Read Soul Beach for Free Online Page B

me want to cry, but I need to stay in control. ‘But you do know that you are, um, no longer alive?’
    ‘Of course,’ she hisses. ‘But I don’t want to talk about it.’
    ‘What do you want to talk about, then? The weather? My A Level coursework?’
    ‘Don’t be angry with me, Florrie. None of this is my fault, is it?’
    I gulp. ‘Of course not. But I feel so frustrated. I can’t see you. I don’t know where you are. I don’t know how you are.’
    There’s a long pause. Beneath the sound of the waves I am sure I can hear low chatter, like a theatre audience waiting for the play to begin.
    ‘OK. You want to know, yeah. About what happened?’
    I hold my breath. Does this make it OK, now, for her to tell me? She did initiate the conversation, after all, which must be within the rules of the Beach.
    Never mind the rules, am I ready for this? For six months, we’ve had to cope with not knowing about her last few hours on earth. Not knowing if she struggled, if she felt pain. And will I be able to cope with knowing what no one else knows? But this could be my only opportunity, and the question of who took her life from her has haunted me for so long: I have to ask.
    ‘Who was it, Meggie?’
    ‘Who killed me?’
    I wait for the screen to go black. To be hurled back into cyber-oblivion. But it doesn’t happen, so I repeat the question. ‘Yes. Who killed you?’

16
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘ What ?’
    ‘I don’t know how I died, sis. Or who killed me, if somebody did. I don’t remember.’
    Of all the things I thought Meggie might say, this is the one I hadn’t considered. ‘You were murdered,’ I say, gently, and then I gulp, because what if even saying that is a rule breaker? What if any moment now this beach disappears in a tsunami of oblivion, washing away any trace of my sister?
    But I can still hear her breathing beside me.
    Breathing . The killer smothered the breath out of her and yet here she is . . .
    ‘I had sort of figured that one out, from listening to the others here. ‘Natural causes’ doesn’t cut it round the campfire on Soul Beach, put it that way.’
    I’m still trying to make sense of any of it. ‘So does everyone have amnesia?’
    ‘No. Most people can talk about what they were doing before it happened. Or even how it felt . . .’ she tails off. ‘I’m the odd one out. All I remember is going to a party with Tim. A masked ball, big night out, you know. Well, not as big I wanted it to be. We had a row.’
    ‘A big row?’ I can’t imagine Tim rowing with anybody. He was always so . . . gentle. I wonder if Meggie said something to provoke him. Maybe that’s disloyal, but, as her little sister, I know how infuriating the ‘songbird’ could be behind the scenes.
    ‘No. I don’t think it was. I mean, all relationships, they have their ups and downs. But not big enough to . . . Is that what people think? That it was him?’
    What am I supposed to tell her? ‘Nobody knows.’
    She sighs. ‘I’ve tried not to think about it. We went to the bar where the ball was, and then I wanted to go to a club and Tim said we should get back early because it was your birthday do the next day. That’s how it started. I don’t remember how it finished.’
    I think of the CCTV images they broadcast on the news, showing the two of them on their way to the masked ball party in the union bar, then Meggie and Tim arguing outside and walking back to halls together, before a final shot of Tim back in the student union bar much later on. ‘You left together at about one. That’s the last anyone knows.’
    ‘Oh, bloody hell.’ She sighs. ‘How, Florrie?’
    ‘How what?’
    ‘How did I die?’
    ‘You were . . . you were suffocated.’
    She gasps.
    ‘What? Sorry. I shouldn’t have told you.’
    ‘No, Florrie, it’s OK. It explains something.’
    ‘Tell me.’
    ‘Only that I always used to get these nightmares. When I was a kid.’ Her voice is hesitant.
    ‘What kind of