CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Annie was desperate to know what her Uncle Bill had been doing in Daniel Curtis’s Range Rover. Her mind raced through various dark scenarios as she walked in the direction they had been heading when she saw them.

It was a small village, so it didn’t take her long to spot the Range Rover again, pulling away from the kerb in front of The King’s Head. Daniel was now alone at the wheel so Annie assumed he had dropped Bill off.

She quickly stepped behind a tree so that he wouldn’t see her as he drove past.

When he was gone, she hurried across the road towards the pub. It was then she remembered that her uncle had said he saw Daniel loitering outside the school on Friday evening. She could even recall his exact words: I’d recognise that pervy bastard anywhere. Did you know he was back, Annie?

Bill had sided with her parents when her relationship with the much older Daniel was exposed. And on the one and only occasion when Daniel came to the house to speak to her father, Bill called him a paedo and told him to fuck off. Her uncle had hated the man with a vengeance back then. So why the hell was he riding around in Daniel’s Range Rover only days after returning to Kirkby Abbey?

Annie was determined to get an answer to that and other questions as she strode into the pub. There were only a handful of people in the bar so she spotted Bill easily enough. He was sitting alone at one of the tables with a pint in front of him. As she approached, he stood and smiled.

‘Order a drink at the bar,’ he said. ‘Tell them I’ll pay for it when I get another round in.’

Annie was thrown by the fact that he seemed so pleased to see her. It caused her to pause for a second before deciding to take him up on his offer.

Martha’s husband Luke was behind the bar and she got him to pour her a large glass of Pinot. She carried it over to Bill’s table and sat down facing him after taking her coat off.

‘Cheers, Annie,’ he said, holding up his glass. ‘This is a nice surprise.’

‘I came here looking for you earlier,’ Annie said. ‘But you’d already gone out.’

‘Well, I’m sorry about that. I went to the garage. They’d let me know that they’d recovered my car and I wanted to see how much damage there was and how much it was likely to cost to repair.’

Annie took a sip of wine and wondered whether he was telling the truth.

‘But you’ll never guess who I met when I left there,’ Bill said. ‘In fact, he gave me a lift back here and only dropped me off a few minutes ago.’

Annie put her glass down on the table and lifted her brow.

‘So who was it?’

‘Your old flame. That filthy scumbag, Daniel Curtis. I couldn’t believe it when he pulled up in his fancy fucking car and asked me if I wanted a lift. He didn’t realise it was me at first, because my face was half-covered with the hat and scarf, so I had to tell him who I was, and then I said I’d rather walk. But he insisted and so I swallowed my pride because I was bleeding lost.’