Scared to Live

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Harper

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2006

Copyright © Stephen Booth 2006

Stephen Booth asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Set in Meridien by Palimpsest Book Production Limited Grangemouth, Stirlingshire

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Source ISBN: 9780007172078

Ebook Edition © FEBRUARY 2009 ISBN: 9780007279692 Version: 2016-10-27

This book is dedicated tomy parents, James and Edna Booth

Title PageCopyrightDedicationChapter OneChapter TwoChapter ThreeChapter FourChapter FiveChapter SixChapter SevenChapter EightChapter NineChapter TenChapter ElevenChapter TwelveChapter ThirteenChapter FourteenChapter FifteenChapter SixteenChapter SeventeenChapter EighteenChapter NineteenChapter TwentyChapter Twenty–OneChapter Twenty–TwoChapter Twenty–ThreeChapter Twenty–FourChapter Twenty–FiveChapter Twenty–SixChapter Twenty–SevenChapter Twenty–EightChapter Twenty–NineChapter ThirtyChapter Thirty–OneChapter Thirty–TwoChapter Thirty–ThreeChapter Thirty–FourChapter Thirty–FiveChapter Thirty–SixChapter Thirty–SevenChapter Thirty–EightChapter Thirty–NineChapter FortyKeep ReadingAbout the AuthorBy the Same AuthorAbout the Publisher

1

Sunday, 23 October

Even on the night she died, Rose Shepherd couldn’t sleep. By the early hours of the morning, her bed was like a battleground – hot, violent, chaotic. Beneath her, the sheet was twisted into painful knots, the pillow hard and unyielding. Lack of sleep made her head ache, and her body had grown stiff with discomfort.

But sleeplessness was familiar to Miss Shepherd. She’d started to think of it as an old friend, because it was always with her. She often spent the hours of darkness waiting for the first bird to sing, watching for the greyness of dawn, when she knew there’d be people moving about in the village. There might be the sound of a van in the street as someone headed off for an early shift at the quarry, or the rumble of a farmer’s tractor in the field behind the house. She didn’t feel so completely alone then, as she did in the night.

For Rose Shepherd, this was the world. A distant noise, a half-heard voice, a snatched moment of indirect contact. Her life had become so confined that she seemed to be living in a small, dark box. The tiniest crack of light was like a glimpse of God.

By two o’clock, Rose had been out of bed twice already, moving aimlessly around the room to reassure herself that she was still alive and capable of movement. The third time, she got up to fetch herself a glass of water. She stood in the middle of the bedroom while she drank it, allowing her toes to curl deep into the sheepskin rug, clutching at the comfort of its softness, an undemanding gentleness that almost made her weep.

As always, her mind had been running over the events of the day. There was no way she could stop it. It was as if she had a video player in her head, but it was stuck in a loop, showing the same scenes over and over again. If they weren’t from the day just past, then they were snapshots from previous days – some of them years before, in a different part of her life. The scenes played themselves out, and paused to allow her to fret whether she could have done things differently. Then they began over again, taunting her with the fact that past events were unalterable. What was done, was done.

It was one of the reasons she couldn’t sleep, of course. Her brain was too active, her memories too vivid. Nothing seemed to slow down the thoughts that stalked backwards and forwards in her consciousness, like feral animals roaming the edge of the forest, restless and apprehensive.

But Rose was glad that she’d been out the previous day. She’d been doubtful about it beforehand. No journey was without its risks, even if it was only three miles over the hill and down into the village of Matlock Bath. Despite a diversion to the shopping village, she’d arrived in the village too early, and had time to kill once she’d parked the Volvo.