Love You Dead - читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги автора Peter James (33 The past) #36

33 The past

It happened eighteen years ago, but Jodie could remember it vividly. It was funny. Whatever her parents thought, Jodie found it funny. Almost hysterically funny. It still brought a big smile to her face. A smile of glee, a smile of satisfaction, a smile at the whole ridiculousness of it all.

But of course she hadn’t dared to smile at that actual moment. She’d managed to look every bit as shocked as her parents.

It was the first anniversary of Cassie’s death. Her sister was receding into the past in both her memory and in the photographs around the house. She was pleased to see that the really big portrait photograph of her, the one that sat in its frame on the windowsill in the lounge, the one in which she looked so truly beautiful, was starting to fade significantly.

There were so many photos of Cassie that the house had the feeling of a shrine. A shrine to Cassie. Beautiful Cassie. Daddy’s pet, Mummy’s pet, teacher’s pet. Perfect Cassie. Jodie often wondered whether, if it had been her instead of her sister, would there have been this same outpouring of grief? This same kind of shrine?

She didn’t think so.

Neither of her parents noticed that she had discreetly moved the big photo from its original shaded position into the bay window that got direct sunlight for hours. Already the colour was starting to leach out of her skin. In a while, Jodie thought, she’ll just look like a ghost. And that will be one less picture of her to haunt me!

The family went to visit Cassie’s grave that afternoon. Her father took the day off work. Her mother hadn’t been back to work since Cassie died, she was still too distraught, still recovering after her breakdown from the shock.

Come on, woman, get over it! Jodie thought, silently. You believe in God — you go to church every Sunday, so what’s your problem? Cassie’s in Heaven. She’s probably the Angel Gabriel’s pet. Jesus’ pet. God’s pet!

Not that Jodie believed in any of that stuff. She didn’t think her sister was any of those things. In her view, Cassie was just a bunch of rotting, desiccated skin, bone and hair in a fancy coffin that was rotting too, six feet under, in the huge cemetery off the Old Shoreham Road, where her grandparents were also buried.

Best place for her. Good riddance, she thought privately as she stood, sobbing and sniffing and pretending to be all sad that her sister was gone, cruelly snatched away — just as the wording said on her neat white headstone with the fancy carved script.

Cassie Jane Danforth

Beloved daughter and sister

Cruelly snatched away from us.

‘Cruelly snatched’ — well that bit wasn’t strictly accurate, she thought. Fell to her death whilst walking along a coastal cliff path on a family holiday in Cornwall during the October half-term. Pushed actually. But that was another story — best not to go there.

Later that evening, home in bed, Jodie wrote in her diary:

We went for a pub supper after visiting the grave. Mum was too upset to want to go home right away and the poor thing was in no fit state to cook. So we drove out into the country to a gastro pub that mum and dad like, which serves the most horrid prawn cocktail I’ve ever eaten. Tiny little things, not much bigger than the maggots that are eating Cassie, and a lot of them still half frozen — and all smothered in a Marie Rose sauce that’s had a flavour bypass. Mum has it every time and insists I should have it too. ‘It’s a very generous portion,’ she always says.

A very generous portion of cold maggots in ketchup-flavoured mayo.

I can’t believe I ordered it again tonight. It was even worse than before.

Even though he was driving, Dad drank two pints of Harveys and ate a steak pie and beans and ordered a glass of red wine with it — a large glass. Mum had a small sherry and they had an argument about who would drive. She insisted she would drive back. The food arrived but I had to run out of the room and into the toilet, to get away from the nauseating atmosphere.

It was just so ridiculous. The whole day and evening.

Mum’s driving for a start. She drives like an old woman — well, she is an old woman, I suppose, forty-six is pretty ancient — but she drives like she’s a hundred and forty-six — at a steady forty-six. She never goes over fifty, not even on the motorway. She never overtakes anything, not even bicycles unless she can see ten miles of clear road ahead. She just sits behind them. Irritating me. But not Dad.

He even told her to slow down tonight! We were doing fifteen miles per hour behind a bicycle and he actually said to her, ‘Susan, slow down, you’re too close.’

My family.

My embarrassing family.

The things they say.

But this really made me laugh. Mum suddenly said she wanted to light a candle for Cassie, have it burning on the table with us during our meal. So my dad went up to the bar and asked if they had a candle they could light for his daughter. Ten minutes later the chef and two other members of staff appeared with a small cake, with a candle burning in the centre of it, and walked towards us, all smiling at me and singing HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!

I’m still laughing about that, even though it’s nearly midnight and I’ve got homework to do for tomorrow that I’ve not even started yet.

But, honestly, I have to say, I’ve not felt so great in a long time!