Page 5 of Her Last Walk Home

She was able to lip-read that. ‘Make it a double,’ she said, miming.

While he was at the bar, she studied the broadness of his shoulders and realised his waist looked too small, his legs too short. In fact he appeared totally misshapen. Or was that the effects of drinking on an empty stomach?

It should have been the first warning sign. He’d promised her dinner in the Joyce Hotel restaurant but then had insisted on pre-dinner drinks in Danny’s Bar. And it now appeared he had no intention of leaving. Maybe she should have asked for a packet of crisps.

She glanced around, trying to see someone she recognised. The place was heaving and the band had got louder – if the thrumming in her ears was anything to go by. He was still at the bar, chatting with the girl who worked there. How they could hold a conversation with the resounding din was beyond her. Maybe she should leave. Grab her coat and get the hell out of there.

‘I must be getting old,’ she told herself, despite having just had her twenty-fifth birthday. Not that long ago, all this was her idea of heaven. But that was before…

‘That was then, this is now,’ she said.

Shit, she was talking to herself. God Almighty, was this what rehab did to you? You went in with one complaint and came out with a host of new ones. Next stop, the asylum.

Grinning at her own dark humour, she noticed him glance over his shoulder at her. A quick smile before he turned back to the bar. Was he checking she hadn’t escaped? More likely he was telling the girl what a big mistake he’d made tonight with his date.

How long could she sit here with him up there flirting while the boom of the band took root in her ears? Not much longer was the answer. But as she stuffed her phone in her bag, he returned with her large gin in a fancy balloon glass, and she decided she couldn’t let a good drink go to waste.

Laura sat in Casey’s on her own. The pub was less crowded than usual. She wondered if she should have phoned Shannon. Not that they’d spoken in almost a year. But sometimes you needed to confide in someone other than your bloody mother.

Her date hadn’t turned up. She checked her phone. It was early yet. Plenty of time. She had the correct pub, hadn’t she? She scrolled through the app and found the message. Yes. So where the hell was he?

Glancing at his photo, she smiled despite herself. He wasn’t half bad-looking. Clicking out of the app, she strained her neck to look around again. No, he wasn’t here. She ordered a Diet Coke. He could buy the alcohol when, if, he arrived.

Then she felt a tap on her shoulder. Slowly she turned, hoping it was him, and a warm, fuzzy feeling settled in her chest as she waited for her eyes to meet his for the first time.

But it was just someone trying to get close to the bar to order a drink. She felt her shoulders deflate and her expectation flying away on the expelled air.

It was after ten and he was driving around Ragmullin again, being careful to keep to the outer roads, using rat runs through housing estates. He didn’t want to be caught on traffic cameras or CCTV in the centre of town, nor the guards to stop and quiz him when he was on a scouting mission. And that was what tonight was about. He was searching for the ideal candidate. The approximate age and build were ingrained in his brain as if etched by a knife on a slate. He knew who he was looking for,even if he didn’t yet know who she was. But he had been given enough information to recognise her when he saw her.

He parked in a housing estate, and sat there with the engine off for maybe twenty minutes, keeping his mind alert by recounting the tools he kept in the boot, while ignoring the knife he’d stuck into the glovebox.

If the guards happened to stop him, he had a plausible story: the taxi light was off because it was broken. Not that he would give anyone a reason to stop him. He felt a tug of excitement. Maybe tonight he would be successful.

He glanced at his phone. Time to move. Turning up the heat to defog the windscreen, he set off once more. If unsuccessful, he’d try again later. He could not leave town empty-handed.Shewould not be pleased.

5

In the end, Katie had lied to her mother and told her she was meeting friends at Danny’s. She’d gone to Fallon’s instead and sat on her own at the bar while her sister dished out words of wisdom in between serving customers.

‘Join a dating site. I’ll set up a profile for you.’ Chloe smiled. ‘I have one, and that’s how I get my dates.’

‘You haven’t been on one in ages.’

‘Hadn’t time recently. I worked every hour over Christmas, and before that I was minding Gran. Go on, be a devil, Katie, for once in your life.’

‘I was a devil once and look where it got me.’ She swirled the remnants of her gin and tonic as if by Louis’ sense of magic the glass would become full again.

‘Whatever, but you need to get a life. I’m serious. Before you know it you’ll be thirty, and then what?’

‘I’ll still be a mother, still have a little boy and my family around me. Isn’t that what’s important?’

‘Some of it is, but Mam will go off with Boyd to set up a new life for herself. I saw him looking at houses on a real-estate website the other evening. If she moves, what about us?’

‘She wouldn’t move without us.’

‘Maybe not without Sean because he’s still at school, but Katie, we’re adults. We need to fend for ourselves. To live our own lives.’

‘When did you become the wise one in our family?’

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