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Back Before You Were Gone Save as PDF
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

Dee didn’t have a phone in her bag, but she had a nail file. Not a fancy Leighton Denny crystal nail file like the one Louise had. A bog-standard metal file with a pointed edge to it. An edge that fitted perfectly into the old-fashioned lock on the heavy wooden door. Now, all she had to do was get the stupid thing to twist and unlock the door so she could get the hell out of here.

She didn’t know how long she’d been in here, but she was pretty sure it felt longer than it actually had been. Anger kept her focused. Each time her arm started to ache from the length of time she’d spent trying to unlock the door, and the voices started inside her head, telling her it was pointless and she was never going to get out of here, she would picture Robert O’Brien’s face when he was arrested for murder and whatever other crimes he’d committed.

While she worked on the lock, Dee went back over everything she knew about Lucy Ryan and Kitty Doran, trying to piece together the different bits of information into a single narrative. She knew for certain now that Robert O’Brien had played a role in whatever happened to both girls. And he was doing his best to make sure no one else found out what he’d done.

That’s why he was here. To cover his tracks. Or someone else’s? A line from Shay Flaherty’s email lodged in Dee’s head:

Robert is devoted to Ursula.

Ursula who, according to her daughter, was a deeply unpleasant woman. In 1997, when Lucy disappeared and Kitty supposedly drowned, Ursula had been working as Robert’s PA. So Ursula and Robert were in this together. Lucy Ryan and Kitty Doran had seen something they shouldn’t have. Maybe both girls were meant to have been killed, but Ursula couldn’t face killing her own daughter. So she’d sneaked Kitty out of the country and given her a new identity. A plan which had worked perfectly until Emer spotted her sister on the London Underground earlier this summer.

Dee wondered if Robert O’Brien knew Kitty hadn’t drowned that afternoon. If he didn’t, if he’d spent all these years believing Kitty was dead, that would explain why he’d offered to help Emer find out about the girl she’d seen on the Tube. It would have come as a shock to realise his wife had been lying to him all this time. More of a shock to discover that the one person with the power to topple his political career was still out there.