The Babysitter(66)

Seeing Dylan standing at the far side of the pig field, Jade called to him as she climbed out of the car. When he didn’t respond, she called out again, and then cursed and heaved the gate open to head towards him.

‘Dylan!’ Jade was seriously irritated now. Squelching through mud and pig shit in her trainers was most definitely not on her list of favourite things to do.

Finally, he turned towards her as she skirted around the pig house, careful to give Inky and bloody Oinky a wide berth. ‘It’s my fault,’ he said pitifully, his face the colour of damp putty and slick with sweat.

‘Dylan…’ Jade tempered her tone and tried to hide her annoyance. Could he not hear himself? He sounded like a two-year-old, for God’s sake. ‘Whatever’s happened, it is not—’

Jade stopped, gulping back a violent bout of nausea as she followed his gaze down to the ground. Bloody hell. They’d eaten half her face.

‘Oh my God!’ Dylan!’ Jade looked away from the woman, genuinely horrified. She was going to step carefully amongst those carnivorous little fuckers in future. ‘What the hell have you done?’

‘Nothing!’ Dylan widened his eyes in obvious terror. ‘She was upset,’ he blurted defensively. ‘We had a row, yesterday morning. She wanted me to phone Uncle Bob and ask him for a job, but I didn’t want to work on a building site. I told her I wanted to stay here, on the farm. Uncle Bob doesn’t like me and Eric is always taking the mickey. I don’t want to work in Birmingham. I told her and she got all upset. She wasn’t talking to me and I—’

‘Dylan, stop.’ Jade moved closer, clutching his shoulders with both hands. He was blinking rapidly, close to hyperventilating or wetting himself. ‘Slow down. Who’s Eric?’

‘Me cousin. He’s always winding me up.’ Dylan dragged an arm under his nose and glanced embarrassedly down.

Gosh, I wonder why. Supressing a sigh, Jade arranged her face into suitably annoyed. ‘He’s obviously an idiot,’ she supplied what he needed to hear, whilst bracing herself to bend down and examine the woman at closer quarters.

‘She’s gone, Dylan.’ Hoisting herself quickly to her feet, she looked at him, oozing sympathy.

‘Dead?’ Dylan squeaked.

Yes, idiot, dead. Jade nodded solemnly. She looked dead enough, but, having found the faintest of pulses at the base of her neck, Jade suspected she wasn’t yet, quite. So, what did she do with her now? Finishing the job would be the kind thing to do, but she could hardly do that with Dylan looking on. The pigs would probably chomp their way through the rest of her eventually. But that would take time and they could hardly leave her here meanwhile.

‘It’s my fault.’ Dylan gulped hard.

Jade gritted her teeth. If he said that one more time, in that wimpish tone, he’d be joining his mum as the bloody pigs’ lunch. ‘Dylan, it’s not,’ she stated firmly. ‘But… it is possible they might blame you.’

Holding his gaze, Jade tried not to notice his Adam’s apple bobbing grotesquely in his throat. ‘She probably passed out or had a heart attack or something. Did she mention she’d been having pains in her chest?’

Dylan’s face drained of what little colour he had. ‘After Dad died,’ he said, his voice now a croaked whisper. ‘She said her heart was hurting.’

‘Well, there you go then. It wasn’t your fault. It might even have been brought on by Mark Cain sniffing around again.’

‘Cain?’ asked Dylan, his thickset brow furrowing. And then a spark of fury glinted in his eyes. Good, Jade thought. That’s what she needed – Dylan angry, not cowering and bawling like a baby. Ready to do whatever it took. She had a plan, and it involved Mark being ‘seen’ to be driving around certain areas. If Dylan pulled it off, she’d succeed in tarnishing Mark’s ‘white knight’ image in Melissa’s eyes. She had to get that bloody woman off the scene before it was poor Mark who ended up on medication.

‘With all the stress she’s been through, worrying about why he’s snooping around could easily have caused her to have a heart attack. Bastard. He might even come back,’ she said, forcing the point home.

‘Oh shit.’ Dylan looked fearfully past her, as if expecting Mark to arrive any moment, blue lights flashing.

‘We have to move her.’ Jade nodded determinedly.

‘But…’ Dylan looked uncertain. ‘Shouldn’t we call an ambulance or something?’

‘She’s dead, Dylan,’ Jade reiterated. Or she soon would be, judging by how much blood she’d lost. ‘And we don’t have much time. He might come back,’ she reminded him. ‘We can’t just leave her here for him to find, can we? Even if he doesn’t blame you, he’s bound to set you up, especially if he has an inkling about us, and he must have. Why else does he keep coming here?’

Glancing back at his mum, Dylan thought about it. He was going to go for it. Jade could almost hear the cogs creaking. ‘And we have to move Daisy, too. Today. We’ll take her in the car and put your poor mum in the barn where she’ll be nice and safe until we can bury her properly. How does that sound?’

Dylan still didn’t look a hundred per cent certain, but he seemed placated by the bury her properly bit.