Fragile Lives Read Online Free PDF

closer all the time.’
    â€˜Eight, no, nine weeks,’ Mac said. ‘She still killed him in cold blood though, you know that. It wasn’t just an act of defence or revenge. It was chillingly thorough and the photograph …’ He shook his head recalling the mobile phone images Karen had shot of Mark Dowling, dead or dying. She had sent her phone to Mac once she was safely away. Proof, she had said, to make sure no one else was accused.
    â€˜Well, she had some sense of honour.’ Eden seemed almost to be following his thoughts. So far, few people knew about the images. Eden thought it best that they be withheld. Karen was smart, cool, used to running having acquired years of experience trying to escape Parker senior. The search for her must, of necessity, be as smart and as cool and as subtle as she was, and anyway right now she was officially just a possible witness to a murder, not the prime, indeed the only suspect that Mac and Eden knew her to be.
    â€˜What are the chances of her still being in the country?’ Eden wondered aloud.
    â€˜Good, I think. I don’t imagine she’d want to put that much distance between herself and George. She’s spent half her life looking out for him, I don’t think she’s about to give up on that altogether.’
    George’s morning had been filled with questions; both the openly expressed and the silently implied.
    It had been his best friend, Paul’s, first day back too after witnessing the horror of Mrs Freer’s murder. Paul had been quiet, subdued, and George had found himself fielding questions and comments for the both of them.
    â€˜You OK, George? Paul? Good to have you back.’ That had been Miss Crick, their form teacher and been echoed by the subject teachers.
    George had learned quickly that an emphatic nod and a mumbled ‘yes thanks’ sorted that particular level of inquiry. They didn’t expect a proper answer, just a response to their good manners in asking.
    Karen had been really hot on manners. ‘They cost nothing,’ she always said. ‘And they oil the wheels of the world.’ Sometimes, she could come out with some odd, almost old-fashioned stuff, but George had learnt to trust the content of her advice even though her actions were sometimes far beyond his reckoning.
    The curiosity of their classmates had been harder to dispel with just a gesture and few mumbled words, but that hadn’t stopped him from trying.
    The rumour mill had been working overtime. According to various versions, they had been charged with breaking and entering – almost true. They had killed some old lady – definitely not true. George’s mam had topped herself – unfortunately, all too true. George and Paul had done Mark Dowling in because he’d killed the old woman – not true at all but uncomfortably close to what George knew to have happened.
    The one good thing was that Dwayne Regis, George’s old nemesis, seemed content to leave them both alone now that Mark Dowling, Dwayne’s protector, had gone. Dwayne seemed almost as subdued as Paul and no longer, from what Paul had told him, a source of torment to be endured on the school bus.
    â€˜He didn’t say nothing,’ Paul was awed to report. ‘Everyone says he’s not said nothing since … you know?’
    Paul, George realized, was still having enormous trouble even labelling recent events. He certainly wasn’t ready to talk about them, and George wondered what took place in his weekly sessions with the counsellor. He imagined long avenues of silence while a clock on the wall counted the seconds. Shrinks always had a ticking clock on the wall in George’s experience.
    Break time had been the worst ten minutes of the morning. Left alone with their classmates and without adult supervision, the questions and the catcalls had come thick and fast.
    â€˜Did you really see the body?’
    â€˜Was