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Chapters (43)
  1. Dedication
  2. Epigraph
  3. Chapter One
  4. Chapter Two
  5. Chapter Three
  6. Chapter Four
  7. Chapter Five
  8. Chapter Six
  9. Chapter Seven
  10. Chapter Eight
  11. Chapter Nine
  12. Chapter Ten
  13. Chapter Eleven
  14. Chapter Twelve
  15. Chapter Thirteen
  16. Chapter Fourteen
  17. Chapter Fifteen
  18. Chapter Sixteen
  19. Chapter Seventeen
  20. Chapter Eighteen
  21. Chapter Nineteen
  22. Chapter Twenty
  23. Chapter Twenty-One
  24. Chapter Twenty-Two
  25. Chapter Twenty-Three
  26. Chapter Twenty-Four
  27. Chapter Twenty-Five
  28. Chapter Twenty-Six
  29. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  30. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  31. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  32. Chapter Thirty
  33. Chapter Thirty-One
  34. Chapter Thirty-Two
  35. Chapter Thirty-Three
  36. Chapter Thirty-Four
  37. Chapter Thirty-Five
  38. Chapter Thirty-Six
  39. Chapter Thirty-Seven
  40. Chapter Thirty-Eight
  41. About the Author
  42. Also by Stephen Booth
  43. About the Publisher

Watching Fry walk back to her own desk to phone Mr Goodwin, Cooper remembered how ambitious she was, how often she talked about moving up or moving on. At one time, he’d thought that Fry’s sister, Angie, would be enough to keep her in the area, but now he wasn’t so sure.

The relationship between the two sisters had always baffled him, and still did. The odd thing was that Diane had seemed to feel closer to Angie when she was missing than she did now that her sister was very much around. It didn’t fit with Cooper’s own ideas about family at all. But was his experience necessarily the way things ought to be?

Cooper rubbed the tiredness from his eyes and returned to the farm records. In seconds, he was back in the past, living a mouth-to-mouth existence at Pity Wood Farm.

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Thirteen

Aaron Goodwin was between clients. Nevertheless, he gave Fry the impression that he’d charge her by the hour if she took more than five minutes of his time.

‘Why did we buy the farm?’ he said. ‘I can answer that in one word. Horses.’

Fry didn’t know what Mr Goodwin looked like, but she was enjoying a mental image of him arriving at Pity Wood Farm in its present condition. She pictured him wincing at the mud, the abandoned builders’ equipment, the police tape protecting the grave sites.

‘My wife and my daughters are mad about horses,’ he explained. ‘They’ve plagued me for years to find a house in the country where we could have our own stables and paddocks, a ménage, somewhere to park a couple of horse boxes. As soon as we had enough money, it was just a question of locating the right property.’

‘And Pity Wood was it?’ asked Fry, barely able to keep the incredulity out of her voice.

Goodwin paused, as if checking his watch. ‘It was a bit of a stretch, admittedly, considering all the work that needs doing to the place. The cost of the alterations and renovation is almost as much as the purchase price, to be honest. I really hope it’s going to be worth it.’

‘Well, you’re certainly going to be in the country,’ said Fry. ‘Have you any experience of rural life?’

‘Not at all. We’re strictly city people.’

‘Then I’m afraid some things might come as a bit of a shock, sir.’

As a city girl herself, Fry might have felt a degree of kinship with the solicitor, if it weren’t for the fact that he was moving to the countryside voluntarily. He was bringing it all on himself, and it diluted her sympathy. But perhaps she ought to enlighten him a bit.