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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

‘There’s more. One of them, a woman called Cheryl, said she’d been with Clodagh the night she met her new fella. She didn’t know much about him, but she remembered he was wearing a uniform. A pilot’s uniform.’

Suddenly, the different pieces of information came together. With it, a lurch of real fear. Gary Wakefield had left his wife because he was seeing someone else. Clodagh and Gary had been on holiday in the same resort. And Bella had been at the airport the day of the crash.

‘Turn around,’ Rachel told Ade. ‘Now! Clodagh’s in danger. We need to get to Bramhurst right away.’

Ade hit the brakes and swung the car 180 degrees so it was facing the gates. As she screeched down the driveway, Rachel looked back, just in time to see the confused look on the security guard’s face as the car turned into the road.

Fifty-three

‘You were at the airport,’ Clodagh said. The words came out slowly, because she was finding it difficult to speak. ‘In the Ladies’ toilets.’

She tried to think through the fog in her mind, but it was getting worse.

Bella had stood up and walked around the table so she was standing over her. Clodagh looked up, trying to focus. There was something wrong with Bella’s face.

‘I knew where he’d gone.’ Bella’s words sounded faint and far away. ‘Same place they went every year. A boys’ holiday. Except it wasn’t just the boys, was it? You were there too. Although I didn’t make the connection then. When I spoke to you in the toilets, I didn’t have the slightest clue that you were the bitch who’d ruined my life.’

‘But you were already divorced. What were you doing there?’

‘I never wanted a divorce,’ Bella said. ‘He didn’t give me any choice. I begged him to give our marriage another chance, but he said he couldn’t do that because he didn’t love me any longer. After the divorce, he cut off all contact. It was unbearably cruel. Can you imagine it? You dream of spending your entire life with someone and then they leave you and you’re by yourself.

‘I asked him if there was someone else, but he swore blind it wasn’t that. And I believed him. Which made it worse, because I spent months blaming myself, trying to work out what I could have done differently. And then I bumped into an ex-girlfriend of Nick’s and she told me the truth. She said Gary had fallen head over heels for some woman he’d met in a bar one night.’

She knew. The knowledge hit Clodagh like a punch in the stomach. She pushed her chair back, tried to stand up but her body refused to do what she needed it to.

‘I didn’t know,’ she mumbled. ‘Swear to God.’