She’s Mine - blog tour

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She’s Mine by Claire S Lewis

About the author

Claire Simone Lewis studied philosophy, French literature and international relations at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge before starting her career in aviation law with a City law firm and later as an in-house lawyer at Virgin Atlantic Airways. More recently, she turned to writing psychological suspense, taking courses at the Faber Academy. She’s Mine is her first novel. Born in Paris, she’s bilingual and lives in Surrey with her family.

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About the book

She was never mine to lose…

When Scarlett falls asleep on a Caribbean beach she awakes to her worst nightmare – Katie is gone. With all fingers pointed to her Scarlett must risk everything to clear her name.

As Scarlett begins to unravel the complicated past of Katie’s mother she begins to think there’s more to Katie’s disappearance than meets the eye. But who would want to steal a child? And how did no-one see anything on the small island? 

EXTRACT

I kick off my sandals and step from the boardwalk onto the beach. The sand scorches the soles of my feet and my head throbs in the glare of the midday sun. It’s the hotel’s private beach: just a long strip of coarse sand, crowded with sunbeds, between two rocky spurs jutting out into the wide bay.

In the heat haze above the sand everything is a shimmering frieze of colour –parasols, towels, and sunburnt tourists. I forgot my shades in the room and feel a little dizzy in the dazzling brightness, and detached, a spectator, watching myself on a movie set. I’m loaded with towels and beach bags stuffed with Katie’s gear – picnic box, sunhat, lotions and goggles. I stride out, ignoring the shifting eyes of middle-aged men, and flick back my hair, flaming in the burning rays.

Katie trails after me, humming softly, swinging a red bucket and spade in one hand and dragging a yellow lilo along the sand in the other.

Smells of barbecued fish and sounds of calypso drift across from the beach club restaurant where my employer, Katie’s mother Christina, is enjoying a leisurely lunch (washed down with red wine no doubt) with her gold-digging fuck-boy-lover Damien – the latest in her string of unsuitable younger men.

I smile briefly at the hotel beach boys who wave and call out to Katie as she meanders by. They’re sheltering from the midday sun, languishing on hammocks strung between palm trees, splitting coconuts or playing dominoes in the shade. More fool us, risking sunstroke on the beach.

‘Come here Katie, under the parasol. Let’s put on your cream.’ She grabs my arm. 

For a child so fragile and slim, she’s surprisingly strong.

‘Where’s Mummy?’ she cries, fixing me with pretty blue eyes. ‘I want Mummy, 

where’s Mummy?’ Her anxious refrain begins to grate but I can’t resist for long and scoop her in for a hug. ‘Shush, honey, stop whining, she’ll be here soon,’ I say, loosening her grip.

Smoothing a thick layer of cream over the little girl’s pale skin, I gaze out to sea, squinting through searing vertical sunlight. The sky’s a hard, metallic blue over glinting water. Arrows of light shoot in all directions. I’m hot and sticky from the cream.

Mad dogs and English men…’ I mutter crossly as I wriggle out of my linen sundress and squat on the damp, glistening sand, watching Katie who darts in and out of the foamy ripples at the water’s edge. Christina’s so distracted that she hasn’t noticed that her blonde-haired baby will get sunburnt out in the midday sun. She wants to keep us both out of the way so she can get her kicks with Damien.

Katie’s absorbed in her own watery world, now down on her hands and knees, rocking gently and sifting through the sand, searching for seashells to add to the treasure trove of golden olives, pale blue periwinkles, banded tulips and rose petal 

tellins she’s collecting in her bucket. It’s her latest obsession. Yesterday, I took childish pleasure in teaching Katie to recite the names of the smooth, shiny gem-like shells as we rinsed the sand off them in the bucket. Today, I feel too drowsy and queasy to join in.

The heat’s oppressive and overwhelming, pulsing down. My head reels. Maybe it’s the lingering jet lag? Perhaps I’ve caught a bug? Or could it be that Caribbean rum cocktail Damien forced on me at the poolside bar this morning? 

‘You may be a working girl, but you deserve a bit of fun too!’ He had winked rakishly, handing me the glass. He kept insisting that one drink wouldn’t hurt. Now I’m beating myself up for giving into him and taking the cocktail. It’s the first thing I learnt at college – never touch alcohol when in charge of a young child. But just one drink, surely, shouldn’t have left me feeling such a wreck?

Damien Covera – handsome, sexy and doesn’t he know it! An Anglo-Italian city boy with classic Mediterranean panache. Clever too. He works in ‘Derivatives,’ whatever that means. Seconded from London to an investment bank in New York a short time before I came over from England to start working as Katie’s nanny. Apparently, he met Christina at some glitzy investors’ art event hosted by one of the Wall Street banks just after he came to Manhattan.He thinks he’s such a charmer, God’s gift to women – he’s way too flash for me!

Buy Links:

Amazon: https://amzn.to/2GTDOov

Kobo: http://bit.ly/2DWf1gs

Google Play: http://bit.ly/2GShJ9O

iBooks: https://apple.co/2BK1acK

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