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Overview
Imagine a near-future Britain in which women dominate workplaces, public spaces, and government. Where the gender pay gap no longer exists and motherhood opens doors instead of closing them. Where women are no longer afraid to walk home alone, to cross a dark parking lot, or to catch the last train.
Where all men are electronically tagged and not allowed out after 7 p.m.
But the curfew hasn’t made life easy for all women. Sarah is a single mother who happily rebuilt her life after her husband, Greg, was sent to prison for breaking curfew. Now he’s about to be released, and Sarah isn’t expecting a happy reunion, given that she’s the reason he was sent there.
Her teenage daughter, Cass, hates living in a world that restricts boys like her best friend, Billy. Billy would never hurt anyone, and she’s determined to prove it. Somehow.
Helen is a teacher at the local school. Secretly desperate for a baby, she’s applied for a cohab certificate with her boyfriend, Tom, and is terrified that they won’t get it. The last thing she wants is to have a baby on her own.
These women don’t know it yet, but one of them is about to be violently murdered. Evidence will suggest that she died late at night and that she knew her attacker. It couldn’t have been a man because a CURFEW tag is a solid alibi.
Isn’t it?
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780593336786 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Penguin Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 03/22/2022 |
| Pages: | 320 |
| Sales rank: | 618,120 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.90(d) |
About the Author
You can find her on Instagram as @CowieJayne
Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
Sarah
Four Weeks Earlier
It was a long drive to the prison. Sarah had the music up loud. She tapped her thumb against the steering wheel, moving her shoulders in time with the beat. She wanted to think of nothing but the drive, of her hand on the wheel, the flex in her thighs as she switched lanes and shifted gear. She would not think about him.
But she did.
It was almost three months since she'd last seen her ex-husband. She wondered if he'd changed. She certainly had. She risked a glance at herself in the rearview mirror, one hand rising to touch the dark strands of her hair, and found herself regretting the new cut. She'd been planning this visit for weeks. She'd wanted to show him that she was managing fine without him. That he no longer had any hold over her. The haircut was meant to be part of that, as were the new clothes.
Now she found that she wanted the changes she'd made to be a secret, hers and hers alone. She should just turn around and go home. There was nothing to stop her. She didn't have to go and see him.
But she kept driving.
She had to face him one last time. She needed confirmation that she'd done the right thing, something to push away the doubts that crept in sometimes, when she had yet another row with their daughter, Cass, or when she lay awake in the early hours of the morning as her mind refused to stop replaying memories she would rather forget.
She flicked the indicator and took the slip road, easing off the accelerator and rolling up to the lights at the top of the slope. She waited for the red to turn green, then set off again, peripherally aware that four other cars were following her, a sorry train of women going to visit their men.
She followed the white markings that led the way to the prison. The conifers that grew at the side of the road were tall and thick, hiding the building from the road. Sarah was grateful for the huge orange signs that told her where to go. She parked the car in the first empty spot. It took considerable effort to unbuckle her seat belt and open the door, and when she did, she found that her parking was so bad that she'd barely left herself enough room to get out. She thought about reversing and having another go, but that would only delay things and give her too much of an opportunity to chicken out.
Slinging her bag over her shoulder, she began the walk toward the entrance. Barriers funneled visitors into a single-file queue and in through an automatic door. Sarah couldn't see anything behind the frosted glass. She didn't look directly at the other women. To make eye contact was to be seen, and to be seen was to admit that you had reason to be here, and she didn't want to do that.
Ahead of her, a woman in a green blouse was waved through, and Sarah stepped forward to take her place. A guard about her own age wearing a navy blue uniform with a radio clipped at the shoulder held Sarah back until the door slid open. Once inside, it quickly became obvious what she was expected to do. She still managed to stumble as she made her way over to an empty counter where a bored-looking woman waited, a large slate in one hand. "Who are you here to see?"
"Greg Johnson."
The woman checked the name on the slate. "And your name?"
"Sarah Wallace."
"Relationship to Greg Johnson?"
"Ex-wife."
The divorce had been quick, painless, and cheap, requested online four weeks after Greg had broken Curfew and confirmed within twenty-four hours. That had been a good day.
The woman gestured to a conveyor belt that led to a scanning machine. "Bag on there, please."
Sarah did as she was told. Then she was directed through a metal archway. Stepping through it felt like crossing a threshold, outside to inside, innocent to guilty. She waited for the machine to spit out her bag. When it did, another guard held out a scuffed yellow tray. "In there," she said, gesturing to the bag.
"You want me to empty it?"
"Yes, please."
Sarah hastily opened her bag and upended it over the tray, keen to show that she'd got nothing to hide. The noisy clatter of pens and lipsticks and keys made her wince. The guard poked at them, then shone her torch into the empty bag. There was nothing more than another little wave of a hand to tell Sarah this step was done. She scooped up her things and then she was funneled down a corridor, long, gray blue, and windowless with a squeaky floor. She followed the peeling black arrows until she found herself in a stuffy room filled with small square tables and plastic chairs.
What was the routine here? Should she pick a table or wait to be shown to one? She took a couple of steps forward and her heart started to thump loudly in her ears, and the air seemed suddenly heavy and the walls too close, because he was there.
Greg sat down at an empty table, rested his hands on the tabletop, and looked at her.
Her lips parted and her tongue, which had been a normal size only moments before, felt too big for her mouth. She could feel saliva gathering around her gums and wanted to swallow but couldn't. She couldn't remember how.
This was the man she'd shared her home, her bed, her life with. The man who had lain on top of her, heavy and sweating as, inside her body, their daughter had been created. She saw every moment of their life together flash before her eyes, from the first time she'd seen him to the moment he had been driven away in the back of a police car, and the room spun.
Someone touched her on the shoulder. Sarah blinked, pulled back to the present. It was the woman in the green blouse. "Are you all right?"
"I . . ." Sarah swallowed. "I don't know."
"First time visiting?"
Sarah nodded.
"Shit, isn't it?" The woman had a sharp nose and wore earrings shaped like starfish. "Just tell yourself ten minutes. Say whatever it is that you need to say, then leave. You can survive anything for ten minutes."
She'd survived Greg for eighteen years. "I will," Sarah said. "Thank you."
The woman gave her a pat on the shoulder and then made her way over to a table where a young man with the same sharp nose sat staring into space.
Ten minutes. That was all. Sarah turned her head, forcing herself to look in Greg's direction. He was familiar, and yet she barely recognized him. He'd lost weight. His hair was completely gray and much thinner than she remembered, emphasizing his shiny scalp. His sweatshirt was the same dirty yellow as the walls. She had to make herself walk over to where he sat.
"Sarah," he said. She'd forgotten the way he said her name, like it left a sour taste in his mouth. Suddenly all the things she'd intended to say disappeared from her mind. She groped for them but found nothing more than a blank space. The days of rehearsal, of talking to herself in the shower and the car, had been for nothing. For several long, drawn-out seconds, they simply looked at each other. Sarah registered fury first of all, tightly packed into his stocky body. It didn't surprise her.
She was, after all, the one who had put him in here.
She sat down, putting their faces level, and immediately wished that she'd remained standing. "I've asked for you to be relocated after you're released," she told him. She didn't bother with a greeting. She didn't ask him how he was. She didn't want to know.
He didn't let her get away with it. "Hello, Sarah," he said. "How are you? How is my daughter?"
"She's fine. Did you hear what I said?"
"I heard."
"Don't you have anything to say about it?"
He sat back in his chair and sighed. "What do you want me to say? Thank you for letting me know?"
"I just thought-"
He interrupted her. "Where are they sending me?"
"I don't know. Wherever there's a space for you, I suppose." But it wouldn't be at Riverside, the block of flats in town that housed men who had recently been released, and that was all that mattered.
"So away from Cassie."
Sarah gritted her teeth. His possessiveness over their daughter, even now, made her want to kick him. You didn't get to behave the way he had and then play the caring parent. "She's almost eighteen."
"I know how old my daughter is."
"Parental responsibility ends at eighteen. You don't need to live near us."
"You came all the way here just to tell me that you're cutting me off from my daughter?" he asked.
Sarah refused to take the bait. "Yes."
"Why?"
"I thought you should know."
Greg lifted one of his hands from the table and inspected his nails. They were short and clean. "I'm sure someone here could have passed the message on." The bitterness that edged his voice was unmistakable.
"I wanted you to hear it from me," Sarah told him.
"It was always about what you wanted, wasn't it?"
Don't do it, Sarah. Don't do it. "What do you mean?"
He folded his arms. "Cass and I needed you, but you weren't interested. You were never there. You were always too busy."
"That's not true!"
"Isn't it?"
"I had to work," she told him. She could feel her face getting hot, but the words kept on rolling right out of her mouth. "We had bills to pay. The mortgage. Curfew . . ."
"Go on, blame Curfew. I suppose it's easier than facing the truth. You weren't cut out to be a wife, and you certainly weren't cut out to be a mother. Why do you think I did what I did? It would never have happened if you'd been there, if we'd had anything even resembling a good marriage."
Sarah stopped. She made herself take one last look at him, at the creases at the corners of his eyes and the patch of hair on his neck where he'd missed a spot shaving. She made herself remember how her life had been. She thought about the tears shed in secret, the crushing exhaustion due to working so many hours, the constant pressure in her head when she thought about the mortgage and the never-ending credit card bills. She'd always put on a positive face in front of Greg because he had given up so much due to Curfew, and she knew it couldn't be easy for him, having to carry the load of most of the childcare. What a fool she'd been. She remembered what had happened on that final day and wondered how he could be so arrogant as to think that any of this was her fault.
She leaned in. "Actually," she whispered, "I don't blame Curfew. I blame you, and my only regret is that I didn't push you out the door sooner." She got to her feet. Her heart was pounding. The woman in the green blouse gave her a little smile and a guard shifted restlessly at the edge of the room, but no one else took any notice.
"Good-bye, Greg," she said, and she walked out, grateful that she never had to see him again.
Chapter Two
Cass
In a school thirty miles away, Cass Johnson was busy trying to work out if she had enough money in her account to buy a magazine from the secondhand bookshop on the way home. Old Cosmopolitans were her favorite, although she'd settle for a pre-Curfew Grazia if they had nothing else.
Twenty minutes of the lesson remained. Officially the subject was women's history, but everyone called it Curfew class. None of them took it seriously apart from Amy Hill, who sat near the front with her expensive slate and her perfect hair and got on Cass's nerves.
Their teacher, Miss Taylor, was flapping a bony hand at a photo on the screen and droning on about the Prevention of Femicide Act of 2023, also known as the Curfew Laws. They had been brought in six months after an MP called Susan Lang was murdered in the street by an ex-boyfriend. According to the government at the time, the appropriate response to this was to lock men in their homes overnight.
It was surprising how something so major could be so boring.
Cass pulled up a cat video on her slate and nudged her best friend, Billy. He looked, but only for a second. Cass poked him again and angled the slate so that he could see it more easily. This time he turned his full attention to the video. Cass held the slate steady, half watching Billy, half watching Miss Taylor, making sure they didn't get caught.
"Ha ha," Billy muttered at the end.
Then he picked up his stylus and scribbled something on his own slate. Cass assumed it was a message for her. It wasn't. He was making notes. She rolled her eyes and tried to jab at him with her own stylus, but he moved at the last second and she hit the edge of the table instead. The noise caught Miss Taylor's attention. She stopped talking and stared at them.
"Is there a problem?" she asked.
"No," Billy mumbled, blushing furiously.
As only ten minutes of the lesson remained, Cass decided to have a little fun. "Yes, actually, there is," she said.
"Which is?" Miss Taylor asked her, raising an eyebrow.
Cass sat back in her chair and folded her arms. "Curfew. I just don't see what society gained by tagging men and making them stay at home at night."
A murmur went round the class. Miss Taylor silenced it with a look. "You're not the first person to voice that opinion, Cass. Lots of people, male and female, thought the same when Curfew was first suggested. But there's no disputing the fact that since Curfew was introduced, the number of violent offenses committed has fallen dramatically."
"That doesn't mean that Curfew is the reason."
"Curfew is the reason."
This was said so firmly and with such conviction that Cass laughed out loud. She couldn't help it. "You can't prove that."
"Typically men commit more violent crimes," Miss Taylor continued calmly. "Before Curfew, they were responsible for close to eighty percent of all murders. Seventy-five percent of all other violent crimes. Even in children, the data shows that boys carried out more assaults than girls."
"But you can make statistics show anything you want. Everyone knows that."
