Chapters (58)
- Cover
- Dedication
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- Thirty-eight
- Thirty-nine
- Forty
- Forty-one
- Forty-two
- Forty-three
- Forty-four
- Forty-five
- Forty-six
- Forty-seven
- Forty-eight
- Forty-nine
- Fifty
- Fifty-one
- Acknowledgements
- An Eastbourne Murder Mystery
- Canelo Crime
- About the Author
- Also by Sheila Bugler
‘Oh my God,’ Emer said. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘He said he didn’t want to tell me over the phone. He’s asked if we can meet up this weekend.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘I told him I’d see him when I got back,’ Maeve said. ‘If Kitty’s still alive, then the chances are she’ll know more about what happened to Lucy than some journalist who never knew her.’
Maeve nodded at the swans.
‘Beautiful, aren’t they? They’ve been here almost two weeks already. We normally don’t see swans here until mid October. They’ll be here for the winter, but they’ll head north again around April.’
‘Wouldn’t that be lovely?’ Emer said. ‘Imagine being able to head off wherever you wanted when you got fed up of being somewhere.’
‘You think that’s what happened with Kitty?’
‘No. Kitty left because she was scared of something.’
The girls were there that night.
What if it was Robert her mother had been arguing with? That wasn’t how Emer remembered it, but she wasn’t sure she could trust her memory after all this time. She’d read stories of people with fake memories. The psychologist Jean Piaget famously remembered being kidnapped in a park as a small child. The memory had been created by a story his nanny told about the kidnapping, which subsequently turned out to be false. Is that what was happening here? Was Emer’s mind creating false memories to help her better make sense of her past?
There was so much she didn’t understand. But there were four irrefutable facts. Fact Number One: Lucy Ryan disappeared one night and was never seen again. Fact Number Two: three weeks later, Kitty disappeared. Fact Number Three: two months after Kitty disappeared, Emer’s father walked out on his wife and remaining child. And finally, Fact Number Four: two years after her father abandoned her, Robert O’Brien got what he’d always wanted – Ursula Doran as his wife.
Twenty-eight
‘Do you want to tell me what’s going on, or do I have to try to guess?’
‘I have absolutely no idea,’ Dee said. ‘I’m happy to tell you what I’m doing here, but only if you’re going to do the same.’
‘Go on then,’ Ed said. ‘Because I’m really looking forward to hearing this one.’
They were sitting on the terrace at the back of the Prospect of Whitby – the pub closest to Annie’s house. Or what had, until yesterday, been Annie’s house.
The pub had been Dee’s idea. As far as she was concerned, they could have stayed in the street and sorted everything out. But she knew Ed Mitchell, and she knew the best way to get him onside was to buy him a cup of coffee and pretend she was taking his well-meaning, but so often patronising, advice seriously.