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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018
Copyright © 2018 Seven Acres, LLC
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018
Cover photograph © Nina Masic / Trevillion Images
Carrie Blake asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780008279479
Ebook Edition © May 2018 ISBN: 9780008279462
Version: 2018–03–16
Table of Contents
On the day he finally asked me, I knew. This was where everything had been leading, all along. I didn’t ask: What happens now? I didn’t ask: Why me? I didn’t ask: What will I have to do? I didn’t ask: How bad will I have to be? How evil?
I waited for him to speak.
He smiled at me across the table in the restaurant where he’d just shown me something that had changed everything. Something that put the last part of my life—or maybe my whole life so far and my immediate future—in an entirely new and different light.
He didn’t have to explain. He didn’t have to tell me what I’d just seen. He took my hand in his and gently stroked my palm. His hands were smooth and icy cold. As cold as the devil’s, I thought.
‘You’re perfect,’ was all he said. ‘Perfect.’