Killing Rachel (2 page)

‘No,’ she said.

He grabbed her hand and squeezed it. She smiled and then stepped out into the street and gave him a backward wave. Walking along she let her fingers curl up, for a second imagining what it would have been like to grasp his hand back. She shook her head at her own stupidity and headed for the station.

She opened the door to her grandmother’s house and went into the hallway. She called out, not expecting an answer. Anna had been out a lot in the last couple of weeks and it meant that Rose had the house to herself. She walked straight upstairs to her rooms and shrugged her coat off on to a chair. Then she remembered the letter from Mary Linton College that she had yet to open.

She reached into her coat pocket and pulled it out.

It was from Rachel Bliss.

Dear Rose,

You will be surprised to get this letter from me but I have no one else to turn to. We had our bad times in the past but I am a different person now and I want you to know that I am sorry for any hurt I caused you.

I am writing because something horrible is happening to me. It’s hard to explain. I don’t understand it myself. You’re the only person I can turn to, the only person I can trust.

This is not a cry for attention, I promise. I have this terrible feeling that something bad will happen.

Please ring me on my mobile.

You did like me once. Please don’t let me down.

Rachel

Rose read it over three times.

She frowned and screwed the letter into a tight ball.

TWO

Rose spent Saturday morning on her laptop. She was trying to catch up on her work. Weeks before, she’d had time off from college and missed some assignment dates. It was important to her to get back on track. She had English assignments to finish and some prep for Art. Plus there was reading and making notes for History and Law. It had all slipped behind and, instead of being one of the top students, she was being nagged for overdue work.

When she heard the front door she went out on to the landing. Her grandmother was standing in the hallway looking flushed and pleased with herself. She smiled up at Rose.

‘Do you want a coffee?’ she called up.

‘OK,’ Rose said.

Rose went into her room and closed down the document she was working on. She had a quick look at her emails but there was nothing new. Then she went downstairs and into the kitchen. She didn’t really want a coffee. She’d accepted the offer because in the last couple of weeks a change had come over her grandmother and it involved her making coffee for Rose three or four times a week. It had started oddly one evening when Rose was working in the small room attached to her bedroom which she used for a study. Anna had tapped on the door and entered with a small tray on which sat a white mug and a small cellophane packet of biscuits. The mug had a high shine, its handle angular. It was part of a set that Anna had on display in the kitchen. She had drunk the frothy coffee and dunked the biscuits and wondered why her grandmother was being so much more sociable. In the days that followed Anna had called her down to the kitchen a number of times and made her a drink and sat with her. There had been conversation and it became clear to Rose that Anna was
making an effort
with her.

‘Black OK?’ her grandmother said.

Rose nodded.

It had been different in the past. They had had some bad arguments where Anna had said upsetting things about her mother and Brendan, Joshua’s father. There had been days when Rose had wanted to walk out of the door of Anna’s house and never come back.

Now it seemed as though Anna was getting to know Rose for the first time even though she had, in fact, been under her care for five years. When Rose’s mother and Joshua’s father disappeared Rose met her grandmother for the first time and came to live with her. There followed years at Mary Linton College, where she was a boarder and spent short periods of time with her grandmother. They were not close but now it seemed her grandmother was trying to be different. So even though Rose didn’t always feel like a coffee she made herself sit down and drink it.

‘I may go away for a few days,’ her grandmother said, after some small talk about Rose’s courses.

‘Oh?’

‘There’s a couple of concerts I’d like to go to at Snape Maltings. I thought I might go on Friday morning and have a long weekend with a friend of mine.’

‘OK,’ Rose said, nodding encouragingly.

Her grandmother took a few moments to tear the cellophane on the small packet of dark chocolate biscuits. Rose looked at her grandmother’s nails, perfectly manicured and polished, each nail having a half circle of glitter at the tip. Her nails were always like this. Her clothes were conservative, bought from Bond Street, but her nails could have been done in Camden Market and they rivalled those of many of the loud, brash girls at her college.

‘I used to go for weekends a lot when you were at Mary Linton but since you’ve come back I haven’t been.’

‘You should go,’ Rose said.

There was quiet for a second and her grandmother’s lips twisted to one side as if she was hesitating about what she was going to say.

‘I wonder,’ she said slowly, choosing each word with care, ‘when I’m away, if you wouldn’t mind, I’d prefer it if that boy, that
Joshua Johnson
, didn’t come into this house.’

Rose stiffened.

‘He’s my stepbrother . . .’

‘Not your
stepbrother
as such . . .’

‘We lived together as a family . . .’

‘But your mother did not marry his father so you are not related to him. Not by law or by blood.’

‘I think of him as my family . . .’

‘I know that. And I know that you see him and he visits you in your studio and I have to accept that but I really do not want him here in my home. It just doesn’t feel right to me . . .’

Rose pushed her mug away.

‘Don’t get upset, Rose,’ her grandmother said. ‘You said a few weeks ago we should be honest about things and I’m just trying to tell you how I feel.’

‘My getting upset is me being honest,’ Rose said.

‘So, we’re both saying what we feel. Maybe that’s a good thing? Both being honest? Wasn’t that what you wanted?’

Later in her room Rose thought about what Anna had said. Her grandmother’s attitude to Joshua had been upsetting Rose for weeks. Anna had always been antagonistic towards him. Rose knew Anna had strong feelings about Joshua’s father and these had coloured her view of this boy who she had never met. Rose wished Anna could see how great Joshua was. How caring and thoughtful he was. How driven he was to find out what had happened to her mum and Brendan. Rose wished that Anna could see Joshua the way she did.

But these thoughts did not make her feel better.

Lately Rose’s own feelings towards Joshua had developed into something that made her feel deeply uncomfortable. When she’d first heard from him six months before she had been overwhelmed with joy at the thought of having one part of her family back in her life. When she met him again for the first time in five years it had seemed so natural, so meant to be. He had been missing from her life and then he was back and together they had been a team. Stepbrother and stepsister on a search for their parents.

But Anna was right. He wasn’t her stepbrother.

He was Joshua and her feelings for him had become mixed up. Her emotions had taken on a kind of longing for him that she couldn’t control. It had started weeks before when they had been through some difficult emotional times. They’d been there for each other and Rose had come to lean on Joshua. But one day she had felt those feelings edge into dangerous ground. There was even a moment when she had been drawn towards kissing him. Just in time though she’d pulled back, retreated to a safe place.

They were family.

She had no right to have any other kind of emotional attachment to Joshua. Standing close to him in the queue for coffee or the cinema she could feel the heat coming from him, smell the scent of spearmint gum and hair shampoo and sometimes she wanted nothing more than to bury her face in his skin. It was those times that she found herself thinking more and more about the fact that they were not really
related
.

But it was unthinkable and she had to push those feelings down.

That’s why it was better to keep busy, to get her college work up to date. She opened a document on her laptop and looked through the notes she’d made earlier. After a few moments she heard footsteps on the stairs and a light knock at the door.

‘Post,’ her grandmother said.

Rose exhaled slowly. It was another letter from Rachel Bliss.

‘I didn’t think young people corresponded in this way any more,’ her grandmother said, handing it to her.

Rose waited until the door closed behind Anna before opening the letter.

Dear Rose,

I realised, after posting my letter yesterday, that you might think I had gone mad. Maybe I have.

Strange things are happening to me, unexplainable things.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Juliet Baker. I can’t seem to get her out of my thoughts. I need to talk to someone about it and you are the only person I feel I can trust.

Please write to me and send me your mobile number – then I can call. I’m begging you.

Rachel

Juliet Baker. That was a name that hadn’t come into her mind for a long time. She lowered the letter and sat very still, thinking back to the last time she’d seen Rachel Bliss.

In Mary Linton College the bell rang for the change of lessons. Rose heard it in a detached way. Now that she was leaving it no longer resonated with her. The sound of footsteps could be heard from the corridor below her room. Lines of girls moving quietly from classroom to classroom. After a few moments the noise of movement subsided and she continued packing her belongings into large trunks. She’d already filled two and was now on to the third. Many of the things she was packing would be dumped as soon as she returned to her grandmother’s house: her uniform, lots of the stupid girly clothes that she’d bought, soft toys that she’d accumulated, books and magazines and piles of cards and letters and photographs that she had amassed over the years of being a Mary Linton Girl.

She heard the door open behind her. She turned and saw Martha Harewood, her housemistress, standing there.

‘Nearly done, Rose?’

‘Almost.’

Martha walked across the room and sat on the edge of Rose’s bed.

‘I’ll be so sorry to see you go. I know you were upset a few months ago but I thought that had been sorted out . . .’

‘I’m all right, really. I just want to get back to my grandmother’s. I guess I’m just tired of boarding.’

‘At least you’ve sat your GCSEs.’

Rose nodded. She’d sat all twelve of them in the previous weeks. Now they were over and there was nothing to keep her at the school.

‘I still think this has something to do with Rachel Bliss.’

Rose shook her head.

‘We used to be friends but we haven’t been close for a while. It has nothing to do with my leaving.’

Martha stood up.

‘Well, it’s good to see you so grown-up, so well. Not like the sad young girl who arrived here.’

Rose took some moments smoothing down the corner of a folded blouse.
Sad young girl
. Martha was referring to the months after she first came to Mary Linton. The days when the ache for her missing mother was like a sickness. Martha had been there then, always with a box of tissues handy and a hot chocolate which she made just for the two of them in her rooms. Martha had been ready with a gentle hug and soothing words. Martha had just been
there
.

‘You will come and see me before you leave?’

Rose nodded.

The door closed behind Martha and Rose was alone. She finished packing, then stripped her bed and folded up the laundry and piled it in the corner of the room. It was 12.15 and her taxi was due at one. On the side of her trunks were giant labels:
Rose Smith, c/o Anna Christie, 17 Andover Avenue, Belsize Park, London
. She was going to live full-time with her grandmother. In the autumn she would become a student at the local sixth-form college and she and Anna would see each other every day. She wondered how that would be, how they would rub together.

Her door opened suddenly and Rachel Bliss stood there. She didn’t speak but looked around Rose’s room, her eyes resting on each trunk. Rose stared at her. Rachel’s hair was loose, flicking up on her shoulders. It looked white and made her face paler than usual. Her blue eyes took in the whole room as if she’d never seen it before. She was wearing cut-off jeans and flip-flops, weekend wear. Around her neck was a heart-shaped locket on a chain. Rose stiffened. She had bought it for Rachel the previous year.