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Diana hugged her grandson sitting on her knee, tablet in his hand, watching a cartoon on YouTube. She’d ditched her phone and bought a cheap one with cash. She’d rented a car with more cash and driven to a holiday home village at Doon Lake, miles outside Ragmullin. She’d paid cash to the owner at the door. She hoped being dropped at the train station was enough to throw others off her scent. She needed time to think on her next move, knowing she was still too close to Ragmullin.

The house took for ever to heat up. She was cold to her bones, mainly with fear. Everything was her fault. Her beautiful daughter was dead. All because of her and the choices she’d made. She’d kept the secret buried for thirty years and now it was in danger of being blown wide open. Maybe it already had been. And there was more than her own safety at stake. Laura’s death proved that.

She wept uncontrollably, her tears dampening Aaron’s hair. Her daughter was dead. Murdered. What had it gained, only loss and sorrow? A gaping, empty void into which Diana was unable to stop herself sinking.

She’d been so careful. Too careful maybe, too regimented, to a point where her daughter found it difficult to grow. To be her own woman. Had it started when she got pregnant with Aaron? Had Diana’s loud cries been the catalyst to send Laura into the depths of depression, only to soothe it with illicit drugs and end up at Cuan?

Or was it the fact that all her impositions had driven Laura to seek out a place of her own? And then to be turned down for a mortgage. But Pine Grove! Anywhere but there. Anyone but Gordon Collins. That man! She shivered as she thought of how he used to strut around Ragmullin displaying his wife and daughters like trophies. Diana was sure he was the root cause of all evil. She’d tried talking to him, but that had been a disaster.

And he was involved in everything, including Cuan. She’d nearly choked that day when she’d seen him there. But that was quickly superseded by shock when she spotted the young woman. With her thin hair brushed back, her jawline sharp, her eyes so familiar that she wondered how anyone could deny her existence.

But she had. Diana Nolan and others had denied her once before too. The old memories surfaced and she’d almost run from the room. She did run eventually, leaving Laura behind. And that, Diana firmly believed, was what had caused a spree of murders almost twelve months later.

She hugged her grandson to her chest so tightly he whimpered. She had tried to protect a child thirty years ago and it was obvious she had failed. She had failed to protect Laura too. She had to protect Aaron at all costs.

This time, failure was not an option.