Lost Souls by Jenny O'Brien (android e book reader txt) 📕

he was loath to damage. She’d already run away once. She might not be so lucky the next time with who she bumped into.

He decided to stop off for a quick rest at Foryd Bay, one of the beaches nearest to the farmhouse and a great favourite with the family. The place was deserted apart from a bunch of teenagers throwing stones into the sea. The crystal-clear water was inviting but he turned away, having to drag a reluctant Ellie with him. She was tired, visibly dropping in front of his eyes. With the unexpected activity of the last few hours, he’d have liked nothing better than to curl up on the warm sand for a snooze. But safety was paramount. He had a feeling that he wouldn’t feel secure until he had a roof over their heads and a front door to bolt behind them. While north-west Wales was a world away from his isolated hideaway up the Great Orme, it would only take one stranger to change all that.

Keeping the Menai Strait, and the Isle of Anglesey on the right and Caernarfon Airport up ahead, this was the most anxious time for Ronan. The screaming roar of aeroplanes taking off and landing was a constant threat and once he even had to pull Ellie to one side, trying to hide her among the tangled mess of greenery that lined the route. He heaved a sigh of relief when he spotted the tiny hamlet of Saron, the landmark he’d been hoping for. From there it was another half-hour walk following the coastal path until they came to a bridge he recognised.

With Dinas Dinlle beach in the distance, he could finally start to relax and funnily enough so did Ellie. Now instead of silence there was nervous chatter as if she had too much to say and not enough time in which to say it. He learnt lots but nothing of any importance, mainly about her hope to train in London as a ballerina when she left school and her love of reading. He even learnt about her best friend, Heather, and the difficulties they were having at school, their friendship forged by the unkindness of their classmates. He could tell her a lot about bullying but instead he let her continue in case she let something slip that would reveal her reason for running away. But her chatter stopped as quickly as it had started, the sugar rush, from the chocolate he’d plied her with during their short break only a distant memory as she faded into complete silence.

‘It won’t be long, kid. Another five or ten minutes and then it’s straight to bed.’

There was no reply.

The dirt track up to his grandparents’ property was starting to show signs of neglect with weeds poking their way through the narrow sloping driveway. The long low farmhouse was just how he remembered, the stone-fronted building as familiar to him as his own home. With the memory of how it had once been pushing through the layers of his mind, the sight of the empty planters that straddled the doorway was a physical stabbing pain as reality hit. To lose both grandparents and his father in the course of a year right on the back of his expulsion from school and his mother’s cancer diagnosis was almost too much for him to bear.

His hands laced through the straps of his rucksack and gripped together over his chest, his bitten nails finding purchase on the tender flesh of his palm. The past was best left alone, something he’d been telling himself ever since he’d left his mother’s house – he couldn’t call it home, not now.

He reached the front door and, fumbling in his pockets, his fingers curled around the hard, cold outline of the keys he’d taken. Ellie waited patiently at his side. The worst of it was that it was all his fault. If he hadn’t taken that final stand against those two boys in St Gildas, the cataclysmic chain of events that had led to the destruction of everything he cherished would never have started. There wasn’t even anything he could do to make it right. Redemption for him was a never-ending roundabout of what-ifs and maybes, the past something he’d like to change in the hollows of his mind. That was his tragedy and the cause of his recent mental and emotional decay. He needed saving but what was the likelihood with no one around, apart from a ten-year-old girl?

With the Yale key in the lock, he lifted his arm, holding it out to prevent Ellie from entering as he finally examined the wisdom in bringing her here. He’d heard the rumours of what had happened at the isolated farmhouse. He’d have had to be living in Timbuktu not to be privy to the story that had filled the front pages of every paper. Now that they’d arrived, he could almost see a high-resolution image of what might be lying in wait in the room at the end of the hall.

‘You stay here. I need to check that it’s safe.’ He swung his rucksack off his shoulders and propped it up against the flocked wallpaper.

The farmhouse was long and low with only attic space above, he recalled, his attention drawn as if by some invisible force to the hatch that punctuated one end of the ceiling. He used to love rummaging among the old tea chests that held everything an imaginative boy could want. The long hours he’d spent with his brothers playing make-believe with the long-discarded and forgotten clothes held an importance far in excess of the reality of mouldy rags and web-strewn rafters.

Ignoring the living space on the right, he walked in the opposite direction to the extension where a master bedroom and en suite had been added sometime in the Seventies, his pace slowing to a stop when he reached the door.

Chapter 22

Gaby

Monday 3 August, 6.30 p.m. Wisteria Cottage

Wisteria Cottage was the last property