A Nice Place to Die by Jane Mcloughlin

did they come here?’ he shouted at Donna. ‘Someone must’ve tipped them off.’
    Donna was scared. He thinks it was me, she thought. Who else would he think it was?
    â€˜They’ve gone away, they’ve nothing on you,’ Donna said. She spoke to him in a soothing, caressing tone because she was trying to persuade Kylie to eat. ‘It must’ve been chance. No one knows you were there.’
    Donna deliberately said ‘You were there.’ She couldn’t bring herself to say ‘You did it.’
    â€˜That old bitch Alice Bates next door does,’ Kevin said. ‘Jess says she spies on us all the time. It must be her.’
    Donna said, ‘Alice Bates? She wouldn’t do a thing like that.’ Donna couldn’t hide that she felt relieved because Kevin wasn’t blaming her. ‘She wouldn’t dare,’ she said.
    Kevin sat hunched at the breakfast bar glowering at Kylie, who began to cry.
    At last he said, ‘It must’ve been her. That old bitch. I’ll make her sorry she didn’t keep her mouth shut. I’ll kill her for this.’

TWELVE
    P arked in a lay-by on the main road between Old Catcombe and Catcombe Mead, Jess Miller sat rigid beside Mark Pearson in the front of his pickup.
    She was wearing a new top which had given up trying to contain her breasts. Mark’s face, occasionally lighted by the headlamps of a passing car, was smeared with her lipstick.
    Now they had nothing to say to one another. Jess had been crying, and her smudged mascara made her look, in the light of her cigarette when she inhaled, like something out of a Dracula movie. Mark gripped the wheel with both hands and scowled at the traffic.
    â€˜What are we going to do?’ Jess said at last. She knew very well that Mark couldn’t answer her question. She got a certain satisfaction from fuelling the fire of their thwarted passion.
    Mark said nothing.
    Jess found a tissue and wiped away some of the condensation on the windows of the pickup. She opened the window a crack and tossed out the pulpy paper.
    â€˜Where can we go?’ she said, staring round as though the bleak lay-by or the traffic on the main road could offer a solution. Jess looked at the empty beer cans and discarded cigarette packs scattered across the grass verge and thought, lots of other couples have stopped here like me and Mark with nowhere to go. She said, ‘We could get in the back and do it. The traffic’s going too fast for anyone to notice.’
    Mark sounded angry. ‘Someone might recognize the pickup,’ he said. ‘It’d be just our luck for my Dad to come by.’
    â€˜We could go into one of your fields,’ Jess said. ‘Where there aren’t any cows. Please, Mark, just for a little while. I’ll keep you warm.’
    â€˜Bullocks,’ Mark corrected her automatically, ‘not cows, bullocks. I’m not doing it in a field like an animal. And if my Dad . . .’
    â€˜If your bloody Dad spends so much time out and about, he’s not in the house much and I don’t see why we can’t go to your bedroom,’ Jess said.
    â€˜Oh, lay off, Jess. We can’t go anywhere near the farm.’
    â€˜I don’t see why not,’ Jess said in a sulky tone.
    â€˜Oh, Jess,’ Mark said.
    She could tell that he was getting irritated with her. She knew she was being childish, but like a kid picking a scab, she couldn’t let well alone.
    â€˜Why don’t we tell them?’ she said. ‘There’s nothing they can do to us, really, is there? The worst they can do is throw us out, and then we’re together which is what we want. Oh, Mark, why don’t we stop hiding and come out with it?’
    â€˜We can’t do that,’ Mark said, and his knuckles were white on the wheel. ‘You know we can’t do that.’
    He was thinking, she always does this, she always starts trying to force