The Bones of You by Debbie Howells Read Free Book Online Page A

shouldn’t be allowed to do this.” Grace slams the paper on the table with the full force of her anger. “They’re evil. It’s so wrong, Mum, making up lies and printing her photo like that. She was just a normal girl. Her poor family . . .”
    “I know, Gracie. It’s horrible. I feel the same.”
    “ Why do they have to put her picture on the front?” Grace stands there, all formidable five feet four inches of her bristling. “Isn’t just writing about it big enough for them? Isn’t it bad enough that she’s dead?”
    “The trouble is, it’s always the most scandalous news that sells papers,” I say sadly. “And this is a big story.”
    She shakes her head, tears rolling down her cheeks. “If it were the last job on earth, I wouldn’t work for them,” she says. “They’re lowlifes, the lot of them. Someone should sue them.”
    I agree with her but leave it to rest uneasily in the background along with everything else, unresolved, as the search for the murderer begins.
    And I call round to see Jo.
     
    Ten of the worst days have passed since I last saw her. Jo was always thin, but now she’s skeletal, her chin a bony protrusion, her cheekbones defined far beyond the point of beauty. She’s wearing a soft cream tunic that swamps her tiny frame and a voluminous scarf round her neck.
    “I was driving past,” I say, even though I wasn’t, and I’ve come round just so she knows I’m thinking about her. To reassure myself they’re somehow clinging on, inside their own private hell.
    “Thank you, Kate. . . .” She looks haunted. I notice, too, that for the first time since I’ve known her, her roots need doing. That under the salon pale blond, she’s quite gray.
    A man’s voice calls out, “Who is it, Joanna?”
    A fleeting look crosses her face, and I’m reminded of Rosie’s when she was caught off guard.
    “He keeps thinking it’s the press. They won’t leave us alone,” she says, then raises her voice. “It’s Kate, darling.”
    “He’s working from home,” she says, glancing over her shoulder.
    “That’s good,” I say, relieved she’s not alone. “For all of you.”
    But before she can reply, Neal appears behind her.
    Though I know his face from numerous TV appearances, I’ve met him only a handful of times, at local cocktail parties or parents’ evenings at school. In the flesh, he’s good-looking, a well-built man with a limp that’s the legacy of his job—a sniper bullet in Afghanistan, according to local gossip. Apparently, he was lucky it wasn’t worse.
    He’s weathering this better than Jo is—at least on the outside—but even in their combined grief, they’re a striking couple, his healthy robustness contrasted with Jo’s frailty.
    “Hello, Kate. Are you coming in?”
    Even now, I notice that quiet assurance in spades, the kind of charisma he has, which men can’t learn but either have or don’t have.
    “Hello, Neal. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to disturb you all. I just wanted to tell Jo . . . well, nothing really. Just, if I can do anything, she knows where I am. . . .” I trail off, leave it open-ended, because it sounds so lame and so inadequate, like offering a Band-Aid for third-degree burns or a broken neck.
    He nods just once.
    “I’ll see you soon.” I kiss Jo’s cheek, then glance at the clock on the wall behind her. “Sorry, I have to go. I’ve a meeting with a client. I’ve already postponed twice. . . .”
    I babble the lie, but I don’t want to say I’m taking Grace to see a movie. It’s irrational, but such is my guilt that she’s here and Rosie isn’t that I can’t even mention my daughter’s name.
     
    Is this how it is now? Are we all suspects? Behind the facade of constrained smiles and familiar exchanges, there’s a shift in our village. That we could have a murderer in our midst is a thought none of us can ignore.
    Remember that man who rented the Stokes’s barn conversion a few months back, who allegedly commuted