The Blue Pool by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781911420033
Publisher: Canelo Books
Published: 2018-09-28T00:00:00+00:00

Kathy

August 1991

“I’ve just had Mrs Nugent on the phone to me.” Charlotte sounded breathless.

It was seven thirty a.m. and Kathy was groggy. She hadn’t been expecting a phone call. And certainly not this early. Barely ten hours had passed since she’d had arrived back at the farm, frazzled from the journey home. She shivered in pajamas in the hallway. Charlotte was sounding really weird.

“Mrs Nugent? What does she want?”

“Sarah didn’t arrive home last night,” said Charlotte.

“Ha ha. Very funny, Charlie.”

“I’m not joking, Kath.”

It took a few seconds to sink in.

“Are you there, Kath? Did you hear what I said?”

Kathy was speechless. This was the last thing she’d expected. “What do you mean, she never arrived home?”

“Just that, Kath. I can’t say it any plainer. Sarah never showed up in Dublin. She never got home.” Charlotte sounded shaky. “Mrs Nugent rang to see if we’d had a change of plan. As far as she was concerned, Sarah was coming home last night. So she rang to see if Sarah was with any of us. I explained that she certainly wasn’t with me, but that I’d check with you and Ruth.”

“Well, she’s certainly not with me,” said Kathy, “and I also doubt if she’s with Ruth.”

“Yeah, I know that,” said Charlotte, “I’ve already rung Ruth.”

This was not good. This was not good at all.

Kathy had a really bad feeling. A truly bad feeling. Breathe. Let the breath out slowly. Breathe again. She squeezed her eyes shut. She tried to squeeze the badness out. But it was here again. She knew it. Exactly like before. Like when she’d been in college and got the message to phone her mother and father back home. Before she’d found out about Lawrence.

“Does Mrs Nugent know that we were hitching?” Kathy forced the words out.

“She knows,” said Charlotte. “I had to tell her…” She sounded apologetic. “I told her you three were hitching to Ennis, to get buses and trains.” Charlotte paused again. “Oh God, Kath, you should have heard her. She went absolutely crazy. Said she’d warned Sarah never to hitch a lift. That Sarah had promised her faithfully she wouldn’t.” Charlotte stopped to catch her breath. “I explained to her that we’d run out of petrol money, and that was why you three had agreed to hitch.” Charlotte sounded like she was blowing her nose. “I felt absolutely dreadful, Kath. Like really bloody awful.”

Kathy could just imagine an apoplectic Mrs Nugent on the phone. What would Sarah’s mother do when she found out that the three of them hadn’t even stuck together? It didn’t bear thinking about.

“I don’t suppose she knows that the three of us split up?” Kathy asked, her voice full of fear. The hallway suddenly seemed cavernous, her voice echoing off the walls.

“Split up?”

There came a long pause.

“What do you mean split up, Kath?” Charlotte sounded very wary.

Charlotte didn’t know? That was so weird. How could Charlotte not know? She’d just been talking to Ruth.

“That’s right. We split up,” Kathy repeated. “We tried for nearly two hours to get a lift together, but no one would take three of us.

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