Read Online The Considine Curse by Gareth P. Jones - Free Book Online

has reached the house and let herself in.
    ‘Why did she call me a half-cousin when we first met?’ I ask.
    ‘She’s just being childish. But you shouldn’t want to be one of us. You should do what Gerald told you to do and keep away from us.’
    ‘How do you know what he told me?’
    ‘We spoke on the phone.’
    ‘You’re all very close,’ I say.
    ‘We only have each other. We don’t have friends.’
    ‘Why not?’
    Lily falls silent.
    ‘What’s wrong with you all?’ I ask.
    ‘We have . . .’ She pauses for such a long time, I wonder whether she is going to finish her sentence at all. ‘We have problems.’
    ‘What problems?’ I am beginning to suspect that all my cousins are mad.
    She doesn’t answer. We are getting near the house. Elspeth appears at an upstairs window. She opens it and shouts, ‘Lily, come up here.’
    ‘Be careful, Elspeth,’ yells Uncle Sewell.
    ‘I’m being careful, Daddy,’ she replies. ‘Come on, Lily, let’s play our game.’
    ‘I’d better go,’ says Lily apologetically.
    She runs into the house. Uncle Sewell turns to me. ‘Too much energy for you as well, eh?’ he says, smiling.
    ‘That’s the thing about teenagers,’ says Mum. ‘It’s like the energy they had a few years ago gets drowned in all those hormones.’
    But it isn’t lack of energy that stopped me running in. It was the lack of an invite. Once inside the house, Mum and Uncle Sewell go into the messy study to look for the documents.
    Alone in the hallway, I look up at the picture of the Mona Lisa. Today she looks like someone trying hard to smile but failing. I climb the stairs. I can hear Lily and Elspeth moving around in one of the rooms. I realise that, without thinking about it, I am trying to walk without making any noise, not because I’m trying to sneak up on my cousins but because I don’t want Elspeth to find me there. I stop on the top stair where I can hear the two of them talking quietly in one of the rooms.
    ‘We have to find it and destroy it,’ says Elspeth.
    ‘But we’ve looked everywhere. It’s not here.’
    ‘We can’t have looked everywhere or else we’d have found it by now.’
    There is a flicker of movement through the slit between the door and the wall. I don’t want to be caught eavesdropping so I move quickly into another room full of large metal trunks. I open one. The lid is heavy and the metal is cold. Inside are old musty clothes. I can no longer hear Elspeth and Lily’s voices.
    Perhaps all families are this bizarre when you look at them up close. It just takes an outsider like me to show it.
    ‘Get your hands off our stuff.’
    I turn around. Elspeth is standing behind me.
    ‘Why are you so unpleasant all the time?’ I say.
    She laughs. ‘Grandma didn’t love you. You shouldn’t be here. This is Grandma’s stuff and she left it all to us, not you.’ Elspeth pushes the lid shut on the trunk I have opened.
    ‘What is your problem?’ I ask.
    ‘You. You don’t belong in this family. We don’t want you,’ she replies.
    ‘You mean you don’t. Amelia was nice to me,’ I say.
    ‘Amelia’s only other company is her own smell.’
    ‘You’re a vile little girl.’
    I leave the room and walk down the stairs but I stop halfway and turn around, angry that I have given in. Mona Lisa looks down at me and I feel like now she is smiling to hide her anger. Sunlight spills in through a side window. The picture frame casts an uneven shadow, revealing that the picture isn’t flat against the wall. I try to get a closer look but it’s too high to reach.
    There is an umbrella by the door. I run down and grab it. I can hear Mum and Uncle Sewell talking in the study. Using the umbrella as a lever to move the picture I cause something to fall. I step back and narrowly avoid falling down the stairs. I grab the banister to steady myself. A small black book is on the stair. It has scuffed edges and it is held shut by a threadbare piece of string. I tuck it into