Free My Husband's Son: A dark and gripping psychological thriller by Deborah O'Connor

the shopkeeper bagged them up she winked at my empty ring finger and told me that some people called the biscuits dreaming bread and that it was tradition to break the cake over a bride’s head on the threshold to her new home.
    Outside the shop, sitting on a low wall overlooking the Atlantic, Lauren had surveyed the strange, crumbly biscuit with suspicion. But then her hunger had got the better of her and after tentatively nibbling a corner, she had devoured the whole thing in less than three bites. Licking her lips, she had pushed her fingers back inside the greasy paper bag in search of leftover crumbs and had declared it the most delicious thing she had ever tasted, more delicious even than Phish Food ice cream.
    I’d told Jason about that meal when we’d first started seeing each other. He’d taken me away for the weekend to a tiny stone house in Windermere. The first night there, the weather had blustered at the windows the same way it had in Mull. I’d told him that, despite the rain and being stuck in a small cottage with Mum and Dad, it had been a great holiday. The best.
    The pink candle wax had started to drip and harden onto the biscuit.
    ‘Thank you.’ I blew gently.
    With the light gone I blinked, disorientated. Sitting on that park bench earlier had left every muscle packed tight against my bones but now I felt them start to loosen. I thought about telling Jason how Mum had been there waiting.
    He seemed to sense the change in me. He got up, came round to where I sat, lifted my arm and put it around his neck. Then, placing his hands underneath my legs, he scooped me up off the chair and carried me out into the hall.
    I let my head fall heavy on his shoulder. His flannel shirt was soft against my cheek, his chest beneath it warm and firm.
    He reached the bottom of the stairs and slowly turned sideways on. Taking care not to bang my feet on the walls or banister, he began his ascent, hushing and soothing me with tiny words and noises that formed a language all our own and before we reached the top of the stairs my eyes were already closed, asleep.

Chapter Ten
    The following week I had a window of free time before my last meeting of the day, and I took my chance. I drove to the off-licence, parked across the street and grabbed my bag. Inside were the photofits I’d taken from Jason’s file. It had been five years, but I hoped that if the manager of the off-licence, this Keith Veitch, was one of the unidentified suspects seen in or near Ashbrook House when Barney disappeared, I’d be able to match him to a picture, no matter how much he’d changed in the meantime. More than that, I hoped to get another look at the boy. I needed to know if he would provoke the same reaction in me. I needed to know if I was imagining things that weren’t there.
    Putting the composite of the woman with frizzy hair to one side, I laid the images of the three men onto the passenger seat. The bald guy with the hamster cheeks seemed to be of a similar age. Trying and failing to remember whether or not Keith had hair, I moved on to the second man, the one with the goatee. He had a slim, almost gaunt face. I thought of Keith’s hip jowls. Maybe he’d spent the intervening years gaining weight? It was possible. Finally, I studied the man with the shaved head and pierced eyebrow. He looked to be in his mid-twenties, whereas I remembered Keith as more around the forty or fifty mark.
    Memorising their faces as best I could, I left the photofits in a pile, locked the car and was about to cross the road when a portly man holding a clipboard appeared in the off-licence doorway, a middle-aged couple in tow. I watched as the man with the clipboard pointed at the shop’s exterior. He seemed to be showing the couple around. I lifted my gaze up, to the blue and red Wine City sign. There, fixed on the wall above it, was a large LEASEHOLD AVAILABLE board.
    I felt a twist of anxiety. After only nine months in the job, Keith Veitch was