Killing Rachel Read Online Free Page B

of the old sofa, her eyes misting. Not now, she thought, she would not cry now when they’d been given new hope. She stood up and took a couple of deep breaths. She put the rubbish in a plastic bag, turned off the heater and the music, and went out of her studio and closed the door firmly behind her. She walked round a laurel hedge and up towards the house. The light was on in Anna’s drawing room. She had friends round. Rose had nodded politely at them as they arrived.
    She went into the kitchen and washed the plates. The drawing room door must have opened because the sound of people talking and laughing got louder. Anna came into the kitchen.
    ‘There’s a message for you on the answerphone. From one of your friends at Mary Linton. Sounds like a nice sort of girl although a little wound up about something. It was a surprise, I must say. You don’t usually get calls here.’
    Rose frowned. A phone call from Mary Linton.
    She dried up both plates as a feeling of anxiety took hold of her. Rachel knew her home number from the time when they’d been friends. When she replaced the plates in the cupboard she went across to the handset and pressed the message button. She recognised the voice immediately.
    Rose, I’m hoping you got my letters. I’m hoping to hear from you soon. You won’t let me down, will you? I’m depending on you.
    Rose stood very still for a moment.
    How many times was this girl going to try and contact her? She jabbed her finger on the Erase button and went up to her room.

FOUR
    Rose didn’t have a class until late morning so she decided to work at home for a couple of hours. Her grandmother had left early and the house was quiet.
    The sound of the post arriving came from downstairs. She went out on to the landing and looked down to the hallway. There was a stack of letters on the hall mat. The sight of them gave her a tickle of apprehension. Underneath, at the edge, she could see a blue corner sticking out. She went downstairs and picked up the mail. She could feel the heavy linen paper underneath the pile of letters and when she placed them on the hall table she pulled out the slim blue envelope. Irritated, she went back upstairs and opened the bottom drawer of her desk. The other two letters were in there. For some reason she’d smoothed them out and kept them. She tossed the unopened envelope of the third letter in and closed the drawer.
    She decided to go on to her blog, Morpho. In the last weeks she’d not posted much on it but since recent events had given her and Joshua some new hope about their parents she’d made a decision to use her blog to document what was happening. The blog was Invite only and at the moment she was the only person who had access to it. She thought that maybe, one day, she would share it with Joshua.
    At the top of the post she typed the words The Notebooks. Then she sat back and pulled up her left sleeve to look at her butterfly tattoo. She’d had it done weeks before, lying to the man in the tattoo parlour about her age. It had hurt; tiny stinging movements as he drew on to her skin. Are you sure you’re all right? he’d said a couple of times, looking concerned. The blood had oozed out in pinprick bubbles. She’d nodded for him to go on, watching each movement with fascination. She’d been overjoyed to find that Joshua had a similar tattoo on his chest, but when she discovered that Brendan had one as well as her mother it seemed unreal. It had been a strange link between them. They had all drawn blood to have this image on their bodies, like some kind of secret ritual.
    She thought for a moment before starting to write. The blog was a way of her explaining what was happening, maybe even explaining it to herself. She began to recall the events after it became clear that their parents had gone.
When our parents went missing I lost touch with Josh. Even though we’d lived together as a family for three years, he was sent to live with his uncle in Newcastle and