office."
- Prone to Tears: Ruth at the beginning of the story, as an after effect from the psychological trauma she suffered previously.
- The Reveal: Mary is Martha Wyers.
- Yandere: Martha for Aidan, good lord. She stalked him obsessively, unable to let him go even though he made it clear he wanted to do nothing with her, deliberately befriended his girlfriend in order to drive a wedge between them and, to cap it all off, kidnapped him and shot him when he refused to say that he loved her.
