Dead Tomorrow

EPILOGUE

Lynn stood in Caitlin’s room, which had remained untouched for almost two and a half years. Now, amid all the mess of her daughter’s things, there was a stack of cardboard boxes from the removals firm.

What the hell did she keep and what did she throw away? There wasn’t much space in the tiny flat she was moving into.

With tears rolling down her cheeks, she stared around at the impenetrable tangle of clothes, soft toys, CDs, DVDs, shoes, make-up containers, the pink stool, the mobile of blue perspex butterflies, shopping bags and the dartboard with the purple boa hanging from it.

The tears were for Caitlin, not for this place. She wasn’t sorry to be leaving. Caitlin had been right all along, in her way. It had been their house but not their home.

She walked through into her bedroom. The bed was piled high with the contents of her wardrobe and cupboards. On the very top was her blue coat, still in the plastic zipper where she had sealed it after her first ‘date’ with Reg Okuma. Although it was her favourite coat, she had felt it was sullied, and had never worn it again. But Reg Okuma was all in the past now. Denarii had been good to her after Caitlin died, and had promoted her to manager. That had enabled her to write off his debt and adjust his credit rating on the computer system. No one had been any the wiser.

She slung the coat over her arm, went downstairs and out into the fine spring morning. Then she crammed it into the dustbin.

She was paying back Luke and Sue Shackleton from the money from the sale of the house. And some of Mal’s money, and her mum’s. There wouldn’t be much left after that, but she didn’t care. She needed to put the past behind her somehow.

And some of it nearly was. Her prison sentence, at any rate. Two years, suspended, thanks to an Oscar-winning performance by a barrister, or the luck of coming up in front of a judge with a heart – or maybe both.

The life sentence of grief for Caitlin was another thing. People said that the first two years were the worst, but Lynn was finding it didn’t really get any better. Several nights a week she would wake, in a cold sweat, crying bitterly over the decisions she had made and for the beautiful girl she had lost.

She would curse and kick herself that the legitimate transplant for Caitlin had been so close and she’d blown it out of sheer panic, out of sheer stupidity.

And the only thing that would calm her down and comfort her was the purring of Max, the cat, on the end of the bed, and remembering the smile of her daughter and those words she used to say that would so annoy her.

Chill, woman.