BooksBarbecue
Back The Lucky Eight
Chapters (64)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. Prologue
  4. Five Years Later
  5. One
  6. Two
  7. Three
  8. Four
  9. Five
  10. Six
  11. Seven
  12. Eight
  13. Nine
  14. Ten
  15. Eleven
  16. Twelve
  17. Thirteen
  18. Fourteen
  19. Fifteen
  20. Sixteen
  21. Seventeen
  22. Eighteen
  23. Nineteen
  24. Twenty
  25. Twenty-one
  26. Twenty-two
  27. Twenty-three
  28. Twenty-four
  29. Twenty-five
  30. Twenty-six
  31. Twenty-seven
  32. Twenty-eight
  33. Twenty-nine
  34. Thirty
  35. Thirty-one
  36. Thirty-two
  37. Thirty-three
  38. Thirty-four
  39. Thirty-five
  40. Thirty-six
  41. Thirty-seven
  42. Thirty-eight
  43. Thirty-nine
  44. Forty
  45. Forty-one
  46. Forty-two
  47. Forty-three
  48. Forty-four
  49. Forty-five
  50. Forty-six
  51. Forty-seven
  52. Forty-eight
  53. Forty-nine
  54. Fifty
  55. Fifty-one
  56. Fifty-two
  57. Fifty-three
  58. Fifty-four
  59. Fifty-five
  60. Epilogue
  61. Acknowledgements
  62. Canelo Crime
  63. About the Author
  64. Also by Sheila Bugler

She had forgotten to leave towels out. As she crossed the room to get some from the wardrobe where she kept the guest towels, one of the floorboards wobbled beneath her foot. Strange, she thought, pressing her foot down on the loose floorboard. She knew Vivienne had spent a lot of money restoring the floorboards throughout the house; stripping them back, varnishing them and ensuring they were properly sealed to keep the rooms warm in winter. She rocked her foot back and forth, feeling the floorboard wobble, as if it was about to spring out.

When they were growing up in Dublin, Clodagh and Vivienne had lived in a Georgian townhouse in the city centre. There had been an attic room, at the top of the house, which their parents had turned into a playroom. The room didn’t have a carpet. Their mother had scattered some old rugs on the exposed floorboards, instead. Some of the floorboards had been loose, just like this one, and the sisters had used the space beneath as their secret hiding place.

She’d spent so many happy times in that room, with Vivienne and their friends. As the girls grew older, the room changed from a playroom to a place they could hide away from their parents. It was where they had their sleepovers, hiding illicit bottles of cider and packets of cigarettes beneath the floorboards.

The need to find a reconnection with those happy days was powerful. Before she knew what she was doing, Clodagh crouched down and started feeling along the edge of the floorboard. There it was. A narrow space between this floorboard and the one beside it. Manoeuvring her finger into the gap, she was able to lift the piece of wood and feel around in the space beneath it. She hadn’t expected to find anything, so she could barely believe it when her fingers brushed a small object lying on the plaster surface below. She pulled it out and looked at it, her brain gradually registering that the object in her hand was a USB memory stick.

The layers of dirt on the stick indicated it had been lying, undisturbed, for a long time. It could easily have been there for five years, or longer. She knew it might not have belonged to Vivienne, but she needed to check.

Standing up, she replaced the loose floorboard and left the room, closing the door quietly behind her. Back in her own bedroom, she inserted the stick into the USB port on her laptop. She opened Windows Explorer, expecting to see the USB listed, but it wasn’t there. Frowning, she took it out and reinserted it. Again, nothing happened. Then, down in the bottom right-hand corner of her screen, she noticed a message:

USB device not recognised.