The Librarian: The unforgettable, completely addictive psychological thriller from bestseller Valerie Keogh

By Valerie Keogh

‘Keogh is the queen of compelling narratives and twisty plots’ Jenny O'Brien

The brilliant new psychological thriller from bestseller Valerie Keogh.

'A wonderful book, I can’t rate this one highly enough. If only there were ten stars, it’s that good. Valerie Keogh is a master story-teller, and this is a masterful performance.' Bestselling author Anita Waller

Since that fateful night I have always kept myself to myself. Reserved. Private. Alone.

Some people think I am too quiet. That life is passing me by. But I know there is safety in my own company. That no one can hurt me if I don’t let them get too close.

Until the day I meet him. A handsome, charming stranger. A chance for me to take a risk…finally?

Or a man who threatens everything I’ve worked so hard for?

You’ll be sorry…

And that’s when my whole life begins to fall apart….

Don't miss the brand new thriller by Valerie Keogh! Perfect for fans of Sue Watson, Shalini Boland and K.L. Slater.

Reader Reviews for The Librarian

'Another great book, loved all the suspense along the way' ★★★★★ Reader Review

'Valerie keogh just keeps producing books that just keep getting better and better' ★★★★★ Reader Review

'This is an amazing book, a real page turner, that will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very end' ★★★★★ Reader Review

• Language: English
• Publisher: Boldwood Books
• Release date: Apr 21, 2023
• ISBN: 9781804154748

Valerie Keogh

Valerie Keogh is the internationally bestselling author of several psychological thrillers and crime series. She originally comes from Dublin but now lives in Wiltshire and worked as a nurse for many years.

Book preview

1

Ava Warrington checked her watch and swore softly. ‘Eleven, and not a minute later.’ That’s what her sister, Judy, had said, as she and her husband, Harris, had headed off earlier. She’d been right there. It wasn’t a minute later; it was over an hour and still no sign of them. Babysitting for her niece and nephew was a regular occurrence for Ava. It wasn’t the first time Judy and Harris were late back either, but even if they’d gone for a drink afterwards, they should have been home by now. Ava checked her mobile. No messages, and when she rang her sister’s number, it went straight to voicemail. Rather than leaving a message, she hung up, tossed the phone onto the seat beside her and picked up the remote to switch the TV to a news channel. When there were no reports of any disasters or terrorist attacks, she turned back to the music she’d been listening to on YouTube, then shook her head and switched the TV off altogether.

Anxiety made her restless. She crossed barefooted to the window and peered out. Her Fiat was parked on the road, Harris’s Volvo parked in the driveway. The nearest streetlight wasn’t working, light from one further along doing a poor job of illuminating the street. Instead, it cast strange shadows. In the slight breeze that rolled along the street, they seemed to sway to a beat of their own. She tried to look away, but as they danced, they caught her up and dragged her back to a time when her life was filled with shade.

Ten years before. During the freedom of those first few months in university, when she’d been stupidly naïve, she’d soaked up every new experience, desperate to prove she could belong. She’d almost wrecked her life in the process… and had destroyed someone else’s. Simon Loder. His name was tattooed into her brain, his smile on the face of every young man she met, anywhere, forcing her to do a double take even when she knew it couldn’t possibly be him.

Ten years… almost to the day. Every year was bad, but this anniversary seemed more significant somehow. Perhaps it was why she’d felt so out of sorts recently… restless, snappy, easily distracted.

A noise brought her spinning around. When it came again, she went out to the hall and listened. She knew every creak and squeak in her smaller, older house, but although she’d stayed in Judy’s several times over the years, she’d never concerned herself with the sounds this house made. If she’d given it any thought, she’d have said it didn’t make any. Judy had bought it off plan almost ten years before with money given to her by their parents. A four-bedroomed, detached house, it was the first step in the future she’d wanted… house, husband, children. Ava admired her sister’s single-minded determination to have her life work out as she’d planned. Admired it, but didn’t fully understand.

Shame Judy’s plan to be home at eleven hadn’t worked out so well. Ava allowed annoyance to come to a simmer and turned to go back into the living room when the sound she’d heard came again. It brought her to a halt. She held her breath and cocked her head to listen.

Clink, clink, clink. It was coming from upstairs. She’d been up and down a few times that evening to check on the children and hadn’t heard anything unusual. One hand on the banisters, she took the stairs a step at a time, stopping to listen before moving up again. Annoyance had been washed away by a wave of anxiety… she refused to call it fear. Whatever she called it, she had no choice but to go up. Until their parents deigned to return, Cody and Melissa were in Ava’s care.

At the top of the stairway, the bedrooms of her nephew and niece were to each side. Their doors were slightly ajar and in the glow from the landing light, she could see both were asleep, the soft hush of their breathing slow and even.

Clink, clink. The other three doors – to the main bedroom, a spare room, and the bathroom – were shut tight. Both bedrooms were to the back of the house, the main having a small balcony overlooking the rear garden and the open fields behind. These doors were alarmed, the alarm switched on when the family were out or heading to bed. But they weren’t on now. Had someone broken in?

Ava strained to listen. Nothing. She lifted her mobile. Perhaps she should do the sensible thing and ring the police. It’s what Judy would have advised… as she had done all those years before, urging Ava to do the right thing, when she wasn’t sure what that was. ‘You must,’ Judy had said. So Ava had, and spent the last ten years in regret.

She sighed and pushed the memory deeper. No, she wasn’t going to ring the police to tell them she’d heard a noise. How pathetic that would sound; she could almost picture their eyebrows raising. She wasn’t a child, nor was she a naïve university student any more; she needed to get a grip. The admonishment didn’t make her any braver, but it did make her cross the landing. A large glass ornament on a small table looked like a likely ally. She picked it up. It was a good weight, solid. She imagined swinging it, hitting someone, could almost hear the crunch of broken bones, the warm gush of blood. Her imagination always did verge on the graphic and over-dramatic. If there was a bogey man or woman behind the door, could she really use her makeshift weapon? She wasn’t sure she had it in her to be that violent, no matter what the cause.

Deciding to keep it in her hand, for comfort if nothing else, she walked up to the first door, the one to the spare room, and pressed her ear against it. Nothing. She slipped her phone into her jeans’ pocket, grasped the door handle, and pressed it down slowly. Then, holding her breath, she pushed the door open.

Inside, the room was in darkness, the light from the landing illuminating the area close to her but doing nothing to dispel the shadows in the corners. She was sliding her hand along the wall, searching for the light switch, when the sound came again, this time from behind her. She spun to face it, almost falling over her feet in her haste.

It was coming from the bathroom.

The clicking sound… was it a switchblade or a gun? She listened for it to come again, hoping to be able to identify it. If she could, then surely she’d have reason to call the police? Not to say she’d heard a noise but that someone with a knife had broken into the house and she was alone with two young children. Then they’d ride to her rescue, wouldn’t they? But now, when she wanted to hear the sound, it stayed stubbornly quiet.

Thick carpet shushed her approach as she slowly crossed to the door. She raised her makeshift weapon; if she couldn’t bring herself to use it, maybe the sight of it would strike fear into whoever was behind the door. So might being caught unawares, and to that end, she pressed the handle and flung the door open in one smooth movement. Too hard, it bounced off the doorstop behind and almost hit her on its return.

Ava swore softly as she pushed it open again and stared into the space beyond. It was a typical modern bathroom: shower in one corner, bath along one wall, toilet and sink against another. Neither big nor small, light from the hallway easily reached the far corners. She held her breath, her eyes flicking from one side to the other, and slowly dropped her improvised cosh to her side. The room was empty.

As she stood staring, the roller blind on the window billowed. It was a colourful blind with a stainless-steel chain for raising and lowering it… and it was this chain, sailing into the tiled wall with every movement of the blind, that was making the noise. Clink, clink.

‘For goodness’ sake,’ Ava muttered, half-amused at how easily she’d been frightened. She reached behind the blind and closed the small window that had been left open.

Feeling faintly ridiculous, she replaced the ornament on the hall table. A quick check on Cody and Melissa, who were still sleeping peacefully, and she headed back downstairs.

She had descended only a few steps when a sound from below brought her to a halt. What the hell? The earlier anxiety had left its mark and came barrelling back now to send her heart racing. Instinct drove her back for the improvised weapon, and with it in one hand and her mobile in the other, she went slowly down the stairs.

Light was pouring through the glass panel in the front door. Something had triggered the security light outside. The sound came again as she reached the hallway. A sharp cracking noise. Someone was trying to break in. This time, she wasn’t afraid to call the police. She was about to punch in 999 when she heard a different sound. One she’d recognise anywhere. Her sister’s loud, inebriated giggle, followed by the same sharp noise. It was coming from the living room.

Confused and annoyed, Ava went through and saw Judy and Harris with their noses pressed against the window, gormless smiles on both their faces. Judy was rapping against the glass with her engagement ring. When they saw her, they started waving manically.

Ava didn’t return the gesture and resisted the temptation to make a rude one. Instead, rage simmering, she plonked the glass ornament she still held on the coffee table, returned to the hallway and opened the front door.

‘Where the hell have you been?’ She lifted her wrist to check the time. ‘Eleven you said, and it’s now nearly twelve thirty. I’ve been worried sick and I didn’t need the bloody knocking on the window.’ She waved a hand back up the stairway. ‘I’ve already been scared shitless by the cord of that stupid bathroom blind!’

Judy staggered through the door. She and Ava were obviously sisters, but whereas Judy’s features were conventionally pretty, Ava’s nose was rather too large, her mouth a little too wide, and her curly, chilli-pepper-red hair was strikingly different to Judy’s smooth, strawberry-blonde locks.

Judy, too, was the neater of the two sisters. Not that you’d have guessed it that night. Everything about her looked slightly askew. She grinned drunkenly and waved her bag. ‘Couldn’t find my keys, sorry.’ Harris, a step behind, stumbled and knocked over one of the box shrubs that bracketed the front door. ‘Careful!’ Judy yelled back at him.

‘Shush!’ Ava grabbed her sister’s arm and dragged her into the living room. ‘You’ll wake up the kids and you don’t bloody well want them to see you like this!’

‘Like what?’ Judy ran a hand over her hair. ‘Do I look a bit bedraggled?’

‘You look steaming drunk.’ Ava watched as Harris gave up trying to pick up the pot he’d knocked over. He stood back, then before she could stop him, he pushed over the second shrub. ‘Matching again,’ he said with a drunken grin of satisfaction. ‘Judy likes them to look matchy matchy.’

‘For goodness’ sake, come inside before a neighbour calls the police.’

Harris, who always grew stupidly belligerent when he’d had too much to drink, spun around, swayed alarmingly, and shook a clenched fist at his neighbours. ‘Let them ring.’

Ava wasn’t sure there was much point in appealing to her sister who’d sunk onto the sofa and was busy divesting herself of her clothes. It was worth a try; Harris might listen to her. ‘Judy, get him to come in before we have trouble!’

‘God, you’re always such a drama queen. Relax, he’ll come in eventually.’

Ava clenched her jaw, feeling her teeth grind. ‘It’s after twelve thirty in the morning. Where the hell have you been?’

‘We went to…’ Judy waved a hand in the air. ‘That show… whatchmacallit? Very good it was too.’

Ava struggled to hold on to what was left of her patience. ‘However good it was, it didn’t keep you out till this hour.’

It was Harris who answered as he finally gave up threatening the neighbours and rolled into the room. He flopped onto the sofa beside Judy. ‘Very true.’

When he wasn’t offering anything else by way of explanation and looked to be falling asleep, Ava went over and shook him, hard enough to make his eyes flick open. ‘Am I supposed to leave you two like this, eh?’

‘Always the drama queen.’ Judy opened her eyes and made a swatting motion with her hand. ‘Go home, we’ll be fine. Probably sleep here for a few hours, then be right as rain.’

‘Never again. That’s it.’ Ava grabbed her book and the handbag she’d dropped on the floor several hours before. ‘Next time you want a babysitter, find someone else.’ She fished her shoes out from under the sofa and slipped them on.

‘You always say that!’ Judy struggled to her feet. ‘I’m sorry. We bumped into friends during the interval, they invited us for a drink and one thing led to another.’

‘And your phone wasn’t working?’

‘It was supposed to be one drink.’ She shrugged and yawned widely. ‘I’m sorry. I should have rung. Anyway, no harm done. We’re here now.’ She staggered slightly before dragging Ava into a hug. ‘Thanks, sis, you’re an angel.’

Also known as a bloody great pushover. Ava bore her sister’s attempt at making peace with her usual resignation. It wasn’t as if this had been the first time they’d taken advantage. Despite Judy’s willingness to offer more than the going rate, babysitters were virtually impossible to come by, and Ava was frequently cajoled into providing the service. She didn’t really mind; she enjoyed spending time with Cody and Melissa. It wasn’t Judy or Harris’s fault that she’d been on edge recently and had been stupidly frightened by that blasted roller blind chain. And they hadn’t been deliberately trying to scare her when they rapped on the window. ‘Right then’ – she searched in her bag for her car keys and pulled them out – ‘if you’re sure you’ll be okay, I’ll head home.’

Judy gave her cheek a kiss before pushing her away on a waft of booze. ‘Yes, of course. Go, we’ll be fine.’ She gave Ava a shove towards the doorway. ‘I’ll give you a ring tomorrow.’

And with that, she was outside, and the door was shut behind her. With a shake of her head at her sister’s cavalier treatment, Ava stepped over the maltreated box shrubs and headed to her car.

The road was quiet. Many of the gardens had high hedges; some had towering trees, their branches overhanging the footpaths. With the nearest streetlight out of action, the distant ones struggled to pierce the darkness. Instead, their light came at an angle through the trees and branches, leaving sections creepily dark.

Maybe she was still in a heightened sense of anxiety because of the earlier scares, or maybe she was being a drama queen again – Judy’s criticism stung – but Ava suddenly had the strangest sensation that someone was watching her. Glancing around, there was nobody to be seen. The same breeze that had sent the blind billowing in the bathroom sailed through the branches, sending the leaves rustling and whispering.

When Ava was sure – almost certain – that she heard laughter coming from one of those darkly hidden places, she ran to her car. She pressed the fob as she neared it, pulled the door open and almost fell onto the driver’s seat. Only when she had the door locked did she glance around. The full beams of the car lit up the road in front and dispersed some of the shadows at the edges.

Ava was being silly. A drama queen. She rubbed the goosebumps from her arms and peered out the windows again.

Her eyes flicked to the rear-view mirror as she drove away, but she didn’t stop when she thought she saw movement. It was her imagination.

There had been nobody there.

2

Ava was propped up on her pillows, a mug of coffee in one hand, her mobile pressed to her cheek. She was talking to her friend Poppy… or rather she’d been moaning for several minutes about how late her sister had been the previous night. ‘She’ll ring me later, be full of apologies, swear it’ll never happen again, then ask me to babysit again next weekend, what d’you bet?’

Poppy blew a long-suffering sigh down the line before replying. ‘She takes advantage of you.’

‘Everyone takes advantage of me; I’m a flaming doormat.’

‘You need to learn to say no, Ava. Honestly, you’re always the same. You say yes to everything because you want everyone to like you, then you spend the next hours, days and weeks pissing off your friends by moaning about being taken advantage of. It’s very wearing.’

Ava felt her eyes fill at the sharp criticism. It had taken her an age to fall asleep, and she’d woken early when a neighbour started doing DIY at the unearthly hour of six. On a Saturday morning. The same every bloody weekend. That morning, she’d do what she’d been saying she’d do for weeks and have a word with him about his anti-social behaviour. As far as she was aware, he wasn’t supposed to make noise before seven. Perhaps it was time she told him so. Poppy was still talking; she tuned back in.

‘You need to learn how to say no. I’ve told you again and again.’

‘You have, and you’re right, of course you are; it’s just hard. Babysitters are like hen’s teeth, so I like to help. She’s my sister, after all.’

‘And what’s your excuse in work when you take on more than you can handle, eh? Those tours you were asked to do, the ones the curator guy said would be occasional. How often are you doing them now?’ Poppy sighed again. ‘Face it, you’re just incapable of saying no to anyone about anything.’

Harsh but probably true. There was no point in reminding her that Ava loved her job as head librarian at the Tate Modern and was always content to do more than was stated in her extensive job specification. Her friend’s beautiful eyebrows would rise in exasperation. It was time to change the record. ‘How about lunch later; we could try the Belvedere Bistro?’ Newly opened, it was the perfect lure to draw her friend away from a discussion on Ava’s short failings. ‘I could ring and book a table, we could sit, sip wine, and people watch.’

Man watching, she meant really. Poppy’s favourite sport. She’d recently finished a six-month relationship with someone totally unsuitable. At least Ava assumed he was, because although Poppy looked very loved-up over the months, she’d never suggested he and Ava met. Poppy went all coy anytime Ava asked about him, so she guessed he might be someone relatively well-known, and probably married. When she pushed for a name at least, Poppy had laughed. ‘What’s the name of that six-foot invisible rabbit that James Stewart sees in that daft movie you made me watch once?’

Ava had to smile. ‘Harvey. And he wasn’t six feet, he was six feet three and a half inches.’

‘Harvey it is then.’ And that’s what he remained until a week ago.

‘How’s Harvey?’ Ava had asked when they’d met for coffee. She’d hardly seen Poppy since he’d appeared on the scene, but that wasn’t unusual and Ava wasn’t offended.

‘As invisible as the rabbit,’ Poppy had replied. ‘I told him he had choices to make but I’m not hanging about.’

Choices? Ava wasn’t a relationship expert, but giving a man an ultimatum didn’t seem to be the best way forward.

That was Poppy’s final word on the matter and Ava, seeing her friend’s unusually resolute expression, merely said that if she wanted to talk about it, Ava was happy to listen. So far Poppy hadn’t taken advantage of the offer to spill her guts. Maybe she would that day over lunch. ‘What do you think?’ she nudged when Poppy hadn’t answered.

‘If you can get a table at this late stage, that’d be great.’

‘I’ll ring and get back to you.’ Ava hung up with a sigh, then groaned. She didn’t have the bistro’s number. It took a few minutes on the internet before she found the information she needed. She crossed her fingers as she dialled, letting her breath out in a relieved hiss when her request for a table for two was accepted. She thought about ringing a mutual friend to join them, then discounted the idea. Poppy would tell Carmel about Ava’s late night, and they’d gang up against her and make the lunch a nightmare.

‘I booked a table for one thirty,’ she said, when Poppy answered on the first ring. ‘I’ll meet you there. We can have a few glasses of wine, something to eat, and chill.’

‘You can chill.’ Poppy cackled. ‘I’m going to be eyeing up the clientele. According to one of my colleagues, it’s a popular place for guys from the local rugby club to go after training.’

Ava hung up and dropped the phone on the bed beside her. Her coffee was cold, but she couldn’t find any energy to climb from under the duvet to make another. Her friend would be on a mission to replace Harvey and be all out to impress in her latest curve-clinging dress. It would be either very short, showing off her well-toned long legs, or cut very low to show off a cleavage which owed more to an expensive plastic surgeon than to Mother Nature. Ava hoped the prospects of wowing rugby players didn’t encourage her friend to go all out and flash both.

When her eyelids started to droop, she snuggled down in the bed. Maybe she’d be able to catch a bit more sleep before she needed to get up. She was almost there, almost over the hill into dreamland, when a loud bang made her eyes snap open. It came again, causing her to swear loudly. That blasted neighbour and his incessant noise. She flung the duvet back and scrambled to her feet. There was no time like

Reviews for The Librarian

[Erika Grobb · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Too slow, moving. Her angst got repetitive. Blah ending. Character wasn’t easy to warm up to.