The party was pounding along at a thunderous pace even though it was still early in the evening. Bodies curled into each other and a weedy aroma hung in the air. Katie Parker ran her tongue along the narrow script tattoo on Jason’s neck. She’d missed all the New Year’s Eve parties but this one was making up for it.

I’m in love, she thought, as he pulled her head back and placed a spliff between her lips. She inhaled. He then brought it to his own mouth, dragging in on the end of the taper. She felt like they were floating in each other’s arms, oblivious to the band, making their own music.

‘Will you come to my house later?’ Jason asked.

Katie stared through the smoky haze.

‘I’ve to go home. My mother was attacked last night. She’ll be worried about me.’

‘Please?’

‘Whatever,’ Katie laughed. The way she felt now, her mother could go to hell.

Sitting down, at last, with a cup of tea, Lottie closed her eyes so she couldn’t see the dirty dinner dishes piled up on the counter. Immediately her phone rang.

‘Lottie?’

‘I’m at home, Boyd. What do you want?’

‘Guess what?’

‘I’m tired.’

‘I found out who Susan Sullivan’s doctor was.’

‘How? Who?’

‘I called into the pharmacy named on the prescription.’

‘About time.’

‘You’ll never guess.’

‘Tell me.’

‘Go on, guess.’

‘I’m hanging up now, Boyd.’

‘Grumpy boots.’

‘Hanging up . . .’

‘Doctor Annabelle O’Shea.’

Lottie put her cup on the floor. Her friend. Annabelle.

‘You still there Lottie? Do you want to talk—’

‘. . . to her? What do you think?’

‘I’ll leave it with you. Goodnight.’

‘Boyd?’

‘Yes?’

‘Thanks.’

Finishing the call, Lottie glanced at the clock. Eight forty-five p.m. Not too late.

Doctor Annabelle O’Shea sat in a corner of the Brook Hotel bar, sipping red wine.

Her image looked effortless, making Lottie feel ancient. Unable to halt a twinge of jealousy colouring her cheeks, she pulled off her jacket, hoping her T-shirt was clean. She groaned. It was the one she’d washed with a pair of Sean’s black jeans.

‘What happened to you?’ Annabelle asked, wide-eyed, inclining her head toward Lottie’s face.

‘My own stupidity. Some punk jumped me.’ Lottie folded her jacket on the seat beside her. ‘Thanks for meeting me.’

‘Sorry I missed your call last night.’ Annabelle spoke in a voice mirroring her look. Sharp and succinct. ‘What’re you having to drink?’

‘Sparkling water. You’re looking gorgeous as always.’

Annabelle signalled to the barman.

Her navy trouser suit sat snugly over a white silk shirt and an eye-catching silver pendant hung round her neck. With her legs crossed at the ankles, shod in a ridiculous pair of Jimmy Choo boots, Annabelle could be a model. Blonde hair, knotted high on top of her head, looked natural, though Lottie knew it was not.

‘Wise arse,’ Annabelle said. ‘You look terrible.’

‘Thanks. You know why I wanted to meet you?’ Her water arrived and she sipped it.

‘Feeling guilty for all the times you’ve stood me up over the last few months?’ Annabelle joked.

‘It’s hard to fit everyone in.’

‘How are the children?’

‘They’re fine. And the twins?’ Lottie hated small talk.

‘They spent the Christmas revising for their Junior Certificate.’

Lottie sighed. How did everyone else get the conscientious brainy children while hers lounged around listening to music or twiddling their thumbs on a PlayStation?

‘I suppose Super-Dad is as efficient as always.’ Lottie knew Cian O’Shea was the husband any woman would die for. Though she suspected Annabelle didn’t share that sentiment.

‘Same old Cian. God’s gift,’ Annabelle said with more than a hint of sarcasm.

‘Lighten up. Without him working from home and running the house for you, you’d be lost.’

‘That’s the problem. He’s always there. I never get a minute’s peace. Can’t even take a day off to stay at home or he’s fluffing the pillows and shunting the hoover about the place. When he’s not cleaning, he’s working on his computer designing God knows what type of games, sound-reducing headphones clamped on and singing at the top of his voice.’

Lottie smiled wryly. She would dearly love to hear Adam’s voice again, even for a minute.

‘Enough about me and my lot. How are you doing?’ Annabelle asked, pointedly.

‘I could do with a prescription for more chill pills.’

‘Lottie, it’s time to start facing up to reality.’

A rush of blood surged up Lottie’s face. She didn’t want a lecture.

‘I want to talk about Susan Sullivan.’

‘Not yet,’ Annabelle said, twisting round in her seat to face Lottie.

‘I’m too busy for this right now,’ Lottie said.

‘Is your mood affecting your work?’ Annabelle persisted.

‘No.’

‘I think the correct answer is yes.’

‘Let’s ask the audience,’ Lottie said, but her flippancy wasn’t working. ‘Truthfully, I don’t know,’ she added.

‘I told you before, you need grief counselling.’

‘Feck off,’ Lottie said, only half-joking.

‘If you don’t want to think about yourself, think of your children. You need to be in the right frame of mind to deal with their problems.’

‘They’re fine,’ Lottie emphasised. What problems? She closed her eyes for a moment. ‘No, they’re not fine. I’m not fine. My house isn’t fine and I fell out with my mother.’

Annabelle laughed. ‘Again? Good. I always said she was a Mad Hatter without the tea-party.’

‘Ah, don’t be so cruel.’

‘She controls you. Always did.’

‘I’ve the upper hand now. She hasn’t spoken to me in months.’

‘You might have the upper hand at the moment, but for how long?’

‘I don’t want to talk about her.’

‘And the history she buried. Your dad, your brother—’

‘We’re here to talk about Susan Sullivan,’ Lottie interrupted. She didn’t want to go down that old secret road.

‘Since Adam died, you’re not in a good place—’

‘Mentally?’

‘Emotionally,’ Annabelle said and sipped her wine.

Lottie put down her glass. Picked it up again. ‘So, I’m depressed?’

‘Grief. It clouds your judgement of the living as well as the dead. You need time out.’

‘It’s been three years. Everyone thinks I’m over Adam.’

‘Are you?’ Annabelle raised an eyebrow. ‘You’ll never be fully over him. But you will learn to cope and you need to be able to give a hundred per cent to your work. Can you do that?’

‘I can give a hundred and ten per cent, even if I’m knocking on the gates of hell.’

Annabelle sighed. ‘Okay, I’ll give you the prescription. Collect it from my office during the week. I shouldn’t but it’s on condition you undergo a full medical and cut down on the narcotics.’

‘Add a few sleepers to the script,’ Lottie chanced.

‘Now you’re pushing it.’

‘When this case is over, I’ll take a full medical.’

‘And counselling?’

‘I just need the pills,’ Lottie said. She’d decide when she was ready for counselling. She wanted the pills, they kept her head together. One day at a time, one pill at a time. Whatever it took, to get her through the day.

‘All right,’ Annabelle said.

Relieved, Lottie switched the subject to the reason they were meeting. ‘Tell me about Susan Sullivan.’

‘God, I can’t believe she was murdered. Here, in Ragmullin! Why? What’s that all about?’

‘That’s what I’m trying to find out.’

‘I don’t think anything I tell you will be of help.’

‘I’m trying to build up a picture of her. At this stage I’ve no idea what may be relevant.’

‘As she’s dead I presume I’m not breaking any doctor–patient confidentiality,’ Annabelle said.

‘When was she diagnosed with cancer?’ Lottie asked, dreading the memories the C word conjured for her.

‘She was my patient for the last year. Presented with abdominal pain so I sent her for a CT scan. It confirmed abnormalities on both ovaries and a biopsy tested positive for ovarian cancer. Advanced stage. I informed her of this, last June.’

‘And her reaction?’

‘Poor woman. She just accepted it.’

Like Adam, thought Lottie, clutching her glass tightly to stop her hand from shaking.

‘I felt sorry for her, she’d such a hard life,’ Annabelle said, taking a slow sip of her wine.

‘Oh?’

‘I advised her to see a therapist. She refused. I encouraged her to talk to me and she did, a little.’

‘Tell me what she said.’

‘She told me she had a baby when she was still a child herself. Her mother, a terrible woman by all accounts, made her sign it away. Susan was obsessed with finding the child. She even . . .’ Annabelle looked away for a moment, biting her lip.

‘What? Go on,’ Lottie urged.

‘Well, I suppose since Susan’s dead I can say . . . She approached your mother about it.’

‘My mother?’ Lottie was astounded. She hadn’t seen her mother in almost four months. Rose was the last person she expected to be talking about. ‘Why on earth would she do that?’

‘Because your mother helped deliver the baby.’

Lottie sat back, feeling a little dull-witted. Of course. Her mother, a midwife, now retired, had delivered many babies born in and around Ragmullin. She concluded Susan had grown up in Ragmullin.

‘That’s certainly interesting,’ Lottie said. ‘And do you know how she got on with her?’

‘You should ask your mum yourself.’

‘Maybe I’ll have to,’ Lottie said. ‘Did Susan have any next of kin?’

‘Her mother died a few years ago. I don’t think she had anyone.’

Lottie sat thinking. A television channel was broadcasting a soccer match, the sound muted. Like her mind.

‘Did Susan ever talk about how she got pregnant? Who the father was?’

Annabelle was silent.

‘Are you going to tell me?’ Lottie probed, tearing pieces off a beer mat, hoping against hope. ‘It might have something to do with why she was murdered.’

‘She was only a child at the time, maybe only twelve years old. All she’d tell me was that she was systematically raped from a very young age.’

‘Her father? Could he have done it?’

‘Lottie, I don’t know who did it to her. She never told me.’

‘Did you advise her to report it?’

‘I did, but she wouldn’t hear of it. Said it was too long ago and that she had enough to sort out in the time she’d left. I couldn’t convince her otherwise.’

‘I find it hard to understand how Susan coped all those years.’

‘She wasn’t always called Susan Sullivan,’ Annabelle said.

‘What?’ Lottie put down her glass with a thump. ‘Who . . . how?’

‘I don’t know what she was called before. I can only surmise that she changed her name in an attempt to obliterate her early years.’ Annabelle smiled sadly. ‘But changing your name cannot change the hurt. Susan carried that pain around with her, every day of her life. I think she found the cancer diagnosis something of a welcome release.’

‘And then someone decided to hasten her entry to the next world,’ Lottie said. She suddenly felt too warm.

‘Indeed.’

‘Now it’s my job to find out who and why.’ Lottie churned the new information over in her mind.

‘And you will, Nancy Drew. Did you know I called you that behind your back, at school?’

‘I knew.’ Lottie wished they could talk about old times and what they remembered as good times. Memory was a strange thing, warping the past. She had learned that from experience.

‘I’m sorry I can’t be of more help,’ Annabelle said.

‘You’ve given me something to go on.’ Lottie put down her glass and looked directly at her friend. ‘What are you going to do about Cian?’

‘He’s driving me up the walls and back down again.’

‘Honestly Annabelle! Why?’

‘Fucked if I know,’ Annabelle said. She rarely swore, but she could get away with it. Lottie knew Annabelle O’Shea could get away with just about anything.

‘I’d say it’s something to do with your mystery man.’

‘Since I met . . .’ Annabelle paused. ‘I’m a different person since I met the man I’m now in love with.’

‘You were always falling in and out of love. Who is he?’

‘You’re my friend but I think it best if you remain clueless.’

‘I’m clueless all right. About more than your lover boy.’