BooksBarbecue
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

They could have been twins. Everyone said so. Except for the eyes. Emer’s were blue; Kitty’s, of course, were two different colours – the left one was blue, the right one was green. Two sisters, and then there was only one.

Sometimes, when the memories came, she tried to resist. Now, just for a moment, she let them in. Image after precious image, snapshots of the first ten years of her life. Playing with Kitty in their tiny back garden. Fighting over a Barbie doll that Kitty had stolen from her and refused to give back. Cuddled up together in the same bed, whispering to each other late into the night. So many memories, all of them ending abruptly one night in a hotel corridor.

I did something really bad, Emer. Kitty’s voice, whispering, her breath hot against Emer’s cheek. And because of that I have to go. I can’t see you again.

Closing the photo, Emer quickly checked her emails – still nothing from Nikki – and opened her internet browser. When she started typing, the words appeared automatically on the screen. Remembered by her browser because she’d typed them so often: Kitty Doran, Lucy Ryan, Ballincarraig.

The results were almost instant. Thousands of links to thousands of different stories about the two girls. And there, midway down the first page, the story Emer was looking for.

Father of missing girl, Lucy Ryan, found dead in family home.

She clicked on the link, like she’d done countless times over the last few days, and saw Lucy’s face smiling out at her. The same photo that had accompanied the many news stories Emer had read over the years. And beneath it, a more recent photo of Lucy’s sister, Maeve, standing outside the hotel she now ran. The story was three months old. Robert and Ursula had gone to the funeral. Emer had thought about it but, in the end, the thought of seeing Maeve again was too much. So she’d taken the coward’s way out and stayed away. And every day since, she’d gone onto the internet to read about her old friend.

She opened a new tab on her browser and checked Instagram and Twitter. Last month, she’d finally plucked up the courage and followed Maeve’s social media accounts. So far, Maeve hadn’t followed her back. As each day passed, it seemed less likely she ever would. Maeve’s Instagram account was private, but her Twitter account wasn’t. Emer scrolled through Maeve’s tweets, mostly promoting the hotel she ran, searching for any mention of what had happened in Ballincarraig twenty-three years earlier. But there was nothing. There never was.