Read Online A Simple Act of Violence by R.J. Ellory - Free Book Online

and felt confused and upset. She didn’t understand what was happening, but she knew she was lying to her daughter.
    Three blocks from the school Natasha Joyce bought the Post . She looked at the picture of Catherine Sheridan; she read the first two or three paragraphs of the article.
    ‘It’s her, isn’t it, Mom?’ Chloe said.
    Natasha shook her head. ‘Don’t know, sweetie . . . looks like her. Maybe it’s just someone that looks like her.’ She hoped to God that she was right. She hoped to God that the monochrome face that looked back at her was the face of someone else entirely. Now she’d seen it twice - once on the TV, once in the paper. She was afraid. More than afraid.
    ‘I think it’s her, Mom . . . she has the same look in her eyes.’
    ‘What look is that, darling?’
    Chloe shrugged. ‘Don’t know . . . maybe like she knew someone was going to get her.’
    Natasha laughed nervously. She remembered standing in the cold breeze with those two people. A woman and a man. How long had it been? Five years. Jesus, it really was all of five years ago. The woman’s name was not Catherine Sheridan. And the man. Chewing gum, twitching a little, like nervous was his middle name. Like he was watching for someone, someone he believed might see them.
    They’d asked after her boyfriend, Chloe’s father. His name was Darryl King, and Natasha remembered thinking, who are these people? How the hell would people like this know Darryl?
    Chloe looked up; wide-eyed sweetness and light, innocent as snow. ‘Who d’you think might have killed her?’
    Natasha laughed again. ‘It’s not the same lady,’ she said. ‘I’m sure it’s not the same lady.’ She folded the paper and tucked it under her arm. She took Chloe’s hand and started walking.
    Didn’t say a word all the way home, and when they arrived Natasha sat in the frontroom for a while. Like she was waiting for something she knew would come. Could hear Chloe playing in her room. Natasha wondered how much Chloe had figured out. She seemed cool, seemed like nothing in the world could bother her. That was the way Natasha had always wanted Chloe to feel, like nothing in the world could ever reach her. Mom could run interference between Chloe and the world. Natasha had done it with Darryl, and though Chloe had only been four when he’d died, she knew that kids were perceptive, and sometimes the youngest were the smartest of all. It had been a thing. A real thing. A full-time kind of thing. Keeping Darryl’s world out of the line of sight, out of earshot, out of Chloe’s life. Hard, almost impossible, but Chloe seemed to have survived, seemed to be okay, seemed to have remained untouched by everything . . . until the newspaper.
    She glanced at the paper again, at the face that looked back at her. She tried to remember when she’d last seen the woman. A couple of weeks before Darryl died - before Darryl King got himself killed for getting involved in things he never should have been involved in. And regardless of whether it was the same woman or not, this thing hurt Natasha. It made Natasha realize that Chloe had seen what was going on, that she had been paying attention, that she could remember all the way back to when her father died. Back to when that woman had come looking for Darryl. And the man with her, the fact that he’d taken such an interest in Chloe, like he felt guilty or something . . . Gave her twenty bucks. Just pulled twenty bucks right out of his pocket and gave it to her. And they bought that doll, the doll that took pride of place in amongst everything else for so long. Polly Petal. Stupid fucking Polly Petal doll. And now, five years on, she’d seen this woman’s face in the paper . . .
    Natasha shuddered. She felt giddy, almost frightened. She didn’t want to think about such things. She didn’t want to remember the past. She wanted the past to stay right where she’d left it.
    After a little while she walked out of the kitchen and