The Returned by Amanda Cassidy

Author:Amanda Cassidy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Canelo Digital Publishing Limited
Published: 2023-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Nineteen

Swirling grey clouds weave their way slowly across the sky when I step out the back door of Currolough station after speaking to Audrey Jones. I’ve four missed calls from Clarke.

‘Ally?’ He sounds like he’s been running, like he can’t get the words out fast enough. ‘Nancy’s at her old burnt-out house. I’m on my way there.’

‘Wait, what?’

I’m still so discombobulated after my conversation with Audrey that it’s hard to pull myself back into the moment, back to Nancy.

Clarke continues patiently.

‘Gerald Barrows called me. He said that Nancy rang him at Haycote Manor, completely hysterical. She begged him to bring Dexter to her at the old house on Eastbourne Road.’

I’m already running myself, manoeuvring my bump through the cars in the small police vehicle car park behind Currolough station.

‘Barrows is obviously not planning to show up,’ Clarke confirms.

‘I’ll meet you there, Casey.’

I clamber into the Discovery and tap the details into Google Maps. It directs me towards Eastbourne coast road. Time wise, I’ll definitely get there well before Clarke.

Lake Lagan is three kilometres wide and about fifteen long – it’s a huge daisy-shaped circle, stretching from Drumlish to BallinÓg, where the tip of it dips near the seashore, and folds back on itself towards Currolough. There’s no place that escapes those long ribbony inlets that slurp hungrily from its muddy banks. Nancy’s old house is still visible from the road, Roe confirmed – far in the distance – an eerie tourist attraction at the end of a long grassy lane that slopes towards the water.

My phone beeps beside me as I drive quickly towards the house. It’s a text from Frank. He usually calls. Texts mean he can’t talk. Overcome with a surge of something venomous, perhaps as a result of having just faced another person who’d asked for love and got hurt instead, I veer clumsily onto the grassy verge in front of some farmer’s gate and pull on the hand brake. I jab the phone icon, but it cuts off after two rings. Disconnected.

He’s cut me off.

‘Don’t get me started,’ I murmur, braver because of the distance between us. I press the green button again, with a determination fuelled mostly from frustration. I know I’m that woman, and I don’t deserve sympathy. Believe me, all of this makes me hate myself more than I already do. But it is time for decisions to be made.

Sammy would call this self-sabotage. And while I spent years squandering any chance of happiness, along comes a baby. A real-life human child that needs me. Things have to be different now. It’s time to make some grown-up decisions. But confronting Frank means being abandoned again. My biggest fear. That’s probably why I’ve clung to Frank like this baby is clinging to me – trusting that the person on the other end of this thin tether will do right by them.

I should have learnt from my mother that that silvery bond can be used against you – looped around you tightly. Weaponised.

I call Frank’s

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