Tell-Tale Bones by N.C. Lewis

Author:N.C. Lewis [Lewis, N.C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-06-29T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 45

A second after Kate Owen opened the door, the figure stepped into the hallway. "It’s about your daughter, Skye."

Nowhere could those words from a stranger strike more fear than in a mother’s heart. Kate must have fallen because a cold hand pulled her to her feet. Helpless, she regained her balance and leaned against the wall. Only then did her brain begin to take things in. Slow, because of the gin and ale and fear which curdled in the depths of her stomach.

The figure was a woman, skeletal thin and smelling of expensive perfume. Middle-aged with sly brown eyes and an excited gleam to her wrinkled prune-shaped face. A vague sense of recognition dawned. Kate knew the woman. Not a stranger, then. But from where?

"Have you been drinking, again?" The woman sniffed.

"Me? No, no, no." Kate mumbled the words, still thinking. It wasn’t like she was some old maid who knocked back booze on her own because she had no friends. "Just a tipple with dinner to help me relax."

The woman’s gaze fell to the orange smudge on Kate’s blouse. "Beans on toast, again?"

Kate’s stomach lurched. She ate beans on toast for dinner three or four times a week. How did this woman know that? "Beans are nutritious."

The woman glanced around the hallway, sniffing. "Are you on your own tonight?"

Kate remembered her now—Mrs Penelope Fowler. Steph’s mum. Oh Christ. She fell back against the wall.

Mrs Fowler took her by the arm, steadying her to the kitchen. "We’d best get the kettle on. We both need a strong cuppa."

Mrs Fowler bustled around the kitchen, tossing the open baked bean can into the dustbin, wiping down surfaces with a cloth soaked in disinfectant and filling the kettle with water, and a few minutes later, poured tea into two large mugs.

Kate watched her work with a growing sense of shame. Mrs Fowler’s husband, Stan, had a fantastic job which paid oodles of money. Kate’s six-week fling with the lush man seared deep in her memory. Flowers and French perfume and expensive Belgium chocolates. It ended when she got greedy and demanded he divorce his stuck-up wife and buy a new house for them to settle. He told her it was a mistake; he hadn’t done it before, that she’d hunted him and trapped him in her claws. He loved his wife and would never leave her. He waved Kate away like a king dismissing a disloyal subject.

Kate fumed for three days drinking ale and gin and smoking giant spliffs fortified with extra strong weed. On the fourth day, the plan came to her.

She knocked on the Fowler’s front door. After midnight. Wearing a scanty negligée. In a drunken stupor. Telling the world what she thought of prune-faced Penelope Fowler and her chipolata-hung husband. Top of her voice. Spitting lurid words like ice-cold raindrops. All the neighbours’ houselights flicking on. Yelling louder about what Mr Fowler was missing and dancing the striptease with boozy delight as a crowd gathered. Big mistake. The only person who would employ her in the village after the fiasco was the sleazy pub landlord.

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