The Reading List(35)
‘Everyone has something.’
‘In that case, if you really want an answer, I have you guys. You and Mum. You’re it.’
Something caught in Aleisha’s throat and she couldn’t reply. The silence of the library echoed around them. What had they done to this young man? What had they done to his dreams?
He launched the meal-deal bag at her, which broke the tension with a clatter, the juice and sandwich rolling out onto the floor.
‘Shit!’ Aidan shouted, and all four people in the library, including Mia, turned around to frown. When Mia spotted that Aidan was the source of the disruption, her face changed, and she beamed at him, doing one of those cutesy little waves. Aidan raised his eyebrows, waving back, picking up the sandwich and juice with his other hand and placing it carefully on Aleisha’s desk.
Mia started to approach, and Aidan smirked at his sister, mouthed, ‘I’m sorry’, and rushed out at breakneck speed. On cue, Mia slowed down, diverting her path ever so slightly away from Aidan’s ghost and towards Aleisha.
‘Oh, you dropped this,’ Mia said, bending down to pick something up from the floor. A little orange Post-it note. She presented it as though it was some kind of precious gift.
Enjoy your lunch. Pick up some stuff for dinner tonight – I’ll cook. Ax
Classic Aidan.
‘From your brother? Awwww, super cute,’ Mia said, reading it for herself.
Aleisha snatched it back. ‘Thanks.’
‘Erm, I was just coming over to say I’m going to head out now, but see you soon. Enjoy your book. And your meal deal. Good to see you, yeah?’
At seven o’clock, closing time was fast approaching. Aleisha was the only person left in the whole library. This was just the kind of peace she wanted. The perfect environment to spend some quality time with Rebecca. When she’d first flicked through the pages a few days ago, she’d known she’d give the book a decent chance. The first sign was My Cousin Rachel on the list of other books written by Daphne du Maurier. Aleisha missed her own cousin Rachel. They used to be inseparable, but Rachel now lived over a hundred miles away …
The beautiful, isolated mansion – Manderley – pulled her right into the book, taking her somewhere else altogether. She was slowly learning about Rebecca herself … she was actually Mr de Winter’s ex-wife, yet her presence was so overbearing in the house, so all-consuming in the new Mrs de Winter’s life, she deserved to be the title character. Manderley’s location was never mentioned precisely, but all the description reminded her of Cornwall … well, it reminded her of the photographs she’d seen of the beautiful Cornish coastline plastered all over her Year 9 Classroom wall after all her friends had gone on a school trip to Bude. Aleisha hadn’t been able to go. Aidan, who had been just 21 at the time, had rearranged his work shifts to try to make it work, but ultimately she had to stay back because Leilah wasn’t well. She’d hated seeing those beautiful pictures at school, hearing the stories from her friends, learning about everything she’d missed.
Aleisha had always wanted to see Cornwall in real life, but she had still never had the chance. She loved the look of its rugged cliffs, dramatic crashing waves – so different from the wide sands and pine trees of North Norfolk, the only seaside Dean and Leilah had ever taken them to as kids.
But now, through Rebecca and Mrs De Winter, Aleisha was experiencing Cornwall from a totally different perspective. And she could go as far away from Wembley, from Mia, from Leilah, as possible, one page at a time.
Rebecca skulked about Manderley like a ghost and, a chill running down her spine, Aleisha dropped the book down onto her desk suddenly. Bloody creepy. After a breath, to calm herself, she tucked the novel under her arm and grabbed her bag, overloaded with books. When she stood up, a big, dark shadow was looming over her, slicing through the waning light of the summer evening.
‘Shit!’ Aleisha yelped, clutching the book to her chest for protection. As her eyes readjusted, she realized it was just the vacuum cleaner, left out by Kyle as a reminder to ‘keep this place looking sharp’. This bloody book – it was still basically daylight and it was already scaring her half to death.
As she locked the library up for the night, kicking a grand total of zero readers out into the summer evening air, she tucked the reading list into Rebecca to mark her spot.
Once again, she found her mind lingering on the curator of the list. She pictured someone fairly young, younger than her mum probably but older than her, judging from the super neat and kind of fancy handwriting, not like Aleisha’s bubble handwriting. They could be a student, but she doubted it. All school reading lists were typed out and just handed out to people. This was one the person had put together themselves, or copied out of a newspaper or off the internet or something. Like off the lists that say ‘20 books to read before you die’. In the case of Rebecca, she wondered if it was ‘the one book to read before you get married in case you discover his ex-wife is going to haunt you and the housekeeper is going to be a right bitch through your whole marriage and maybe you can’t trust your new hubby either’.
Aleisha had no idea what it was like to be haunted by a dead woman or to live in a mansion, but the way Manderley was described, the atmosphere, sharp, heavy and suffocating … she got that. She knew exactly what that felt like. She wished she’d never made the comparison. Maybe it wasn’t the best book choice for her after all. But it was already too late.