Kylie let out a shriek of joy and got to work on him again. Later, she was going to give him some very good news.

Shauna stewed over the New Year’s Eve event for a week. That little bitch! Jumping about on her furniture, announcing her engagement to her son. And grinning at her like that. Mocking her. Well, she wasn’t going to get away with it. Shauna made a long overdue call, and within a day Jeb Cleaver was waiting to meet her in a barely used pub six miles down the road, well out of the way so that none of her usual associates would see them together. Shauna was groomed to perfection, and the sight of this apparently high-class woman alongside a tatty yokel was bound to attract unwanted attention.

‘So,’ said Jeb, getting a gin and tonic for her and a pint of real ale for himself. ‘You got a job for me, yeah?’

‘I might have,’ said Shauna, and told him about Kylie and what a nuisance she was proving to be. ‘I’m going to talk to her, but if she don’t see reason, then you can try.’

Shauna looked at Jeb with thinly disguised disgust as he downed the ale in one and belched loudly. She was bound to him now. Jeb knew damned well that something had happened to Ciaran and Rowan at the hands of the Flynns, and he’d mentioned their disappearance lots of times, and said he was better off without them. Now Bill Cleaver was getting on and he had just the one son under his roof, so Jeb found himself more appreciated than before. Yes, Jeb might still puzzle over where Ciaran and Rowan had gone – but it didn’t bother him one jot.

As for Bill, he was a drunk who had never been a good father to any of them. If he’d ever cared about why his other two sons had gone out one night and never come back, he’d long forgotten why. Jeb was in charge of the pig farm these days. He hired in casuals to pick up any slack, and on the rare occasions Bill got wistful about Ciaran and Rowan, Jeb shrugged it off, said they were probably out in New Zealand, herding sheep or fucking them, one of the two.

‘What do I get out of this?’ asked Jeb.

‘I’ll pay.’

‘Pay me in kind,’ said Jeb with a bullish leer. ‘Come out to the pickup and we’ll discuss it.’

‘No. I’ll pay cash. I’m just telling you now to make sure you’re in, if the need arises.’

‘Honey, things are always rising around you.’

Shauna thought this was so ironic. So fucking sad. Josh who she loved didn’t want her. But this fucking low-life oik still did. ‘I haven’t got time today,’ she told him.

‘Suit yourself,’ he said, and smiled.

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