She whispered, ‘Rachel and Jodie are in the wrong order.’
Ash’s hatchback kicked up a cloud of dust as she turned into her mum’s driveway. Not for the first time, she saw the irony in that she’d spent her first five years here, but it would never be her home. She pulled up behind the house and spotted the dogs confined to their pen. Odd. And so was the absence of tradies’ utes in the yard.
With one foot inside the house, she was unnerved by its silence and gloom. Since she’d been here, the curtains had been pulled wide for natural light during the days; oil lamps and candles casting a warm glow at night. Today, the windows were covered.
‘Mum?’
No answer.
Dread weighed on Ash and she called out again. Something from the distant past or perhaps purely innate dragged her feet to the main
