<i>The Stranger</i>, a chilling new thriller by Melanie Raabe

Posted on 17 October 2017 under

She doesn’t know him. But he knows everything about her.

Get ready for another high-stakes, intense psychological thriller from Melanie Raabe, author of the international bestseller The Trap.

The Stranger is packed full of gripping twists and turns and everything else that you loved about Melanie Raabe’s first book.

Philip Petersen, a wealthy businessman, disappears without trace on a trip to South America. His wife, Sarah, is left to bring up their son on her own.

Seven years later, out of the blue, Sarah receives news that Philip is still alive. But the man who greets her before a crowd of journalists at the airport is a stranger – and he threatens Sarah. If she exposes him, she will lose everything: her house, her job, her son…her whole beautiful life.

Read an extract below.

Sarah

The world is black. The sun above me is black.

I stand, head thrown back, eyes wide open. I try to drink in the moment, to commit it to memory, to block out any other thought. The trees are rustling softly, almost ceremonially. Only the birds high in the branches seem unimpressed: they sing as if to spite the darkness, as if singing is all that matters. The sun is black and I stand and bask in the sight. There is no more warmth. No light.

This is not the first eclipse of the sun I have witnessed. When I think of the first, I have to smile, in spite of everything. Philip had wanted to get out of town and go to the woods – he thought the birds would suddenly stop singing when the sun went dark and wanted to know if he was right. I wanted to stay in town with our friends – all of us together, young and silly and keyed up, with our special glasses on our noses. I talked him round. It wasn’t hard – back then he was happy to let me talk him into all kinds of things. He made one last attempt to persuade me, saying how much more romantic it would be in the woods, just the two of us, but I said, ‘Don’t be soppy!’ and he laughed and we ended up staying in town with the others.

The strange thing is that I can’t remember the eclipse itself. I remember all the rest – our friends’ chatter, the music coming from the radio, and a smell of burning because someone had put sausages on the barbecue and forgotten about them. I remember Philip’s hand in mine. I remember that we ended up taking off our glasses because they got in the way of kissing. We held each other’s hands and must have missed the moment. For the first time, though, we talked about the future. I had always refused up until then – the future wasn’t something I believed in. But someone had said that the next eclipse of the sun we’d see would be in 2015 and that there wouldn’t be another one until 2081, and that was real – I could believe in that. We worked out that Philip would be almost forty at the next eclipse and I’d be thirty-seven. We laughed at the sheer madness of the thought that we would one day be that old, but we promised one another we’d be more careful next time, that we’d see the black sun and that we’d see it together – in the woods, so that Philip could find out if he was right about the birds.

And here I am now, thirty-seven years old, standing in a small clearing alone in the middle of the woods. I am staring at an enormous black sun and it stares back at me and I wonder if Philip can see it too – if it’s visible wherever he is. Our son will be seventy-five at the next eclipse – I will no longer be around and Philip will no longer be around. Today was our last chance. As Istand here watching the moon edge its way across the last sliver of sun, I realise that Philip was wrong – the birds around me aren’t any quieter at all. I wonder whether he would have been disappointed or pleased and tell myself that it no longer matters. Philip isn’t here anymore, I think. Philip has gone. Philip has disappeared. Philip has fallen off the edge of the world.

And at that moment the birds stop singing.

***

The hairdresser has a beautiful face with prominent cheekbones. His hands are slim and feminine. I was hesitant to enter the salon and deliberately walked past a few times before pushing open the door. Now I am sitting here in a swivel chair, at the mercy of this man.

Fingers spread, he runs his pianist’s hands through my hair, which is so long now I can almost sit on it. He does it once, twice, three times, all the way from the roots to the tips, making admiring noises, and a colleague who introduces herself as Katja comes over and does it too. The physical contact embarrasses me – it is far too intimate. For so many years there was only one person allowed to touch my hair, and that person loved it. He rested his head on it, dried his tears with it. But I let the two of them have their fun and pretend to be pleased at their compliments. Eventually they stop oohing and aahing and Katja goes back to dealing with her customer’s extensions.

‘So,’ says the hairdresser, his fingers already twining through my hair again. ‘You want the ends trimmed?’

I swallow drily.

‘I want the whole lot off.’

The hairdresser – his pretentious name has slipped my mind – gives a brief giggle, but falls silent when he realises that I’m not laughing with him, that this isn’t a joke. He looks at me. I am prepared. I rifle through my handbag, produce a page torn out of a fashion magazine, hold it up and point.

‘Like that,’ I say. And then, as if to reassure myself, I say it again: ‘Like that. That’s what I want.’

The hairdresser takes the glossy page from my hand and studies it. At first he frowns, then the steep line bisecting his forehead vanishes. He looks at me, looks at the magazine again, and eventually nods.

‘Okay.’

I breathe a sigh of relief, glad not to have to argue with him. I’m a grown woman, and I hate it when other people think they know what’s good for me. Patrice – the hairdresser’s name has suddenly come back to me – is enough of a pro not to challenge me. He sets out his equipment on the little table in front of the mirror: scissors and combs, brushes, liquids and sprays, and a hair dryer with an assortment of nozzles. A hand mirror, which he will presumably use later to show me what my hair looks like at the back, is lying on a stack of magazines. But it slides off the slippery surface of the tower and falls to the ground. Patrice curses and bends down to pick it up. The glass is lying in smithereens on the floor.

‘A broken mirror brings seven years’ bad luck,’ I say.

The hairdresser looks at me, startled, his brown eyes wide, and gives a nervous laugh. How wonderful to be afraid of bad luck – it means, after all, that it hasn’t yet found you. I could smash up an entire hall of mirrors and it wouldn’t make the slightest bit of difference to me.

Seven years ago my husband disappeared without trace on a business trip to South America. I’ve been waiting for him ever since, my life on hold – seven years of hopes and fears and a lost feeling so intense that sometimes all I wanted was to wipe every last memory of Philip from my mind.

I’ve already put seven years’ bad luck behind me.

Patrice fetches another mirror without a word. Then he carefully gathers the biggest pieces and sweeps up the rest. I keep quiet and let him get on with it. I close my eyes and run my hands through my hair, very tenderly, as if I were fingering precious lace. Like my mother, many years ago. Like Philip, once upon a time – and no one since. Philip, playing with my hair.

I think of our first night together, water all around us and stars overhead, my wet hair draped over my naked shoulders like a cloak, drops of water glistening on Philip’s skin. No sound, apart from our breathing. Darkness. The world suddenly tiny, shrunk so small that there’s no room for anyone but us. A cocoon of silence and stars. And Philip’s hand in my hair.

‘Okay,’ the hairdresser says. ‘Ready?’

He has cleared away the broken glass and is standing behind me, a pair of scissors in his hand.

I nod.

With his other hand he grasps a hank of my hair and lifts it, then he catches my eye in the mirror.

‘Sure?’ he asks.

I swallow.

‘Sure,’ I say.

He puts the scissors to my head and starts snipping.

I can hear my hair screaming. It is a frail, silvery sound, like a whimpering child, like a whisper. I close my eyes.

The hairdresser works in silence, swift and efficient. Soon there is nothing left – nothing to run your fingers through dreamily.

I mourn my hair with three big, silent tears that fall to the ground as softly as the first snow of winter. Then I dry my eyes, get up, pay and leave the salon. Life goes on – at last.