The Bones of You by Debbie Howells Read Free Book Online

worried.
    “It would be better if you didn’t tell her. I just like coming here to help,” she said quite anxiously, repeating herself in that apologetic way she had. “Like now—if it’s okay?”
    It remained an unspoken, slightly awkward secret between us. One I never mentioned to Jo, though I considered it once or twice, but there was never any reason why I should.
    Rosie kept herself to herself, not mentioning friends to me, but she was a sweet, pretty girl, and I often wondered if there was a boy in her life. The last time I saw her, I commented on the jewel-colored necklace.
    “That’s so pretty, Rosie.”
    I watched the tinge of faint pink in her cheeks as her hand went to her neck, touching it.
    “Thanks,” she said shyly. “It was a present.”
    I wondered then, but as always, she didn’t say and I didn’t ask, “Who from?” Not understanding her secrecy. Was she hiding something?
    Then my mind wanders back to that afternoon in the woods. Was I spooked by the storm, or had something else been there with me? Is it possible? Do I really believe that? Then, as I sit there in the silence of the night, I feel a hand on my shoulder and my heart stops.
    I jump up, spinning round, my tea going everywhere. “ Jesus! Angus! Don’t creep up on me like that.”
    My husband’s bleary with sleep. “Who else would it have been?”
    I shake my head at him. “I didn’t hear you. You frightened the life out of me.”
    “I just wondered where you were. Come back to bed.” His hair is pointing all ways; his pajamas are hanging off his lanky frame. He yawns.
    “Okay. I’ll be up in a minute.”
    I clear up my spilt tea but suddenly don’t want to be alone. After turning out the light, I follow him.

7
    O ver disorientating days that merge seamlessly, we learn more. First disbelief, then shock ripples through our village. It wasn’t an accident. Rosie was murdered.
    Murder. Until now unspoken, a word that out loud triggers an aftershock.
    As it reaches Grace, she gasps; her hand goes to her mouth. “Rosie was murdered? Oh, Mum, it’s so horrible.” She’s in tears, her eighteen-year-old world tumbled sideways into an ugly parallel universe that’s sprung out of nowhere overnight.
    A visceral, wrenching loss fills me then, not for what’s happened to Rosie, but for Grace and the safe, nurturing, loving world that she’s grown up in, so full of promise, holding her dreams and the stars, and that’s suddenly gone.
    I put my arms around her and hold her close, hating what this is doing to us.
     
    As facts slowly filter out, the first strands of a spiderweb of something sinister appear. It was as Jo told me: her body was discovered in the woods. There was evidence of a struggle, during which she suffered several blows to her head, before she was stabbed viciously a number of times. And then follows the part that I struggle with, because they found her in the same clearing where I fell off Zappa.
    And I didn’t see her.
    On Facebook, a public outpouring of grief is unleashed, unchecked and uncensored, spreading like wildfire, as buried amid the many tributes to Rosie are more sinister posts hinting at the reasons behind her murder.
    Grace is horrified. “It’s sick, Mum. Most of them don’t even know her.” All traces of teenage bravado gone, using “sick” in the old-fashioned sense.
    “I’m sure they’ll be removed, Gracie. And anyone who knew Rosie will ignore them.”
    As if that’s not enough, the lowest echelons of the press show their true colors, too, with a front-page article on “acclaimed news reporter Neal Anderson and his wife” visiting the site where their daughter’s body was found and featuring an intrusive, devastating photo of the family taken several years ago. It’s followed by speculation about an unknown, unnamed boyfriend and hints at a secret life Rosie led, with another, more recent photo of her, those pale eyes seeming to look out of the pages into mine.
    “They