How To Be Brave by Louise Beech Read Free Book Online Page B

day now?
    ‘She’s not here,’ I said to Jake, confused.
    ‘She’ll be watching TV.’
    ‘Maybe.’ I pulled the covers back, looked underneath. I checked the wardrobe, then went onto the landing again, called, ‘Rose! Come on – don’t play about! Where are you hiding?’
    ‘Don’t panic, she’ll be downstairs,’ said Jake.
    Before diabetes I’d not have panicked – I’d have known she’d be quietly reading in the book nook or lying on the floor in front of the TV. But the house was too quiet, my skin too prickled with goose bumps.
    ‘Are you still there?’ asked Jake.
    ‘Yes.’ I headed downstairs, looked in the dining room and then the front room where the big TV is. Both empty. In the kitchen our pumpkin still mocked me, its sceptical eyes a reminder of Rose’s yesterday. I’d bin it today. I had no idea why I’d left it so long. The candle; I’d keep the candle. My thoughts scattered. Unreasonable.
    ‘Is she there?’ asked Jake.
    ‘No, she’s not.’ I opened the back door and looked at our long garden covered in gilt-edged leaves, conkers and dead twigs, surrounded by browning bushes and a fence that needed painting. ‘Where the hell is she?’
    ‘Calm down and think about it. She’ll be somewhere. She’s only nine – how far can she have gone?’
    ‘But I don’t know when she went missing,’ I said. ‘Could’ve been hours before I woke.’ I paused. ‘I’m supposed to be looking for a book, not our daughter.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    I shook my head. ‘No, nothing. I mislaid a book, that’s all.’
    Find the book . After that dream I’d half-heartedly browsed the shelf in the book nook, just in case, imagining something might jump out at me and give sensible meaning to the phrase that now haunted me. But nothing had and now real things were lost – Rose.
    ‘I’m going to be sick,’ I said.
    ‘Look in the cupboards, places she might hide for a joke.’
    I searched around the house while Jake continued to reassure me. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘She’s never done anything like this before.’
    ‘But you don’t know her,’ I said.
    ‘Of course I do.’ He was hurt.
    ‘No, I mean you don’t know her now . She isn’t the same girl anymore.’
    ‘For God’s sake, she can’t have changed completely in just a week. She’s just a little girl and you talk like you hate her!’
    ‘How can you say that?’
    Jake didn’t speak.
    ‘You’re not here,’ I said. ‘You don’t know.’
    ‘I can’t help that,’ he whispered.
    ‘Yes, you can,’ I said. ‘You chose something that takes you away from us. No one made you go.’ Jake’s wordlessness, his apparent indifference, fired me further. ‘It’s not my fucking fault – it’s yours !’ And again I ended our call abruptly and threw my phone onto the table.
    There was no time to feel bad about it – Rose was missing.
    Where would she go? What did she like? I’d no clue anymore.
    I ran outside, not caring that I was still wearing a sheer nighty. Rows of green wheelie bins on the path. Was it green bin day? I should put ours out. Not now, not now. Find Rose. Find the book . I ran up and down the path, up and down the street, up and down our path again.
    ‘Rose!’ I cried. ‘Please, come out if you’re there!’
    April emerged from the overgrown bush that separates our gardens, a huge patchwork shopping bag over one arm and comfy shoes on her feet. She looked up and down at my see-through attire.
    ‘Did you see Rose?’ I begged her.
    ‘Out here?’ she asked.
    ‘I don’t know!’ I wanted to sit on the cold path and put my head in my hands. ‘Did she pass your window?’
    ‘No, not that I noticed.’
    ‘She’s gone,’ I cried.
    ‘Oh dear. Shall I help look? Should I knock on Winnie’s door?’
    ‘Yes, yes, do that,’ I begged. Rose often went to Winnie’s house because she gave sweets out to the kids in the street. Now she’d have to miss out.
    ‘I’ll go look in the house again,’ I said.