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Overview
Judith has been visiting her mother, Stephanie, in prison once a month for the last eight years. She still can’t bring herself to talk with her mother about what brought them here—or about Nathaniel, the man whose religious cult almost cost them their lives.
When Stephanie first meets him, she is a struggling single mother and Nathaniel is a charismatic outsider, unlike anyone she’s ever known. In deciding to join the group he’s founded, Stephanie thinks she’s doing the best thing for her daughter: a new home, a new purpose. Judith and Stephanie are initiated into a secret society whose “followers” must obey the will of a zealous prophet. As Stephanie immerses herself in her new life, Judith slowly realizes the moral implications of the strict lifestyle Nathaniel preaches. Tensions deepen, faith and doubt collide, and a horrifying act of violence changes everything. In the shattering aftermath, it seems that no one is safe.
With “propulsive plotting” (The Guardian), The Followers is a novel about love, hope, and identity that asks: Are we still responsible for our actions if we remake ourselves in someone else’s image? And can there be a way back?
“With skillful judgment, Wait shows us that not everyone can be trained or scared into submission. The tenderness and the transformative nature of the ending are truly moving.” —The Independent
“Brooding tension . . . building to a page-turning finish.” —Daily Mail
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781609454029 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Europa Editions, Incorporated |
| Publication date: | 10/08/2019 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 304 |
| Sales rank: | 1,048,411 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
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CHAPTER 1
Stephanie didn't know what it was about the man in the corner because as far as she could see he just sat there quietly and read his book. But the other girls jostled for position on Thursday mornings to serve him, and then competed again for who would clear his table.
'He usually has a cappuccino,' Helen told her on her first Thursday, as though she were revealing the secrets of the universe. 'But sometimes, just occasionally, he switches to breakfast tea.'
'Right,' Stephanie said.
She decided to leave them to it. Plenty of other customers to serve and plenty of other tables to clear. She hadn't been here long and she wanted the other girls to like her. The risk of losing your job was ever-present these days, everything so shifting and unstable that it was best to keep your head down and get on with it. Three years she'd been at the bookies, had made the mistake of thinking she was safe — why worry about losing a job you hate, anyway? — but as it turned out, she'd been the first to go.
The rent was a problem, as constant as her exhaustion. She still remembered a time when she'd actually relished the idea of rent payments. On those nights in her early twenties when she'd left Judith with her mum and gone out for a drink, she'd enjoyed dropping it into conversation with her friends: 'Better not have another, or I won't make the rent this month,' or, 'No, it's a rubbish job, but you have to pay the rent somehow, don't you?' It was a magic word back then, transforming her into someone she wanted to be: adult, bold, a little haphazard, perhaps, but making it all work. Her friends — many still sleeping in their childhood single beds — had been impressed.
She was thirty-one now, and the charm of paying rent was long gone. Too many moves. Too many cramped, dreary towns, each time hoping for better. Everyone was paying rent now, and much less precariously than she was, it seemed. And Judith's dad had never been much help, neither with money nor with anything else. No sign of him for ages now. It wasn't Sean who had to worry about paying the rent, or finding the cheapest way to make bolognese without Judith complaining it was grey.
It seemed to happen as you got older that instead of expanding, the world shrank around you, so that in place of all that freedom you'd been promised you got breathlessness and fear and the daily drudge of making ends meet.
Stephanie began to hate the man who sat in the corner every Thursday, who had nothing better to do than drink coffee and read a book on a weekday morning.
'What does he actually do?' she said to Helen on her third Thursday.
Helen was vague. 'I think he's a teacher.'
'Where? St. Joseph's? The FE college?'
'Don't think so.'
'There's nowhere else.' Not in this wasteland, she added silently; nothing but the moors and the wind and the rain.
'Well, then,' Helen said, 'he probably works further afield, doesn't he? Bradford, even.'
'Bradford? Right.'
Stephanie looked over at him again. Early forties, maybe. Dark hair that curled a little. He was OK-looking, she'd give him that, but nothing special. The others were welcome to him.
Then, an accident. Helen had gone out for a cigarette and Liz was wiping down the tables by the door so that somehow Stephanie was alone at the counter when he came up, his polite half-smile already in place. She didn't smile back.
He said, 'Please could I have a chocolate croissant?'
Soft-spoken, with quite a posh accent — a little like he was about to read you the news. Mainly, she noticed his eyes. A strange pale green, too light for his colouring. Stephanie had never seen eyes like that before. They unsettled her.
She focused on the pastries instead, lifting the plastic lid and using the tongs to retrieve a croissant for him.
'That'll be 90p, please.'
He said in his gentle voice, 'You're new, aren't you?'
'Been here nearly a month.' She wasn't sure where her irritation came from. Maybe because he made it sound like he was the one who belonged here, like he was welcoming her onto his territory.
'Nice to meet you,' he said. Then, 'My name's Nathaniel.'
Her 'Stephanie' sounded silly coming after his curiously old-fashioned name.
He had paid and was holding the little plate with the croissant on it. But he didn't walk away.
He said, 'I come here every Thursday.'
'I know.' She regretted saying it immediately. Made it sound like she'd been watching him, same as all the others. A short silence, during which she felt those pale eyes on her again. She'd been staring down at the cash register, but now she made herself look up and meet his gaze. There was something patient in his expression that made her feel like she was being unreasonable.
'I'll let you get on,' he said, and the next moment he'd gone back to his table with the croissant and picked up his book. He didn't look at her again after that, not when he'd finished his coffee, not when Helen went over and they seemed to be chatting away, laughing together, not even when he left.
'What's so special about him?' she said to Helen later, as they were closing up. 'Why do you all fancy him?'
Helen snorted, gave her a shove. 'I don't fancy him. He's just nice, that's all. Nice manners, you know?'
Must be the polish of Bradford, Stephanie thought. She just managed not to say it out loud.
Shrieks of laughter greeted her from the front room when she got home. A moment later, Judith burst into the hall, and Stephanie thought, as she often did, that it was a peculiar gift on Judith's part that she could make even a school uniform look scruffy.
'We've made a talk show, Mum,' Judith said. 'I'm the interviewer, and Megan's my guest, and she's a pop star, but she's off her head on drugs and keeps answering with stuff that doesn't make sense. Do you want to see it?' 'Not just now, love.' Stephanie stuck her head round the living-room door, where Megan seemed to be conducting some kind of elaborate mime by herself. 'Megan, hadn't you better be getting home? Your mum will be wondering where you are.'
'She knows I'm here,' Megan said placidly.
'She means she wants you to go home,' Judith said, coming back into the room. 'She's not being rude. She just wants to make our supper and watch Coronation Street in peace. Come on. I'll walk with you.'
'Judith!' Stephanie said, but the girls had already gone to get their coats.
When Judith returned, Stephanie had the beans heating up on the stove and was buttering toast. Judith came and leaned against the counter next to her. She seemed to be getting bigger at a rate that Stephanie found alarming, taking up more and more space as Stephanie felt herself diminishing. It struck her as extraordinary, when she thought about it, that she'd produced a child like Judith: this bright, self-assured person who seemed like no one but herself.
Judith said, 'You know, Mum, you should see people more. It'd do you good.'
'I see Megan often enough, don't I?'
She hadn't meant to snap, but Judith seemed unfazed.
'I mean friends your own age, Mum. Why don't you invite Megan's mum round for coffee?'
'Kay is not my age, Judith. She's in her forties, for God's sake!'
'Yes, but you're both mums, aren't you?' Judith said, as though that settled it.
Stephanie closed her eyes briefly. 'Shall we have supper in front of the telly?'
Another accident: this time, entirely his. She was wiping down the tables the following Thursday when she heard a quiet sound of frustration behind her, and looked up to see that he'd knocked his mug over, sending a wave of coffee over the table and soaking the paperback that rested on it.
She went over with her cloth, and did her best to absorb the worst of it before it flooded his lap. He picked up the book and flapped it uselessly, as though he could shake out the coffee that had already sunk into its pages.
'I'm such an idiot,' he said.
'We all do it.' He was looking at the book so sadly that she added, 'If it's ruined, you can get another copy, can't you?' She couldn't see what the book was, but it looked old and tattered, the pages yellow where they weren't stained with coffee.
'Well, yes,' he said. 'Only —'
When he broke off, she found it impossible not to prompt him. 'Only what?'
A quick, rueful look. 'Sounds stupid. But it was my mother's book.'
'Oh — sorry.'
'No use being sentimental though, is there? It's only a book.'
'Did you lose your mother recently?' she said. Was this OK to ask? Did people ask things like this?
He didn't seem to mind. 'No. Back when I was a kid.' He remained thoughtful a moment longer, then gave her an unexpectedly charming smile. 'Sorry about the spill.'
'It's fine. It's nothing. It's just a shame about your book.'
'It's my own clumsiness,' he said. 'I sometimes wonder if my brain's failed to understand the length of my arms. I'm always misjudging distances when I reach for things.' He had placed the book back on the table now, and she was able to read the title: Murder in the Cathedral by T. S. Eliot, which sounded like an Agatha Christie novel, though wasn't he the one who wrote poems about cats?
'Is it any good?' she said, gesturing to the book.
He looked up at her, and those pale eyes locked onto hers so that for a moment it was as though the rest of the world stilled and receded and there were just the two of them there. He said, 'This is one moment, but know that another shall pierce you with a sudden, painful joy.'
It took her a couple of beats to realize he was quoting. She didn't know what to say, but she couldn't drag her eyes away. He seemed clever, she thought.
He freed her by giving a small huff of amusement and looking down at the book. 'It's a bit strange, to be honest.'
'Sounds it.' A pause, then she said, 'I'd better get on.'
Back at the counter, she made him a replacement cappuccino and took it over to him, with a breezy, 'On the house,' and then winced inwardly, because this expression belonged to television, not real life. She brushed off his thanks and walked away, not trusting herself to linger any longer.
The following Thursday was her day off. She started out by cleaning the flat, then gave up and went to bed with a magazine. It was hard to focus, though. She wasn't used to having time to herself; she felt she was wasting it.
On Friday, Liz said, 'He asked about you yesterday.'
Stephanie could tell who Liz meant from her sidelong look. She felt something in her stomach, a wriggle of excitement.
She affected nonchalance. 'Oh?'
'He asked where you were, if you were ill. I said you were working at the weekend instead. That he'd have to make do with me and Helen.'
Stephanie didn't comment. She told herself it was weird he'd asked.
He was there again the next Thursday. She wasn't at the counter when he placed his order, but he made a special point of bringing his empty mug up himself later, when she was replenishing the pastries. The coffee shop was quiet that day, so she was able to pause in her work and say, 'Did you dry your book out OK?'
'It's not too bad,' he said. 'The pages have gone quite an attractive shade of brown. I think I prefer it. Before long, everyone will be doing it.'
'I'm not sure about that.'
As she turned to wipe down the coffee machine, he said, 'So have you always lived round here?'
'No. Leeds, originally.'
'What made you come here?'
Stephanie shrugged. She'd followed a boyfriend here a few years back, only he hadn't stuck around, and now there seemed neither anything to keep her here nor any reason to move on. 'You know,' she said. 'Life.'
'And are you happy here?'
A strange question. 'It's alright,' she said. But, feeling his directness required a more honest answer, she added, 'It's not where I imagined I'd end up.'
'Things don't always turn out the way we expect, do they?'
He said it softly, almost to himself. Something made Stephanie ask, 'Are you from round here?' It already seemed obvious he wasn't.
'No, I grew up with my uncle in London.'
She wanted to ask about his parents, but didn't know how. Perhaps his father as well as his mother had died when he was a child. Stephanie's own father had been killed in a road accident when she was six, and though she hardly remembered him, though her mother never spoke of him, Stephanie seemed to carry with her a physical memory of his death, a pain in her chest when she thought of him that was like being winded.
'Everyone's always telling you that things turn out for the best,' she said. 'But don't they just turn out, without any scheme behind it? And anyway, we can't say things have turned out for the best or the worst because we don't know what the other options would have been.' She had taken herself by surprise — the words seemed to burst out of her in his presence. She risked a glance at him. 'What?'
'Oh, nothing,' he said. 'I had a feeling about you, that's all. And I was right.'
'What feeling?'
'I suppose — that you think about things more deeply than other people.'
'Oh!' she said, trying to hide her pleasure. 'Hardly. Look where I've ended up. Working in a cafe.' A single mother, she almost said.
'It's not about what we do,' he said. 'It's about who we are.' When she didn't answer, he added, 'Actually, I think there is a scheme to it all. But we can talk about that another day. I'd better leave you in peace now. People will think I'm making the world's longest and most complicated coffee order.'
She smiled at him. 'See you next Thursday.'
But the next week he didn't come. Stephanie told herself she didn't mind, she would see him again the following Thursday. But he didn't appear then either.
'Maybe he's found another coffee shop,' Helen said gloomily.
'Maybe he's dead,' Liz said.
Stephanie didn't comment. Isn't this typical, she thought. It was almost worse than if he'd never spoken to her. This was what they did, men: made you think it meant something to them as well, when really it was just a passing fancy, throwaway remarks.
That evening, she stood in the kitchen stirring pasta sauce, thinking of nothing. She was dimly aware that Judith was talking to her, relaying with an unnecessary level of detail the plot of the film she'd watched with Megan the night before. Stephanie had given up trying to follow, and stared down at the pan instead, letting her mind go quiet.
Judith's voice broke in, strident. 'Did you hear what I just said, Mum? About the man with the hook?'
'Yes.'
'OK, what does he do, then? What does he do when he comes up behind Ryan Phillippe on the balcony?'
Stephanie stirred the sauce. 'He kills him,' she said.
'Oh, Mum. That was a lucky guess. I can tell you're not listening.'
'I was.'
'You weren't. You never listen.' She paused, then delivered the devastating blow. 'Megan's mother always listens to her.'
'Well, why don't you bloody well go and live with Megan then?' Stephanie said.
'You shouldn't say "bloody",' Judith said. 'It's undignified.'
'I don't fucking care,' Stephanie said, feeling even more of the moral high ground slipping away from her. 'Anyway,' she went on quickly, 'it doesn't sound like a suitable film. I'm surprised Megan's mum let you watch it.'
'We watched Sleepy Hollow when Megan came round here a few weeks ago,' Judith countered. 'Remember? You screamed your head off and spilled the popcorn. Megan said she was going to have nightmares until the end of her days.'
'Get the plates out, will you?'
'What are we having?'
'Pasta with mushroom sauce.'
'I hate mushrooms,' Judith said.
'Since when?'
'Since about a year. See? You never listen.'
It was true, really, Stephanie thought later. She was a failure as a mother, even though it was about the only thing she'd ever done with her life. And even that had been an accident. She remembered her own mother saying once, 'Some people shouldn't have children.' It had appeared to be an idle comment, a response to something they'd seen on the news, but Stephanie had taken it personally and couldn't shake off the suspicion that it had been intended that way.
She and her mum didn't speak these days. There hadn't been a falling-out, exactly, but somehow they seemed to have nothing to say to each other. Stephanie could feel the waves of disapproval coming from her mother even down the phone line. Her mother had a point, anyway. Stephanie had gotten everything wrong.
She sometimes thought about the time she went to the Fens with a boy from college, long before Judith was born. She didn't know why this trip stood out so vividly in her memory, except that it had felt like a moment in someone else's life. They'd stayed with the boy's sister, a romantic getaway of sorts, only instead of a hotel in Paris it had been a dingy back bedroom in the Fens.
The Fens had scared her to death. Flat like an unfurled ribbon, all that sky, fields going on forever and nothing to stop you slipping right off the edge of the world. There'd been no other houses around the cottage, just the farmhouse it backed on to, and beyond that just emptiness, empty fields and empty sky, for miles and miles. When it got dark, you could see a glimmer of light in the distance, a small, lighthouse pinprick floating somewhere across the vast expanse of black.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Followers"
by .
Copyright © 2015 Rebecca Wait.
Excerpted by permission of Europa Editions.
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