‘A chilling, addictive read.’
Woman & Home
‘Dark, disturbing, compulsive. I was genuinely terrified reading this.’
Adele Parks
‘An incredibly addictive thriller that examines women in the workplace, ageism, and the clash of generations.
It’s creepy and unnerving, with observations that are often dead-on. A breath-taking debut.’
Samantha Downing
‘A deliciously dark, addictive and twisted page-turner.’
Alice Feeney
‘Guaranteed to start the mother of all office fights between Generation X and millennials, Monks Takhar’s enjoyably poisonous debut updates All About Eve for our image-obsessed age.’
The Independent
‘A taut, sharply written thriller about two women and their toxic obsession with one another. Sexy, scary and satirical, [it’s] a cat-and-mouse tale on steroids.’
The Bookseller
‘What a debut! Twisty, explosive, and hugely compelling, with hints of Gone Girl … Excellent.’
Will Dean
‘A hypnotic dance of obsession, gaslighting and revenge that doesn’t let up until its final unnerving reveal.’
People
‘Monks Takhar tackles workplace dynamics, aging, feminism, mental illness, and the hotly debated generation gap, all within the framework of a tightly plotted revenge thriller. A wickedly sharp first novel.’
Kirkus starred review
‘Twisted, dark and shocking. Absolutely terrific.’
Jo Spain
‘A slick, fast paced, compelling novel that asks genuine questions. I loved it and was hooked from beginning to end.’
Kate Hamer
‘An intergenerational clash between two women, played out to a shocking finale. Nail-biting.’
Harriet Tyce
‘Audacious, dark and smart, with one of the most shocking scenes I’ve read in a while.’
Phoebe Locke
‘Supremely twisted and completely riveting.’
Katie Lowe
‘Disturbing, zeitgeisty and twisted, Precious You will make you second guess everything and change the way you look at your colleagues forever.’
Phoebe Morgan
‘A brilliant, butt-kicking romp through the Gen X/Millennial clash and the horrors of cutthroat corporate life. I couldn’t put it down.’
Alex Marwood
‘A brilliantly twisted tale. LOVED it.’
Lisa Hall
‘What a wild ride. I’m obsessed with it! I felt so seen, so many times. This book, while SO twisted and dark, will resonate with many, many women.’
Laurie Elizabeth Flynn
‘A twisty, thrilling story about two women who can’t seem to decide whether they love or hate the other. Sharply observed and wickedly fun.’
Anna Pitoniak
‘Scarily, addictively dark. My mouth was hanging open for the last third of the book. Wow – what a brilliant read!’
Cressida McLaughlin
‘If you like dark and twisted thrillers with venom in their veins, add this to your wishlist!’
Anita Frank
‘A brutal beauty – twisted, terrifying, pitch-perfect storytelling that gets under your skin. WOW.’
Miranda Dickinson
‘Deliciously dark, gorgeously written; an absolute powerhouse of a debut!’
Emma Cooper
‘OMG! Loved the twisty-turning end. I couldn’t put it down.’
Josie Lloyd
‘A thrilling, wicked, thought-provoking book every woman should read.’
Roxie Cooper
‘[A] dark and disquieting debut … Monks Takhar delivers an excruciatingly tense slow burn that’s rife with twists that shock and devastate.’
Publishers Weekly
‘Precious You promises to be one of the best!’
CrimeReads
‘Gossip Girl meets Single White Female. One to add to your reading list.’
Northern Soul
‘Messed up and BRILLIANT.’
Liz Loves Books
HELEN MONKS TAKHAR has been working as a journalist, copywriter and magazine editor since 1999, having graduated from Cambridge. She began her career in financial trade newspapers before writing for national newspapers including The Times and The Observer. Originally from Southport, Merseyside, she lives in Stoke Newington with her husband and two young children. Precious You is her first novel.
Precious You
Helen Monks Takhar
ONE PLACE. MANY STORIES
Copyright
An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2020
Copyright © Helen Monks Takhar 2020
Helen Monks Takhar asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition © June 2019 ISBN: 9780008340162
Version 2020-05-27
Note to Readers
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Page numbers taken from the following print edition: ISBN 9780008340148
For Danny, Mohinder and Zora
Snowflake generation
noun
informal, derogatory
The generation of people who became adults in the 2010s, viewed as being less resilient and more prone to taking offence than previous generations.
COLLINS ENGLISH DICTIONARY. COPYRIGHT © HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS
‘Oh, little snowflakes, when did you all become grandmothers and society matrons, clutching your pearls in horror at someone who has an opinion about something, a way of expressing themselves that’s not the mirror image of yours, you snivelling little weak-ass narcissists?’
BRET EASTON ELLIS
‘There is no one with a greater sense of entitlement than a millennial.’
WWW.DAILYMAIL.CO.UK ARTICLE, ‘MILLENNIAL FURIOUSLY RANTS ABOUT HOW MUCH EASIER LIFE WAS FOR HIS PARENTS’
‘A lot of offensive stuff is happening. Why should people not be offended? People are offended but they’re using that feeling of being offended to bring about change. Things are so dire sometimes that it’s necessary. If I want to carve out a safe space, why shouldn’t I?’
LIV LITTLE, EDITOR WWW.GAL-DEM.COM
Contents
Cover
Praise
About the Author
Title Page
Copyright
Note to Readers
Dedication
Katherine
Chapter 1
Lily
Chapter 2
Lily
Chapter 3
Lily
Chapter 4
Lily
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Lily
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Lily
Chapter 9
Lily
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Lily
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Lily
Chapter 14
Lily
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Lily
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Lily
Chapter 20
Lily
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Creep Feeder
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Lily
Author Note
Acknowledgements
About the Publisher
Katherine
I’ve lost you in the neon river of high-visibility vests and chrome helmets flying ahead of my car towards the junction. You lot all look the same. Is that what they think of us? I can hear Iain say. I fight my exhaustion, rub my gritty eyes and try to find you again.
I slept in my car last night. I had that dream again, the one I told you about, the one I’ve had every night since I laid eyes on you. I’m back at my mother’s farm. A darkness soaks into my bones; a black sky marbled with thick red veins envelopes me. Through the gloom, I see my top half is me today; a short swish of black hair, my strong arms shielded by a leather biker jacket. The bottom half is twelve-year-old me; my mother’s dirty cast-off jeans hanging off stringy legs. I’m starving. Barefoot, at first I’m treading on stubbled grass, but the terrain quickly changes; I’m stepping on burnt pasture, like a thousand tiny razors under my bony feet. My blood begins to wet the parched scrub below. Suddenly, the ground begins to separate into hundreds of deep gullies. My instinct is to freeze, but I know I must go forward; ahead of me is the gate to the far paddock and I have to reach it to end this nightmare and stop my hunger. And I can’t see her, but I know my mother is watching. She thinks I’ll never make it. She thinks me too weak; she always tried to keep me so. She’s willing me to stop, but I keep pushing forward, despite the pain, despite the hungry chasms at my feet that want to swallow me, I force myself to place one foot in front of the other to reach the gate.
I woke up aching, bent double in the backseat of my Mini. My life has come to this because of you: an existence played out slumped in Costa armchairs and the car I can’t afford to insure anymore. This morning I’d decided to drive. I didn’t know where or why until I spotted you on your bike. Then, I knew exactly what I had to do.
I stop-start, tracking you through the clog of traffic edging towards De Beauvoir and into Shoreditch, then the City. At Liverpool Street you snake your way through stationary vehicles and out of my sight. Then, the jam begins to shift, allowing me to edge forward and mark you again, keeping just a few metres behind you as the traffic pushes down Gracechurch Street.
We’re nearly there.
Five cyclists have died on the junction ahead in the past year. Five young lives, just like yours, lost.
The car in front turns to give me free passage to the edge of the advanced stop line at the junction. I’ve got you in my sights. It’s as if the world has finally decided to take my side, but no sooner than I start to move forward, cyclists flood into the void ahead. I’m surrounded once more by glinting handlebars and fluorescent young bodies.
I’m stuck.
I search desperately for you up ahead, then in my rear-view. But you’ve disappeared. You’re going to enjoy another day on this earth; another day in my job, going home to my flat, tucking yourself into the bed my partner and I chose together.
Then, there you are.
You’ve pulled up right next to my door, your eyes focused on the lights ahead. Your body, that close to me again, makes my blood rise. You’re inches from me, I could reach out, grab your arm, and beg you to tell me once and for all: Why? When I was ready to help you, why did you set out to snatch everything that was mine?
You start to move away, squeezing through the other cyclists to the very front of the pack. You flash that smile of yours. Of course, they let you pass. That devastating smile. That smile is like the warmest sun and the brightest light. That smile has undone my life.
Behind you, I move ahead too, breaching the cyclists’ zone and causing various slaps on my Mini’s roof and cries of What the fuck do you think you’re doing, you stupid cow? to erupt as I force them out of my path. You swivel round to see what’s causing the uproar, but quickly turn back towards the lights, knowing they’ll change any second. You don’t notice my car creeping up right behind you, and you don’t wait for the green light before deciding to strike out on your own; up off your seat, powerful calves bearing down onto the pedals as you begin your acceleration. But it’s time you were stopped from getting ahead of me.
Your back wheel fills my sight.
I wonder what your body will feel like under me, as your bones crunch and collapse. I can almost smell your blood, running hot in the final moments before it gushes from you, cooling as it flows out onto the tarmac to drip into the waiting drains and down to an impassive Thames.
Only when this happens can I really begin again.
The lights change to green. I slam my foot down hard on the accelerator.
Chapter 1
Katherine
Six weeks earlier
I’ll never understand why they weren’t worried, those young things I saw every day at the bus stop, stretching free of their crammed houseshares and parental buy-to-lets in my neighbourhood, at least a mile from the nearest place they would actively choose to live. Why didn’t they care we hadn’t seen a bus for twenty minutes? I made a mental note to ask Iain why no one under thirty seemed arsed about being late for work anymore, then texted my deputy, Asif. I was hoping he’d have words of reassurance, something I could use to soothe my latest work-related crisis. That Monday was the first day of a brave new world at the magazine I edited: new owners, a new publisher, a shot at a new start. I knew it was critical I made a good impression, but the world was already screwing this for me by making all the buses disappear. I messaged Asif:
No bus. Confess late now or busk it?
And got back a not particularly helpful:
Nice weekend? New publisher already here. Not sure. Good luck. xxx
I can see myself that morning, gazing in the direction of my flat, the edges of its dried-out window boxes just visible from where I stood. I wore the oversized high-collared shirt I’d bought the day before, an ankle-length pencil skirt split to the thigh and the black biker I always wore to work. I wanted to show up looking just-pressed, but edgy and not desperate to fit into the new corporate regime I was facing, even though, of course, I was.
Mondays were already hard for me, even before that day. It wasn’t just that after twenty years I seemed to be getting worse at my job, not better, nor that the youth, hope and unbounded energy of my interns shoved the frustrated promise of my own formative years right back in my face with greater force every day. No, it was the awfulness, the horrifying dread, of the interns asking me, ‘What did you do this weekend?’
Compared to when I was at the height of my potential in my twenties, I felt invisible most of the time. But on Monday mornings I felt suddenly watched. I tried, as I so often did when I was surrounded by millennials, to minimise the damage to my pride. While they recounted their energetic tales of running around London, meeting other bright young things from north, south, east and western corners, as I had once done, I sat tight. I had done next to nothing with no one but Iain, and this could be exposed at any second. I’d sometimes manage to arrange phone interviews for 9 a.m. on Mondays, so I could block out their weekend lives and avoid their social and creative endeavours showing up my dead existence. If anyone got to ask me The Monday Morning Question, I’d recently taken to out-and-out lying, telling the interns, ‘We caught up with some old friends.’
That Monday, my anxiety was soaring when I caught the glow of a taxi’s light far up the road. I watched it furtively at first, until I realised I was the only one inching towards the edge of the pavement to hail it. Of course, none of the bus stop lot had the money for a black cab. No money, but plenty of time. Their lives were rich with activities and all the time they had to do them: arts, crafts, queuing for artisan toast, curating photographic records of their fizzy lives on social media and generally being creatively incontinent. I felt the hum of self-belief and productivity whenever I was around younger adults and it left me feeling singed.
I double-checked behind me for any would-be competitors for my cab. I saw you.
You were something quite different.
You had their air of creative confidence, the one I could only assume comes from parents who cheerlead your every trifling achievement, but you seemed to carry a hunger about you too; some neediness in your eyes. Out of nowhere, I got the sense you were a young person with whom I might possibly have some common ground.
Because unlike the others, you seemed like you were bothered by being late for work. Less like them, more like me. Such an odd sense of time and age I felt you emit: undeniably as young as them, but somehow seeming older and more desperate, like me, all at once. And do you remember, you wore that tiny leather skirt? I have one just like it and I used to wear it to work too. Your skin was as pale as mine, but fully taut and shimmering, except for a dirty stripe of oil on the right side of your forehead. I couldn’t take my eyes off you. You were like looking into a mirror, or more like a window into a different time in my life, not long past, but just out of reach. I wanted to know more about you, to see if you really could be anything like me. When the taxi began to pull over, I began to wonder if I should invite you to share it.
I glanced back at you again. A finger on your left hand fiddled with the string tag on the yellow laptop case you held against the front of your thighs. You switched your weight from hip to hip and occasionally flicked the nails of your right thumb and index finger under your chin. I took the door handle and turned around to take you in one last time, before the ebb and flow of a London day separated our paths. A thought needled its way to the front of my mind: your face would return to me throughout the day and I’d have to exorcise you by telling Iain over dinner about The Girl I Saw at the Bus Stop Who Reminded Me of The Old Me.
But you were watching me.
As you looked over, you bit your bottom lip, painted hot orange like the sunrise in summertime, and flicked your nails against your skin again before moving your black eyes off me to the non-existent bus on the horizon.
I could let you in to my cab, but I wondered what we would possibly talk about. Or maybe you’d just sink into your phone, like people your age do, and I wouldn’t get to talk to you at all. And how would you pay your way? People like you never have cash on them, so would I give you my bank details so you could transfer your share of the fare? Was that wise? Was that cool? Wasn’t there an app for that, one I’d be embarrassed to say I haven’t downloaded or even heard of yet? Or would you ask to meet me somewhere at lunchtime to give me my twenty quid? Would we then end up having a burger? Find ourselves talking for ages?
Go on, girl, you show ’em what us old ravers are made of, I could hear Iain say.
No.
No, I should leave it.
I didn’t need to over-complicate what was already shaping up to be another day I’d want to forget. I opened the taxi door and readied myself to leave you on the pavement, but suddenly you were there, right behind me.
You made me jump.
‘Hi there, you must be heading south? Mind if I get in?’ When you spoke to me, your mouth split to reveal the most fantastic teeth.
‘Yes. I mean, I’m heading to Borough, but—’
‘Perfect. Me too. Wait a sec, sorry, I’ve just realised, I literally don’t have any cash.’
Behind you I saw the bearded and big-haired gaggle were agog that you’d thought of hitching a ride and they hadn’t. If I refused you, I feared a group of them would initiate some kind of collective action, gathering their grubby coins together in a bid to get in.
‘It’s fine, just get in.’ One of you had to be better than three or four.
‘Is that alright? You’re absolutely sure?’
You gained and double-checked my consent. It was a technique you would use again and again on me when I didn’t understand what I was agreeing to. One of your many gifts.
‘Sure.’
I obediently slid over to the far seat to make room for you. You bent low to get in, your head suddenly so close to mine I could smell you’d just washed your hair. It was still wet at the roots, cooling the blood in your scalp. I was about to tell the cabbie where to go, but your youthful scent made me falter.
‘Borough, please. I’d avoid Old Street if I were you. Dalston then Gracechurch?’ you said. Smiling, you waved your phone in my direction. ‘Good for you? I’ve just seen there’s a burst water main near City Road. I mean, if you’d rather go your way?’
I saw your screen was blank.
I looked to the driver for some response, but was distracted by the faint reflection on the glass screen in front of me: a decidedly middle-aged woman, short ink-black hair framing a smudgy face. I was struggling to recognise myself again. I hadn’t admitted to Iain yet, but in the build-up to that day, I could feel my illness creeping back with its full force, exactly how it had when the last crash happened fifteen months ago.
An extended Christmas break, followed by six weeks pockmarked by regular sick days, followed by my GP signing me off work as a beige cloud surrounded me, washing the colour out of everything. Recently, that familiar filter of dread which had only recently lifted felt like it was on the descent again. If I went back to my GP, I suspected he’d want to put me back on my antidepressants again. But Citalopram had given me weeks of terrible side effects so that I suddenly needed help to achieve even the basic requirements of life: eating, concentrating, remembering both what had happened that day and things I’d done years ago. I felt sleepy constantly, primally drawn to dark rooms, my bed or under a blanket on my sofa, like an old animal looking for a quiet place to die. Eventually, getting to work became impossible and the pills made all of it worse, with a mouth like cotton wool and a supressed sex drive to boot. My GP said I’d only need to take it for a few months to ‘jump start myself again’. My former masters at work were understanding, and anyway, they were too distracted by finding a buyer for the struggling business at that point. I doubted whether the new owners would be so sympathetic, or their attentions as diverted.