The house was quiet. Mark had taken the girls and moved in for a while with his sister. He’d be back though. She felt sure of that. And as for Tom, maybe she’d been a little too strict with him. A bit harsh about his girlfriend. He’d be back too. Just as soon as he’d got her out of his system and he realised that life on the road with a band on tour wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Her son liked his creature comforts. He liked his own bed and home-cooked food. He liked his laundry basket emptied and his clean and ironed clothes put away in drawers.
She could still check on the girls from her car outside their school playground. Just for now, Mark wouldn’t let her anywhere near them. He had no legal basis for this behavior but she didn’t want to antagonise him. She’d play by his rules for now. She would take things one day at a time and she would win back his affection.
The police had asked her all sorts of invasive questions. It was quite ridiculous. She was not a monster. Just someone looking out for her family. And all that nonsense about sergeants Trish Daly and Samantha Greene? That was twaddle. They wouldn’t be able to link her to them. She’d thought them clever women. Too clever for Richard. They’d certainly have run rings around him if she’d allowed those relationships to flourish. But in the end she’d been surprised at how easy it had been.
She’d lured them into the countryside with a simple anonymous phone call. They hadn’t been that clever after all. They’d both been greedy for promotion. Selfish. Wanting all the glory for themselves. Both had willingly come on their own, each enticed with the prospect of solving the riddle of Sarah Nugent.
Charlotte was clever. She also had a good memory – something that had proven useful. It was years later when she’d gone in search of the secret cave that dumb-ass Bundy from the north of Ireland had told her about that night in the pub in Clare. It had been difficult to find but it was as she wanted. It would be no use if it could be easily stumbled on. She had never breathed a word of the place to anyone except perhaps to Richard. The cave had proven ideal – it had been so much harder to dispose of the remains than she’d anticipated.
As she sat in her armchair, Charlotte had to admit there were some small perks to living on your own. She could smoke freely inside her own house. It could be lonely though. Three times this past month she’d invited Brenda from next door in to join her in a glass of wine but for some reason Brenda always seemed to be busy.
As Charlotte sat smoking, she looked out at the kids playing on the green at the front of her house. They were whooping and shouting. A bunch of boys about seven years old were playing football, using jumpers for goalposts. At the far-end of the green, were girls with skipping ropes. Life had been so much simpler when the kids had been that age.
As she watched a car pulled up outside the house. A squad car. Its lights were flashing. There was no siren. Her heart skipped a beat.
Oh, good. At last!
Richard had finally thawed out.
She knew he would. Things were all going to be okay. She hurriedly quenched the cigarette, stood up, and put a smile on her face. As she looked out the window once more, something caught her eye. She looked closer.
There were two squad cars outside now. Two? And that didn’t look like Richard walking towards her house. He was dangling something from his hand… was that… …was that handcuffs? No. She must be wrong.
The boys who moments earlier had been playing football had been drawn towards the house like a herd of curious cattle. They stood on the edge of the green, watching.
The doorbell sounded.
Still smiling, she opened the door. She was right. It wasn’t Richard.
There were four policemen standing at her door and none of them was Richard.
The End