‘No, you listen to me: if my six-year-old son isn’t back here in ten minutes I’m going to come round there and rip you a new arsehole, are we clear?’ Ian McLaughlin slapped a hand over the mouthpiece and shouted at his wife to turn that bloody racket down. Then he went back to the idiot on the other end of the phone: ‘Where the hell’s Jamie?’
‘When I got back from the pub they were gone, OK? Catherine’s not here either … maybe she took the boys for a walk?’
‘A walk? It’s pissing down, pitch black, freezing cold—’
‘What? What’s wrong?’ Sharon stood at the door to the living room, wearing the witch costume she’d bought from Woolworths. The one that hid her pregnant bulge and made her breasts look enormous.
Ian grunted, not bothering to cover the phone this time. ‘It’s that moron Davidson: he’s lost Jamie.’
‘Jamie’s missing?’ Sharon clapped a hand to her mouth, stifling the shriek. Always overreacting, just like her bloody mother.
‘I never said that! I didn’t say he was lost, I just—’
‘If we’re late for this bloody party, I’m personally going to see to it that—’
The
