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

moving on.
    Still watching the estate agent, I stepped into the road. I didn’t see the van.
    I put out my hands to break my fall. As the road’s gravel made contact with the soft, private skin of my palm I twisted and hit the floor side-on. When I looked up I could see something black, its surface grooved with zigzags. It was a tyre. The tyre of a parked car on the street. Beyond the tyre I saw the scattered contents of my handbag, my business cards flapping in the wind.
    I must have been in pain, but all I could think was how spongy the van’s bumper had felt against my thigh bone and how surprising that was.
    The driver ran round to where I lay.
    ‘She came out of nowhere,’ he kept saying as people started to gather. ‘I braked just in time.’
    I became aware of someone kneeling over me.
    ‘Don’t move her. She might have hurt her back.’
    There was a growing murmur of voices. I looked in their direction. Trainers, flip-flops and slip-on leather shoes filled my vision.
    I knew I had to convince everyone I was OK, otherwise an ambulance and the police would be called. They’d contact my next of kin, Jason. It wouldn’t take him long to figure out why I’d been here, on this street.
    ‘It was my fault. I wasn’t looking where I was going.’
    It hurt, but I forced myself to sit up.
    ‘I think we should call someone.’ This was the driver again. ‘My insurance.’
    ‘I’m OK, honestly.’ I mustered a smile.
    ‘Are you sure?’ asked the man at my side. I looked at his face. He seemed genuinely concerned. In his fifties, with blue eyes, and cheeks crevassed with acne scars (most of which were hidden by a brown beard). His chest and shoulders were bull-solid, his arms thick with muscle.
    ‘I don’t want any fuss,’ I said, wincing at the searing sensation in my hip.
    He didn’t seem convinced. Still, he nodded and stood up.
    ‘I’ll take care of her,’ he said, addressing the driver and small crowd on the pavement. ‘You can all go on your way.’
    He began gathering the strewn contents of my handbag. I watched until I saw him retrieve Lauren’s silver compass and then set about finding my shoes. Somewhere during my tumble, my stilettos had fallen off.
    ‘How about something to warm you up?’
    I looked at my arms. I was shivering.
    ‘And maybe a plaster for that knee?’
    I let him help me to my feet and into a café a few doors down from the off-licence.
    ‘She’s had a bit of a bang, that’s all,’ he declared to nobody in particular once we were inside. He sat me on one of the fixed red plastic two-seaters that furnished the place. ‘Kimberley, can you bring a mug of tea?’
    A chubby girl at the till responded with a nod.
    The man crouched on his haunches and moved in close to look at my knee. Remembering myself, I tried to hitch down my skirt, but it was no good – from where he sat it was impossible for him not to see my underwear. He stroked the outer circle of the wound with the pad of his thumb. Beneath his greying forearm hair, I could see two tattoos. Too faint to be professional, the one on his right declared an allegiance to Celtic Football Club, the one on his left outlined a winged naked woman, a large anchor placed diagonally across the length of her body. They were the kind you do with a needle and ink from a biro. The kind you see on sailors. Or ex-cons.
    I looked around to see who else was in the café. There was only one customer. An old man eating his full English and reading the racing pages. Every now and again the long multi-coloured ribbons that hung above the entrance would fly up and brush him lightly on the back and he would tut at them as if they were a naughty child. A blackboard spelt out the daily specials in chalk and a clear-fronted Coke fridge hummed in the corner, dust balls dancing around the air vents where its bottom met the floor.
    ‘Is this place yours?’
    ‘It’s not mine, but I’m in charge here, if that’s what you mean.’ He wiped his