Read Online Hold Your Breath by Caroline Green - Free Book Online Page B

Siobhan had remembered an old boyfriend who lived next door to a large church in a village about twenty miles away. They’d split under acrimonious circumstances and although Siobhan
had no reason to believe the man would take Tyler, there had been threats made during their final, heated row, which implicated him.
    The police went in hard, battering down the door and dragging Sean Stanley from where he’d been sleeping off a drinking bender. Already known to police for petty crime, Stanley’d
suffered injuries in the police’s handling of him.
    But Tyler hadn’t been there.
    As everyone soon discovered, he’d been lying near to his home at the bottom of the steep bank that led to the railway line. An area the police said had already been thoroughly searched.
Although obviously not thoroughly enough.
    Tara felt about a hundred years old as she wearily began to pack away the cuttings and the letter.
    Of course she
hadn’t
killed that little boy. His injuries had killed him. And maybe, as her mother had tearfully pointed out many times since, if Siobhan Evans had kept more of an
eye on her small son in the first place, it would never have happened.
    But it felt like Tara’s fault. She couldn’t explain what had happened, despite the long tearful hours trying to do just that with Mum and Dad afterwards. She’d been sure, that
was all. So sure. And so wrong.
    The story would have had more prominence in the national news had it not been for a unique set of circumstances that week: the suicide of a cabinet minister and a massive terrorist attack in
France. A perfect storm of bad news.
    But it wasn’t a big town and it didn’t take long for people to find out locally.
    There was no need for Siobhan Evans to tell her she’d never be forgiven.
    Tara was never going to forgive herself.

C HAPTER 7
W IND C HIMES
    T he next day at school, Tara was conscious of Melodie Stone’s purse in her bag. It felt like it was giving off some kind of radioactive glow.
She’d stuffed it hastily into an A4 envelope that morning, and the brief few moments of contact had caused a spasm of pain to shoot through her head. She didn’t want to touch it any
more than she had to. It was impossible to ignore the thing. Every time she went in her bag to get a book, a tissue or her purse, the bulging envelope seemed to demand her attention.
    She found herself next to Karis during food technology, washing up some stuff that Mrs Marchment had used in a demonstration. They worked in silence. Tara kept wrestling with the decision to
tell Karis about her conversation with Will. Maybe she could take the flipping purse there instead. But something stopped her every time she formed the words. She didn’t want to have to
explain how she’d come into contact with Will, in case it meant divulging that she’d been to the lido to find Leo.
    So she held back. She wasn’t intending to speak at all, but it was Karis who suddenly broke the silence.
    ‘Why did you ask about Mel the other day?’ she said.
    Tara’s breath caught.
    ‘I mean, why wouldn’t she be okay in Brighton?’ Karis was watching Tara intently, her hazel eyes narrowed.
    Tara shrugged. ‘You lot were all wailing so much about how sudden it was, that was all,’ she said.
    Karis sniffed and glanced over to where Jada and co were huddled, giggling over something on Chloe’s BlackBerry. Tara followed her gaze. It suddenly struck her that she hadn’t seen
Karis hanging out with that group for a few days.
    ‘
I
wasn’t wailing, actually,’ said Karis.
    ‘Whatever,’ said Tara, rinsing off a wooden spoon, which was nobbled and sticky with pastry mix, under the hot tap.
    ‘It is a bit strange, though,’ said Karis in a rush.
    Tara stopped what she was doing to meet her eyes.
    ‘I mean, the fact that her phone isn’t working any more,’ said Karis. ‘Why would she just leave so suddenly? She doesn’t even like her dad.’
    Tara stared at her. Why did everyone think
she
was