Read Online Like This, for Ever by Sharon Bolton - Free Book Online

towels. The washing was Barney’s job, because he quite liked the sorting into organized piles, and the idea of putting dirty stuff in and getting clean, sweet-smelling, damp clothes out. His dad did the ironing.
    ‘What’s going on?’ he said, as he walked into the kitchen, his eyesgoing straight to the washing machine. Yep, there it was, something pale and stripy sloshing about.
    ‘Breakfast’s ready,’ said his dad, who was sitting at the central island, a cereal spoon in his right hand. Barney didn’t move. His dad had used too much soap. There was too much froth in the machine.
    ‘I spilt a mug of tea in bed this morning,’ said his dad. ‘I didn’t want it staining. That’s OK, isn’t it? For once?’
    ‘’Course,’ said Barney, making himself look away from the washing machine. So did that mean they’d only do three loads the next day? Odd numbers had a way of making him feel twitchy inside.
    ‘Barney!’ His dad was reaching out across the island towards him, putting his own large hands over Barney’s small ones. ‘You’re doing it again.’
    Barney shrugged and concentrated on making his hands relax. He couldn’t remember it, but he knew they’d been tracing patterns on the granite surface, his fingers moving in repetitive squared shapes, over and over, even when his hands started to hurt, either until someone stopped him or he was distracted by something else.
    ‘Raisins,’ said his dad.
    The raisins were by his right hand. The bran flakes had already been poured into the bowl. Barney counted four raisins into his bowl as the 8am news came on, his dad adjusted the volume and a tall man in a suit told the world what most of it already knew – that the bodies of Jason and Joshua Barlow had been found the previous evening and that the police believed they’d been killed by the same person who’d previously abducted and murdered Ryan Jackson and Noah Moore. He reminded them that a fifth boy, Tyler King, was still missing.
    The tall man, a senior police officer of some kind, was sitting behind a table with three other people. As the next four raisins landed on the bran flakes, the cameras moved along the table to the parents. The bones of the father’s skull seemed to be pressing themselves out through his skin as he asked the viewers to help find their sons’ killer. The mother didn’t manage to articulate a single word. She was crying too much.
    At least Jason and Joshua had had a mother.
    As the last four of his sixteen raisins went into his cereal bowl, adark-skinned, dark-haired woman appeared on the screen. The name card on the desk in front of her said that she was Detective Inspector Dana Tulloch.
    ‘Someone knows who this killer is,’ she was saying. ‘This killer doesn’t appear from nowhere and then vanish again. He lives among us. If you have any information that you think could be helpful, however small, however unimportant it may seem, please get in touch.’
    The news moved on to the next story and Barney’s dad turned the volume down again.
    ‘Toast?’ he said, getting up.
    ‘Please,’ said Barney. ‘Can I have maple syrup and honey?’
    ‘No, because that would be disgusting.’
    ‘I mean honey on one half and maple syrup on the other.’
    With a heavy sigh and a resigned shake of the head, his dad reached up into the cupboard. ‘Barney, I’m not sure I want you going out in the mornings at the moment.’
    Instant panic. Barney looked from the TV over towards his dad. ‘Why not?’
    His dad turned to face him. ‘It’s too dark,’ he said. ‘Maybe when it gets lighter, in the summer.’
    ‘If I give my job up now, I won’t get it back again just because the working conditions become better,’ said Barney.
    His dad almost smiled and then caught the look on Barney’s face.
    ‘I just don’t feel comfortable about you being out on your own right now.’
    But he felt perfectly comfortable leaving him on his own two nights every week. OK, that was hardly