Page 5 of Final Betrayal

‘Oh, whatever.’

‘Chloe! I’m listening now.’

‘Can you babysit Louis for Katie at the weekend. We want to go to out.’

‘Where is out?’

‘Jomo’s. Please.’

‘The nightclub?’

‘Yeah.’ Chloe rolled her eyes as if her mother were a dinosaur.

‘You’re not old enough.’ Lottie wasn’t in the mood for a row. This was their first night in their new home. They should be happy. Shouldn’t they? But she knew that while the four walls surrounding them might be different, inside they all remained the same.

Chloe stood in the doorway, her fingers turning white. ‘Why do you continue to treat me like I’m twelve? I’ll be eighteen next month. Life is too short to worry about what age you have to be to get into a nightclub. Come on. Let me live.’

‘You have school. Exams. Study. You’re too young.’

‘You didn’t answer the question though,’ Katie piped up.

Damn, she’d forgotten the question. ‘What was it again?’

‘Can you babysit?’

Lottie glanced over at Louis and winked at him. Immediately the baby opened his mouth in a smile full of mashed potatoes. She sighed. ‘Let me see how work is set and I’ll let you know.’

‘They get to go everywhere,’ Sean said sulkily. ‘And I’m stuck here with you and a baby. Such a gross life.’

‘Sean?’ Lottie was speaking to air as her son left the kitchen.

‘Don’t mind him,’ Chloe said. ‘Teenage problems.’

‘And what are you? You’re still a teenager too.’

‘But I’m mature.’ Chloe straightened her back and followed her brother.

Katie dabbed at Louis’ mouth with a wet wipe and handed him over to Lottie. ‘Can you change him, Mam? I’ll go and talk to Sean.’

Alone with her grandson, Lottie eyed the mess on the table and the counter full of saucepans and dishes. She suddenly missed living at her mother’s. She’d never thought she’d feel that emotion. Not after everything that had happened in the last year.

‘What are we going to do with the lot of them?’ she asked Louis.

She was rewarded with a burp and a dirty nappy.

FIVE

At twenty-five years old, Louise Gill felt she had been through her life twice. At times, she even felt like she was two people living in alternate states of mind. Her mother worried that she might be schizophrenic, but Louise had refused all medication. She didn’t want to live in a fugue state. She had to study, and she wanted to be normal.

She checked the notifications on her phone for possibly the tenth time since she’d woken up. Nothing of interest on Instagram and no new Snapchats. She hadn’t many friends, so that was normal. Putting the phone to one side, she pulled her laptop onto her knee.

The coffee shop she was sitting in had recently opened in an old bank building, and she loved the anteroom situated in what had once been a fireproof vault. The door was six inches thick, but these days it was perpetually open, having been cemented at an angle to the floor. Louise didn’t experience claustrophobia like some of her friends, who refused to join her in the dimly lit cavern. In here, she felt safe. Away from the world.

Her thesis was tough and she had to submit it in mid December. Criminal psychology was her favourite subject, and writing about miscarriages of justice had awakened memories deep within her psyche.

She had been right, hadn’t she? About seeing him running frantically that night. What age had she been? Fourteen. She was confident in the testimony she had given. Wasn’t she?

Catching sight of her reflection on the screen, she realised her laptop had slipped into sleep mode. Just like her brain. Her eyes were hollow and dark-rimmed. The nightmares had returned. He had been released from jail. He was back in her town. Walking among people on the street. He could be in here now for all she knew. Her eyes flared wide. She couldn’t see their colour in the reflective screen, but they were dark brown, like her long hair, which she had never dyed. Her skin was sallow, with a sprinkling of freckles on her nose.

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