Free Until You're Mine by Samantha Hayes

face was bursting red with hatred and anger. Blue-black veins wiggled across his cheeks and his strawberry-like nose, indicating a lifestyle that was most ungodly.
    ‘Are you certain Russell Goodall was the baby’s biological father?’ DNA testing would soon tell them but she wanted their opinion.
    ‘Sally-Ann told us he was,’ Mr Frith said. He let out a half growl, half sigh.
    ‘No, Sally-Ann wasn’t sure, Bill,’ Mrs Frith continued. ‘She was a . . . a popular girl.’
    ‘Slut, you mean.’
    ‘Carry on,’ Lorraine said to Mrs Frith.
    ‘She had two boyfriends. She couldn’t decide between them. When Liam found out about the baby, he didn’t want anything more to do with her. He said it couldn’t possibly be his,’ Mrs Frith explained meekly.
    ‘Fucking whore, that’s what she was.’
    ‘Bill!’ Mrs Frith said as loudly as she could. ‘Our daughter was not . . . she was not like that.’
    ‘What’s Liam’s surname, Mrs Frith?’
    ‘Rider. Liam Rider.’
    ‘And married with a family of his own, I might add.’ Mr Frith’s hands were balled into tight fists. He sucked air in and out as if there was no oxygen left in the room. ‘No wonder the dirty bastard went running when Sally-Ann got pregnant.’
    ‘So you can’t be sure who the baby’s real father was?’ What mattered more, Lorraine knew, was who each of the two men
believed
the father was.
    ‘Sally-Ann got herself in a state over it. When Liam wanted nothing more to do with her, she tried to forget him,’ Mrs Frith said. ‘She wanted to scribble him out of her life, but it was hard. She loved him.’
    Literally
, thought Lorraine as she remembered the scratched-out name in the pregnancy file.
    ‘Russell stepped up to the mark. He’s a kind-hearted boy,’ the mother continued.
    ‘He’s a loser, that’s what.’ Mr Frith’s turn again.
    ‘Where did Sally-Ann meet Liam Rider?’ Lorraine asked. ‘Who did she know first?’
    ‘She’s known Russ since she was at primary school. Liam, though, she didn’t meet him until she enrolled on that college course. He was teaching her bookkeeping. Everything changed when she met Liam.’
    ‘Teaching her how to be immoral, more like,’ Mr Frith said. His face appeared to balloon at the cheeks and turn a deep shade of beetroot, then he broke down into dry, rasping sobs. He covered his face and dropped his head. The top of his scalp was swept across with strands of grey, greasy hair.
    Lorraine glanced at Patrick. They gave the man a moment.
    ‘Let it out, love,’ Mrs Frith said, but he shrugged her hand off his back. He was going to have to do this his own way.
    ‘One more question.’ Lorraine drew in breath but then stopped. She’d been going to ask why they thought Sally-Ann had put Russ Goodall as her next of kin on the pregnancy file and not either of them. But staring at them in turn, she kind of guessed.
    *
    Liam Rider wasn’t home. A bemused woman of about thirty-five answered the door with a couple of kids peering on from down the hallway. It was a pleasant house, a Fifties semi with a neat front garden and a pot of pansies beside the front door. A waft of cooking food – baked potatoes or chips – spilled out as the woman stared at her ID. Lorraine felt her stomach rumble.
    ‘Is everything OK?’ the woman asked, paling a little. ‘Is Liam all right?’ She took hold of the doorframe as Lorraine convinced her that everything was fine, there were no accidents. She couldn’t bring herself to say that no one was dead.
    ‘It’s Mr Rider I’d like to speak to,’ Lorraine said. ‘Do you know where I can find him?’
    ‘At the college, I think,’ she replied. Her eyes were flashing everywhere from beneath a neat blonde fringe. She didn’t look like the kind of wife to be cheated on. Then again, Lorraine hadn’t thought she was the type either until Adam, drunk on guilt, had decided to tell her that he’d had a brief –
oh so brief
– affair. Lorraine