Page 4 of Her Last Walk Home

A glance at the leather-bound knife on the central console was enough to make him sit up straight and concentrate. This night could be short and uneventful. Or it could be long and bloody. Though he knew he was forever cloaked in her shadow, night was a time for his power to reign without her influence pulsing between his shoulder blades.

4

The tan was a disaster. If she’d taken her time doing it, it would have turned out grand. She’d applied fake tan too many times to count in her twenty-five years but tonight it had to be perfect and it wasn’t. It was a streaking mess.

‘Typical,’ Laura Nolan moaned at her reflection in the smeared mirror.

Trying not to cry, which would be detrimental to her make-up, she attempted to muster up positive vibes. She’d had her hair washed and blow-dried, even though it broke her heart to fork out the twenty euro she couldn’t afford. The effect was worth it, wasn’t it? She hoped so. She’d already ruined her silver sequin skirt with tan and had to resort to a pair of dark denim jeans. Her black chiffon top with its diamanté spaghetti straps was okay. She hoped.

Flicking an eyelash with another dab of mascara, she heard a voice behind her.

‘Stop fiddling with it. You’ll make it worse.’

Laura groaned as her mother revealed herself in the mirror, her face a little askew because of the crack in the top right-hand corner. Small, too thin, with not a grey hair in her fair mane (shecould afford the salon, of course), Diana’s bracelets tinkled as she moved a hand to fix a stray hair at the back of Laura’s neck.

‘Don’t!’ Laura snapped. ‘You’ll ruin it.’

‘Be hard to ruin something that’s already ruined, missy.’

‘Can you leave me alone? Please?’

‘Where are you going?’

‘Out.’

‘I gathered that. Out where?’

‘Why do you care?’

‘I want to make sure you’re safe. Are you meeting up with a friend?’

‘Yeah, for dinner and drinks,’ Laura said, to shut Diana up. Her friends had drifted away once she’d got pregnant with Aaron. He was almost four now and she loved him with every bone in her being, but she missed her friends.

‘I can’t be on call to babysit all the time, you know that?’

‘I do, and I’m grateful to you. It means a lot to me.’

Her mother smiled. Laura knew it was forced. ‘Just so you don’t forget, you have a little boy here who wants to see you when he wakes up in the morning.’

‘I won’t forget.’

How could she, Laura thought, when Diana was constantly reminding her? How could she when she loved her son so much?A mistake, a one-night stand, how could you? No condom, not on the pill, how could you be so stupid?Her mother’s words from the night she’d told her reverberated in her brain. She’d had no choice but to tell her. No choice but to drop out of college and lose her grant. To run back home because she could no longer pay the rent. All of that. But Diana had insisted she keep the baby. No daughter of mine (she was the only daughter, as far as Laura knew) will get an abortion. Over my dead body.

She had agreed to help. And Laura had accepted. But she hadn’t realised that the help was offered grudgingly. It camewith more complaints and caustic words than a day could hold. The proverbial strings attached to that help circled her neck and threatened to choke her to death. But she didn’t want to think about all that now.

She pursed her glossed lips, dropped her mascara tube into her cosmetic purse and scrunched the purse into her tiny handbag along with her phone. Maybe tonight she would meet the man who wouldn’t mind dating a girl with an almost-four-year-old child in tow. A young woman who still lived with her mother.

One could hope.

Why did pubs have music playing so loud? It was only nine o’clock and Shannon Kenny already felt like the band had set up a practice session in her ears. She leaned towards her date to say something; he turned at the same time, their noses inadvertently touching.

He laughed. ‘That’s an Eskimo kiss.’

At least that was what she thought he said. He could have asked her to marry him and she wouldn’t have known.

Trying not to make a tit of herself, and as loudly as she could, she said, ‘I’d love another drink.’

‘Same again?’

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