25. He hadn’t known them

but he knew they could not have been all bad. He loved the sound of the names “Loga” and “Quigley.” When he had overheard words that an Englishman was going round the place asking all sorts of questions about them he didn’t like it. Luke Dawson was an uncomplicated soul.
He decided that he would simply frighten him away.
From watching him at the tombstone he had followed him to outside Oscar’s house and fired off his warning shot.
Luke didn’t have the faintest idea how or why the tombstone might be connected with the lives of his mother and father. He, like so many other people in Wild Bay had heard whispers about some terrible secret that maybe had gone to their graves with them.
But that was all.
He would continue to keep a close watch on this interfering stranger.
Many thousands of miles away at that point in time, on the banks of the rushing River River of Gold running through the precipitous gorge of Opporto in northern Portugal, was Shanolla’s mother. She was sitting down on the very steep, worn, red sandstone steps outside her small fifth floor apartment in Old Porto. Amongst its closely packed, atmospheric whispering streets and five and six storey blocks she was again trying for the umpteenth time; trying to make arrangements to see her daughter again.
Roseanne McCarthy was writing another letter. She hadn’t seen Shanolla for six years and they hadn’t spoken to each other in all that time.
Shanolla hadn’t understood why her mother decided to leave Wild Bay in such a hurry. As a 14-year-old girl it was if her whole world had just caved in. She had not been told why and she had held it against her. But the arrival of Richard had completely changed everything. With his help they should be able to get together again. There was