Skin Deep by Laura Jarratt Read Free Book Online Page B

never being away from her suffocated me and how I’d felt free today. And then how different it must have been for her, sitting here polishing stones until I came home . . .
    I sat down beside her, guilt knifing me. ‘Today went fine. It’ll bring in some extra money anyway. Mum, these are great. Really great. Want a hand with anything?’
    She took a breath in and combed her fingers through her mess of hair to loop it back. ‘I’ll start dinner. Tidy up for me and bag the finished ones.’
    ‘Want me to put the price labels on?’
    ‘Yes . . . yes . . . OK.’ She hesitated and forced a smile. ‘It was strange here without you today.’
    I fished in my pocket and pulled out the bus timetable I’d picked up in Whitmere on the way home. ‘Got this for you. There’s a bus that runs through the village. Maybe you could go into town tomorrow and give those shops I told you about a try. And you could find out about the market. Do some shopping too?’
    She nodded and put the timetable on the pinboard.
    ‘It’s an OK town,’ I said as she got a pan from the cupboard and took ingredients from the fridge. I thought I saw tofu and shuddered. ‘Plenty to look at and you’ll like some of the shops. Bet there’s even somewhere you can get some new supplies . . .’
    I wittered on while she got dinner ready. The more I talked, the more she relaxed, so in the end I babbled on about nothing just to drive the day’s silence away for her.

 
9 – Jenna
    Thursday was Charlie’s football night so I came home from school alone. I picked the letters up from the doormat and went to put them on the hall table, but a folded sheet of paper caught my attention. It was an A4 sheet folded in half, with the shadow of dark lettering showing through. I opened it.
    Letters cut from a newspaper were glued on in a message:
    UR A DEAD MAN
    Steven – I knew it was from him. I headed for the hall chair before my legs gave way under me. Don’t overreact – this is typical of him. Always shouting his mouth off . It didn’t mean anything, I told myself, trying to calm down. He was trying to scare us, that’s all. For all Steven Carlisle thought he was a big man and not a stupid boy, when the car had crashed, he’d lain crying on the grass. It was left to Rob White to pull me and Sarah out while Steven whimpered and did nothing. He’d never have the guts to do anything to Dad, no matter how much he might hate us.
    I tried to put it out of my mind and focus on my homework. If only Dad would drop this stupid campaign. It’d alienated most of the village against the Carlisles and while I didn’t care how that affected Steven one little bit, I did care if it kept people talking about the crash. All I wanted now was for it to be forgotten – as much as it could ever be possible for the village to forget Lindz and Charlotte’s deaths.
    I never did understand what Lindz saw in Steven, apart from the looks of course. He thought the world rotated on its axis for him alone and treated everyone as if they should agree with him.
    The scrape of a key in the front door lock meant Dad was home. I ran downstairs. Mum was with him. I handed him the note. He read it and passed it to Mum. His face didn’t flicker. He picked up the phone from the hall table.
    Mum’s hand flew to her mouth as she read the note. ‘Clive, what are you doing?’
    ‘Calling the police. I’m not having that little thug try to threaten us.’
    ‘Are you sure that’s a good idea? Maybe it would be better to ignore him.’
    ‘Dad, let it lie, please.’
    He dialled the number for the police station and walked off into his study with the phone.
    ‘Come on, let’s go and pick some apples,’ Mum said. I knew she was only trying to distract me, but I didn’t mind being distracted right then.
    We walked down the garden to the two apple trees by our vegetable patch. Mum held the basket while I reached up and picked the ripe ones from the lower branches.
    ‘Get that one. No,