The Lost Child (Detective Lottie Parker #3)(22)

‘Don’t mind him.’ Annabelle rushed into motion, sweeping her hair on top of her head and wrapping it up tightly with a bobbin. ‘Work pressure.’

As her friend cleared away the mugs, Lottie said, ‘Is everything okay?’

‘Why wouldn’t it be?’ Annabelle dried her hands, checked a pot boiling on the stove then shepherded Lottie back to her boots at the front door.

‘Does Cian know about Tom?’

‘Shh!’ Annabelle put a finger to her lips, opened the door and shoved Lottie out on to the step. ‘Yes, he knows, but there’s no need to remind him. I’ll see you in town. Soon. For a coffee?’

‘Yeah, sure,’ Lottie said, standing in her saturated socks, boots in hand.

The door closed before she could ask the question she had come to ask.



* * *



‘What did she want?’

‘Cian, you know right well her name is Lottie.’

‘Always sounded like a dog’s name to me. Where’s dinner?’

‘Ready in ten.’

Annabelle backed up to the counter. She hated it when Cian was in this kind of humour, and it seemed to be happening more often. Since he’d discovered about her affair with the property developer Tom Rickard, he had made her life a living hell. It hadn’t even been her first affair – just the first he’d found out about. If it wasn’t for the twins, she’d have left long ago.

She turned her back to him and checked the saucepan, stirring the vegetables around and around and gazing vacantly at the swirling water. She knew that her indiscretion with Rickard had elevated Cian’s wrath to a new level, and for the sake of her sanity she had made a conscious decision to make her marriage work. But all her efforts seemed to be failing. Badly.

She put the lid back on the saucepan, turned down the heat. Behind her she could hear Cian clattering the sweeping brush around the kitchen floor. Before she knew what was happening, her legs were whacked from under her, and she was sprawled on the black and white tiles, her husband standing over her. She shielded her face as he rained blows down on her legs with the handle of the brush.

‘Stop, please stop!’ she pleaded.

‘You’re a slut,’ he snarled. ‘Spreading your legs for scum, and then you try to deny me in bed.’ He reached down and pulled her hair free of the topknot. Wrapping the long blonde strands around his fingers, he pulled her up to her feet. ‘And then you bring your detective friend around here, snooping. For what?’

‘You’re insane,’ she spat.

‘I’m perfectly sane. I just want what is mine. Mine!’

When he let go of her hair, she slumped against the cupboard, her legs like jelly. There was only so much a person could take. She would have to leave him.

‘Where’s your Lottie friend now? Woof, woof.’

‘Cian, we need to talk.’ She held up her hands, appealing to him. Annabelle had never begged for anything in her life. But maybe now she was begging for her life. She shrugged off the tremor scuttling up her spine. Ignored the pain in her legs. Her husband might be all macho with the handle of a sweeping brush in his hand, but when she slammed the divorce papers in front of him, then she’d see what he was really made of.

‘Talk? Now you want to talk?’ His laugh was stoked with derision. He grabbed her chin and held her throat. She felt his other hand pulling at the zipper on her jeans.

‘What the fuck? Get off me, Cian!’

‘Shut your mouth.’ With a kick, he spread her legs and thrust his body up against hers.

‘I hate you,’ she hissed. She struggled against him, but she was no match for him. Crushing her body against the granite, he pulled at her jeans. When he couldn’t get them down, he stood back and hit her in the stomach with the brush handle. Doubling over in pain, she felt the wood smash into her back. She bit her tongue, and blood seeped out of the side of her mouth. She wouldn’t cry. He could beat her and mock her, but by God, she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing her cry.

The pot on the stove whistled. She twisted round on the floor to see Cian standing over her, the pot in his hand, steam rising in a cloud from the boiling water. Rolling her body into a ball, she held out her hands, pleading.

‘No! Cian… no!’





Eighteen





‘Something’s not right with the O’Sheas,’ Lottie said.

‘What makes you say that?’ Boyd drummed his fingers on the steering wheel.

‘Cian was acting a bit… off. He was always funny, but this was different.’

‘Funny ha ha?’

‘More like creepy. Are you going to start the car or start up a band?’

‘I’m thinking about it,’ Boyd said.

‘Why would he want the door left open?’

‘Who?’

‘Annabelle’s husband.’

‘What door?’

‘We were talking in the kitchen,’ Lottie explained. ‘Annabelle closed the door when I asked her about Tom Rickard. Then Cian comes charging down the stairs giving out about the door being shut.’

‘Maybe he likes listening to his wife chattering nonsense with her friends?’

‘Whatever it is, I think something isn’t right in that house.’