Excerpt from Letters to the Lost by Iona Grey, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Suddenly she felt bone tired, the pulse of pain in her ankle radiating outward so that her whole body throbbed with exhaustion. She made her way haltingly back to the front room and sank onto the sofa, dropping her head into her hands as the enormity of the events of the last hour overwhelmed her.

Shit. She'd broken into a house. An empty and neglected one maybe, but even so. Breaking and entering wasn't like nicking a packet of crisps from the corner shop because you didn't want to be called a skank for having a free school dinner. It was a whole different level of wrong.

On the upside, she had escaped. She wasn't on her way back to the flat in Elephant and Castle with Dodge. She wouldn't have to endure the lust that afflicted him after a beery evening watching her sing in the slutty gear he made her wear. Not tonight, not ever again. The first thing she'd do when her ankle was better was find a charity shop or something and spend a bit of the precious money on decent clothes. Warm clothes. Clothes that actually covered up her body, rather than displaying it like goods in the window of a cut-price shop.

Wincing, she lay back, resting her leg on the arm of the sofa and settling herself on the cigarette-scented cushions. She wondered where he was now; whether he'd given up looking and gone back to the flat to wait, confident that she'd come back eventually. She needed him, as he liked to tell her; needed his contacts and his bookings and his money, because without him what was she? Nothing. A Northern nobody with a voice like a thousand other wannabe stars. A voice that no one would ever hear if it wasn't for him.

She tugged the crocheted blanket down from the back of the sofa and pulled it over herself. In the wake of the adrenaline rush her body felt heavy and weak, and she found she didn't actually give a toss where he was, because for the first time in six months what he thought or felt or wanted was of no relevance to her whatsoever.

The unfamiliar house settled itself around her, absorbing her into its stillness. The noise of the city seemed far away here and the sound of cars on the wet street had receded to a muted sigh, like waves on a distant beach. She stared into the shadows and began to hum softly, to keep the silence at bay. The tune that came into her head was not one of the songs she had belted out on the stage in the pub earlier, but one from the past; a lullaby Gran used to sing to her when she was small. The words were half-forgotten, but the melody stroked her with soothing, familiar fingers, and she didn't feel quite so alone.

*   *   *

Light was filtering through the thin curtains when she woke, and the slice of sky visible in the gap between them was the bleached bone white of morning. She went to adjust her position and instantly pain flared in her ankle, as if someone had been waiting until she moved to hit it with a sledgehammer. She froze, waiting for the ripples of agony to subside.

Through the wall she could hear noises; the rise and fall of indistinct voices on the radio, then music and the hurried thud of feet on the stairs. She sat up, gritting her teeth as she put her foot to the floor. In the icy bathroom she sat on the loo and peeled off her shredded tights to look at her ankle. It was unrecognizable; puffy and purpling above a foot that was smeared with dirt.

The bathroom didn't boast anything as modern as a shower, only a deep cast-iron bath with rust stains beneath the taps and a basin in the corner. Above this there was a little mirrored cabinet, which she opened in the hope of finding something that might help. Inside the shelves were cluttered with boxes and bottles that wouldn't have looked out of place in a museum, their faded labels advertising the mysterious medicines of another time; Milk of Magnesia, Kaolin, Linctus. In among them, on the bottom shelf, there was a lipstick in a gold case.

Excerpted from Letters to the Lost by Iona Grey. Copyright © 2015 by Iona Grey. Excerpted by permission of Thomas Dunne Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.