The Girl in the Dark by Deirdre Palmer

Author:Deirdre Palmer [Palmer, Deirdre]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781805080725
Published: 2023-09-10T16:00:00+00:00

While the chilli con carne he picked up from the corner shop is revolving in the microwave, Carl considers phoning Ellen to ask her if Rosanna’s lover might have been using a false name, then thinks better of it. She’s already told him everything she knows, and she doesn’t truly support this mission. She only went along with it to please him, he realises that, and he doesn’t want to upset her by quizzing her further. Besides, if Rosanna knew her lover by that name, Ellen won’t know any differently, will she? If the bloke has been going around incognito, Carl’s scuppered before he’s barely begun. It’s a depressing thought.

Over his meal, Carl thinks around the problem, trying to approach it from a different angle. The only idea he comes up with is even more depressing: that Ellen’s story is true, and she really did push Matt in the path of the train. Okay, murderers don’t exactly go round with it written across their foreheads. They look like anybody else.

But Ellen? No. Never in a million years.

Supposition, educated guesswork, and pure gut instinct – when it comes down to it, these are the only weapons he has in the fight to bring Ellen back to the real world. But even if he’s stopped believing in himself, he won’t stop believing in Ellen – the real Ellen, not the one who for some reason thinks she’s a killer.

He pushes his plate away, leans his elbows on the table and puts his head in his hands. Back at the house in Sussex, he tried as many times as he dared to convince Ellen that her memory of that night is distorted, or at least make her question it, but she wasn’t having any of it. She was – is – so sure of what happened, she won’t consider any other version, and he finds that so frustrating at times he could shake her.

But he is not Ellen. He can’t see inside her head. Loneliness – yes, Ellen is lonely; he realised that early on – can affect the mind in all kinds of strange ways. The tragic loss of her parents would have had a long-lasting effect and probably explains her attachment to her sister and her determination to protect her. Other than that, he can’t second-guess her thoughts. But he has to help her. He cares about her too much to walk away now.

Getting up from the table, Carl wanders through to the sitting room and stands at the bay window. Across the narrow street, he can see straight into another room. A family, gathered around the flickering light of a large TV screen, a dog romping around. The ordinary domestic scene calms his mind, pushes his thought processes onto more fertile ground. He thinks about today, his visit to the green building. It must mean something that Rosanna, and therefore Ellen, knew the name Trubridge and Jensen. Perhaps Matt’s left the company, and the records the office held didn’t go that far.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.