I Let You Go by Clare Mackintosh Read Free Book Online

rocks, three beats between each wave. Gulls wheel overhead, their cries like kittens, mewling in the fading light, and I shiver involuntarily, wanting suddenly to be inside.
    The ground floor is barely twelve feet long; an uneven wooden table separating the living space from where the galley kitchen squats beneath a great oak beam.
    Upstairs, the space is split between the bedroom and a tiny bathroom with a half-sized tub. The mirror is spotted with age; the mottled crazing distorting my face. I have the pale complexion common to redheads, but the poor lighting makes my skin seem even more translucent, starkly white against the dark-red hair that falls past my shoulders. I go back downstairs, to find Iestyn stacking wood next to the fire. He finishes the pile and crosses the room to stand against the range.
    ‘She’s a bit temperamental, so she is,’ he says. He pulls open the warming drawer with a bang that makes me jump.
    ‘Can I take the cottage?’ I say. ‘Please?’ There is a note of desperation in my voice, and I wonder what he must make of me.
    Iestyn eyes me suspiciously. ‘You can pay, can you?’
    ‘Yes,’ I say firmly, although I have no idea how long my savings will last, or what I will do when they run out.
    He is unconvinced. ‘Do you have a job?’
    I think of my studio with its carpet of clay. The pain in my hand is no longer as intense, but I have so little sensation in my fingers I’m frightened I won’t be able to work. If I am no longer a sculptor, what am I?
    ‘I’m an artist,’ I say eventually.
    Iestyn grunts as though that explains everything.
    We settle on a rent which, though ridiculously low, will soon race through the money I have been putting aside. But the tiny stone cottage is mine for the next few months, and I breathe a sigh of relief that I have found somewhere.
    Iestyn scrawls a mobile number on the back of a receipt he pulls from his pocket. ‘Drop this month’s rent into Bethan’s, if you like.’ He nods to me and strides out to the quad bike, starting it up with a roar.
    I watch him leave, then I lock the door and drag across the stubborn bolt. Despite the winter sun, I run upstairs to draw the bedroom curtains, shutting the bathroom window, which has been left ajar. Downstairs, the drapes stick on the metal curtain pole as if unused to being closed, and I tug at them, releasing a cloud of dust from their folds. The windows rattle in the wind and the curtains do little to stop the icy chill that creeps around the loose-fitting frames.
    I sit on the sofa and listen to the sound of my own breathing. I can’t hear the sea, but the plaintive call of a lone gull sounds like a baby crying, and I put my hands over my ears.
    Exhaustion overtakes me and I curl up in a ball, wrapping my arms around my knees, and pressing my face against the rough denim of my jeans. Although I know it’s coming, the wave of emotion engulfs me, bursting from me with such force I can barely breathe. The grief I feel is so physical it seems impossible that I am still living; that my heart continues to beat when it has been wrenched apart. I want to fix an image of him in my head, but all I can see when I close my eyes is his body, still and lifeless in my arms. I let him go, and I will never forgive myself for that.

5
     
    ‘Have you got time for a chat about the hit-and-run, boss?’ Stumpy stuck his head round Ray’s door, Kate hovering behind him.
    Ray looked up. Over the last three months the investigation had gradually been scaled back, making way for other, more pressing jobs. Ray still went over the actions a couple of times a week with Stumpy and his team, but the calls had dried up, and there had been no fresh intelligence in weeks.
    ‘Sure.’
    They came in and sat down. ‘We can’t get hold of Jacob’s mother,’ Stumpy said, getting straight to the point.
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘Just that. Her phone’s dead and the house is empty. She’s disappeared.’
    Ray looked at