The Good Girl Read Online Free Page A

followed. The rapturous pain of memory, Rachel called it.
    She didn’t bother with the kitchen, shutting the door on Lucifer and last night’s mess to avoid being sidetracked. One of the reasons she was determined her father should leave before lunch was that it would encourage Rachel to go at the same time. Seven nights with them both was enough. They hadn’t spent time together so intensively since they were children. That’s what a parent’s death did to you. It sent you hurtling back through time.
    Ailsa grabbed the car key from the hook by the back door, pulled on Romy’s boots and a huge khaki jacket with fake fur around the hood that belonged to Luke. She zipped it up until only the top of her face was visible and headed outside. She breathed in deeply until the cold burned her lungs and squinted at the snow-bleached landscape. It was completely still. Every stem and leaf was covered in a glassy fleece of frozen snow. She stared up at the vast anaemic sky and felt a familiar surge of joy at the way it swallowed her up. Some instinct drew her gaze to the second-floor window of the house next door. She glanced over and saw a curtain move.
    It wasn’t until she had crunched her way down the
driveway to the road that Ailsa realized just how much snow had fallen in the night. Using the sleeve of Luke’s coat, she wiped a circle of snow from the windscreen, climbed inside the car and slammed the door. It was like being inside an igloo. The only sign of the world outside was through the small porthole in the windscreen.
    The car was a mess. The leather seats were peeling, the grille had come off the ventilation system so that you couldn’t direct the jet of air, and the internal lights no longer worked. But the engine started as soon as Ailsa turned the key and the heating was immediately responsive. She jumped as the radio came on at full volume. The children had left it on Kiss FM. A rap song assaulted her senses, something about a girl sucking a man’s dick and her sister being stabbed with an ice pick. Gruesome. Ailsa quickly switched to Radio 4, but the news was all about more changes to the exam system so she switched back. Perhaps if standards in English were raised, lyrics would improve. Although he could have gone for toothpick rather than ice pick. Rappers lacked irony.
    Ailsa put the car into first gear and pressed the accelerator. When it didn’t move, she pushed a little harder and heard the tyres spin. She should go and get a spade. But outside it had begun to snow again. She pressed her hand to the windscreen and watched as the tiny snowflakes melted. It occurred to her that the heat from the engine might do the same and then she could try again.
    Leaving the engine running, she pulled out her mobile phone and dialled her mother’s number. She had kept
paying for her mother’s phone just so she could listen to her message. No one else knew. Not even Rachel. ‘It’s Georgia here. Although obviously I’m not here at the moment because otherwise I would have answered this wretched phone, so please leave a message and I will get back to you.’ For a couple of seconds her mother came back to life. Ailsa saw her in the kitchen of their family home, hair wet from swimming in the sea, excitedly describing how a seal had joined her in the water. Then just as quickly the memory dissolved.
    Ailsa closed her eyes to trap the tears behind her lids, breathed in deeply and thought about their first Christmas without her. Her chest hurt. It was the hole left when Georgia had died. When she was sure she wouldn’t cry she opened her eyes. On balance it had gone better than expected. They had survived. Ailsa jumped as the back door of the car suddenly opened.
    ‘Thought you might want some company,’ Rachel said, slamming the door behind her.
    ‘Why didn’t you get in the front?’ asked Ailsa. It was typical of Rachel, who always complained that Ailsa treated her as a child, to behave like a child. Ailsa