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Back The Lucky Eight Save as PDF
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

Walking down to the beach, she pulled the dress over her head and, leaving her bag, shoes and dress on the shingle, she ran over the stones and into the sea. A brief shock of cold before her body adjusted and then she was swimming through the glass-flat water.

She had always loved swimming. As she’d gradually recovered from the crash, swimming had become an important part of her recovery. After moving to Sussex, she discovered that swimming in the sea was far better than any pool. There was something about the colours – the sharpness of the blue sea and sky against the white and grey shingle beach, the way the drops of water caught the light as she swam through it – that made this place feel magical.

Later, she lay on the beach, drying in the sun and wondering what she’d do this evening if Adam still refused to tell the police about Robbie. She couldn’t stay with him if he didn’t do what was right. Maybe this latest revelation was the trigger she needed to move on. The problem was, she didn’t know where or what she was meant to move on to. Her old life in London was finished. She hadn’t worked since the crash. Her friends and colleagues had all moved forward with their lives, while Clodagh had remained stuck in this limbo.

She couldn’t stay in Bramhurst if she split up with Adam. The village was tiny and the prospect of bumping into him each time she went outside wasn’t an option. The coast was where she felt most at home these days. Maybe that was the answer. She could buy a little place in Worthing and raise her baby by the sea. The more she thought about it, the idea of setting up home here, with Ivan close by, started to feel less like an idea and more like a plan.

Ivan lived in a small, terraced cottage on a quiet street close to the beach. When Clodagh rang his doorbell, there was no answer. She pulled out her phone to call him, when she noticed the front door was slightly ajar. Pushing it open wider, she stepped into his hallway and called his name. Nothing. The sitting room door, on her left, was closed. She could see down the hallway into the tiny kitchen at the back of the house. There was no one in there, either.

But she could hear voices coming from upstairs. As she climbed the stairs, the voices became clearer. A man and a woman, something strangely familiar about the woman’s voice.

There were three doors at the top of the stairs. The bathroom door and the door to the spare bedroom were both open. But the door to Ivan’s room, at the end of the corridor, was closed. The voices were coming from there.