The Piggy Farmer (The Barrington Patch Book 3), Emmy Ellis [electric book reader txt] 📗

now. She’s taken extra shifts at Betty’s, then there’s that flower arranging course she’s doing.”

“Well, I’m sure I wouldn’t know owt about that, because you never said until now. You don’t share owt. Funny she hasn’t nipped in, because you were in each other’s pockets at one point. Something’s happened, I know it; you just don’t want to admit it.”

Doreen had held back a scream. Mam was poking too hard at an abscess that might pop. “I’m not talking to you when you’re in this kind of mood, it only leads to a row. I’m off to the market. Do you want owt?”

“A cauli and some carrots for tomorrow’s roast.”

Mam hadn’t dipped her hand in her purse or said thank you.

Now, Doreen sighed and eyed a dress, but if she bought it, Mam would comment on it, saying how it was too short, too tight, and people would think Doreen was a tart if she ‘swanned’ up to The Donny in it. “Legs aren’t for flashing, our Doreen.”

She turned away from it, missing the nights she’d put on whatever she liked and Mam hadn’t seen it, walking to the pub with Lou and Janice, having a right laugh, no chance of Mam turning up because she didn’t hold with ‘drinking and cavorting’, unlike some people.

Christ, always there with a barb.

Bloody hell, maybe Doreen should have stayed with her friends, but it was too late now as some girl called Deborah had taken Doreen’s place, and she doubted any of them would want her bunking in one of their rooms on a camp bed. And besides, Stalker calling her from the well had seemed so real at the time, and knowing his body was down the bottom of it… She couldn’t cope with it. She swore a faint rotting meat smell had wafted out, too, the peat not doing enough to hide it, the summer so hot it drew the whiff up.

Lou had said, “But surely it’ll be cold down there, so far under the ground, so the smell stayed there? You must have imagined it.”

But I bloody didn’t.

She moved on to the shoe stall, one with racks around the edges beneath the red-and-white-striped marquee. The woman who ran it wasn’t about, probably gassing to someone elsewhere, another market trader, so Doreen browsed what was on offer, again telling herself not to bother buying any because…Mam. The old gal meant well, had a good heart when the chips were really down, but sodding hell.

“Those ones are nice,” someone said in a Yorkshire accent.

Doreen turned to whoever had spoken, and her breath caught, her heart stalling. Eyes, those bloody blue eyes stared, and for one terrible second she thought they belonged to Stalker, that he’d clawed his way out of the well, taken himself to hospital, and was now all better. He couldn’t have, though. It was too deep, there was no ladder, and it was just her silly mind playing tricks. And this man was a couple of inches taller, although he had the same colour hair, but it wasn’t him, oh God, it wasn’t him.

“Um, yes, they are nice but out of my price range,” she barked, the need to run immense, gripping her tight and begging her to get away from him, to take herself to safety, far from those eyes.

He smiled, coming off as an all right sort, and she felt bad for snapping.

“I wonder if you can help me. This might sound a bit weird, but I’ve been looking for someone, asking around, and the woman on the veg stall said to ask you. I arrived this morning, so just getting a feel for the place. It’s confusing trying to find someone in a new town.”

“Who are you after?” Fear clutched at her heart, even though he seemed kind and was as polite as owt.

“Lou—that’s all I’ve got, I’m afraid, no surname. Do you know her?”

“What if I do? What business is it of yours?” Fucking hell, why was he looking for her? And why hadn’t she asked: Lou who?

“It’s just that she’s my brother’s girlfriend, and I need to find her. He hasn’t phoned home for around a month, nor has he written us any letters, and we’re worried. Mam’s going frantic, because his landlady hasn’t heard from him either and wants her rent—Vera at the B&B. Mam thinks we might have to phone the police, report him as a missing person.”

Doreen felt so sick she swallowed bile and had to steady herself with a hand on a pair of black patent high heels. “Lou doesn’t have a boyfriend.”

“So you do know her.”

Doreen sniffed. “Listen, it must be the wrong Lou. Loads of people are called that. It’s short for Louise, so yeah, lots of those about.” She needed him to go away. This was getting a bit much. How could you feel cornered when you weren’t in a corner? But she did, blocked in by his presence, his blue irises.

He smiled again. “The veg lady said I’d got it right. Lou works at Betty’s Blooms, Steve said so.”

“Steve?” ‘S’. It had to be Stalker he was on about.

“My brother. I’m off there next as it happens, now I’ve been given directions. Steve wrote and said where she worked, that he’d met her in there.”

I bet he didn’t tell you what he did, how creepy he was, and that he followed her home so he’d know where she lived cos he’d planned to break into our house.

Her body went rigid, and she clutched his forearm, desperate to put an end to this. “I’ll come with you. Let…let me speak to Lou first, before she sees you. She isn’t into men, you see, not at the moment, so you saying she has a fella will throw her. Or maybe she is seeing him and wanted to keep