by Sheila Riley
Dance?! Evie told Mim she hadn’t given the matter a thought. She didn’t know how to dance, and, anyway, she would feel more comfortable helping in the kitchen, re-filling plates and washing teacups.
‘Not in your maid of honour dress, you won’t!’ Mim said, pushing her towards the dance floor. As they reached it she saw Susie Blackthorn, who looked as if her eyes would pop right out of her head.
‘I like your frock,’ Susie simpered, possessively linking her arm through Danny’s. ‘Isn’t Evie’s frock nice, Danny? Do you think I’d suit a frock like that? But I wouldn’t wear that colour – not many can, it is so draining.’
Evie lifted her chin as she crossed the room. She felt fabulous in her maid-of-honour dress, despite what Susie Blackthorn had to say.
‘She’s got above herself,’ Evie heard Susie say, and realised the comment held no fear for her anymore. She didn’t feel like an outsider. And, smiling at the gathered throng, she wasn’t treated like one either. She couldn’t think what Danny saw in Susie, who never saw the good in anybody. If he had courted someone kinder, more cheerful, like he was, someone who had time for everybody. Then she could have understood. But Susie Blackthorn!
Without warning, she felt her throat tighten and her eyes stung with unshed tears. She must get out of here. Cigarette smoke was making her eyes water. She must find Lucy. If she was playing outside in the bridesmaid dress, the little madam was in for a good talking-to.
35
Something troubled Evie. She hadn’t expected to see Danny with another girl. Nor did she anticipate how it would make her feel. Approaching her own house, Evie noticed the parlour curtains were closed.
She had opened them before leaving for the wedding, surely? But, with all the excitement and trying to calm Lucy, she might be mistaken.
People didn’t shut their front door until bedtime in Reckoner’s Row, and there was nothing unusual in seeing the Kilgaren door open these days. Although, knowing they would be out all day, she knew Jack made sure it was locked. Lucy must have been home and left it ajar.
When Evie entered the house, it was quiet. Too quiet. Listening for any sound of the wireless, which she knew she had left on this morning, all was silent.
The house was usually full of noise and bustle with Jack and Lucy coming and going, bickering about everything and nothing. Evie, very gently, closed the vestibule door. She shivered. In the dusk of the spring evening she felt like she did when she entered the local church. Tiptoeing across the polished linoleum, towards the parlour door. Evie didn’t know why she felt like this. But there was certainly something wrong.
The house was so still. Passing the closed parlour door, she ventured into the kitchen. Opening the door, her eyes grew wide and her jaw dropped. Lucy was sitting in the chair by the fireside, still in all her finery.
‘Are you all right, Lucy?’ Evie asked in hushed tones from the door. She knew the day had been full of excitement for her young sister. Maybe she needed peace and quiet?
Then she noticed the sideboard doors were wide open and the floor littered with domestic debris, ransacked drawers, broken china. What had been going on while she was out!
‘Lucy?’ Evie deliberately kept her voice low. Lucy looked very pale. ‘It looks like a bomb’s hit the place.’ Her heart pounded in her chest as her eyes scanned the once-tidy room. ‘Tell me, Luce.’ Her voice deepened, terror giving it a hard edge. The child silently pointed to the parlour, and Evie heard a thudding noise on the other side of the wall.
Evie hurried towards the door. But Lucy, who had a surprisingly strong grip for a child stopped her. She looked to Evie and put her finger to her lips.
‘Lucy,’ Evie hissed, ‘what’s going on?’ She was going into the front room to see what was happening in there. Lucy looked terrified, and Evie noticed she was trembling. Putting her arm around her young sister, Evie convinced her that everything was going to be fine.
‘He said he’s come back for what belongs to him, and he’s not leaving without it.’
Evie didn’t ask what Darnel had come back for. As far as she was concerned, he had stripped the place of everything he had contributed when her mother lived here.
‘Go out the back way, fetch Jack!’ Fear made Evie’s mouth dry. If Darnel dared raise his hand to her again, she would go for him. By God she would. Picking up the poker from the hearth, she walked towards the lobby.
‘Don’t go in the parlour.’ Lucy tried to pull her from the door. Her eyes were wide with fear.
‘I’m not scared of him, Lucy,’ Evie said. Her words cut short when she saw Lucy crying.
‘Who?’ Lucy sniffed, holding her skirt like Jack had done all those years ago, encouraging her to forget her own trepidation. She had a family who she intended to look out for and protect.
‘Leo Darnel?’ Evie’s eyebrows pleated in confusion as Lucy shook her head. ‘You know who he is, don’t you?’ Lucy nodded. She had seen a picture of him in the newspaper in connection with a dockside robbery.
‘The man in the parlour,’ Lucy said, ‘is the shepherd.’ Her lips screwed into a little knot of anger. ‘But he’s not good no more. He shouted at me. Told me to sit down and behave.’
‘Did he, now?’ Evie said, determination coursing through her veins. ‘We’ll soon see about that!’ Feeling sick, she remembered what real fear felt like, but did her best to hide her dread from Lucy. Those days were gone. ‘What happened, Lucy?’ Evie asked. ‘Tell me what went on?’
‘He said Mam hid his money in there.’ Lucy’s voice quivered as tears rolled down her face.
‘What money? We’ve got no money.’ Evie took a deep shuddering breath, trying to calm herself. Now she knew what Darnel meant when he said they were in danger. Evie thought they were in danger from him. But she was wrong. He was warning her about a man who was much more dangerous.
‘Go now! Fetch Angus!’ Lucy raced out of the back door in a cloud of yellow tulle and down the yard. Evie saw her drag open the gate and in the blink of an eye her young sister was gone. Safe.
Within minutes Angus came through the front door, which Evie had left ajar, with Danny following close behind. Angus motioned for Jack to move forward, putting his fingers to his lips.
‘Lucy’s good shepherd?’ Evie informed Jack in hushed tones.
‘He’s in this house?’ He asked. She nodded. Yes.
Angus, at his most commanding, gestured for Jack to take a position at the side of the parlour door. This was his wedding day. He should be dancing with his new bride.
‘He may be armed,’ Jack said in a low whisper, taking his position. ‘He was the last time I saw him.’ His large hand splayed behind him to stop Evie overtaking and getting into the parlour.
‘Lucy?’ Evie whispered, looking around the kitchen, her eyes desperate. The child was gone.
Moving with panther-like grace and calm, Angus closed the vestibule door. He covered all angles. The front door was ajar. He moved to stand at the foot of the stairs. Evie clutched her dress in her clammy hands.
‘This man has no compunction about killing a woman, we know that,’ Angus told Evie, ‘but we don’t know about children.’ Evie’s insides turned to water. Unsure what he was capable of.
‘Stay back,’ Angus whispered when there was no sound from the parlour, and the quick exit they had been expecting did not happen. They listened more. Not a peep. Angus nodded to Danny, before he shoulder barged his way into the parlour door. It opened with a terrific crash and hit the parlour wall.
The high-pitched clang of the police car bell vied with the ring of the ambulance before both vehicles screeched to a halt. After a moment Angus came out, his face devoid of expression. He held Evie back and, looking to the police constables, he said, ‘You’d better come and see this.’
‘Something’s happened!’ Ada Harris said needlessly, elbowing her way to the front of the huge crowd of neighbours who had left the wedding party in the Tram Tavern and gathered outside.
‘D’y
a think?’ Susie Blackthorn’s cynical reply went amiss as she moved closer.
‘Well, a police car and an ambulance don’t turn up for nothing,’ Ada said, ignoring her sarcasm. Everybody in Reckoner’s Row milled around the Kilgarens’ front door. Kids had stopped their games to watch uniformed men race into the house.
‘I’m going to find out what’s going on!’ Ada said, never behind the door where news was concerned. While, in defeat after breaking its tether, the jacket of her two-piece flapped wildly in the weak spring sunshine. Susie followed at a lick now, too. They reached the house just as a policeman in a gaberdine mackintosh and homburg hat came out of the house and stood guarding it. The parlour curtains were shut tight.
‘What’s happened? What’s the matter?’ Ada asked. ‘Is it Connie? Jesus, Mary and Joseph!’ She made the sign of the cross.
‘I’m afraid I can’t say anything.’ The policeman looked very solemn.
‘And I’m afraid you’ll have to,’ Susie demanded, irritated beyond reason.
‘I’m so sorry, love,’ he said. ‘There’s blood and brains all over the show.’
‘My Danny’s in there!’ Susie screamed, and Ada poked her in the back with her index finger. ‘Please let me in, we’re as good as family. You’ve got to tell me what happened!’
‘I bet it’s that Darnel’s gone berserk’ Ada said. ‘Finished them off good and proper!’
‘Don’t be stupid.’ Susie set off a chain of murmurs that quickly went around the curious crowd. Darnel’s name was mentioned frequently.
‘Done Lucy in,’ neighbours said behind their hands. When the front door opened again, the waiting crowd got their patient reward. However, they were relieved to see the body on the stretcher was not that of the child. It was the unconscious body of Leo Darnel, being stretchered into a waiting ambulance.
36
Evie took in the terrible scene through the open parlour door. With her back hard up against the narrow lobby wall, she stared slack-jawed and wide-eyed at the bare room, devoid of furniture. Blood-spattered cardboard boxes scattered across the linoleum floor, and a breathless man was doubled over, holding on to the marble fireplace her mam loved so much.
Evie needed to run, to scream, but her body had turned to petrified stone as he gasped for breath from his earlier exertions of beating the living daylights out of Leo Darnel. She should be glad, and grateful, but she felt neither.
Lifting his head, blood and sputum suspended from his cut lip, he glared at Evie. Her blood turned to ice when she saw recognition glint in his cold grey eyes. The ghost of her past stood before her, but this one was not dead.
‘Get Lucy out of here!’ His ragged words rang through her head like a cymbal crash as globules of foamy saliva spurted vehemently from his lips in that familiar Irish rasp. His livid command bringing back terrifying, long-buried memories.
Fingernails digging deeply into the palm of her hand, Evie knew she must be strong. Stronger than her mother. She must not show fear. That was Mam’s biggest mistake, she was cowed by this man’s tyrannical outrages. His children were the pawns Frank Kilgaren used to control his wife, and the biggest weapon in his arsenal.
The floodgate of memories opened. He’d threatened to take Jack and Lucy from her mam. But the war did that when they were evacuated. Evie watched uniformed bobbies hold back her long dead father and secure him in handcuffs.
‘Frank Kilgaren, I am arresting you for the murder of your wife, Rene Kilgaren, and for the attempted murder of your son, Jack Kilgaren…’
‘I didn’t know it was him. It was dark. I just wanted to scare him off!’ Frank Kilgaren protested, obviously ignoring the magnitude of his many misdemeanors.
‘We thought you were dead!’ Evie gasped.
‘… Washed up on the Irish coast, unconscious for days, picked up by a sheep farmer.’ He was detached, emotionless. His words slotting everything into place.
‘Lucy’s good shepherd.’ Angus quietly informed Evie, and her heart sank. Over the years she had invented a perfect father. So too, young Lucy. A more loving, more compassionate man who would cherish and care for them.
‘Mam only knew peace when you were dead…’ Evie stretched her back to its full height and lifted her chin. This man had terrified the woman he promised to love and to cherish. The biggest threat to the children he swore to protect. She hugged Lucy close and Jack, resplendent in his new suit, stood head and shoulders above the two of them.
‘I recognise that voice. You brought me back home on the night I was shot!’ Jack realised he had just called Reckoner’s Row, home.
Evie, feeling safe now, recalled a distant thought. Words her mother spoke to her on that Sunday before she left Reckoner’s Row. Evie, she said, if anything ever happens to me, just remember, I could not burden you with the ugly truth. Like a warning, her mother’s words echoed inside her head and now made sense.
‘Rene knew you were alive,’ Angus said to Frank. ‘And you had her children?’
‘I kept them in Ireland, paid my sister to look after them, hoping Rene would follow,’ her father said, and Evie let out a small rush of air as two policemen bundled him out of the parlour door.
‘Lucy was too young to recognise who you were…’
‘I worked on a neighbouring sheep farm. Jack never saw me.’
Standing aside Evie said, ‘so it was you who wouldn’t allow them to come home – not Mam!’ Her mother was trying to protect her, even though she could not say anything at that time.
‘She had another man here. In my place.’ Frank Kilgaren struggled but the burly constables were too strong. ‘Nobody could blame a dead man for murder.’
‘She threw Darnel out,’ Evie sobbed. ‘You didn’t have to kill her.’
‘I brought the kids home, but she wouldn’t take me back.’
‘You thought you’d teach her one final lesson.’ The tears that flowed down Evie’s cheeks were tears of anger, and from that anger she gained courage.
‘She wasn’t your possession. She was your wife. The mother of your children. Locked in a loveless marriage. You don’t know how to love!’
‘Love is a cold wind that blows no good,’ Frank Kilgaren said as he was led outside to a jeering crowd of onlookers and Evie shuddered as her father was bundled into a police car. His dark eyes, staring into nothing, were devoid of warmth, of love. The bogeyman had been captured.
‘One thing I vow,’ Evie whispered, watching Susie Blackthorn clinging possessively to Danny’s arm, ‘I will chase my dream of a happy family life, and I will never allow anyone to make me feel worthless again.’ Her mother had taught her that much, at least.
Acknowledgments
Thank you to my amazing, enthusiastic agent extraordinaire, Felicity Trew at the Caroline Sheldon Literary Agency, who restored my faith when I needed it most.
Thank you also to my fabulous editor Nia Beynon and all the team at Boldwood, whose professional experience, attention to detail and publishing expertise is second to none!
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About the Author
Sheila Riley wrote four #1 bestselling novels under the pseudonym Annie Groves and is now writing a new saga trilogy under her own name. She has set it around the River Mersey and its docklands near to where she spent her early years. She still lives in Liverpool.
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First published in Great Britain in 2019 by Boldwood Books Ltd.
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Copyright © Sheila Riley, 2019
Cover Design by The Brewster Project
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The moral right of Sheila Riley to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Every effort has been made to obtain the necessary permissions with reference to copyright material, both illustrative and quoted. We apologise for any omissions in this respect and will be pleased to make the appropriate acknowledgements in any future edition.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
