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
When she sees Kitty’s face, she stops running, because Kitty is crying and she never cries. Emer’s the crybaby who cries at everything and should try harder to be more like her sister because she’s a big, brave girl. But Kitty doesn’t look big and brave now. She looks sad and lonely and it makes Emer feel sad and lonely looking at her.
‘Go back to your room.’
Kitty sounds angry, but Emer’s not going to go back to her room because everyone thinks Kitty’s dead and if this is a joke it’s not very funny.
Emer starts to run towards her, but someone grabs her and lifts her off the ground. She sees her hands, reaching out in front of her, trying to pull Kitty back, but she’s already too late.
Kitty is gone.
The same dream, always. The details so familiar it had become impossible, over the years, to separate the dream from what had actually happened. There were times she could almost believe that’s all it had ever been: a dream. It would be so much easier if that’s all it was. If she could let go of what she believed had happened that night and move on with her life. And she’d tried. God knows, she’d tried. When Nikki had first threatened to leave, Emer had promised she’d change. She would accept, once and for all, that Kitty was dead. And she would focus, instead, on the life she had with Nikki. But she hadn’t been able to keep the promise. The memory of her sister in the hotel that night continued to haunt her. Her belief that Kitty was still alive remained as strong as ever. And because of that, Nikki had left, and now Emer was living back in Ballincarraig with her mother and stepfather.
She could hear them now. Talking in the kitchen of the big house that Robert O’Brien had bought for his new wife as a wedding present. The house, a converted coach inn, was one of the finest in the town. Ursula never tired of telling people how, when she was a little girl passing the house on her way to school each day, she’d dreamed of living here eventually. She refrained from adding that the only reason the house had come on the market was because of the town council’s plans to build a municipal dump on the land behind the property. Or that these plans were mysteriously rejected by the same town council a week after Robert, then head of the council, had purchased the house.