Human Remains by Elizabeth Haynes Read Free Book Online Page B

after rent payments stopped.
    A police spokesperson said, ‘Police were called to an address in Baysbury where the badly decomposed body of a young woman was discovered. The death is thought to have been due to natural causes.’
     

Rachelle
     
    They all said in the newspapers that they didn’t know why I went, or where I’d gone. They said that it was completely out of character. They said I had friends and a loving home. They said I must have been taken by somebody because I would never have left. My mother said I was doing well at college and I had a good career ahead of me. That I had my whole life to look forward to. She said I was a beautiful girl, and that I was loved by my whole family.
    All of that was lies.
    She appeared on the telly, I saw her, tears in her eyes, appealing for me to get in touch. And then appealing to whoever had taken me – ‘Someone, somewhere must know where my Rachelle is, where my baby is…’ asking them to get in touch with the police, ‘put a mother’s mind at rest, she’s going out of her mind with worry, we can only imagine what she’s going through.’
    My baby
. I actually heard her say those words. I was sitting on the sofa in my new flat in a state of complete shock at seeing my own mother on the television appealing for me to get in touch. I was wrapped in three jumpers, cold, too worried about money to put the heating on. I was always cold, even in summer.
    Still it meant I couldn’t go out, for a while, after that. I’d already seen the neighbours once and I was hoping that they wouldn’t have recognised me. I’d dyed my hair black, given it a rough choppy cut – hard to see the back but better than nothing; at least my hair was thick enough for the uneven bits not to really show. With a bit of make-up smudged around the eyes I looked a proper emo. I doubt my own mother would have recognised me, in truth, but then she had a hard time looking at me even before the makeover.
    I ran out of medication after two months here but I couldn’t go and find a doctor. So I did without, and it was OK. I was sick of the medicated numbness anyway. At least with the black cloud you knew where you were. It was always there anyway, it was just like with the pills it was hidden out of sight. I liked to know it was there. Even if it was bad, at least it was real.
    After I saw my mother on the news, I couldn’t go out for a few days. If I didn’t go out, then I couldn’t buy food. I would just have to stay in and go without. And by the time I really needed to go out and get things, maybe I would have lost – what? Four pounds? Maybe even half a stone? It had been a long time since I’d had a good weight loss like that. I would lose a pound here, half a pound there – every so often if I had a really bad day I’d put on, but usually I made sure that I lost it again, quickly. I would say to myself, by the time I go back (if I ever want to go back, that is) I’ll be thin and beautiful and maybe then they’ll all start listening to me and treating me better.
    I like this flat. It’s tiny, of course, but it’s furnished and they let me have it for six months. I used the money Gran gave me. They didn’t know about that. She gave me seven thousand pounds before she died, told me to put it in a bank account and not tell them. She left me some other money in her will, but she knew that they would take that away.
    Gran was the only one who loved me no matter what, the only person who understood my drive towards perfection. She never once told me I was wasting away, or too thin, or needing to put a few pounds on. She never once told me I was ugly looking like this, nor did she ever tell me I was beautiful. To her, I was just Rachelle. I was the same little girl who’d played in her back garden when I was small, who’d dressed up in her cocktail gowns and high heels.
    Whenever I thought of Gran, of being at Gran’s house, it would make me smile. It was the only thing that made me