Roadkill (LiveWire) (8 page)

It’s only when he heads back into the night that I remember he was coming up from the embankment again, and did I imagine it, or was there the rumble and crash of an artic. pulling away from the lay-by. I file it away for future reference. Along with all the other stuff cluttering the back of my mind.

When I finally slide into my bed I spend maybe a half hour remembering, and Rose, from her lofty position on my wall gives me the thumbs up. I can’t even work up the energy to be indignant, to ask her about what Ashley told me. For the first time since her death, I sleep long and dreamlessly, and wake with a smile, reaching for my pastels and sketchbook.

An hour later, and rain is tapping on my window, soaking the sill, so I slam it closed. Typical, I can hear my sister say, “English summer only lasts a month if you’re lucky…” She would go on to tell whoever was listening about how different it would be when she was trekking through rainforests in Borneo or something.

“Caroline? Are you awake?” Saturday so Mum is still at home at, I squint at the clock, Eleven. Oh my god. Grabbing my phone I hastily scroll through six messages; Four from Leo asking if I’m okay, one from Melissa trying to persuade me to head over to Herman’s Lake for a ‘wild swim’ later, and asking me to call her, and joy, one from Matt suggesting a date for tonight. Result!

Yelling to Mum that I’m just going to jump in the shower, I’m positively beaming as I rinse out my hair, inhaling the last of Rose’s Clarins body wash. It’s weird how one minute you can actually be happy, the next that dull ache catches you unawares and drags you down again. This time it’s because for a split second I thought I must get out the shower and text Rose, tell her about Matt.

Quickly I haul on my clothes and stumble into Rose’s room and locate the diary. To set my niggling fears to rest I flick through, specifically checking the evening stuff. Cursing Leo for adding to my suspect list, I riffle through the pages, pleased to note there is nothing. Except…oh jeez.

“Leo called twice. He was wondering where you were? Says he couldn’t get hold of you on the mobile. Whatever time did you get in last night?” Mum is bustling around with a cloth and floor polish, for all her efficiency missing a couple of patches, which obviously I don’t point out, because she hasn’t stopped the whole cleaning thing since Rose was found. Our whole house stinks of bleach and furniture polish.

“There! All done. Did I miss anything?”

“Um. No,” I mumble through a mouthful of cereal. The diary is stashed in my bag. I’m also itching to get online and see if I can trace the mystery bloke Rose was allegedly going to leave Ash for.

Mum looks pleased, and stashes her stuff away.

“So where did you go last night?”

I yawn, tapping out replies to my texts, “Oh a party, then I walked back with Matt and Ashley.”

“That’s good.” She makes us both coffee, and sits opposite me.

Gradually it dawns on me, she is waiting to have a Talk. Mum is a nightmare with this, going days, weeks without really asking what we’re up too, immersed in her important work. She gives conferences all over Europe, and The Times once did an article on her work. Then, bam! Something that’s been niggling her blows up and we have a Talk, which generally makes a drama out of whatever has been bothering her. However this time I’m blown away by her subject choice.

“ Caroline, I know how hard it has been for us all after losing Rose, and you have been wonderful. It will get easier.”

I am silent, letting her talk as usual, and it works, she continues;

“After your dad died I hurt so much I thought I would never get over it.”

“But you did. You met Garry,” I can’t stop myself sounding vaguely accusatory.

“Yes,” she is unruffled, twisting a gold link charm bracelet on her left wrist. “That doesn’t mean the pain I feel for your father’s death has gone. I still feel a piece of me is missing, and I always will. Garry understands that. It’s the same with Rose,” now her eyes are bright with tears and my throat constricts.

“With Rose, it’s not the same,” I blurt out, suddenly furious at her for ruining my happy mood.

“It is Caroline. We’ll never forget either of them, and our lives will always be a little bit sadder. But we have to move on.”

Chapter Nine

“MOVE ON!” I shout now, standing up, grabbing my phone, “It’s only been three months since she died!”

“Caroline please. There is something I wanted to discuss with you. Something important. Sit down please.”

I am torn between childishly storming out, and waiting to hear. I sit.

She locks her hands neatly on the table and looks directly at me, smudged green eyes enhancing her fragile heart shaped face. My mum doing her stern china doll look, with her delicate bone structure and pretty clothes. Taking a deep calming breath, I instruct myself to grow up and listen.

“Garry and I have become very close,” she begins nervously. Not so composed, now.

I really really hope she is not about to say they’re getting married.

“He has suggested we might like to live in Australia for a while. A couple of years actually. He’s been offered a teaching post, lecturing at a university in Sydney,” she grinds to a halt, waiting for me to say something.

I’m shocked out of my self-imposed silence, “Like, forever? Just leave here?”

“Not necessarily forever, we could see how it goes. The initial offer is for four years. You see, Caroline, I am not sure I can bear to stay here after Rose. I need to get away to move on. It would be a chance for both of us.”

“You didn’t move countries after Dad died, we just moved out of the army house, and you got over him okay.” Bitchy, I think.

“Just think about it Caroline.”

“Oh you do want me to come then? I thought you might want to just head off for your new life, just the two of you…” I can’t go on, and run from the room.

“Caroline! You must make your own decisions. You’re an adult now, not a child any longer, but we would love it if you came. Of course we would…” Her voice trails away as she realises, despite what she has just said I’ve just confirmed my childishness by storming out mid conversation.

My brain is spinning and I slam the bedroom door for good measure, and collapse on Rose’s bed, rubbing my burning cheeks. They want to move to the other side of the world? I don’t know what I think, I don’t want to have to deal with this! Something else nags me, something Mum said about grieving for Rose being the same as grieving for Dad, but it wasn’t.

Dad was a helicopter pilot in the army, and he was killed by a roadside bomb. Stuck in an armoured truck, that was transporting him and another crew to a remote base. Weird thing was I didn’t miss him for a bit. It was like he was just off on another tour of duty. It was weeks before it hit me he was never going to come through the door yelling “How’s my girls?” Smelling of sunshine and dust, tanned a deep gold, and totally exhausted. But still happy to have to small children jumping on the bed, dragging him out to funfairs, the beach (even in winter!) or for long walks in the woods. Then it hurt.

Dragging out the diary I double check the familiar bold scrawl, then I text Ashley;

‘Lorry – 0130 - ASH? Mean anything?’

With Rose it was instant, as soon as she didn’t come home that night I knew she wasn’t just staying over at a girlfriend’s, and when the police arrived to tell us, I had already known for almost five hours that she was dead. Because something in me died too, the way it never did with Dad. It’s funny that me and Rose were only eighteen months age difference, but she always seemed way older, my perfect big sister.

I snap up and grab Rose’s computer, logging onto LiveWire without a moment’s pause. I’ve just had an idea so good, and so scary it catches my breath. Plus whatever pathetic excuse Ashley comes up with I need to meet him. To think I felt sorry for him. Leo must have been right. They were dealing drugs; meeting a lorry on the road to get their..er…bag of pills? Except she didn’t die on any of the dates the lorry thing was marked….

Ignoring this, I’m fizzing with excitement as I quickly tap out Rose’s login details, luckily her password is saved. Leo was horrified when she confessed she scrawled all her internet passwords on a random sheet of paper, or just got her computer to remember them. She called him an old fogey.

I could have guessed her password anyway;
live4eva.
She used it all the time, and my fingertips tingle with pain as I access her messages. Will I ever get used to the fact she isn’t here anymore? I remember our only serious conversation about death suddenly, and with total clarity.

For my seventeenth birthday Rose organised a ‘surprise’ party at Alton Towers. She was cross I wouldn’t ride the rollercoasters, but pleased I liked her present; a wooden artists easel, real hair brushes, and box after box of jewel coloured oil paints, stubby pastels, orderly rows of pencils…

“Wow Rose, this must have cost a fortune!” I hugged her. We were sitting on her lacy bedspread, surrounded by wrapping paper. Rose’s room was always pretty and girly, at total odds with who she was.

“Nah, forget it. Most of it was on sale!”

Rose was always dead generous, and it turned out she’d paid for my gifts from her ever growing stash of modelling cash. She was sombre for a moment, gazing over my head, where Dad smiled from the wall.

“Dad would have loved you being seventeen,” she said eventually.

“He would have loved the rollercoaster!” I said a touch enviously, stroking the box of paints reverently, itching to pick up a brush.

Rose brushed her dark hair out and started to plait it, quick and deft. She flicked me a look, “Sorry I said you were a wimp. I didn’t mean it.”

“S’ok. Rose are you scared of anything?” It’s a childish question and for a moment I thought she’d dismiss it with her usual cryptic humour, then, after another long look at Dad, she stared right back at me, aquamarine eyes glittering with unusual depth.

“Dying,” she said softly, “I’m scared as hell that there is nothing there when we die. You don’t go anywhere, you can’t feel anything. It totally freaks me out.

I was puzzled, “What do you mean?”

She shifted positions, cross- legged now, like a Buddha, “Like with dad. Me and Carly did this séance you know.”

“You didn’t!” I was goggle eyed at this unexpected side to my sister, and couldn’t suppress a giggle.

She gave a wry smile, “I know, it was mad right? But I wanted to check he was okay. That some part of him was still out there somewhere……To reassure myself there was something out there I guess.”

“Did it work?”

“No!” she forced a laugh, “We ended up drinking tequila shots instead, and going to that dodgy nightclub that lets anyone in without ID. You know, Peers Street?” She shuddered “Cheesy eighties music.”

For a moment we were silent, then Rose’s phone beeped and she snapped back to reality, crackling with her usual electric energy. She tapped out a number, blue fingernails flying;

“Ash? We got it! What? Okay, see you in five.”

“Caz, I got the funding for the ultra race! Gotta go. Love you!” She hugged me and hurtled from the room, a whirlwind of life and fire, leaving me to sit like a frail little ghost on her pink bed.

“Love you Rose.”

I glanced up at Dad, then reached blindly for one of my new pencils and started to sketch. Two little girls, a rollercoaster in the sky…

It was one of the best things I’ve ever done, and I stuck it in my St Martin’s Portfolio, which is at the back of my wardrobe. And if I don’t get a move on there it will stay while I head off to do a science degree. Mum and I need to have another little Talk, and this one’ll be on me.

Anyway, I drag myself back to the present and check on Rose’s messages. As I suspected, there is nothing about her death, and her mates on the LiveWire forum are asking if she’s up for this dare, or that dare. I guess it’s not like any of them would have seen the piece in the paper; a small paragraph in the local rag about a promising teenage model killed in a hit and run. Not a whiff of scandal so I don’t think any of the nationals even picked it up.

No messages, old or new from a mysterious secret admirer either. Maybe he didn’t exist, or if he did maybe he wasn’t linked to LiveWire.

Deleting messages, I flick back to the last one from Kelly, asking where Rose is, posting a load of stuff from her latest dare. I scroll down the page, and squint at the photos. Blurry as usual, and dark, as usual, but oh!

Kelly and her mates are scaling a tall derelict building, climbing steadily upwards with no safety harness, one girl even screams as a high heeled shoe drops twenty feet into the street below. I can’t tell which one is Kelly, and you wouldn’t even know it was LA, what with the looming landscape shrouded in darkness, and bad camera work. She seems pretty pleased with her effort though, notching up another star and challenging Rose to crack on and catch up.

Which is exactly what she is going to do. Matt, Melissa, even Leo are far from my mind as Rose-Farlan returns to LiveWire. Three months after her death. Because you see, it occurred to me when Mum was babbling about moving to Australia. If I was to go too. IF. I would need to make sure I was actually right and Rose’s death was truly an accident. Of course, I would still want to kill the person who did it, but if it really was truly an accident I guess I could leave it. Go to art school, go to Australia, whatever. I don’t have to know who did it anymore, I need to know it wasn’t done deliberately. This must be progress of a sort.