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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

‘Do you know the worst of it?’ Bella’s voice rose as she spoke. ‘He was talking about Clodagh, saying everyone thought she was this goody two shoes but it was all an act and no one knew what she was really like. I thought Clodagh was my friend, so I stuck up for her. I told Nick he shouldn’t say those things about her. That’s when he told me. He thought it was funny. Kept laughing at how clever Gary had been, hiding the affair from me even during the divorce.’

‘How did that make you feel?’ Ade asked.

‘Horrible.’ Bella scowled. ‘You have no idea how stressful it is when you’re trying to conceive. We tried so hard, but nothing worked. By the end of it, we were flat broke and emotionally wrung out. That’s the real reason Gary left me. I don’t care what anyone thinks, he’d never have looked at that bitch if I’d been able to give him what he wanted.’

‘I assume Nick knew all of this?’ Ade said.

‘That made it worse,’ Bella said. ‘He was Gary’s best friend and he knew what we’d been through and yet there he was, laughing at me as if it was all one big joke.’

‘Gosh.’ Ade shook her head. ‘No wonder you lost your temper.’

‘I didn’t mean to kill him. You can think what you like, but it was an accident. If he’d been just a little kinder, a little less of a bastard, I wouldn’t have got so angry.’

From there, it was easy to get Bella to tell them exactly what had happened. As she told them how she’d hit Nick multiple times on the back of his head before rolling his body over onto his back, Rachel was struck once again by Bella’s utter lack of remorse.

‘Why do you think Nick never said anything about Clodagh and Gary before that night?’ she asked, when Bella had finished speaking.

‘Gary was his best friend,’ Bella said. ‘After the crash, Nick did all he could to try to defend Gary’s reputation. Right up to the outcome of the investigation, he kept insisting the crash wasn’t Gary’s fault.’

She paused, as if something had just occurred to her.

‘The thing about Nick,’ she said, ‘he wasn’t that bad before the crash. He was best man at our wedding. We were friends, the three of us. But the crash changed him. His career did brilliantly, but his personal life was a mess. He lost his three friends and I don’t think he ever got over it.’