Die With Me by Elena Forbes Read Free Book Online Page B

world, she had often thought, a scar that would never heal which tainted everything and poisoned the future. She wondered what Kramer and his wife would do with Gemma’s room. Would they leave it just as it was or would they change it? Perhaps they would find it impossible to continue living in the house with all its memories.
    Looking around, almost everything in the room was pink: walls, curtains, carpet, bed covers, even the string of fairy lights in the shape of little angels hanging in an arc over the bed. It was a little girl’s bedroom. Donovan wouldn’t have been caught dead with a room like that at the age of fourteen. Six, maybe, when you had no choice in the matter, but never fourteen. Her walls had been papered with posters and photos, but apart from a gilt-framed print of a girl jumping a fence on a pony, Gemma’s were totally blank.
    Although Gemma’s development seemed to be arrested, no expense had been spared in kitting out the room. Along with a new-looking laptop, Gemma had her own TV and mini hi-fi system. The small collection of CDs, mainly boy bands and similar, were anodyne, nothing to give her parents cause for worry. She remembered Kramer’s words: ‘We didn’t want her growing up too fast’, wondering what it was that they were trying to protect her from. On the surface at least, the poor kid had had no choice but to remain a child, wrapped in this pastel-pink cocoon. She wondered how Gemma had felt about it, whether she had resented it at all. Maybe what she had been doing in that church had been an attempt to escape.
    A small desk stood in a corner of the room, inside the single drawer a collection of coloured pens and pencils, stationery, a mini iPod and a PDA, with a Barbie logo on the front. But there were no letters or cards, no journal or any other personal items of interest. Putting the iPod and PDA in her bag to examine later, she tried the chest of drawers, feeling around amongst the neat piles of clothing. But there was nothing hidden there.
    The bookshelf above the desk was packed with a mixture of children’s classics, what looked like a full set of Harry Potters and Georgette Heyers, as well as The Hobbit , a gift set of the Narnia books and Artemis Fowl . Apart from a child’s encyclopaedia and a few factual books on horses and riding, fantasy seemed to be the predominant theme. Donovan was surprised to see that Gemma was a reader, given the lack of books in her parents’ sitting room downstairs.
    A copy of Wuthering Heights lay on the low table next to the bed. The paperback was well thumbed and fell open as she picked it up. Flicking through, she noticed several passages heavily underlined in purple, some with a star inscribed in the margin. Wondering if perhaps Gemma was studying it at school, she skimmed through some of the highlighted chunks. They all seemed to be about Heathcliff, a physical description of him on one page accompanied by several exclamation marks and a small inked heart. It instantly struck a chord. For a moment Donovan remembered the acute feeling of teenage longing, the wanting to belong to another world, far removed from family and friends. Heathcliff, the dark and dangerous lover who had filled her dreams too. He had seemed so real for a while. How could the smelly, spotty, greasy-haired youths she had known at school ever measure up? Heathcliff had blighted any opportunities for adolescent romance and she was forced to admit that a part of her still hankered after him even now.
    Glancing at her watch, she realised that it was past seven o’clock. She went over to the desk, unplugged the laptop and tucked it under her arm. Checking the room one last time to make sure she hadn’t missed anything obvious, she switched off the light and went downstairs. She would send a team over in the morning to go through the rest of Gemma’s things more thoroughly.
    Downstairs, Kramer walked her to her car, putting the laptop onto the back seat while she wrote