I gave her a quick hug and she hugged me back. I could feel the tight roundness of her belly; the hardness of it was always a small shock.
“Have you thought of a name, yet?”
She put her hands on her bump, moving them in a slow circle. “Not yet.” She looked at me, considering. “Maybe I’ll call her Jessica.”
When the time was right, I got up off the bed where I’d been lying, and put my shoes on. I pulled on a coat and picked up my torch. I checked my watch again. Then I left the room, quietly, shutting the door behind me.
The night was cool but not cold, the night sky huge, indigo-hued and ragged with rapidly moving clouds. A thin slice of moon shone little light over the dark countryside and I was glad of my torch. I made my way up the track, stones slipping under my feet. Every noise I made sounded loud in the expectant hush of the countryside. As I reached the end of the track, my teeth began to chatter.
The stones looked so small. I walked over to the Men-an-Tol and put my hand on it, feeling the chill of it beneath my palm. Through the hole, I could see a few faint stars twinkling against their black velvet backdrop, before they were blotted out by cloud. I held my breath. If there really had been a ritual to take me back in time, to whisk me back to that night before everything fell apart, would I perform it? Would I have been able to stop what happened, a ten-year-old child? Perhaps somewhere, in another universe, perhaps I had. In this one, all I could do was watch the sky through the hole in the stone and mourn my friend.
“I’m sorry, Jessica,” I said. I whispered it to the night and the stones and the sky. “Wherever you are. I’m sorry.”
My farewell said, I turned and made my way back to the track. I kept my eyes on the small circle of light cast by the torch. I didn’t look behind me.
THE END
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Have you met Detective Sergeant Kate Redman?
The Kate Redman Mysteries are the bestselling detective mysteries from Celina Grace, featuring the flawed but determined female officer Kate Redman and her pursuit of justice in the West Country town of Abbeyford.
Hushabye (A Kate Redman Mystery: Book 1) is the novel that introduces Detective Sergeant Kate Redman on her first case in Abbeyford. It’s available for free! Read the first two chapters below…
HUSHABYE
(A KATE REDMAN MYSTERY)
CELINA GRACE
© Celina Grace 2013
Prologue
Casey Fullman opened her eyes and knew something was wrong.
It was too bright. She was used to waking to grey dimness, the before-sunrise hours of a winter morning. Dita would stand by the bed with Charlie in one arm, a warmed bottle in the other. Casey would struggle up to a sitting position, trying to avoid the jab of pain from her healing Caesarean scar, and take the baby and the bottle.
You’re mad to get up so early when you don’t have to, her mother had told her, more than once. It’s not like you’re breastfeeding. Let Dita do it. But Casey, smiling and shrugging, would never give up those first waking moments. She enjoyed the delicious warmth of the baby snuggled against her body, his dark eyes fixed upon hers as he sucked furiously at the bottle.
She didn’t envy Dita, though, stumbling back to bed through the early morning dark to her bedroom next to the nursery. Casey would have gotten up herself to take Charlie from his cot when he cried for his food, but Nick needed his sleep, and it seemed to work out better all round for Dita, so close to the cot anyway, to bring him and the bottle into the bedroom instead. That’s what I pay her for, Nick had said, when she’d suggested getting up herself.
But this morning there was no Dita, sleepy-eyed in rumpled pyjamas, standing by the bed. There was no Charlie. Casey sat up sharply, wincing as her stomach muscles pulled at the scar. She looked over at Nick, fast asleep next to her. Sleeping like a baby. But where was her baby, her Charlie?
She got up and padded across the soft, expensive, sound-muffling carpet, not bothering with her dressing gown, too anxious now to delay. It was almost full daylight; she could see clearly. The bedroom door was shut, and she opened it to a silent corridor outside.
The door to Dita’s room was standing open, but the door to Charlie’s nursery was closed. Casey looked in Dita’s room. Her nanny’s bed was empty, the room in its usual mess, clothes and toys all over the floor. She must have gone into Charlie’s room. They must both be in there. Why hadn’t Dita brought him through? He must be ill, thought Casey, and fear broke over her like a wave. Her palm slipped on the door handle to the nursery.
She pushed the door. It stuck, halfway open. Casey shoved harder and it moved, opening wide enough for her to see an out-flung arm on the carpet, a hand half-curled. Her throat closed up. Frantically, she pushed at the door, and it opened far enough to enable her to squeeze inside.
It was Dita she saw first, spread-eagled on the floor, face upwards. For a split second, Casey thought, crazily, that it was a model of her nanny, a waxwork, something that someone had left in the room for a joke. Dita’s face was pale as colourless candle wax, but that wasn’t the worst thing. There was something wrong with the structure of her face, her forehead dented, her nose pushed to one side. Her thick blonde hair was fanned out around her head like the stringy petals of a giant flower.
Casey felt her heartbeat falter as she looked down at the body. She was dimly aware that her lungs felt as if they’d seized up, frozen solid. She mouthed like a fish, gasping for air, but it wasn’t until she moved her gaze from Dita to look at Charlie’s cot that she began to scream.
Chapter One
Kate Redman stood in the tiny hallway of her flat and regarded herself in the full-length mirror that hung beside the front door. She never left the flat without giving herself a quick once-over—not for reasons of vanity, but to check that all was in place. She smoothed down her hair and tugged at her jacket, pulling the shoulders more firmly into shape. Her bag stood by the front door mat. She picked it up and checked her purse and mobile and warrant card were all there, zipped away in the inner pocket.
She was early, but then she was always early. Time for a quick coffee before the doorbell was expected to ring? She walked into the small, neat kitchen, her hand hovering over the kettle. She decided against it. She felt jittery enough already. Calm down, Kate.