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

cut and patted it dry with some toilet paper, pressing down hard. ‘It’ll stop bleeding in a minute and Mum has a first-aid box here somewhere. Hold that for a second while I find it.’

After a moment of rummaging in the same cabinet, he managed to produce a handful of plasters. He stuck one in place, the others he tucked away in his pocket. He had a premonition he was going to need them.

‘Right then, stay still a minute while I finish off your hair.’ With two snips he removed the longer bits, leaving Ellie looking as if she’d come off worse in an argument with a lawnmower.

‘Number one?’ she said, fiddling with the settings on the clippers, all trace of her earlier bravado masked under an expression that declared her acceptance of what was to come.

‘Perhaps you could get away with a number four.’ He hovered, unsure of quite what to do. He’d never had to clip hair before, but then again neither had she.

Chapter 6

Janice

Monday 3 August, 7.50 a.m. Church Walk, Llandudno

Janice Stevens’s immaculate appearance was hardly in keeping with the thoughts scattering through her mind. But then she was never one to allow her inner turmoil to impact on the mask of indifference she presented to the world. As a lawyer, she’d learnt the hard way to screen her feelings with a calm smile, something that had proved invaluable when her husband had turned from the man she’d married into one of Britain’s worst monsters.

Rounding the corner out of the clos, the only indication that she wasn’t her usual self was a slight tightening of her hands gripping the steering wheel. The two boys squabbling gently in the back would have no idea that she’d just spotted their brother loitering by the lamp post near their home. It had been nearly a year since her world had descended into a tragedy but only a couple of months since her rocky relationship with Ronan had dismantled completely. To wake up and find him gone with only a scrappy letter telling her not to search for him was worse somehow than all the months gone previously.

She flicked on the indicator before turning left onto the dual carriageway. She looked at the entrance to the sports centre up ahead, her mind for once not on the usual list of lunch boxes and school bags that had to be remembered before the boys could jump out of the car and join their friends. Instead she dipped into the past, a place drenched with sorrow. Casper, currently on remand awaiting trial, couldn’t hurt her now but Ronan’s problems and life choices were a constant source of worry and pain. Along with the additional stress of having to wind up Casper’s shop and go back to work in order to pay the bills, there was also the constant fear about her own health. She was only managing to keep the family together by a thread. If her cancer returned …

Janice was brought back to the present by the sound of Jacob and Caleb’s voices as they scrabbled around the back seat collecting their belongings.

‘Bye, Mum, love you,’ they flung in her direction before slamming the doors; words that, for once, stabbed like a knife as she remembered other similar words before Ronan had disappeared.

Like an automaton, she reversed before performing a neat three-point turn, the powered steering wheel of the Saab taking the weight off her shoulders. She knew she should get rid of the car. Three cars in the driveway was two too many but a trip to the garage had decided her that the pittance they were offering wasn’t worth the effort. There was always the hope that Ronan would come to his senses and pick up the driving lessons he’d abandoned along with all links to his past.

With her foot hard on the accelerator, she decided to do the one thing she’d been told not to by Reverend Honeybun – to speak to her son. Oh yes, she’d traced Ronan’s movements almost as soon as he’d left the family home. He was an intelligent lad, far more intelligent than either Casper or herself; that’s why they’d taken the decision to move him to St Gildas instead of keeping him at the local secondary school. She’d visited the vicar in desperation over those first few days, when the police had reminded her that, as an adult, Ronan was free to make his own choices. Reverend Honeybun, with his soft voice and wispy grey hair, had gone out of his way to both settle her mind and arrange her thoughts. Ronan needed to have a reason to come home and no amount of badgering on her part could change that.

She pulled into the drive a little less than thirty minutes after leaving it, ignoring any thoughts of the nine o’clock meeting she had lined up. Ronan back home was all she could think about. Closing the front door, she leant back against it, her palms flat against the wood and listened. But all was quiet apart from the ticking of her father’s mahogany clock, which sat next to the Portmeirion vase on the hall table.

It only took her a few seconds to see that the rooms looked exactly as she’d left them. The boys’ cereal bowls and spoons were piled beside the dishwasher for later. The study, Casper’s domain, was a room she hadn’t entered in weeks and, pushing open the door, she held her breath in case any trace of his aftershave lingered. Just like she now avoided the lounge, this room – his room – was a no-go area unless she desperately needed to check one of the many household documents that resided in the steel filing cabinet under the window.

His study was decorated in uncompromising shades of dark grey, a large antique wooden desk taking up much of the floor space, the walls lined with bookshelves. But this wasn’t where her gaze rested. It was on the