Read Online The Bones in the Attic by Robert Barnard - Free Book Online Page A

impressed.
    â€œYour parents must be very rich,” said a girl called Sophie, about Rory’s own age. “Having a fridge. And whenever we come here there’s ice cream in the freezer box. And they don’t care if we eat it all up.”
    Rory shrugged. He had an early sense of his grandeur, though in other respects he seemed to lack confidence.
    â€œNo, they don’t care. They just say, ‘Have you had friends in, then?’”
    â€œDo you get lots of pocket money?” asked Matt. That was a bone of contention at home in the East End, and the supply had become very erratic since he came to lodge with Auntie Hettie.
    â€œNot bad,” said Rory, preserving the mystery by not being too specific.
    â€œParents just don’t know the cost of things,” said Peter.
    â€œOurs don’t, anyway,” agreed Sophie feelingly.
    So Sophie was Peter’s sister, was she? In Matt’s drowsy memories she was blonde, curly-haired, and very forward—or perhaps determined was a better word. She knew what she wanted. He remembered this because it contrasted so completely with Rory Pemberton, who seemed to have no idea what he wanted, beyond showing off about his parents’ money.
    â€œThere’s other ways of getting money than holding out your hands for more pocket money,” said Marjie. Matt pricked up his ears at this, but Marjie didn’t volunteer any further information, and Matt was puzzled because she seemed to be looking at Lily Marsden. Lily, however, was not returning her gaze, but was digging deep into the ice cream as if her spoon were a pickax.
    â€œHere, greedy, you’re taking more than your share!” said a boy called Colin. He looked at Rory.
    â€œThere’s more in the freezer,” Rory said. He went into the scullery and, opening up another boxlike structure, took out a second carton.
    It was the first time Matt ever saw a freezer.

That morning the grown-up Matt was on the twelve-to-seven shift at Radio Leeds, and taking some of the hourly TV bulletins. The children were still at their old schools in Pudsey, and when they had been packed off up to the Stanningley Road and the 72 bus, Matt bundled Beckham into the Volvo and drove off to give him a treat: an hour-long walk in Herrick Park.
    While Beckham ran here and there in ecstasy, meeting up with old friends and cautiously making sniffy contact with stranger-dogs, Matt followed on, occasionally calling him if trouble seemed to be brewing, but mostly leaving him to his own devices. That meant his own mind was free too, and as he walked he went over the memories that the name Lily had triggered.
    Peter and Marjie had been his friends from the first day. He had liked them, in his childish way, because they acknowledged so enthusiastically his footballing skills. Now he warned himself that the liking was based on ridiculous grounds. They had then both been in their early teens, Peter with deep-brown floppy hair, Marjie with fair hair tied behind in a rough sort of ponytail. He felt he could put faces to them—faces then, of course. Who could say what their faces were like now ?
    Rory, he ought to have been pals with, he being closer to his own age, but he knew he hadn’t been. Was it because his parents had had money—more money, apparently, than most of the parents in the terraces of stone houses, therefore much, much more than his own parents back in London? Probably that was it. And anyway, age seemed to have little to do with it: he was so far outside their age range—seven to their eleven to fourteen—that he had just attached himself as a sort of mascot to whomever he liked most.
    Lily Marsden’s face he remembered quite clearly. Not at all a pleasant face: withdrawn, inward-looking, mean, perhaps. Was she the Lily Fitch who now lived in Lansdowne Rise? If so, and in spite of all her efforts, she had become Lily, not Elizabeth. Colin, he could just about put a size