BLOG TOUR
The Truthby Naomi Joy
About the book
Perfect wife. Perfect life. Perfect crime.
Anthony is not the man everyone believes him to be. And Emelia is not the woman he wants her to be.
Theirs was a whirlwind romance, Anthony was the doting boyfriend, the charismatic and successful career man who swept her off her feet. But now Emelia is trapped in a marriage of dark secrets and obsession. She is no more than something Anthony wants to 'fix', one of his pet projects.
Emelia has no escape from the life that Anthony insists on controlling, so she shares her story through the only means she can – her blog. Yet Anthony can never find out. Forced to hide behind a false name, Emelia knows the only way that Anthony will allow her to leave him, is death.
Trapped with a man she knows is trying to kill her, Emelia is determined that someone will hear her story and Anthony will meet his ends. That everyone will discover the truth.
EXTRACT
Blog Entry
13th October, 8.00 a.m.
The bedroom is suffocating. Dank. Infected with early morning sunshine thanks to an unwelcome late summer heatwave. It’s going to be another scorcher, the cheerful presenter would say if I turned on the radio by my bedside, her nauseating optimism bouncing off the walls. I can’t listen to people who are that happy any more, so only the heat hums in my ears as I stir in fitful half-sleep.
My eyelids flicker, reluctant to open, and I peer out at my surroundings. Sporadic shafts of sunlight break through the corners and cracks of the supposedly black-out curtains, the fine details of our bedroom illuminating one after the other: the French wardrobe painted white, door ajar, the sleeve of a blouse I used to wear just visible within. The curved edge of the floor length mirror, casting the light back from where it came, picking up the red-gold pattern of the curtains opposite, fading in patches. The broad bookshelf opposite is piled high with rainbow spines, a jumble of notepads and old greetings cards, a single photograph in a white bone frame perched on top. The photo flashes, grabbing my attention, and my eyes adjust to it, fixated as it sends me back to a happier time: Anthony and I standing in a football pitch sized trench, our arms tight round one another, teeth on show, my hand fixed to the brim of my hood, raincoat blowing in the breeze. Windswept, beautiful. Naïve.
I roll onto my side, away from the memory, the damp bedsheet beneath determined to stick with me, more Velcro than cotton in the current climate. I wriggle to break free and, for a moment, entertain the idea that it isn’t the weather that’s causing my discomfort but the heating, cranked up overnight to torture me. A prisoner in my own home, interrogated until I tell the truth. I’m thinking about it then – torture – imagining how, in this moment, waterboarding might feel: cool waves running across my face, down my throat, over my body. You know, I think part of me would actually enjoy drowning in it.
I shake my sleepy brain awake, away from the disturbing thought of a suffocating death and wick the duvet back from my body. I lie like that, uncovered, for a while. Static. I listen to the melodic chitter-chatter of the birds outside, repetitive whistles mixed with elaborate arpeggios, breasts puffed with song as they sit on the branches outside our apartment block. But their whistles do little to comfort me and still I sweat, staining the sheets beneath as though I’m a corpse outlined in off-brown chalk. If someone were to turn my bedroom into a crime scene – police tape taut across the doors, markers next to key pieces of evidence (the pills, my laptop, the bedsheets) – they’d figure out I’d been lying here for a while. Suffering.
I draw in a staggered breath, steeling myself for the day, tasting the sweat in the air, getting used to the humidity of it, jungle-like in its thickness. If only I could open the window to let a breeze slither in, my skin prickling with tiny goose bumps, confused and delighted by the sudden rush of cold. They’d start first at my oily hairline then snake down my spine. Twisting as they went, one vertebra at a—
‘Emelia? Are you up?’
My ears prick, and I tune into the crescendo of footsteps, the turn of a lock, the twist of a doorknob. I push my laptop under the bed, determined to keep my blog a secret. It’s not that I don’t trust him, I just… It thuds as it hits the damask rug beneath and I recoil my arm quickly, pulling the covers back over my body and up round my neck to make it look as though I’ve been sleeping rather than typing, but this sudden movement throws fistfuls of confetti-dust into the splinters of light in the room and I worry he’ll suspect that I’ve been up to something.
About the author
Naomi Joy is a pen name of a young PR professional who was formerly an account director at a prestigious PR firm in London. Writing from experience, she draws the reader in to the darker side of the uptown and glamorous, presenting realism that is life or death, unreliable and thrilling to page-turn.
Follow Naomi :
Facebook: @naomijoyauthor
Twitter: @naomijoyauthor
Buy links:
Amazon: https://amzn.to/2Mdblxi
Kobo: https://bit.ly/2H2dvvg
iBooks: https://apple.co/31AvG30
Google Play: https://bit.ly/2KwoYWq
Follow Aria
Website: www.ariafiction.com
Twitter: @aria_fiction
Facebook: @ariafiction
Instagram: @ariafiction
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