A Traitor in the Family by Nicholas Searle

Author:Nicholas Searle
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780241979891
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2016-12-07T05:00:00+00:00

1993

* * *

10

Bridget walked with head down, closing the gate as she left the garden. Clutching her shopping bag to her, she turned off the road and on to the path by the woods. This was the shortest route into the village, though the path was not gravelled but muddy and overgrown. Few people passed this way and Bridget had to swish through the encroaching undergrowth, ducking beneath overhanging branches, laddering her tights where brambles caught her legs. She looked down; she was bleeding. She must look a mess.

She’d left as soon as the two telephone calls had come. One wrong number and a second call six minutes later from a pushy Scottish woman trying to sell her insurance. The signal. She’d learned the drills by heart, never imagining that they would be enacted in real life.

‘Whatever you do,’ Sarah had said, ‘don’t try to hide it at home. Do you have somewhere safe?’

‘Yes,’ she’d said immediately, and they’d agreed on it. It wasn’t ideal, but Francis had stopped using the place so far as she knew. She’d given Sarah the spare key. Somehow Sarah or her people had fixed up a hiding place inside it. Now the unreal secret existence she shared with Sarah was about to collide with her reality in Carrickcloghan.

She came to the track that led to her parents’ home and looked up it, pausing as she did so, before walking on down the main street, glancing around her as she went. She saw no one. Was she being watched? One of Francis’s comrades-in-arms? Or a malevolent RUC officer? Anne-Marie? Or Cathy or Patricia? Or was it the raw fear that was becoming familiar? Sarah had told her to trust her instincts but to temper them with logic. But her instincts had bled into heart-thumping anxiety and her rationality had been supplanted by a pounding headache that shot pain through the backs of her eyeballs. Eventually she stepped briskly into the snicket that divided the old post office from the next-door house and was momentarily cast back to a happier time. She could almost imagine herself entering through the back door of the shop to find Mr Kennedy standing there in his baggy mustard-coloured cardigan, teapot in hand, waiting for the kettle to boil. But fond imaginings were difficult to sustain.

She turned back and saw only light at the mouth of the alleyway. The point of no return had been passed. She was already dead or safe. The door gave immediately she pushed it. The lock, which had been broken years back, had not been repaired. Inside it was familiar, but unfamiliar. Dust covered the surfaces of the Formica worktops and the stainless-steel sink. All the furniture had been removed, though the outline of the refrigerator could still be seen on the filthy carpet tiles. Mr Kennedy had always kept it spick and span, a proud widower. His easy chair was no longer in front of the hearth, where he used to sit of a wintry afternoon while she cashed up and put the takings in the safe.

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