Just Keep Breathing, GS Rhodes [best book club books for discussion TXT] 📗

It was nothing like the rest of the house. Compared to everything else in the house, it looked like it had been ransacked. While, what he’d seen of the house and Laura’s online presence had shown her to be the queen of clean, this was precisely the opposite. Perhaps she hadn’t been able to bring herself to touch it after they’d come in here for the search. Maybe it was too much for her.

The room would already have been searched last night, looking for a suicide note or anything that might show her to be high risk. They also would have been looking for body parts or signs that the parents were responsible. Kidd knew the drill. But they’d not found anything. Kidd couldn’t help but wonder if they’d missed something. There was more going on here than he could tell right away. He listened for the sounds of anyone coming up the stairs or coming down the corridor. He knew he shouldn’t be in here, but he couldn’t resist.

He didn’t even really know what he was looking for. Something to help him find her, absolutely anything. He started over towards her desk. There was a computer on it, a few notebooks that were leaning over as if one of them were missing, either the ones she’d taken to school with her on Friday or ones they had seized.

He picked one of them up at random.

He opened it to find beautiful drawings in it. Sarah was artistic, it seemed. The pages were dotted, but she’d filled them with hand-drawn calendars and daily jottings. He found himself skimming over a couple, the names Dexter and Taylor coming up more than a few times. Jonno coming up a lot too, though not really with any reference to their relationship. She was even hiding it from her diaries too.

He put the notebook down and opened one of the desk drawers. It was full of makeup, lip glosses, mascaras, eye shadow palettes, the whole drawer practically overflowing when he opened it. He closed it and opened the next one, this time there was stationary. He rummaged a little, past the pens, the pencils, the sharpies, his heart pounding faster because the more time he spent in here, the more likely it would be that someone downstairs would wonder where he was.

Then his eye landed on something interesting.

It wasn’t much. An Apple logo. But he found himself moving quicker, grabbing it and pulling it out from beneath the piles of pens. It was the same as the handset he had, a year or two out of date. Kidd couldn’t imagine this family going without when it came to new tech. The parents had said she’d taken her phone with her, and the last ping on the phone had been near her school, so it all checked out. This had to be an old phone.

He wondered if there was anything on it, anything that might be able to help.

He pressed the on button, greeted with the Apple icon before the phone opened up before him. He opened the photos, selfie after selfie of Sarah. He checked the dates and saw that it was from just over six months ago, nothing new since then. At least it confirmed in his mind that it was an old handset.

He opened the internet browser, immediately clicking on the history. There was one place she visited more than most. ThisIsMyHeaven. It was a Tumblr, whatever the hell that was, stark white with pale grey writing on it. He saw the initial D and J in a block of text that seemed to go on forever.

Then the screen went black.

He tried to switch it on again, now greeted with an empty battery icon.

“Shit,” he muttered.

“Can I help you?”

DI Kidd froze. Busted.

CHAPTER TWELVE

He closed the desk drawer, slipping the phone up the sleeve in his jacket out of sight. He turned around slowly to see PC Clara McCulloch stood in the door frame. They had worked together on a previous missing persons case some years ago. She was tall, dark-skinned, fairly well built, and staring daggers at DI Kidd. Her jacket was still zipped up like she’d just come in from the cold. Perhaps she had and Kidd had been too distracted to hear the door open and shut in the hall, to hear her footsteps on the stairs.

“Afternoon, Clara,” he said, straightening up and looking her square in the eye. The only way he was going to get through this was with some blind confidence, maybe a little blagging. “I didn’t know you were on this case, how have you been?”

“I’ve been better,” she said flatly. “You here for—?”

“To discuss Sarah with her parents, yes,” he said.

She eyed him carefully. “And what were you doing in Sarah’s bedroom?” she asked.

“Looking for the bathroom,” DI Kidd said, keeping his voice level, staying cool. He knew he’d been caught out here. They would have had a warrant for the search last night, but that didn’t mean he could just wander into rooms in the house and start rummaging through drawers. This was the kind of mistake that could get him in trouble if he didn’t play this right. “What about you?”

“Was coming to the bathroom myself. I just got here,” Claire said, flashing him a smile. “Just a quick visit to make sure Mrs Harper is doing okay.”

“I don’t think she is.”

“Neither do I,” Claire replied. “But she certainly manages to put a brave face on it most of the time, don’t you think?”

“I’ve only just met her,” Kidd said. “Well, I knew her about twenty years ago, but I hardly think that counts.”

“No,” she said. “Did they sign another search book?” she added quickly.

“Not exactly,” Kidd said. “Like I said, I was looking for the bathroom.”

She stepped out of the doorframe and pointed down the hallway to where Kidd already knew the bathroom was. “It’s just there.”

“You’re more than welcome to go