Page 39 of 59 Minutes

MRS DABB

He had taken her home in a truck the next day.

She’d forgotten that until today but now it all comes back.

The mud-splattered step up into its body, the cab filled with boysy smells and detritus.

Paper bakery bags, made see-through with oil.

Dank smells from strong cigarettes, butts spilling from an overstuffed cigarette tray.

Discarded work hoodies along the back seat.

Stink on stink on stink. She’d forgotten it all.

She still can’t remember the colour of its exterior, only the mud and the smell threatening to make her sick, her belches rising in a final indignity. He was a stranger again in the morning. A name known by reputation and already a regret.

She’d asked him to drop her off in Chagford instead of at the cottage, not wanting to be seen. And he knew why, a brief wave of hurt passing over his face. To think, she’d once felt sorry for him, as she tucked her Saturday night tail between her Sunday morning legs and slunk home.

The truck slows ahead of her. Inside, a collection of heads bob up and down with the camber of the road. She speeds up to get a closer look, but then it indicates left and carefully turns. As she zooms past, she can see no one inside that she recognises.

His place is just over the brow of the next hill.

How had they got there that night, from Chagford?

Vague recollections of a car, maybe a lift from another drinking buddy, themselves beer-breathed and swaying?

Country rules. They all thought they were untouchable.

They were, until they skidded over that line.

Before he killed someone she loved and turned her life inside out, the raw flesh of it still exposed.

Fuck. Fuck. Bunny knew his name, knew his reputation, the stories and still …

Because she didn’t know the most crucial bit, and what’s more alluring than being handed the missing piece of your own puzzle?

She is trying not to think of Bunny being pecked at by what’s left of that family. But if there’s any possibility she’s there … Are there any good ones among them? Any women … an aunt or grandmother who might keep her child safe? Especially if they value their own blood so much.

Well, half their blood but loved with her mother’s whole heart. She drives faster as the little car whines its way up the slope towards the dark valley the other side.