Free Till We Meet Again by Lesley Pearse

to herself. ‘The truth of the matter is that you are a pompous, nasty bastard!’
    She hated him. If it hadn’t been for her mother she would never have gone back to the house after she started university. Monty even took the credit for that, boasting about the sacrifices he’d had to make to give his three children such a good education.
    The truth was, it hadn’t cost him anything, they’d all gone to grammar schools. When they went on to university they all got grants, and took part-time jobs to keep themselves. Monty had never given any of them anything – not money, not time, nor even affection. Now he liked to take the credit for their successes.
    But Beth had loved her mother. She was a quiet, gently brought up woman who did her best for her children and stoically put up with her overbearing bully of a husband, believing that marriage was for better or worse. But it couldn’t get much worse than she had it. She might have lived to a ripe old age if Montague had agreed to sell the house and move somewhere dry, warm and easier to look after.
    ‘I wonder if you’ll tell me what your parents are like?’ Beth said to herself, thinking again of Susan.
    Beth liked to know her clients’ family background. She found it often held the key to what made them turn to crime. It certainly wasn’t an infallible guide, though – there had been enough trauma and provocation in her own family for her or her two siblings to go off the rails. But none of them had.
    Robert was a hard-working doctor, kind, thoughtful and with more patience than she’d ever known in a man. Serena had her mother’s sweetness, but she was no doormat. She ran her accountancy practice from home, while looking after her three children too, and she was always unfailingly glamorous.
    Beth couldn’t claim to share her brother’s and sister’s gentle natures. She had always been fiery, self-sufficient, and hard-hearted too.
    She had just got on to the M5 when the ringing of her car phone broke off her reverie. It was Steven Smythe. ‘I know you are on your way to visit Fellows,’ he began. ‘But we got some information about her this morning, and I thought it might be useful to you.’
    ‘Well, thank you, Steven,’ she said, assuming he was only going to tell her about Annabel.
    ‘She was born in 1951, in Stratford-upon-Avon. Born Susan Wright, she changed her name by deed poll to Susan Fellows in December of 1986 in a solicitor’s office in Bristol.’
    Beth was so astounded that her hand slipped on the steering wheel and the car veered dangerously towards the middle lane of the motorway. She dropped the phone, straightened the wheel and then pulled over to the hard shoulder, badly shaken.
    ‘Steven?’ she said as she picked up the phone again. ‘Are you still there?’
    ‘Yeah, what happened, did you drop the phone?’
    ‘Something like that,’ she gasped out. ‘Where did this information come from?’
    ‘Your chum at Bridewell. He left a message for you on the answerphone before the receptionist got in.’
    For the first time since Beth had met Steven she had the urge to talk to him properly, to share with him what that name meant to her. But she suppressed it. She had to think this one through carefully.
    ‘Thank you for letting me know,’ she said, aware her voice was shaky. ‘I’ll be back in the office by lunch-time. See you then.’
    ‘Are you all right?’ he asked curiously. ‘You sound odd.’
    She looked at the cars streaming by her on the motorway and realized she was lucky not to have caused a serious accident. ‘I’m fine,’ she lied. ‘It’s just the reception on this phone. I’ll see you later.’
    But she wasn’t fine. She felt as if she’d been hit by a thunderbolt. Now she understood why faint bells had rung in her mind when she looked at Susan and heard her voice. And why Susan had reacted as she did when Beth first met her at Bridewell.
    Her childhood friend, that tubby little girl with hair the