The ice cream girls (by Dorothy Koomson)

(Amazon UK link)

I do like the books by Dorothy Koomson, though some of her writing is rather harder-hitting than many of my preferred authors. Her later books seem to be thrillers, which is a genre where I feel less comfortable than with more straightforward women’s fiction. I’m currently rereading my collection of her books, around one per month, and this week I picked up ‘The ice cream girls’, which I last read over thirteen years ago.

Usually, after such a long gap, I have entirely forgotten a storyline. It’s a testament to the author’s powerful writing that I did recall a fair amount of what happened in this book, once I had started. This did not detract in any way from the story, or the suspense that continues throughout.

There are two main protagonists, Serena and Poppy. We meet Serena first when her husband Evan goes down on one knee and proposes to her… a romantic gesture of the kind she has been longing for. He’s a kind, generous man - a doctor, and apparently a very good one. They have a good relationship, and now he’s offering to marry her over again, with a lavish ceremony that contrasts with their more basic original wedding. 

Everything seems perfect… but Serena has a past, which Evan knows nothing about. This slightly confuses me; we quickly learn that, although she was accused of a terrible crime, she was acquitted. I am not sure why she never mentioned it to him, but it’s clear that it became more and more difficult. They have two children: thirteen-year-old Verity and eight-year-old Conrad.  Serena came from a happy home, with loving parents and older twin sisters, although they’ve become a bit less close in the past couple of decades.

Then we meet Poppy. She has been in jail for the past eighteen years, for the crime for which Serena was acquitted. She is emerging into London, with little idea where to go or what to do. Life has moved on, and she hasn’t. She goes to her parents’ house, as she has nowhere to go, and is shocked that they seem distant; unwilling to talk to her, or even be in the same room as her. Poppy insists that she is innocent, that she was wrongly jailed. But nobody seems to believe her.

Poppy is convinced that Serena must have been the guilty one, and she starts stalking her. Unsurprisingly, she feels that it’s very unfair that Serena has such an idyllic life, whereas she has been incarcerated for twenty years. She believes that the only way to be vindicated is if Serena confesses. But Serena also claims to be innocent…

There are a lot of cleverly written flashbacks to the time when Serena and Poppy were teenagers. Serena starts doing some extra studying with a teacher who eventually seduces her… and it’s clear that she’s not the first.  Something similar happens with Poppy not long afterwards, although she’s not at the same school. 

But it’s not just the story of a man twice their age who has an unhealthy interest in underage schoolgirls. That would have been bad enough, but both girls are infatuated, and are willing participants. Unfortunately it turns out that this teacher is also a narcissistic bully who becomes more and more controlling and violent. He seems to have no redeeming features at all. And since he threatens to kill the girls if they tell anyone what’s going on, or decide to end the relationship, it hardly seems like a tragedy that he was killed himself.

So he is no longer a threat, although neither Serena nor Poppy is able to forget him. Both need to learn to let go of the past, to be able to trust people again. It’s harder for Poppy, having been around criminals for the past twenty years; even more so when she starts to trust someone again, only to find out that things are not what they seem.

Thankfully there are no gratuitous descriptions of the violence, though it’s referred to, and it’s clear what happened. It’s a terrifying story, all the more so because, at the end, the author says that she wrote it for the sake of people who are in domestic violence situations. It’s hard to believe that someone could be as evil as this man, but apparently such people do exist. I hope that this book may help anyone in such circumstances.

But it’s a very good read anyway, and even though I had - vaguely - recalled the eventual outcome, I could hardly put the book down once I was about half-way through. I liked Serena very much, and felt extremely sorry for Poppy. The first time I read it, I wished there was more… so I’m very pleased to have learned that there’s a sequel, which I was given, and which I intend to read towards the end of  next month. 

Definitely recommended, if you like character-based psychological thrillers. 

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