‘Well look what the cat dragged in.’ Annabelle O’Shea grabbed Lottie in a hug. ‘Missed you.’

‘Hi, Annabelle.’

‘Give me that wet thing. You’ll get your death.’ She took Lottie’s jacket. ‘Leave your… em… boots by the door.’

Glancing down at her soggy Uggs, Lottie wondered if her socks were presentable enough to walk on Annabelle’s pristine tiles. She pulled off the boots and noticed that water had seeped into her odd socks. What the hell, she thought, and moved down the hall after her friend, leaving damp footprints in her wake.

Annabelle said, ‘Would you like a drink? Oh, sorry, I forgot, you don’t drink. Cup of tea?’ She picked up a kettle and busied herself pouring in water.

‘That’d be grand,’ Lottie said, without correcting her friend. She’d seen little of Annabelle since they fell out in January, and since then she’d led an investigation into a horrific series of murders. On the night of the memorial service for the victims, she’d downed a bottle of wine. That was the start of it. Now she tried to control it; keep it secret. Not easy living in a house with three teenagers and a baby.

Sitting at the black-granite-topped breakfast bar, Lottie admired how it blended in with the decor. Everything matched. Figured. Dr Annabelle O’Shea was the epitome of designer chic.

The stainless-steel kettle began to hiss on the stove. Annabelle moved in her ridiculously high-heeled boots across the black-and-white-tiled floor and placed black mugs on the table.

‘Where is everyone?’ Lottie asked.

‘The twins have after-school study groups. Cian is upstairs working. Developing some new game or… I don’t know what he does up there.’

Cian was Annabelle’s husband, and Lottie didn’t really care much for him. She wasn’t sure if that was because of the picture Annabelle painted of him or because she just didn’t like him. She sensed Cian O’Shea was too good to be true. A man whose smile never succeeded in reaching his eyes.

‘How did the twins get on with their exams?’ she asked, immediately regretting it. Now she’d have to tell Annabelle about Chloe’s.

‘All A’s, the both of them. Isn’t that amazing?’

‘Yes,’ Lottie said. ‘They’re very bright.’

‘How did Chloe do?’

‘Not too bad. Considering all that happened.’

‘What did happen?’

Did Annabelle live under a stone? Lottie thought everyone knew what had gone on last May in Ragmullin. Maybe she was being diplomatic.

‘It doesn’t matter. It’s all over now.’ Lottie rolled up the sleeves of her long-sleeved navy T-shirt. The kitchen was stifling.

Annabelle poured the tea and sat, expectantly.

It was a long time since they’d last spoken properly. But Lottie had lifted the phone earlier and called Annabelle. Swallowed her pride and everything else. She needed something more important than her damn pride.

‘Oh, how stupid of me,’ Annabelle gushed. ‘You’re a granny! Congratulations. Boy or girl?’

You know right well, Lottie thought. ‘A boy. Louis. He’s three weeks old. I worry about Katie, though. She’s not coping very well but she won’t let me help her.’

‘If she has post-natal depression, she needs to see her doctor. Or tell her to call in to me.’

‘I’m not sure she will, but I’ll try talking to her about it.’

Lottie knew Katie imagined that because she had turned twenty in August and was no longer a teenager, she now possessed special powers. But she didn’t want to get sidetracked about this with Annabelle. She would talk to Katie tonight.

‘You’re very quiet,’ Annabelle said. ‘What can I help you with?’

‘I’m not sure,’ Lottie began. ‘It’s so hot in here.’

‘Is it? I didn’t notice.’ Annabelle, her blonde hair hanging loose over her shoulders, wore a black polo-neck jumper and skin-tight blue jeans. Her knee-high leather boots finished the look. Lottie didn’t know whether to be jealous or suitably happy in her trusted old clothes.

‘How’s work?’ she asked.

‘Not as busy as it used to be. Not since the media publicised the fact that a brothel was being run from the building beside the surgery. Doesn’t matter that it disappeared in a flash.’

Lottie caught the knowing look from her friend. But she wasn’t about to admit anything. ‘Do you have milk?’ she asked.

Annabelle jumped up, fetched a jug from the refrigerator and sat down again. ‘How’s your mother?’ she asked.

Lottie paused, jug in hand, and stared at Annabelle. After a moment she said, ‘She’s fine. Why? Do you know something?’

‘I may be her doctor, but I’m just being polite.’

‘She’s fine.’ Lottie sipped her tea. Silence wrapped around them, broken only by the soft hum of music emanating from somewhere in the depths of the house. ‘Do you ever see Tom Rickard?’ she said, her voice a whisper.

‘No… Why would you ask that?’ Annabelle had also dropped her voice and looked around furtively before getting up to close the door leading to the hallway. ‘Jesus, what’s got into you, Lottie? I haven’t seen you for months, and then you come into my home asking about my former lover. Things are bad enough. Give me a break.’ Her words swished through clenched teeth.

‘Ease up. I was only wondering. You know his son was Katie’s boyfriend, and therefore Tom is the baby’s grandad.’

‘I may be blonde, but I’m not stupid.’

‘I think he needs to know about Louis,’ Lottie said.

‘Last I heard, Tom had moved abroad, and I’ve no idea where Melanie is.’

‘That figures. I drove by their house once or twice and saw the For Sale sign. But I didn’t think they’d left the country.’

‘Surely you could have snooped around a few databases and found out where they’d gone?’

‘Thought I’d ask you first.’

Annabelle threw back her head and laughed. ‘You’re so weird, Lottie. God, I’ve missed you. More tea?’

‘No thanks.’ Lottie clutched the mug with both hands. ‘There was something else I wanted to ask.’

‘Fire ahead.’

Before she could say another word, the door burst open.

‘Somebody’s left footprints on the hall floor, and I thought I told you not to close… Oh, I didn’t know you had a visitor.’

‘Sorry,’ Annabelle said, picking up a tea towel. ‘Lottie must have closed it when she came in.’ She wiped the perfectly clean counter.

Lottie stood up. ‘Hi, Cian. I’m just leaving.’

Cian O’Shea, at six foot three, had to duck his head under the ornate lighting arrangement hanging from the ceiling. He held out his hand and shook Lottie’s in a crisp, hard shake, then brushed her cheek with his lips.

‘Long time no see,’ he said. ‘What brings you here?’

‘Just popped in for a chat.’ She thought his eyes looked a lot darker than she remembered, with circles of blue-grey around them.

‘Well, it’s nice to see you,’ he said.

Lottie doubted the sincerity of his words. It was the way he looked at her when he said them. She glanced at Annabelle, frozen, cloth in hand, watching Cian watching her. Bizarre.

‘Don’t let me disturb your chinwag.’ He turned on his brown leather loafers and took himself out of the kitchen and back up the stairs, leaving the door wide open.

‘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!’