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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

‘I still have nightmares. We all do. I dream I’m back there on the plane with all the chaos and the noise, the smoke and the fear. Everyone screaming in the dark. Because it was pitch black. We couldn’t see anything. The lights had gone out, and the cabin was full of this thick smoke. I thought that’s what would kill me, the smoke. Because I couldn’t breathe.

‘The counselling has helped, but there are days when I can’t even get out of bed. I wake up and there’s this blackness that blocks out everything. All I want to do then is die. But that’s the one thing we can’t do. No matter how bad it gets. Because we’re meant to think of ourselves as lucky.’

She stopped speaking and looked down at her lap, as if embarrassed for revealing so much. For the first time, Rachel felt a pang of real sympathy for her. But Rachel was here to do a job, which meant asking questions, regardless of whether they upset Tara even further.

‘You mentioned the twelfth of August,’ she said. ‘Jessie’s birthday, right? Had you planned anything special for that day?’

‘We were going to go away,’ Tara said. ‘Nick had booked us into Chewton Glen for a week. It’s a spa hotel in Hampshire. Really gorgeous.’ She gave Rachel a small smile. ‘I don’t fly any more. Nick does – sorry, he did – but I’ll never get on a plane ever again.’

‘A week in a spa hotel sounds glorious,’ Rachel said.

‘It’s not going to happen now though, is it? Nick’s dead.’

‘Chewton Glen,’ Rachel said. ‘Is that the name of the hotel?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘Tara, I’m afraid you were right about the reason we came here today,’ Ade said. ‘I can’t confirm any details of how Nick died, but I can tell you that we are treating his death as suspicious. As part of our investigation, Rachel and I will be looking into every aspect of Nick’s life. That includes his plans over the coming months.’

‘I knew it,’ Tara whispered. ‘I knew from the moment I heard he was dead that it wasn’t an accident. Is that why you’re here now? Because you think it was me? I wouldn’t ever have hurt him, I swear to you. Nick was the only good thing in my life. He was the one who kept me going, even when things got really bad. I loved him and I don’t know how I’m going to get through this. I feel as if I’ve lost the only person left in the world I ever cared about. I know what people said about him. They thought he was a bastard, but he could be so kind as well. And he took care of me. He really did. Who’s going to do that now?’