All the Little Things by Sarah Lawton (the best books to read txt) 📕

It’s hot and hazy walking to Molly’s house. All I can hear are crickets squeaking in the long grass of the verge. Even the birds are too hot to fly; there is nothing in the sky except blue and the blazing sun. I’ve got another headache coming. I can feel it pulling then pressing behind my eyes, gathering itself up for a pounding assault in my skull. I don’t want to do this but I know it will look odd if I refuse, so I walk straight up to Molly’s green door and before I can even lift the brass knocker it opens and Abi almost falls out, falls onto me and grabs me in an unusual and most unwelcome sticky embrace. I can smell something on her, something sour, bitter. Despair, perhaps. Or wine.

‘Vivian, thank you so much for coming over. Come in, please. Do you want a drink?’

She pulls me into the cooler interior of the house. I have always liked it here, with its plain walls and simple furniture. It’s soothing. I know Molly hated it and preferred the exploding coloured chaos of my house, but I can’t understand that. This house makes my headache abate somewhat. I think maybe Molly and I were born to the wrong mothers – I would have been happily neglected here, left to my own devices in a restful white box.

‘Can I have a glass of water, please, Mrs Barnes?’

‘Yes, of course – and I’ve told you, my name is Abi. Mrs Barnes is my mother-in-law!’

She clutches at this weak joke like she’s been clutching at her neck. I can see the marks of her fingers on it, red welts that she probably isn’t even aware of. I can see her hands shaking as she gets a glass from the tall cupboard and runs the tap for a moment before filling it for me. I’m glad of it, because my mouth and throat have gone papery and dry from the walk here, and perhaps from nerves as to what it is she wants from me.

She clears her throat and looks at me expectantly, hopefully. She thinks I know where Molly is, and that I’m going to tell her. I’m not.

‘I don’t know where Molly is, Mrs Barnes. I haven’t heard from her since Saturday night, when I left.’

Her hopeful expression crumples. ‘Why did you leave, Vivian? I don’t understand why you left.’

‘I was boiling hot. Molly wouldn’t open the window – you know what she’s like. I didn’t want to wake her up so I just left. I figured she’d call me in the morning but she never did.’ I let my own face fall, as if I’m worried and scared too, as if I miss her, though I’m none of these things: I’m still furious with her.

Her face pales at this and she closes her blue, Molly-like eyes and lifts a hand and runs it into her thick blonde hair, tangling her fingers up in it. It looks like she’s pulling it, tight, at the scalp. Is she hurting herself on purpose? I lean in slightly to look. She rears back away from me and releases the fistful of hair, smoothing it down again.

‘Vivian, why do you think Molly keeps doing this?’ I know the answer to this. So does Abi. She just doesn’t want to face up to what her benign neglect turned Molly into – a girl desperate for affection and attention from anyone who would give it to her. Even when it ruined everything else she had, that we had. I just shrug and look sad.

‘Could you have a look in her room for me? You’d know better than me, I think, if anything else looked wrong, or was missing? All her perfume was smashed – I don’t know why, she loves her perfume.’ A lone, fat tear rolls down her cheek, cutting through her make-up. ‘The police won’t do anything, they just told me she’ll turn up again, but something just doesn’t feel right. They won’t help, because of the other times she ran away.’ She trails off, and the slick left by the first tear on her cheek pulses as another joins it. Rather than watch it, I leave her and go upstairs.

Molly’s room looks like it usually does, but somehow it’s different. Maybe it’s the smell, but there’s something stale about it. No one has been in here, breathing the air in and out; it’s just been hanging, unused. I could do anything in here. I half-heartedly look down the side of the bed. There’s a bundled-up pair of lacy knickers and a lot of dust. I wonder if they are there from the night with Matt. I lift the quilt and see if anything has been slipped between the frame and the mattress. I don’t see anything at first, but then I spot a flash of something. It’s a torn-off corner, a piece of blue foil from a condom wrapper by the look of it. She wasn’t entirely stupid, then. I leave it there – there might be a fingerprint on it, or something useful.

I don’t think Molly kept a diary or anything that sad. I never found one the times I poked around, and she never mentioned one. Most of her is out there in the world anyway, online, posed. Shiny hair, shiny teeth, shiny life. Except all those secret thoughts she had – she kept those to herself, locked up in her pretty yellow head. I wonder what secrets she had bubbling up out of her head on Saturday night, running away from her. I didn’t ask her because I didn’t care; it was too late to do anything about her wanting me. I think maybe she just wanted everyone, all of everyone, all the time. There was no room for anyone to want anything else but her.

I rummage through her drawers. Everything is just stuffed in, all jumbled