Out of Sight: An utterly captivating murder mystery thriller by Anna Legat

Author:Anna Legat [Legat, Anna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Headspace Books
Published: 2023-10-15T16:00:00+00:00

NINETEEN

On the strike of six o’clock the front door bell rang again. Becky and John arrived with a bottle of red, each.

‘Better than flowers, we thought,’ Becky pulled a smug face. ‘We can get thoroughly plastered. Like old times!’

‘Why don’t we?’ Nora couldn’t help but agree. ‘I’ve ordered pizza and a neighbour contributed a cake. And we’ve got the whole house to ourselves.’

‘Jus like old times!’ John echoed Becky’s words. ‘Do you remember when we swarmed on you in Lower Norton when your parents went away for a week—’

‘Two weeks! They went to Turkey for Dad’s forty-fifth.’

‘Yeah. That was—’ John paused to search for the right word.

‘Decadent,’ Nora laughed.

‘Exactly! To say the least.’

They sat on the Persian rug in the lounge, passing the first bottle of red around their small circle, and taking generous swigs. They’d decided to dispense with glasses – like old times. The sensation of utter, unbridled freedom that Nora had traded for marriage and motherhood years ago had made a welcome reappearance. Memories, too, returned.

They reminisced about those two crazy weeks of endless parties at her parents’ house: hikes in the woods, naked swims in the river, the midnight campfires shedding flickering light on couples kissing in the shadows, and their late-night talks when they drunkenly decried the dreaded poll tax. They had counted ten crates of empty beer cans and wine bottles by the time the marathon party was over. Towards the end of their spree a total stranger had joined the party, bearing cannabis. Consequently, they had spent one last night doing things nobody could remember the next day. The stranger too had vanished the following morning and no one could recall his name, or of having ever invited him.

There had been six of them on and off. Other people came and went, just like said stranger. Becky had brought with her a rugby player whom she had met a day earlier and whom she ditched the day after she returned to her digs in Bath. Again, his name was now a long-lost memory. Another couple formed the core of their gang: Jennifer and Adrian.

‘What became of them, I can’t remember now?’ John asked.

‘They got hitched soon after graduation and moved to Aussie,’ Becky said. ‘I paid them a visit. That would’ve been twelve, maybe thirteen years ago. They had two kids and a flaming ranch in the Northern Territory. Would you believe that! The dainty Jennifer! She cried when she broke her nail.’

‘Strange how people got scattered all over the world,’ Nora observed out loud. Internally, she could only mourn the years she had lost tied up to Stewart like a sacrificial goat to a post.

‘We did, didn’t we? The class of ’89…a restless lot,’ Becky mused.

‘You travelled around a fair bit before you finally settled down in Sexton’s. To my great relief, I hasten to add,’ Nora raised the wine bottle to Becky.

‘Who says I’ve settled down?’ Becky snorted and took the bottle. ‘I ain’t finished, not by far!’

‘And I haven’t even started.

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