Some Kind of Fairy Tale Read Online Free Page B

of them.”
    “Heck.” Genevieve looked round at the kitchen. “We’ll have to tidy the place up before they get here. It’s incredible.”
    Peter was about to open his mouth when the door opened. It was Zoe. “The dog’s been sick,” she said.

    O N B OXING D AY, WHAT with Dell, Mary, and Tara expected around midday, it was all hands to the pumps, or all shoulders to the wheel, to try to pull the cottage around to some semblance of order. Which meant that the children pitched in to lift one out-of-place object only to set it down in another out-of-place venue. In the end a lot of Christmas toys got scooped under the sofa or parked behind the curtains, all in the name of tidying. Genevieve supervised while Peter grumbled; Zoe hoovered as Amber hovered; Jack put things in boxes and Josie took things out again.
    All because Tara had come home. Peter’s confusion and resentment were growing by the minute.
    Genevieve had never met Tara. She and Peter had been together for three years before he even mentioned to her that he had a sister. Tara was two years younger than Peter and she had doted on her older brother. He, in turn, had always been protective toward her, and in childhood they had been as close as the print on a legal contract. Then at the age of nearly sixteen one summer Tara had gone out of his life.
    When he’d told Genevieve what had happened to his sister and that they had come to accept that she was dead—perhaps after some sexual predator or psychopath had abducted her and buried her body in a secret place—she had quickly understood what a mighty stone this was in his heart; that the experience had almost been enough, but not quite, to petrify all feeling inside of him. Tara was occasionally mentioned in passing, and Genevieve had always listened calmly whenever he spoke about her, knowing that even his sister’s name had been a plug, a cork to a reservoir of hurt that should be faced but never would be.
    Tara’s name had occasionally surfaced in conversation with the children’s grandparents, perhaps if they opened a family photo album; or referenced if they wanted to locate a particular time in the family’s history. But it was always a name that flared for a second or two and was ushered on, a spark from a burning log watched briefly for its danger and allowed to smoke out.
    Tara was very smart, pretty, and intriguing, and she left a lot of people her own age and older way behind. She had a cool look about her: an unsettling calm, and nut-brown eyes that blinkedwith intense appraisal. She had her own effortless style and she was genuinely interested in other people at an age when most teenagers were passionately devoted only to themselves. Boys and girls were drawn to her, but she didn’t need them. She was a natural leader, but one who didn’t want any followers. Tara came across as someone with an agenda lodged elsewhere: a private agenda, mysterious and esoteric.
    It had been Peter who had introduced her to Richie Franklin, her boyfriend at the time of her disappearance. Peter and Richie had put together a rock-and-roll band, of sorts. Pete kept strict time on drums while Richie, with front-man ambitions on guitar, marshaled various hapless and mostly useless teenagers in and out of the band. Richie was someone who could forgive anyone for playing a wrong note, but not three.
    They allowed Tara to come with them to watch their band play in pubs, or to see other bands in clubs, to camp with them at rock festivals, to smoke a joint with them, to let her pretty face and shy smile help them gate-crash parties. She never cramped their style; on the contrary, without even knowing it her simple presence loaned them a radical and chic appeal that neither of the boys had naturally. She plugged them into something. If only she had a voice to go with it, Richie had said more than once.
    All of which made the loss of this fey but exciting creature doubly hard to bear at the time. After she’d gone