Killing Rachel by Anne Cassidy Page B

walked out of the emporium and along the street until she came to a tiny square that had benches in the middle. She sat down and watched people walking by.
     
    The summer holidays after Rachel’s lie had seen emails flying back and forth between them. Rachel was sorry. Rachel was sorry the whole summer long.
    I was depressed; the summer was coming up; I didn’t want to go home: I was worried about my mum’s boyfriend, Robert, so I made the stupid story up; don’t ask me why; I’m just an idiot.
    Sometimes I think my life is just so dull that I have to make things up.
    You’ve had dramatic things happen in your life. You don’t know what it’s like to be ordinary.
    The only thing that ever happened to me was Juliet’s death and that’s not something I want to remember. Maybe that’s why I made it up. Something to feel bad about that hadn’t actually happened.
    I promise I’ll never lie about anything again.
    Rose softened. Rachel had admitted she’d lied, she’d even tried to analyse it. Maybe this was a new beginning for her. In any case, the first days of the holidays when Rose was resolved to breaking up with her friend were grim. Walking around her grandmother’s house it was as though she was the twelve-year-old who had first gone to live there. She had gone back three years in time, alone, friendless. All she had to look forward to was a solitary time at school. Rachel would find new friends and she, who did not easily connect with people, would be on her own.
    It made her feel bereft.
    When the emails came she ignored them for a few days but eventually she answered, stiffly and showing the hurt she’d felt at Rachel’s lie. Then her answers got longer and she even tried to sympathise with Rachel, cheering her up, asking her about the terrible Robert and about how things were going with her dad’s new wife, Melissa.
    Rose wore the bracelet and she gave the silver locket she’d bought to Rachel. The friendship was strong again for the first few weeks of the autumn term. The cold weather stopped them going to the wood and they spent most of their time inside. There was work to do; the GCSEs were at the end of year and the school was geared up to getting high results for all their students. There were extra classes and regular tests. There were pastoral meetings and targets and work patterns were examined and commented on. The girls were put on notice. This was the year of examinations and they had to knuckle down.
    Rose did everything that was asked of her. She intended to get into university in three years’ time. She wanted a career and life away from Anna and independence was the only way she was going to have that.
    Rachel was less motivated and Rose saw it as her job to chivvy her along, to nag her about work, to make sure she was completing assignments. Rachel was easily bored, though, and didn’t like the work. During private study time Rose saw her sitting in the refectory or in the quad chatting to other girls. Her grades were poor and Rose tried to explain to her how she needed to do more research or spend longer doing fresh drafts of her essays but Rachel told her, jokily, ‘Give it a rest!’ Or ‘Leave me alone!’
    They fell out bitterly just before half-term in October.
    Rachel had said she would see her in the library after the last class. She was doing some research for a project on Buddhism and Rose said that she would help. Rose went to the library and waited for her. She took her book out and read for a while. She went on to one of the monitors and looked up websites she liked. Eventually, she gave up and went to look for Rachel. A girl she asked said she’d seen Rachel go into Brontë House. A feeling of indignation took hold of her. Rachel had no right to be in Brontë House when she’d agreed to meet Rose in the library. She marched across and found Rachel sitting in a small kitchen with two other girls, one of them Tania Miller. She walked right in and stood stiffly amid