Chapters (64)
- Cover
- Dedication
- Prologue
- Five Years Later
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- Thirty-eight
- Thirty-nine
- Forty
- Forty-one
- Forty-two
- Forty-three
- Forty-four
- Forty-five
- Forty-six
- Forty-seven
- Forty-eight
- Forty-nine
- Fifty
- Fifty-one
- Fifty-two
- Fifty-three
- Fifty-four
- Fifty-five
- Epilogue
- Acknowledgements
- Canelo Crime
- About the Author
- Also by Sheila Bugler
‘So what’s going on with you?’ Clodagh said. ‘First you disappear without telling me where you’ve gone, and then I have to find out from the police that you and Robbie are much closer than I ever realised.’
‘I left because I’m very good at running away when things get difficult.’ Ivan smiled. ‘It’s my superpower. But I came back because you are my friend and I don’t want to lose you.’
‘And Robbie?’
‘Robbie is nothing. We had a fling on holiday. It didn’t work out and he got upset. That’s it.’
Clodagh knew there was more, but she wasn’t going to push him if he didn’t want to talk about it.
‘You know, if it wasn’t for you,’ Ivan said. ‘I don’t think I’d have got through that first year.’
‘Really?’
‘You remember that first meeting we had?’
Three months after the crash, Adam had arranged a series of meetings just for the survivors. The first time they’d all been together since that terrible day.
‘I almost didn’t go,’ Ivan said. ‘In that first year, especially, I was struggling so badly with my mental health and my anxiety. There were many times I thought about ending my life, because it seemed so much better than forcing myself to keep going day after day after day.’
This was so unlike the version of Ivan that Clodagh had in her head, she didn’t know what to say.
‘There was a couple sitting directly in front of me on the plane,’ Ivan said. ‘I remember they were so excited about coming to London. Izabella and Georgy. I overheard her speaking and realised she was Croatian so I introduced myself. She told me Georgy was her fiancé and they were going to London for his cousin’s wedding.
‘Afterwards, I couldn’t stop thinking about them. I read everything I could about them, trying to understand how they died while I had somehow survived. Izabella was twenty-three years old. She came from Rijeka, a city I know very well. She was her parents’ only child. Georgy was a philosophy student from Chania. He had three sisters and a brother. He met Izabella when she came to Crete for a holiday with her friends the previous summer. They fell in love and she had moved to Crete so they could be together.’
Clodagh knew the couple he was talking about. Izabella Bošnjak and Georgy Doukas. The names of those who had died were burned onto her brain, impossible to forget. Those poor souls whose screams still invaded her dreams, night after night, year after miserable year.