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Back Before You Were Gone
Chapters (58)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. One
  4. Two
  5. Three
  6. Four
  7. Five
  8. Six
  9. Seven
  10. Eight
  11. Nine
  12. Ten
  13. Eleven
  14. Twelve
  15. Thirteen
  16. Fourteen
  17. Fifteen
  18. Sixteen
  19. Seventeen
  20. Eighteen
  21. Nineteen
  22. Twenty
  23. Twenty-one
  24. Twenty-two
  25. Twenty-three
  26. Twenty-four
  27. Twenty-five
  28. Twenty-six
  29. Twenty-seven
  30. Twenty-eight
  31. Twenty-nine
  32. Thirty
  33. Thirty-one
  34. Thirty-two
  35. Thirty-three
  36. Thirty-four
  37. Thirty-five
  38. Thirty-six
  39. Thirty-seven
  40. Thirty-eight
  41. Thirty-nine
  42. Forty
  43. Forty-one
  44. Forty-two
  45. Forty-three
  46. Forty-four
  47. Forty-five
  48. Forty-six
  49. Forty-seven
  50. Forty-eight
  51. Forty-nine
  52. Fifty
  53. Fifty-one
  54. Acknowledgements
  55. An Eastbourne Murder Mystery
  56. Canelo Crime
  57. About the Author
  58. Also by Sheila Bugler

‘Not bad,’ Dee admitted.

In fact, Louise’s theory was pretty close to Dee’s. The only difference was that Louise hadn’t made the jump to working out the identity of the man Michael Holden had killed.

‘By all accounts they were a really close family.’ Louise frowned. ‘You know, all the time I covered that story, I never once got any hint that Annie wasn’t their child.’

‘They’d been out of Eastbourne a long time by then,’ Dee said. ‘Annie would have been – what? – twenty-one at the time of the murder? From the articles I read, journalists barely mentioned her in their stories.’

‘They had no reason to,’ Louise said. ‘Although now you mention it, I vaguely remember someone telling me Fiona and Mike didn’t always have a daughter. Who was that? God, it was so long ago… It probably doesn’t matter. I’m sure they said Annie was adopted. That would make sense, wouldn’t it? They adopted Annie and moved to Alfriston soon after that.’

‘Of course,’ Dee said. ‘People adopt older kids all the time. It’s the perfect cover. And, as you say, if they moved to Alfriston soon after, there’d be fewer people to ask difficult questions about the adoption.’

‘If someone was looking for Kitty,’ Louise said, ‘I doubt they’d make the connection with Mike and Fiona. It’s too tenuous. Who would even know they were friends with your father?’

‘I don’t think they were friends exactly,’ Dee said, ‘not really. Dad drank at the pub they ran, but that’s as far as it went.’

She thought of the painting she’d seen in Annie’s studio. The woman sitting at the bar with a packet of cigarettes in front of her, and a child hiding in the corner. At the time, she’d thought it was a self-portrait. But over the last few days, Dee had pored over every news piece she could find about Robert O’Brien and his wife. She’d seen enough photos of Ursula O’Brien to work out she was the woman in Kitty’s painting. The only question now in Dee’s mind was whether the child in the painting had been Kitty or Emer.

They’d arrived in Alfriston by now, Louise navigating her way slowly down the high street that was too narrow for two cars to pass each other at the same time.

‘I want to move here when we retire,’ Louise said. ‘I love Alfriston.’

‘They were pub landlords,’ Dee said, looking out the window at the timber-framed buildings and flint-fronted terraced housing. ‘Alfriston’s an expensive place to live. How did they afford that? Did they even work after they moved here?’