Killing Rachel (18 page)

‘Rachel lives with her grandparents. Her mother had her when she was seventeen and wanted to have her adopted. Her grandparents adopted her and the mother moved away and has not seen Rachel or her own parents since. I believe they heard through a friend of a friend that Rachel’s mother is married and has a family of her own in the north. Rachel’s grandparents are good people and love Rachel even though she has not always been an easy child to raise.’

Rose couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

‘For the first ten years of her life Rachel thought that Mr and Mrs Bliss were her parents but then they told her the truth and it upset her greatly. Maybe they were wrong to do that but still . . . From then on she battled with her grandparents. She has been at a number of schools and we thought she had settled when she came here. Then there was the dreadful suicide of poor Juliet Baker. When she became friends with you I thought that she had fallen on her feet. A good solid friend was what she needed.’

Rose couldn’t speak. Her lips felt as though they would crack if she moved them.

‘I can see you’re upset but I felt it was important you should know the truth. She’s not a bad person, Rose, and she will grow out of this storytelling phase.’

Storytelling phase
. She’d done it before. Of course, she had. She’d done it last summer when she told Rose that her half-sister had leukaemia. Rose had forgiven her then and she had promised never to do it again.

‘We thought that she has been getting on OK over these last months. Her work, of course, could do with improvement but we were so pleased to see that she was in a steady friendship with you.’

Rose stood up. Martha looked concerned.

‘Don’t be angry with her, Rose. Go and talk it out with her. Maybe she’ll open up to you. You and she have some things in common . . .’

Martha had stumbled on the last words and looked as if she wished she hadn’t said them.

‘What do you mean? What have we got in common?’

And then it came to Rose. They both had been abandoned by their mothers.

‘No,’ Rose said, shaking her head. ‘No, there’s no comparison. My mother is most probably dead because of her police work. She is a hero. She would never have left me of her own free will. She was abducted. How can you compare that to a seventeen-year-old girl who doesn’t want her baby!’

‘What I meant was you are both without mothers. That’s all . . .’

But Rose turned away and walked out of Martha’s rooms. She went straight along the corridor until she got to Rachel’s door. She didn’t knock – she barged in. Rachel was in her jeans and sweatshirt and looked as though she was starting to do some work. On her desk Rose could see the tiny jars of nail varnish lined up, their colours gaudy and gross.

‘What’s up?’ Rachel said.

‘You lied to me. You live with your gran and grandad. All that stuff about your dad’s flat and your mum’s new boyfriend, it was all a lie.’

Rachel looked away.

‘Why?’ Rose said.

Rachel shrugged.

‘How could you? After last summer when you told me about your so-called sister? You said then that you’d never do it again. Why did you lie to me?’

Rachel made a show of choosing a jar of varnish. Then she took her time unscrewing the top. Rose waited for her to say
something
. She did not.

In exasperation Rose walked out. She headed for the stairs and out of the building, past the Year Sevens who were having a makeshift game of rounders. She walked to the furthest corner of the quad and sat down on a bench and put her face in her hands.

She was too angry to cry.

They’d been friends for over a year. Rose had been loyal and she’d thought that Rachel was her true friend. They’d had their problems but still underneath it all she felt this extraordinary affection for her. Was it too much to say that she
loved
her? She was very still. She did, she loved her, but all the while Rachel had been lying her face off, creating a fiction out of her life. What kind of person was she?

The tears came then, hot enough to burn her skin.

It was finished. It was over.

She ignored Rachel. She went on with her work and wrote a letter to her grandmother asking if she could leave the school at the end of the year. The days were long and lonely but she held her head high and would not make eye contact with Rachel even though Rachel was often hanging around in the same bit of the quad as Rose or on a dining table nearby.

Then one day, weeks later, when she was having a low moment, she turned on her laptop to find the words
New message
.

It was from Joshua Johnson.

I’m trying to contact the
Rose Smith who used to live in Brewster Road in Bethnal Green. If you are this person could you contact me? If not, sorry to have bothered you.

She stared at the email with disbelief.

Joshua? She said his name out loud, filled with a feeling of elation. Joshua Johnson, her stepbrother. She replied instantly.

Dear Joshua, yes, it’s me. Your little stepsister, Rose. How are you? It’s brilliant to hear from you!

Minutes later, she received a longer message.

Hi Rosie, at long last got hold of your email address (don’t ask me how many emails I’ve sent to ‘Rose Smith’). It’s a long time since we spoke but I thought I’d contact you to tell you that I’m coming to London in September to go to uni. I’ll be living in Camden and I think that’s not so far from where you live with your gran? Don’t know if you’ll be around or whether you even want to meet up and chat over old times. For years I’ve thought it was a shame that we lost touch. Now might be a good chance to get to know each other again. Joshua.

PS And it goes without saying that we could swap stories about Dad and Kathy. XXXX

She read it over, two, three times. Then she replied.

It felt like a new beginning.

The head teacher’s door opened.

‘You can come in now, Rose,’ Mrs Abbott said.

Martha passed her, giving her arm a squeeze. In the head’s office an elderly couple were sitting in the armchairs. There was a tray of tea and biscuits on the coffee table. Mrs Abbott introduced them.

‘You’re Rose?’ the woman said. ‘We heard a lot about you from Rachel. Thank you. You were a really good friend.’

Mrs Bliss had a solid square handbag on her lap and both her hands gripped the strap. Mr Bliss stood up and held his hand out for a shake.

‘Whenever Rachel came home for the holidays she talked about you non-stop, didn’t she, Tony?’

‘She drove us mad. Rose Smith this, Rose Smith that!’

Rose frowned. She had no idea what to say to them. They were smiling at her in an encouraging way.

‘I’m so sorry about her death,’ Rose said.

The word
death
sat uncomfortably in the room.

‘It’s a terrible thing,’ Mrs Bliss said, eventually, and then turned to her husband. ‘She said she’s sorry about Rachel’s
accident
.’

‘Dreadful,’ Mr Bliss said.

‘Miss Harewood told us that you knew that Rachel was our adopted daughter.’

‘Yes,’ said Rose.

‘She was our pride and joy,’ Mr Bliss said, sitting upright, brushing his trousers down with the side of his hand.

‘Even if she didn’t always think that was the case,’ Mrs Bliss said, patting her husband’s hand briefly before gripping the handle of the bag once more.

‘Rachel was so upset when you left. She talked about you all last summer.’

Rose didn’t know what to say. How to answer. How to make them feel any better.

‘Let the girl go, dear,’ Mr Bliss said.

He stood up and gave her a firm handshake and Mrs Bliss grabbed hold of her other hand and squeezed it briefly before sitting back down, hugging the handbag and sighing loudly.

Outside, Rose stood for a moment feeling the cooler air on her face. Then she went to the reception area and picked up her bag. She’d told Joshua to come up the drive and pick her up at the entrance but now she didn’t want to wait around. She wanted to be away from the gloomy atmosphere of the building and the memories that it brought with it. She walked out of the door and along the drive. She’d meet Joshua as he drove towards her.

She wanted to go home to London.

EIGHTEEN

Joshua was late. She reached the end of the drive and expected to see him there but the lane was empty. She looked each way for the Mini to appear but it didn’t. She checked the time; twenty past one. She rang his phone but it went straight to voicemail. She tried to remember what he said he was doing after he dropped her off earlier. Had he been delayed?

She knew what direction he was due to come from so she started to walk briskly along the lane. As she went she thought about Rachel Bliss’s grandparents. They looked as though they were in their sixties. Had they known about the lies she told? Had they been offended that she made up stories about her family or had they blamed themselves because they’d waited so long to tell her the truth? Rachel had lived a lie with them for ten years. Had she been punishing them by making up a completely new family?

But why had Rachel punished
her
by lying?

She came to the end of the lane where the bus stop was. She looked north up the coast road for the Mini. She pulled out her phone to see if a message had arrived but there was nothing. It was 1.35. Where was Joshua Her bag felt heavier now and she pulled it across the road to the bus stop and sat on the small wooden seat, its edges crumbling, its fibres sticking up. From where she was she could see up the lane and for a considerable distance along the road. She’d be able to see the Mini when it came.

Then she could get away from here and put Rachel Bliss out of her mind once and for all.

After their friendship was over Rose and Rachel avoided each other. Rachel spent her time with other girls but Rose spent time alone. There were three things on her mind. To get the best grades in her GCSEs. To persuade her grandmother to let her leave Mary Linton and go to a local college. To get closer to Joshua.

Amid all of the revision she was amazed and delighted when there was a message from him. Many were long and detailed, telling her what had happened to him in the time that they had been separated. She replied, filling him in on her life although her emails seemed shorter, blunter than his.

It kept her going.

Her grandmother reluctantly agreed that she could leave after her exams and look at local colleges for somewhere to do her ‘A’ levels. Rose was delighted with this. It meant she could get away from school and Rachel Bliss and that she would be in London when Joshua moved there to go to university.

Maybe they could meet up soon. The thought gave her a thrill.

But she had to get her exams out of the way first and then pack her things up and leave Mary Linton College behind her.

Walking out of her last exam she felt exhilarated. Her wrist ached because of the fervour with which she had written her answers. She’d hardly paused to look at the other students or at the clock on the wall. She just kept writing, one paragraph after the other until she’d finished and then went on to the next question. When a voice said,
You have fifteen minutes left
she had looked up startled and then dipped her head back into her work once more until it was over.

It was a hot day and she went and sat in the quad feeling the late afternoon sun beating down on her face. She looked up at the building and knew that in a few days’ time she would be leaving it for ever.

She was glad.

Then she saw Rachel coming round the corner. She kept her eyes fixed on a point on the building so that she didn’t have to make eye contact or acknowledge her. But Rachel walked straight towards her and sat next to her. Rose tensed herself. She did not want to have a conversation with Rachel but she could hardly ignore her at such close quarters.

‘Finished?’ Rachel said.

She nodded.

‘I’ve still got another Classics paper.’

Rose didn’t answer.

‘There’s something I wanted to tell you,’ Rachel said, lowering her voice a little. ‘I didn’t know whether to or not but last Saturday I was in Cromer and I think I saw your mother.’

Rose turned slowly and stared at Rachel. Moments went by and she didn’t utter a word. Then Rachel’s eyes dropped and she made a sound clearing her throat.

‘I was on the pier with some girls from Brontë. One of their parents took us out. We were larking about and I saw this couple standing in the corner. The woman was staring at me. We were in our own clothes but still she stared, not just at me but at the other girls as well and she looked so familiar. I thought I knew her, you know; maybe she’d worked in the school or in one of the shops in Holt or something. I didn’t take much notice of her after that. I was too busy with the others but as I was walking away it came to me where I knew her from.’