Chapter 2

TWO

Lottie Parker was excited at having a home of her own after living in her mother’s cramped house since mid February. Being a detective inspector in the town of Ragmullin brought its fair share of dangers. During one recent case, her house had been burned down. Though it had been ruled accidental, she still wasn’t convinced.

‘You could at least smile,’ Mark Boyd said as he struggled with an IKEA flat-pack box wider and taller than the door space. ‘And get Sean to give me a hand.’

‘He’s gone for a ride. And that’s your fault. Buying him a new racing bike.’

‘At least it gets him out of his room. That’s a good thing, isn’t it?’

‘Sure, but we could do with an extra pair of hands right now.’

She gripped one end of the box and began to shimmy it in through the front door with Boyd huffing and puffing on the outside. Sean, her fifteen-year-old son, was becoming more of an enigma with each passing day. He had succumbed to another bout of depression a few months ago, and only when Boyd arrived with the sparkling new bicycle had his eyes shed their deep darkness.

Boyd stopped moving the carton.

‘What?’ she said. He was looking at her over the angles of the now crunched cardboard.

‘This is the right thing to do, Lottie. You know that. But you have to accept that everything you had in your old house is gone. This is an opportunity to start over. Leave the ghosts of the past blowing in the ashes.’

She shook her head, surprised to find that tears were gathering. She sniffed them away. Boyd was her detective sergeant and a good friend. ‘This isn’t going to work.’

‘Of course it will. Just give yourself time to get settled.’

‘I mean this goddam carton. We’ll have to open it up outside and bring the stuff in bit by bit.’

‘What’s in it anyway?’

‘I have absolutely no idea.’

Boyd let out a loud laugh, and Lottie couldn’t help it. She had to laugh too.

As it turned out, it was a bookcase that had been in the box. Now Boyd was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the sitting room, instructions in one hand and a handful of screws in the other, and slats of timber everywhere.

Lottie switched on her new red kettle and got two mugs from the cupboard. Maybe Boyd was right, she thought. She had to admit that he knew her better than she knew herself sometimes. They had been going through a good patch over the last few months. He was a loyal friend. More than a friend at times, if she wanted to be totally honest with herself.

Her hand stalled on a jar of coffee as she realised the truth. Boyd was her only friend. What kept him around? He’d got his divorce from his wife, Jackie. He seemed content. But she knew he wanted more of a commitment from her. Of that she was certain. She couldn’t give him any more, though. Not now. Not yet. She’d lost her husband Adam to cancer five years ago, and ever since she had struggled with grief, widowhood and raising her children.

The house was going to be full of life soon. Her twenty-one-year-old daughter Katie with her baby son Louis, seventeen-year-old Chloe and Sean were due to move in tomorrow. They’d already snapped up the bedrooms they wanted, without any major rows, and most of their clothes were now hanging in newly painted wardrobes. She wondered how Rose, her mother, would cope with an empty house. She smiled. Rose would probably be delighted to have her own space back, after the long months of them all living there like transient gypsies.

‘I think there’s a screw missing,’ Boyd shouted from the other room.

‘I knew that about you a long time ago.’ Lottie smiled and started to make the coffee. Maybe it was time to leave Adam’s ghost resting among the ashes of her burned-out house. Maybe.