Free The Hunter's Prayer by Kevin Wignall Page B

the dogs, naturally.’
    She smiled. The last two days had been a nightmare, like flying blind through a storm, and as things had deteriorated, it had felt like she was beyond ever taking control again.
    If anything, worse was probably still to come, but something about being here with this benign man and his daughter, his collection of charity leaflets, made her feel like there was still some kind of life she could head for, some integral part of her family that they hadn’t managed to destroy.
    There were black days ahead, and a loss that would last forever, but she had to believe that, at some point in the distant future, all of this would turn back to the good. All she had to do was stay alive long enough to get there, a thought that made her want to hold on to Lucas, to take him back to England with her, because it was hard to imagine herself safe without him.

Part Two

Chapter Six
    H e was free again, lesson learned. From now on, no matter who called, no matter what the history between them, he couldn’t help them. This hadn’t been too bad and they were nice enough kids, but the fact remained, he was either retired or he wasn’t.
    He thought of them now as he walked back into the station, how thrown they’d looked when he’d put them in a taxi and sent them in the direction of the consulate. They’d obviously expected him to go along, not appreciating that it wouldn’t have been in anyone’s interests for him to have shown up with them.
    They’d be okay without him now anyway. Since Ella had made the call early that morning the consular staff would have been busy phoning around, checking her story, making arrangements. They probably already had a flight home, and that had been the limit of his job, delivering her into that security.
    He was glad she’d gone. As much as he’d liked her, having her around had made him think of things that weren’t worth thinking about. Maybe that had started before Montecatini, just watching them, but it had been worse afterwards—talking to her, having her stay in his house, the questions she’d asked.
    He was distracted now by a girl walking through the station concourse who’d changed direction suddenly and headed towards him. For a split second, he tightened up but then noticed the scrunched-up bag in her hand, the litter bin next to the bench he was sitting on. She threw the bag in and changed course again, probably not even noticing him.
    He looked around at the other people—a little kid dancing around as he walked in front of his parents, an old woman making steady progress with a small wheeled case, a look of long-nurtured disdain on her face, a couple of teenagers laughing. He took a mental snapshot of each of them, amazed as ever that it was probably the closest he’d come to knowing these people.
    It was the thing that got him about railway stations and traveling by train. He’d often think of the houses he passed, the lit windows, cars waiting at crossings, people walking. A procession of glimpses into lives he’d never know.
    He’d always found it vaguely depressing, and yet it shouldn’t have mattered that the world was full of people he’d never know when he’d removed himself so completely from the world anyway. This time, though, waiting for a train, he understood why he felt like that.
    His daughter could be one of these people. She could brush past him one day in a railway station or an airport and he wouldn’t know, neither of them would ever know, that the opportunity of two lifetimes had come and gone, lost in the quickly forgotten detail.
    He took a deep breath and snapped himself out of it. All these things were true, almost certainly, but life was full of poignant truths and wrongs that could never be righted. There was nothing to be gained from wallowing in them.
    He took out the book he’d just bought, Persuasion , losing himself immediately in the distant history of the Elliot family. His routine had been upset, that was all,