Blood Loss by Kerena Swan (good beach reads .txt) 📕

to show Tommy that his dad was a great detective. Someone else finding the woman wouldn’t give Paton the same satisfaction.

He was frantically trying to think of a reason why he should go instead of DC Mitchell Tomkins when Metcalfe relented.

‘Okay, Dave. You look like a dog that’s had his dinner snatched away. Two nights. That’s all we’re paying for.’

Chapter 55

The Following September | Grace

I sit on the chair next to Jenna’s hospital bed and stare at her features. Her curled dark eyelashes rest on soft rounded cheeks and her dark hair, rolled into unwashed dreadlocks, coils on the pillow like a nest of vipers. Her profile is obscured by the oxygen mask but I’ve studied her before when she wasn’t looking. I can recall in exact detail her straight nose and wide, full-lipped mouth. She is unmistakably Rosemary Butcher’s daughter.

And I hate her.

It was relatively easy to gain access to my real family. I only had to work for the cleaning company for a couple of weeks before I managed to get the other girl, Dionne, sacked. It never fails to surprise me how people believe anonymous phone calls over their employees – always too afraid to take a risk. They didn’t even carry out a full investigation. They just told her that her cleaning wasn’t up to standard and she failed her probation. I was right there, of course, to offer extra hours to cover Dionne’s area.

It’s been unnerving at times, catching sight of Jenna and seeing my mother in her features. No, not my mother. Her mother. I try to remember if Rosemary was ever fun-loving and warm as I was growing up, but all I see is a weak husk of humanity marinated in alcohol. She’d hidden the drinking at first but Dad – John Butcher, rather – and I had known about it. She was always asleep on the sofa when I got home from school, always withdrawn and neglecting my physical needs, always allowing John Butcher to bully me without once fighting my corner…

I wonder what sort of person fake Jenna would have been if she’d lived my life. I wish I could show her a film of how I suffered. By the age of ten I was doing most of the laundry, cooking the meals and fetching the shopping. No one praised me or thanked me; rather they accepted it as my fate.

I know Jenna wasn’t responsible for the swap but I can’t help resenting the way that my pain has been her gain. And what’s she done with it? She prances around with that stupid hair and terrible clothes that shriek, ‘Look at me, aren’t I amazing?’

She smiles and smiles but what’s she achieved? Nothing. She’s no career to speak of. She just works in a bar and faffs around with that damned horse. Even the twins’ mother didn’t hesitate to get rid of her when I phoned to say Jenna had hit the boy. At least I gave her a taste of what it feels like to be rejected and to worry about having no money. Not that she’ll ever know what real poverty feels like. No doubt Mummy will bail her out of any financial fixes.

If I’d had my own life, I’d have read more books, studied, become someone. But Jenna… She’s squandered my life. Wasted opportunities. I can’t think of her without feeling as though my stomach is being burned with battery acid. She’s too stupid to see it, though. Too stupid to see beneath my show of kindness and patience. She’s not only a parasite, she’s thick, and it maddens me to think that such a superficial, unworthy person has lived my life for all these years.

A plump, young nurse bustles into the room and smiles at me before checking the contents of the drip bag attached to a cannula in the back of Jenna’s hand. Jenna stirs and slowly opens her eyes.

‘Hello, lovely,’ the nurse says. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Tired.’ Jenna yawns, revealing her perfectly straight, white teeth.

My teeth could have looked like that if I’d had regular visits to the dentist and been reminded to clean them every night. I might have had an expensive brace to straighten out my wonky bottom teeth. Instead, I have a mouth full of grey NHS fillings, crooked incisors and a gap halfway back where I had a molar removed.

‘We just need to make sure your symptoms won’t return and take a blood sample, then you should be able to go home,’ the nurse says in a bright, sing-song voice. ‘The fluids are nearly finished so your blood pressure should have reduced. I’ll do your observations now.’ She clips a gadget onto Jenna’s forefinger and pulls a blood pressure cuff up her arm.

I watch Jenna being fussed over and nursed back to full health. I should have put more peanut butter in the pâté but I was worried she’d recognise the taste. I can’t believe the luck this cuckoo has. I thought feeding her horse carrots and oats would have hyped it up enough to make it unmanageable when I spooked it with the carrier bag but I have to admit, she’s a better rider then I expected. No doubt her childhood was filled with lessons and small ponies.

I desperately wanted a horse as a kid. My old memories are as clear as yesterday’s. A girl at school once said I could ride her pony and I walked two miles in the biting wind to her farm and waited by the gate, too afraid to open it and walk past the snarling dogs. My excitement dwindled as the chill seeped into my bones and ears, making me ache like I had the ‘flu. My friend didn’t appear and after what seemed like hours of waiting I gave up and had to walk the two miles home. She never invited me again, the bitch. I bet Jenna didn’t even get cold travelling to her lessons. She’d have had a private