Page 149 of Worse Than Murder

‘Have I ever broken a promise I’ve made to you?’

‘No.’

‘There you go, then.’

‘Come on, we’d better be heading off before we get caught up in all that traffic,’ Philip says.

We all hug and say our goodbyes.

‘I’m going to miss you so much,’ Carl whispers in my ear as he wraps his arms around me.

‘I’m going to miss you, too. Be good to your parents, however many dogs you end up getting. I’m at the end of the phone whenever you need me.’

He pushes himself out of my embrace. ‘You could move to Ireland with us. Mum says your family is Irish. You could return to your roots.’

I smile. ‘It’s a good idea, Carl. I’ll give it some thought. Go on, don’t keep your mum and dad waiting.’

We wave them off, both with tears in our eyes.

‘I’m going to miss them,’ I say.

Adele puts her arm around me and squeezes me tight. ‘They’re a good family. We’ll go and visit them very soon.’

‘I’d like that.’

‘In the meantime,’ Adele says. She links arms with me, and we turn and walk away from the wreckage of the restaurant. ‘What are you going to do next? As snug as it is in Tania’s cluttered house, I think we’re very close to outstaying our welcome.’

‘Speaking of Tania.’ I take my phone from my back pocket and open an email. ‘She sent me a mock-up of the next edition of her paper.’ I hand it to Adele.

‘Tania’s asked me for a slutty photo.’

‘Do you have a slutty photo?’

‘I have one of me wearing a Sarah Lund sweater.’

‘Ooh, chunky knitwear, very slutty. And what’s this? Forty-two? Really?’

‘You don’t think I can get away with forty-two?’

She looks me up and down. ‘You’re going to need a lot of Vaseline on that camera lens.’

I snatch my phone back and pocket it. ‘I’m not sure how Gill is going to take all this. I doubt Tania is going to mention her once in the article.’

‘What’s going to happen to Gill’s father?’

‘I’m not sure. He sat on the secret for thirty years that Iain blackmailed him into removing Travis’s statement. Lionel’s name was blackened throughout the village when it came out. If he had said Iain coerced him, nobody would have believed him.’

‘Pemberton truly is an evil bastard. I can feel my blood boiling just thinking about him. Anyway.’ Adele puts her arm through mine again. ‘Let’s confine Iain to the pages of history. Hopefully, he’ll get a long sentence and he’ll fade away a lonely and broken man.’

‘Hope so.’

‘And what are you going to do now? Are we heading back to Sheffield?’

I take a deep breath. I don’t say anything.

‘You need to find out the truth, Matilda. You need to discover who killed your family. That way, you can move on and rebuild your life.’

‘I know.’

‘So… what now?’

‘A cup of coffee and a piece of chocolate cake,’ I smile.

‘And after the coffee and cake?’

‘After the coffee and cake, I’ll give Sian a ring and ask her to pop over to the house and put the heater on. I want it to be nice and warm for when we get back home.’

We head off into the village. There’s a spring in my step. My mind is clear for the first time in a long while and I know exactly what I’m going to do next. I’m going back to Sheffield. I’m going to find the man who murdered my family.

And I’m going to kill him.