Isabella's Not Dead - Hardcover

Morrey, Beth

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593540336 ISBN 13: 9780593540336

Verlag: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2025

Inhaltsangabe

A hilarious and thought-provoking murder mystery about the death of a friendship, and one woman’s quest to track down the best friend who disappeared, for fans of Where'd You Go, Bernadette.

Isabella’s NOT dead.

That’s what Gwen tells anyone who asks about the friend who ghosted them all fifteen years ago. But if Isabella’s not dead, then where is she? And why did she leave, just when Gwen needed her most?


Freshly fifty-three, out of a job, and with children who are starting to fly the nest, Gwen decides to turn detective. Setting out to solve the mystery, Gwen embarks on an adventure across England—then across Europe—that will test her marriage and put her on a collision course with reluctant acquaintances, a mother-in-law best described as eccentric, and a rabbit hole full of clues. But Isabella’s not the only one who’s lost.

A tale of deep, frayed friendship, fractured memories, and skewed perspectives, Isabella’s Not Dead is the story of one woman’s quest to reclaim her best friend—and herself.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Beth Morrey's work has been published in The May Anthology of Oxford and Cambridge Poetry, and long-listed for the Authors' Club First Novel Award. She is the author of The Love Story of Missy Carmichael, Delphine Jones Takes a Chance, and Clover Hendry’s Day Off. She lives in London with her family and dogs.

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Chapter 1

I was on my third gin and tonic and thinking about sneaking off for a bath when Rachel produced the Ouija board and Amanda announced she was leaving her husband. She'd been building to this decision all afternoon, drowning her marital sorrows in a bottle of Rioja and moaning about his endless business trips. There wasn't much I knew about Christian Simmons-he worked in construction and in Amanda's Instagram photos he always looked painfully sunburned, but neither of those things necessarily marked him out as a matrimonial disappointment. Mind you, there wasn't much I knew about Amanda either, not having seen her in the flesh for several years. Nowadays, she was much blonder, and self-consciously moderated her northern vowels-she might have changed in other ways, but they weren't immediately apparent, and we were only on the first night of the weekend. It was clear no one wanted to get into Mrs. Simmons's impending divorce, so we all turned our attention to the Ouija board instead; the lesser of the two evils.

The cottage was a converted pub, tastefully renovated. Art prints of various lakes on the walls, wipe-clean leather sofas, a welcome Kendal Mint Cake and a complimentary basket of logs for the fire. There was a big kitchen with two dishwashers, and four double bedrooms with beds that could be repurposed as twins. Perfect for get-togethers, if you didn't mind sharing, which I wasn't sure about. Even though I'd officially known my roommate for forty years, co-habiting wasn't much fun when you were fifty-three and a restless sleeper.

History repeating itself, Rachel was reveling in her role as the rebel of the group, having brought hash brownies to the party, plus twenty Marlboros for old times' sake. The brownies were actually a traybake, which I appreciated as a middle-aged twist on misdemeanor-Martha Stewart meets . . . well, Martha Stewart. Never mind drugs; I was pretty sure the Airbnb was strictly nonsmoking, but as we worked our way through the booze, rules went out the window, along with our coughing exhales. I'd had two fags and I'd never smoked before, not even in school. Chloe (my roomie) had already been sick, and it was only ten thirty, though long past bedtime for all of us. Eight former school friends fueled by various hormones, herbs, chemicals, and tipples. It was a messy regression.

Rachel Lloyd, Amanda Simmons, Chloe Coulson, Min Chiu, Erica Stanley, Holly Griffiths, Bhavini Gupta, and me, Gwen Mortimer. Our Lake District idyll had cost £1,800, plus £500 for a highly alcoholic Ocado order, which meant I'd spent nearly three hundred quid on a weekend I felt deeply ambiguous about. We'd kept in touch intermittently over the years, through an email group called Harpur Harlots, which was what we'd named ourselves when we were sixteen and playing in a field hockey team together against the nearby Bakewell Tarts. It seemed funny at the time.

Why had we kept in contact when so many other friendships had fallen by the wayside? Probably due to Holly, who did something glamorous in PR, was aggressively social, and had established a tradition of round-robin emails between us every Christmas. She'd also organized the whole weekend, finding the cottage and cajoling everyone into booking. Seeing her name flash up on my phone a few months before, I'd answered because it was such a novelty to hear the dry rasp of her voice after all that time, then couldn't think of an excuse on the hop. To get eight out of the original eleven team members together was quite an achievement, really. Danielle Seitzman wasn't there because she lived in New York. Gracie Wagstaff couldn't get childcare. And . . . well, eight was good. An even number. It would be fun, wouldn't it? Apart from weddings and big birthdays, many of us hadn't seen each other in years. Hadn't got together as a group in decades.

"We're in our prime!" party girl Rachel had shrieked, doling out the cigarettes after we'd eaten Bhavini's chili. But we weren't, really. She said it again when she got out the Ouija board, and it sounded like she was protesting too much, but it turned out I hadn't heard her correctly, and she was actually saying "Amazon Prime" in reply to someone asking her where she got the board. It was a flimsy wooden thing, with the alphabet in a semicircle across the top, and numbers in a straight line along the middle. In the top two corners it said Yes and No and at the very bottom it said Goodbye, which I supposed gave the spirit world its way out if it got a better offer. Even fueled by gin, I wasn't sure I really wanted to strike up a conversation with a bunch of dead people, but the alternative was marriage counseling with an increasingly maudlin Amanda. We put our fingers on the planchette and looked to Rachel for further guidance.

"It says you just ask it questions," she mumbled through Lindor, a chocolaty finger tracing the instructions.

"Don't we have to open a line of communication?" pondered Chloe, who'd made a miraculous recovery and was back on the whiskey sours.

"How do we do that?" Bhavini, swigging a can of mojito, was simultaneously patting Amanda's heaving shoulder in a comforting manner.

"I'll create an atmosphere," said Chloe, and went round switching off lights. Everyone then grumbled that it was too dark, since Min was deaf and relied mostly on lip-reading, but Chloe was set on the drama. Commanded by chief coordinators Rachel and Holly, Erica lit candles, grudgingly, because she was still pissed off with Rachel for bringing the hash brownies, which had eclipsed her straight carrot cake. Tall and rangy, one of those "natural beauties," Erica fancied herself as a bit of an earth mother-not the kind of woman who would actually wear an apron, but maybe one of those Toast smock-dresses to signify rusticity. She'd bored me rigid earlier talking about her chickens, and her cake tasted vegan. But maybe I just felt guilty because I hadn't brought anything to the party, physically or emotionally. Not so much as a tea loaf.

When the atmosphere had been created, a silence settled, and we all stared at each other in the candlelight. It softened our features, briefly, and I could see the girls we'd been, before life took over and gave us the lines and sags of middle age. Rachel still looked good, probably because she hadn't had children, plus she was leggy and had big hair. Min had also aged well, her blunt fringe framing a youthful, open face. Amanda's blond princess-prettiness was as brittle as the balsa board, but then my own pixie-ish, scrawny look was increasingly difficult to maintain without looking pinched and haggard. Erica was kind of ageless-she could be thirty or sixty, like a smug nun. Chloe had just been sick, so wasn't at her best, but usually she looked well-groomed, like a show pony, thick brown mane swishing whenever she told one of her tall tales. Holly was still sexy in her mussed-up, grubby way and Bhavini was beautiful but had allowed her hair to go completely gray, which made her seem older than all of us. When I thought of the ancient photo Holly sent along with the house details-us in our kit, lithe in shorts and bibs, flushed and carefree and so goddamn young-I felt depressed. We were that much closer to the spirit world already-did we really need to be striking up a conversation with it?

"Are you there?" intoned Rachel.

"Is who there?" barked Holly. "Who are we talking to?"

Rachel shrugged. "Whoever's about. On the other side."

"Shouldn't we have someone in mind?"

"Elvis?"

"Marilyn?"

"Mr. Fogarty?"

We all made sad noises. Mr. Fogarty was, or had been, a favorite geography teacher, kind and gentle. He was also the last person I'd imagine would be hanging about in the hereafter waiting to talk to a group of drunken, middle-aged former pupils.

"Princess Di."

"Geronimo the...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: G.P. Putnam's Sons
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2025
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593540336
• ISBN 13: 9780593540336
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 310
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: G.P. Putnam's Sons; https://www.penguin.com/putnam/; ; 1745 BROADWAY Attn: Madison Forsander; NEW YORK; NY; 10019; USA
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar