Читать книгу 99 Red Balloons: A chillingly clever psychological thriller with a stomach-flipping twist - Elisabeth Carpenter, Elisabeth Carpenter, Libby Carpenter - Страница 17

I stand outside the bedroom door. I hardly ever open it, but I feel as though Sarah’s telling me to go inside, to remember. I almost don’t want to. The everyday thoughts are bad enough – those pangs I feel in my chest when it catches me by surprise, when I think I’ve buried it enough to go about my day. But it never goes away. I’m meant to be sad. Nothing will change that.

Sarah and Zoe moved in with Ron and me six weeks before Zoe went missing. Missing – it sounds so flippant. She was taken from us, murdered, vanished. They are the dramatic words that should belong to Zoe, because we don’t know what happened to her. No, they’re not the only words. She was kind, even at five years old, so kind. Yes, she could be challenging, but only because she was so bright – not that we said so at the time.

Sarah’s husband, David, had been made redundant, but they’d been arguing long before that. She and Zoe moved in with us to give Sarah some space to think. But Zoe missed her dad.

Pull yourself together, Margaret. My mother’s voice is tingling in my ears.

Easier said than done, Mother.

I turn the handle and push the door open. I always leave the curtains tied, so it’s never dark. There’s not as much dust in here this time. What is dust, anyway? I once heard that it was about seventy per cent human skin. No one comes in here, so there can’t be much. I wonder how many of the little particles left behind are from Sarah and Zoe. I want to gather them all up and bring them to life.

Next to Sarah’s single bed is Zoe’s little camp bed. Her three teddies are still on her pillow. One of them, her favourite pink elephant, Wellie (she couldn’t say Nellie when she first got it, and it just stuck), is almost standing upright. The clothes they arrived with are still in suitcases under the bed. I couldn’t bear to unpack, to look at them, to touch them, to smell them. Mother had a point when she said that some things are best left buried – it feels too painful to unearth them.

I still wonder if things would’ve been different if Sarah hadn’t left David. They lived over twenty minutes away, so Zoe would never have gone to the sweet shop on the corner. I used to blame David for driving Sarah away, but that has lessened. I haven’t seen him in over ten years.

I don’t want to look to the left; I know what I’ll see. The mahogany chest of drawers that Ron and I bought from a car boot sale in Blackpool. On top of it will be a twelve by seven photograph of Zoe in a beautiful carved frame; there’ll be a box that contains a lock of Zoe’s hair from her first trip to the hairdresser’s; the candle, burned only once from her christening. There will be angels made from porcelain, plastic, wood; a stone Zoe picked from St Anne’s beach; a jar of perfume she made with roses and Ron’s aftershave; the conker she pickled in vinegar and made me bake for seven hours.

I know all those things are there and I can’t look at them.

I stroke the cover of Sarah’s bed – the place where my beautiful daughter died, and back out of the room.