The Price of Love by Rosie Harris

think who it could be hammering on the door.
    ‘Surely Sam hasn’t brought my mam and dad back from their ride already,’ she gulped, her brown eyes wide with distress as she looked at Robert.
    ‘It’s far too soon for them to be coming home,’ Robert agreed. He looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. ‘They’ve only been gone just over an hour. Anyway, the door isn’t locked, so they could have opened it. It must be someone else.’
    ‘What are we going to do? Perhaps we should stay quiet and pretend we’re not here.’
    ‘No, we’d better not do that in case it is important. You stay there; I’ll go and see who it is.’
    He reached for his clothes, pulling on his trousers and shirt and fastening them as quickly as he could.
    There was another loud hammering on the door and Lucy hurriedly put on her own clothes and tried to smooth down her tousled hair as she heard Robert call out, ‘All right, I’m coming; there’s no need to bash the door in.’
    With shaking hands she tried to straighten the crumpled rug and pick up the cushion that was lying on the floor and put it back on to the sofa.
    She walked over to the fireplace and stared at her reflection in the over mantle as she smoothed her hair, wondering if anyone could tell from her appearance what had just happened in the last hour or so.
    She looked perfectly normal, she told herself as she heard Robert returning.
    Her feeling of bravado was immediately forgotten when she saw that he was accompanied by a policeman; she could only stare at them in silence, afraid to ask why he was there.

Chapter Six
    ‘Are you Lucy Collins?’ the policeman asked, removing his helmet and placing it on the table before taking out his notebook.
    ‘Yes!’ Lucy said in a trembling voice, her colour rising. What on earth was a policeman doing calling on them? she wondered. They’d never had a policeman at the door in the whole of her life. He was so big and burly that he seemed to fill the room.
    She felt a frisson of fear rising inside her, making her heart thud faster. Surely she and Robert couldn’t be prosecuted for what they had been doing, she thought anxiously.
    The policeman consulted his notebook again and then cleared his throat hesitantly. ‘I’m afraid I have some bad news for you, miss,’ he said awkwardly. ‘The motor vehicle that your brother was driving has been involved in a serious accident—’
    ‘Accident?’ Lucy’s voice was shrill with fear. ‘What sort of an accident? My mam and dad are in the car with him; he was taking them to Southport as a treat …’ Her voice faded away and she looked helplessly at Robert who immediately moved across the room and put his arm around her protectively.
    ‘Yes, Miss Collins. The accident took place at Blundell Ince, a small village about halfway between here and Southport,’ he paused and consulted his notebook. ‘It seems a horse strayed on to the main road and when the driver took evasive action to try and avoid it, the animal reared up and collided with the vehicle and the driver lost control of the steering. Two of the wheels skidded off the tarmacked road and into a deep ditch, causing the vehicle to overturn. The driver and passengers were all trapped inside the vehicle.’
    Lucy gasped.
    ‘Are they badly hurt?’ Robert asked.
    ‘The driver was taken to hospital with severe injuries; I’m afraid I don’t yet have the details of exactly what they were.’
    ‘What about the two passengers who were in the car?’ Robert persisted, his arm tightening around Lucy, who was white faced and trembling as they listened to the policeman’s report.
    The officer’s mouth tightened as he studied his notebook. ‘I’m afraid, sir, that both the passengers in the back of the vehicle died at the scene of the accident.’
    Robert frowned. ‘Are you quite sure about that?’
    ‘It was a very deep ditch and there was considerable impact when the car plunged into it—’
    ‘It’s not true,’ Lucy