Chapter 18: The Back Lane

Marianne's POV

"I've seen nobody," I said, with my hand on the door.

"Course you haven't, love," Dennis said, and went on smiling.

I went out into the car park, and then I ran.

I got to the Micra with the keys already in my fist.

Joss came out of the side door behind me, taking the steps three at a time.

"He knows," I said.

"He's known since the pie."

"I walked straight into it."

"You said one true thing." He pulled the passenger door open. "Drive."

I drove the way I'd never driven in my life.

We came into Pauline's street with the headlights off.

Two bikes were parked on the pavement outside her house.

A young man in a black prospect's vest was standing on her front step, and a second was walking up the side passage toward the yard.

Pauline was in her doorway with the rolling pin.

"Not tonight," she was saying. "Go home to your mothers."

"Dennis wants the baby, missus," said the one on the step.

"Then Dennis can come and ask me himself."

He put his hand flat on her chest and moved her aside.

She hit him on the wrist with the rolling pin, hard enough to crack it.

He howled and hopped back down the step with his arm in his other hand.

Joss was already out of the car.

He took the first boy by the back of his vest and put him over the garden wall into the hedge.

Then he went down the passage after the second.

I ran past Pauline into the hall.

"The loft," Pauline said, red in the face. "They went up when your car came."

Keep reading free with an account. Start His Wife, Her Sister, Their Secret from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.