The Bones of You Read Online Free PDF

too fast. I’m slumped in the back, on the soft, low-slung seat, and can’t see out, so sickness rushes over me in waves. Mummy’s sick, too, all the time, but she says hers is different.
    When we get to the new house, I shiver under a streetlight while my father stands in the drive, just staring at it. Then steps back, still staring, before a smug look spreads across his face. It’s not like our old one. It’s too big and dark.
    As we go inside and can’t find the light switch, my father says, “Really, Joanna, this is your fault.”
    It’s when I notice how he always calls her Joanna, not Jo, like other people do. I wait for them to find the lights, listening to the echo of their footsteps, wishing we were back in our old house. But when it’s warm and lit and the furniture is set out, and after about five days, when the windows have curtains and the rooms look a bit like our old rooms, and I have new toys and my own brand-new pink TV, I decide I like it here.
    I start my new school under a lavender sky just before a hailstorm, small, in a too-big overcoat, carrying my schoolbag, following other children across the playground just as the hail starts. I remember its icy sting against my hands and face, the drumming sound as it falls on the pavement. I don’t see my mother bolt for the car or the lavender sky darken to a steely gray. I never look up.
    I’m nervous all morning, staring out through the window at the gloom lightened only by an ice carpet, imagining I’m caught in a gray hinterland where the sun never rises, until break time, when a girl asks me to play. That’s when I meet Lucy Mayes, and then a little while later, the sun comes out and the ice melts away. I find out Lucy’s clever and lives in a nice house quite near ours and plays the violin. As Mummy says, she really is the perfect friend.
    And then, just before Christmas, our house made beautiful with a tree that glitters and presents tied with ribbons piled underneath, Delphine comes to us, another perfect daughter in the random world that isn’t random.
    I look at my sister, who has my pale hair and eyes that stare into mine as if there are secrets there. She’s someone who needs me. A gift.
    When we’re alone, I call her Della, liking its sound and how it flows off my tongue.
    As I watch, the feeling comes back. The same excitement, mixed with happiness and gratitude for Christmas, my new sister, and my perfect childhood. I whisper to Della about the things we’ll do together and how I’m her big sister. I’ll always look after her.
    It’s a bubble that lasts until the night before Christmas Eve. My father comes home late, shouting at Mummy, who has crystal tears that hurt her. She goes upstairs to comfort Della, because she’s crying, but he pulls her back and locks Della’s door.
    I cry then, and the baby behind the locked door cries because of the noise, and because all she wants is a warm body to cuddle against. But my father’s shouting at Mummy, and wherever I look, I can’t find the key. So while my six-year-old self talks through the door to her baby sister, I stand above her cot, whispering to her.
    “It’s okay, Della. You’re not alone.”

6
    D eath casts its shadow, leaving our hearts sad and tainting our world with fear. Have I reached that point in life where from here on it will always be there, lurking, just out of sight, but waiting in the background for its next victim?
    And while our questions go unanswered, life goes on, the sun rising over grass sparkling with dew and the dawn chorus as loud and sweet as any morning, just as Ella, my neighbor, walks past with her black Labrador and the post arrives and Angus goes to work. He has an important meeting with the head of an American company, who’s flown over from Boston just to see him.
    Early morning, with the sun rising through the trees, is a time of day I love. Not just the quiet, but the low, clear light, which gives color depth, each petal and leaf