Read The Silent Girls for Free Online

worth keeping.’
    Edie was glad of the reprieve, every time Sam came within a foot of her she started to feel like an overheated teenager and it was making her feel both stupid and uncomfortable. Even the smell of his damned handkerchief was making her feel queer, she pulled it down and let it settle around her neck while she tried to get a grip on herself and make the drinks.
    When she returned to the front room Sam was pulling something out of the bottom of the china dog’s twin. ‘What on earth is that?’
    ‘I don’t know, it looks like a scarf. Someone must have poked it inside.’ He pulled the fabric out as if he were performing a low budget magic trick.
    ‘Who on earth would do something like that?’ she asked.
    ‘No idea, someone who wanted to hide something?’
    ‘Why hide a scarf?’ The strip of fabric lay creased and colourful on the dirty carpet.
    Sam shrugged and picked it up. ‘Who knows? I hate to say it but your relatives were a strange bunch at the best of times.’
    Edie took the scarf from him and threw it into the box where she had been collecting the smaller ornaments that she figured were probably worthless. She thought about the wooden heads upstairs wearing their scalped hair and of Dickie’s strange inventions. ‘Yep, they were an odd lot.’ She passed Sam his tea and wandered towards the window, moving the grimy net curtain aside to get a view of the street. The murder tourists were back, congregating around the drain, eager to hear its grisly history.
    Sam came up behind her and draped an arm casually about her shoulder, leaning forward to follow her gaze. ‘I see the ghouls are out in force.’
    Edie was acutely aware of the weight of his arm. ‘Doesn’t it bother you, that they do this right outside the house?’
    ‘Not a lot we can do about it, they are all legal, it’s a perfectly legitimate business. No one cares about the morality of it.’ he said, giving her shoulder a squeeze before dropping his arm.
    The pressure of his fingers burned and tingled like an old scar on her skin. She shivered and turned back to the room. ‘I’m going to dump this box outside and make some space, hopefully someone will take it off my hands.’ she said, hauling the box of tat into her arms and carrying it out of the room. She manoeuvred it out of the front door and dumped it by the gate, hearing the satisfying chink of broken china as it hit the concrete. Removing the weight from her arms hadn’t lessened the heaviness in her heart, she was acutely aware that she had just unceremoniously dumped a handful of the totems that had marked her family’s existence. It felt wrong and it felt brutal. She noticed that the tour guide was staring over again, looking as though he hadn’t yet forgiven her for her previous sarcasm. She turned away from his gaze and went back into the house.
    Sam had sorted through the books and offered to take them to the nearest charity shop. Edie was both grateful for the offer of help and the opportunity for a break from his company. Sam Campion was having a strange effect on her and it was becoming a most disconcerting experience.
    When he had loaded the books and left, she took the opportunity to pause her activity and review the situation. When she had agreed to the task of clearing the house, she’d had no idea that she would be letting herself in for this level of challenge. Not only was the house a daunting nightmare of effort, she hadn’t bargained for the discovery that she still had feelings and female reactions that she had believed were withered and gone. For some reason she’d thought her dysfunctional relationship with Simon had killed the possibility, and was mildly surprised that he hadn’t stifled her regard for men in general. Not that being attracted to Sam was a scenario worth thinking about – she was here to dispose of the past, not cultivate thoughts of a future.
    The room looked almost naked now, stripped bare of its fripperies and