The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward (guided reading books .TXT) 📕

Words cluster, stinging in her throat but Dee bites them back. Karen has failed again and again to give Dee the only thing she really needs. Lulu.

‘How are you?’ she says instead.

‘We’re having a heatwave up here in Washington,’ Karen says. ‘It hasn’t been this hot in years.’ Not since the year Lulu went missing, but neither of them says that. ‘Anyway I know this time of year is difficult for you. I thought I’d check in.’

‘Check in on me or check up on me?’ Dee says. She knows Karen is thinking of the man in Oregon.

‘What?’

‘Nothing. I appreciate it, Karen.’

‘You’ve been on my mind. I could have sworn I saw you in a grocery store in town the other day. The mind plays tricks, huh?’

‘That it does,’ Dee says. Her heart is racing. ‘That part of the world won’t hold me, Karen. I wouldn’t come back.’

‘I understand.’ Karen sighs. ‘You promise me you’ll call, Dee, if you need help?’

‘I do.’

‘Take care of yourself.’ The line goes dead.

Dee shivers and curses her luck. Could Karen trace her cellphone? Maybe, but why would she? Dee has done nothing wrong.

She’s got to be more careful. It would mess everything up if Karen knew she was here. No more going out in the day. She’ll take the bus into the city to do her groceries. She swears to herself in a hiss. When Dee looks out of the window again, Ted is gone.

Ted

Is the intruder the Murderer? I think and think but I can’t work it out.

I haven’t been so scared since that time at the mall. That was the last time I came this close to being found out – to being seen for what I am.

Lauren cried and showed me the holes in her socks. She had outgrown all her clothes and she hated the stuff I chose for her. What dad can refuse his daughter clothes? So even though I knew it was a mistake, I said yes.

I picked an older mall, one slightly further out of town, and we went on a Monday afternoon, in the hope that it wouldn’t be too crowded. Lauren was so excited before we left that I thought she would pee herself. She wanted to wear all kinds of crazy pink things in her hair, but I thought there should be limits.

‘I simply couldn’t be seen with you,’ I said to her in a fancy lady’s voice, and she giggled, which showed what a good mood she was in, because she never laughs at my jokes. I wore a baseball cap, sunglasses, and regular clothes in neutral colours. I knew that this shopping trip was a risk, and I was anxious that we should attract as little attention as possible.

Lauren was good on the drive there, looking out of the window and singing to herself, the song about woodlice. There was none of the nonsense that she had tried in the past, trying to grab the wheel and steer us into a ditch or a wall. I allowed myself to hope that this would go well.

When we got to the mall we couldn’t even see it at first, the parking lot was so huge, and we had picked a spot right at the far end. Lauren was impatient and didn’t want to get back in the car, so we walked. It must have been a quarter of a mile, and the morning was close. The big square box of the building got bigger and bigger as we approached. It had fancy writing across it, huge like a giant’s signature. Lauren pulled me on.

‘Faster,’ she said. ‘Come on, Dad.’

I was sweating heavily by the time we reached the doors. The cool air and marble floors were a relief. I had picked a good place; there was hardly anyone else here. Some angry women with small children. Bitten-looking men who didn’t look like they had anything else to do with the day.

There was a big plastic board with a map on it, and I stood in front of it for a while trying to make sense of the floor plan. But I was too anxious and it all dissolved into lines and colours (those were the days before I had the bug man and the pills). Lauren was no help, she was all over the place, peering this way and that, trying to look at everything at once.

I went up to a lady in a brown uniform, with a badge on her chest, and asked, ‘Excuse me, where is Contempo Casuals?’

The woman shook her head. ‘That store closed down,’ she said. ‘Years ago, as I recall. Why would you want that?’

‘My daughter, she’s thirteen,’ I said. ‘She wants to get some clothes.’

‘And she asked for Contempo Casuals? Has she been in a coma?’

The woman was being very rude so I walked off. ‘They don’t have that store here,’ I told Lauren.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘Isn’t this great, Dad?’ Her voice was loud and I saw one of the tired mothers look over at us.

‘If this is going to work, you have to be smart,’ I told her. ‘You don’t talk. Keep close, no tantrums, do everything I say. Deal?’

She smiled and nodded and didn’t say a word. Lauren has her faults but she’s not slow.

We walked along the storefronts, looking at all the stuff. There was so much to see, we could have spent all day there. Piano music came out of the white pillars and echoed on the marble floor. There was a fountain playing somewhere. I could tell Lauren loved it, and if I’m honest, I did too. It was great to just walk around together, out in the open, like a regular father and daughter. I got us an Orange Julius in the deserted food court. Burnt sugar and soy sauce fought uneasily in the air. The tables were all messy like people had just left, burger wrappers and plastic forks and crumbs