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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

‘It was the final straw,’ Bella continued, as if Clodagh hadn’t spoken. ‘I had to do something. I couldn’t wait until he was back in the UK. I flew to Crete the night before he was due back. I found out when the Air Euro flight was due to leave and I waited for him at the airport. I knew it would be my best chance of finding him. It was crazy, I can see that now. But that’s what he’d turned me into. A bitter, crazy woman who couldn’t control what she was doing.’

Bella leaned down, her face so close her features blurred together. Clodagh smelled garlic and spices and felt warm, damp breath on her cheek. She tried to swing her head to one side but Bella was holding her face, making it impossible to move.

‘He wanted children,’ Bella said. ‘Was desperate to be a father. That’s the real reason he stopped loving me. Not because of some stupid slapper he had a fling with. We’d tried to get pregnant but nothing happened and, over time, it wore us down. That day at the airport, I found him and told him I’d discovered I was pregnant soon after he left me. I let him believe that maybe I still was. Then I looked him in the eye and told him I’d had an abortion.’

The only way to deal with a liar is to play them at their own game.

‘I wanted him to see that actions have consequences. I thought he’d be devastated. But you know what he said? He said it was probably just as well, because he didn’t think I’d cope very well as a single parent. That’s when I did it, Clodagh. I asked him to go to the bar and get me a glass of water. And while he was gone, I emptied my vodka into his glass of juice. When he came back from the bar, he was so keen to get away from me that he drank the juice in one go and left. It was the last time I ever saw him.’

‘But his blood alcohol…’

The investigation into the crash had concluded Gary had been drunk. Clodagh knew you didn’t get drunk from a single shot of vodka.

‘He must have gone to another bar and carried on drinking,’ Bella said. ‘He’d never been able to stop at one drink. It’s why he rarely drank.’

It was Clodagh’s fault, then. Bella would never have been driven to do something like that if Gary hadn’t cheated on her. And the person he’d cheated with was Clodagh. She had stayed with him, even after she knew he had a wife. The fact that she’d left him eventually didn’t change anything.

‘I’m sorry.’ It was all she could say and she knew it would never be enough.