Girl Number One: A Gripping Psychological Thriller Read Online Free

forgiven for believing those really are the ghosts of
long-dead travellers you can hear among the crags, as local legend suggests,
not the sound of wind whistling over hollows and through narrow crevices in the
rock.
    But
the moor can be beautiful too, in the right mood. I’m not unnerved by its
bleakness; I love that I live close enough to touch the wilderness.
    Our farmhouse originally belonged to my
mother’s Great-Aunt Teresa, who left it to my mother. My mother was pure
Cornish, not like my father, who was born on the edge of Wolverhampton in the
Midlands. But when Mum died, she left everything to Dad, so we stayed on at
Eastlyn despite the memories. It was hard on him though, after Mum died. He
would drive past the woods every day when he took me to school, and glance
across at the dark shroud of trees, his hands clenched on the wheel. Maybe he
was thinking about the violent way she died, or remembering how the police
carried her out of the woods in a body bag.
    I did not see that part myself. But Hannah did,
and described it to me in a whisper, both of us sitting in my bedroom at the
farm.
    It
sounds gruesome, but for a long time I needed to know everything about my
mother’s murder. Every last detail. Knowing more about her death is a
compulsion that still haunts me, like a jigsaw puzzle you know you can never
finish because the last piece is missing. In those days, I kept newspaper
cuttings in a book hidden under my mattress and used to study them for hours,
going through that day in my mind.
    My father said little in the months after she
died, hunched like a sick hawk, staring at Mum’s photograph, holding her
clothes against his cheek. Every night he would cry himself to sleep or drink
heavily until he fell asleep in front of the television. He was sick in those
days, no good to me as a father. Though I don’t blame him for that. I
understood, and still share his pain. Then one night, a few years back, I woke
to find the air thick with smoke and my father unconscious in the living room. It
took all my strength to drag him out of there. By the time the fire brigade
arrived, the place was well alight. An accident, they said; my father had been
drinking while watching television, and had fallen asleep with a cigarette in
his hand.
    The
firemen saved the farm from complete destruction, but much of the ground floor
was gutted and had to be rebuilt. Is still being rebuilt, in fact. Brick by
brick. Slate by slate. And my father lives alone in a caravan on the property
now, keeping himself warm at nights with a bottle of whisky.
    When
I came back from university and found East Cottage for rent, further up the
lane, it seemed like the ideal situation; I could keep an eye on my father there
without having to live with him.

 
    We hurtle past the
ruins of my family home and approach the turn to the cottage. Lush green
hedgerow on either side of the narrow lane whips at the wing mirrors.
    Jenny suddenly brakes violently. ‘Bloody hell.’
    A man has come stumbling out of the unseen
fields next to the lane, muddy and unkempt. He skids down the overgrown bank of
weeds and grasses, landing awkwardly on the tarmac a few feet from the bonnet
of the Renault.
    I recognise the man before he scrambles to his
feet. Wide-eyed, grass in his hair, staring at us like a fugitive on the run.
    ‘It’s your dad,’ Jenny says blankly.

CHAPTER FOUR

 
    My father tries to smooth down his hair,
unsuccessfully, and kicks a few strands of cow parsley off his boot before limping
towards us. There’s still grass poking out of his hair, and what looks like
sticky weed caught on the shoulder of his jacket. Mud scuffs on his faded jeans
and wellies make him look like a farmer come from herding cattle. But it’s been
a long time since he did a full day’s work; he’s lucky now if he gets offered
work at all. His speciality used to be website design, and living out of a
caravan with only mobile coverage is not ideal for that kind of job.