Read Online The Grey Girl by Eleanor Hawken - Free Book Online Page A

library door open. Despite the weekend’s theme he was wearing his Sherlock Holmes cape and holding his plastic pipe. He smiled broadly at me as I walked into the room, and I smiled back, although feeling uneasy as I realised the crying couldn’t have been him. Just as I’d done the Friday before, I lined up with Aunt Meredith, Nell, Toby and Katie – the part-timer who only ever showed up at weekends – in the library as Aunt Meredith welcomed the guests and introduced the staff and characters. Once again there was no one under the ancient age of thirty-five in the party. And once again during dinner I screamed a blood-curdling scream in the hallway and collapsed to my death. The guests came hurrying out and pawed over my ‘dead’ body, wondering aloud who could have killed such a pretty and promising young thing.
    I made sure to get up as quickly as I could as soon as the guests had left me. I didn’t want to be alone playing dead on the cold stone floor. I hurried back to the kitchen and helped Katie clean away the dinner plates and pack away the leftover food. ‘Katie,’ I said carefully, as she passed me the last of the plates to be put away. ‘There are no guests staying on the top floor, are there?’
    â€˜No,’ she replied, pushing her fair hair away from her face. ‘It hasn’t been renovated yet. It’s not safe up there so I wouldn’t go exploring if I were you.’
    â€˜I thought I heard –’
    â€˜It was the wind,’ she said quickly, before I could finish. Her face had paled and her eyes darted away from me, as if she was hiding something. ‘The wind will play tricks on you up there in the attic. Don’t go up there.’
    â€˜I won’t,’ I replied, although I didn’t believe what I was saying.
    I spent the next day avoiding the guests and keeping as far away from the house as I could. I sat in the boathouse writing for hours. The afternoon was muggy, the air desperate for a thunder storm. I wrote scene after scene, tearing each page that I’d completed from my notepad and setting it aside into its own little pile. Needing a break, I took myself back to the house and into the kitchen, my completed pages in one hand and the notepad in the other. Nell was sitting at the table; Toby was sat next to her reading his 007 book. I put my notepad on a shelf by the sink so I could use my free hand to run the tap. I gulped down a glass of cold water greedily.
    â€˜I don’t suppose you want to help me?’ Nell said, chopping a lettuce into shreds. That annoyed me. She’d already made up her mind that I’d say no before she asked, so why bother asking at all?
    â€˜I don’t suppose I do,’ I muttered back.
    â€˜You know, Suzy,’ Nell said thoughtfully. ‘Sometimes you can sound very rude. You really should think before you speak.’
    I nearly exploded all over the kitchen. I could have lashed out at her and torn her throat out at that moment. How dare she say such a thing to me? ‘Just because you can hear what comes out of my mouth doesn’t mean you know me,’ I said sharply. Toby looked up from his book, his little body rigid at the sound of my outburst. ‘You don’t know the thoughts in my head. You don’t know what I think and feel,’ I accused Nell.
    â€˜All the world has to go on is what you give them, Suzy,’ Nell replied so calmly it only made me angrier. ‘You’re a girl with shocking red hair and an arsenal of Shakespeare quotes at the ready and a whole lot of attitude. It doesn’t take a genius to know that something is troubling you. I’d much rather you spoke to me about it than snap.’
    â€˜What makes you think I’d speak to you about anything? You’re not my friend. You’re not my mother,’ I shouted. ‘You have no idea who I am or what I’ve been through in my life. I don’t care