the road. She seemed detached, was staring out of the window.
‘What’s wrong?’ asked Ellie.
Abby turned to face her. ‘You can’t account for eighteen thousand pounds’ worth of spending?’
Ellie huffed. ‘Look, I don’t get paid much. I work hard. I need to let off steam sometimes. Look after myself.’
‘But that’s so much money!’
‘It’s over years, Abby. I work all the hours I have to give at that school, and my salary barely touches the sides. I feel like I’m going round in circles. OK, so I know I could rent somewhere cheaper, maybe treat myself less often, but I also need to live my life.’ She paused. ‘You wouldn’t understand. I did so little when I was younger. Always ill, always missing out. My world was so small. I feel like I lost something that I’ll never get back.’
‘But Ellie . . . Eighteen thousand pounds!’
The familiar panic fluttered up in Ellie again and she looked at her sister, but then something surprised her. She realized she felt sorry for Abby. At the effect the debt was having on her, and it wasn’t even her debt. Her sister didn’t seem to have the ability to understand that money could give you choices and experiences as well as security.
‘You never know how long you’ve got on this earth,’ said Ellie. ‘I guess I always had an underlying understanding of my own mortality from when I was young. You know, always being so ill. I didn’t ever tell anyone but when I was little I decided I had cancer. I thought I was going to die. I would go to bed and put a note under my pillow: “I love you, Mum. Bye bye.” In case I didn’t wake up in the morning.’
Her sister was looking at her expectantly.
‘No, I didn’t include you.’ Ellie shrugged.
Abby blinked and then barked out a laugh.
‘Look at last night,’ Ellie went on. ‘That could have ended very differently. It could have been us lying with our throats cut in those woods. What would your millions do for you then, Abby?’
For once, her sister had nothing to say.
SIXTY-THREE
Matteo was sitting in the back of the police car, alone. He was far enough away from the crime scene to be unnoticed, which was how he liked it, but close enough that he could see what was going on. The tent was now up, covering the body; police and forensics crawled the area.
It was quiet in the car and it gave him space to think. A man lay dead just a few metres from him, shot in the back. There was still no connecting evidence that Abby had done it, or that she’d even been to these woods, but he had a sense of foreboding that later on this afternoon the evidence would start to pile up. The bullet would be the same as those from his regulation police gun, fibres would be found on the corpse’s body, Abby’s hair might be on the ground amongst the blood and the leaves.
Once all that happened, Matteo knew his wife would be wanted as a suspected murderer. It didn’t matter that the piece of scum on the hill probably deserved to die. Abby was armed and would be considered dangerous. When they caught up with her, there would be no softly, softly arrest. They would take her down.
And what about him? How did he feel about his wife now she was the subject of a manhunt? And what about all that stuff when she was younger? Had she poisoned her brother, attempted to do the same to her sister?
The door opposite him suddenly opened. He looked over to see Baroni slide onto the back seat next to him.
‘Have you heard from her?’ she asked.
He felt a twinge of irritation. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Otherwise I would have told you.’ Wouldn’t I? He didn’t know, and decided to ignore her look of scepticism.
‘You made any calls?’
‘Again, no.’
‘OK. You need to ring her and pretend you know nothing about any of this. Tell her you’re on your way to Hernani but you just called the hotel to make sure she arrived safely and they said she never showed up. Ask her if she is OK and where she is right now. Sound like a loving husband. A concerned, loving husband.’
He bit his lip to stop himself from saying something he’d later regret. How he hated her authoritarian tone.
‘You know that even if she had something to do with this, she’s vulnerable. She’s not a criminal.’