The Half Blood Princess

CHAPTER TWO- The day Cory wanted to marry me.

"Bluebell are you awake?" It was Cory's voice. I could smell him and the familiar tangy cologne. His voice soft and tender.
Are you awake?
Cory in my room that night! Had I been dreaming?

I was so drained, the sense of foreboding clung to me and nearly choked the life out of me. Each day was worse that the one before. My spirit and body was broken. I was a ghost of my former self. A living, but dead young girl who would now have to face the day that she would finally bury her parents; The lovely Stephanie and her beautiful soul mate in life and now in death. Lance Julius Williams. The whole Williams family had nearly been wiped out, by the fire on that fateful night. Five other bodies were found in the house as well. But they were so badly burned that they and my parents had to be identified by their dental records. Two were neighbours, a couple in their twenties and one was a young waitress. The other two were never identified.
It made the national news. Reporters hovered around like a hungry pack, wanting their fix of a good story. They were a   f..k...g. hungry, pack of animals feeding on the grief of many families. I hated them.
My parents were written about as if they deserved their fate. Lurid stories about their life, even I had found hard to believe, were everywhere. What they saying in  the press and  on social media was unbelievable.
I could still see that infamous headline.
Blonde bombshell and her gangster millionaire husband murdered in fire!
Or the worse.
The secret life of Stephanie and Lance-sex drugs and the untold millions they squandered!
No child should have to  deal with this. Never. Especially an only child.
But burying them and leaving them to rest in peace would be so hard as the funeral,  although a strictly private affair, would have a mob of curious onlookers.
The policewoman, Melanie Stevenson, was great and she looked after me as I helped the police with their enquiries. I was assigned someone to look after me and help me remember anything about that night that was now weeks ago. But as I kept stating, over and over again my memory was only of smelling and seeing the smoke through my door. That smell would haunt me. But the image of my mother burned and disfigured haunted my dreams. Lance was discovered in a locked bedroom with two other yet unidentifiable bodies. Female and Caucasian.  My mother was locked in a room on her own- the downstairs loo.
It was arson.
According to the fire report. Someone wanted me and my family dead. My room was locked. But somehow I had escaped. There were no fume inhalations  in my lungs, no burns,  just the smell of acrid smoke clung to my clothes, and somehow still clings to me.
Or was that my imagination?
The fire chiefs and police had some many unanswered questions; not just about the motive and  there were many.
But there were many speculations, considering the life my parents had lived at one time.
Was it someone they knew?
My Facebook and Instagram account had to be terminated. I was getting death threats  and insults galore from real weirdos. I even had several marriage proposals!
Jeez! And I thought the lunatics were in the asylum.
You slut you did it! Why else would you survive?

They say you were naked babe, in the house -what a party ! contact me anytime rich bitch!!!!

Suck my c..k! I'll teach you a lesson- rich little posh girl!

I read them all, willing myself to feel the taunts, the hate, the vicious bile, the sadistic fantasies of the great British public. I wanted to suffer. I felt guilty that I had survived. So very guilty. In one mad moment when I nearly went completely bonkers I wondered if I had done it? My drink had indeed been spiked said the doctors who had examined me. I was only in hospital for one night. I refused to see a counsellor or therapist. Gran couldn't look after me, She indeed was suffering from early onset dementia. My mother's father Dr Terence Hughes was now living in New Zealand,
Finally Melanie forced me to cancel all my social media.
Friends kept away.
What friends I did have, and that included some neighbours  gossiped with some element of morbid curiosity and glee.
Joanna Jones. She and her mum even sent a get well card.
Bloody get well!
Joanna's scrawny handwriting told of her sorrow for me at this time. And the joy that I had been saved.
Even Tessa sent a card and that was more sincere.  She had watched my press conference.
She apologised for calling me weirdo all those years- when I gave my one and only press conference with my Nan at my side who was too dazed to understand what was really going on- and I said quite calmly:
"We were all outcasts I suppose trying to fit in, but now I know we didn't. Not me, my mother, and father. But whoever did this will know they didn't succeed in destroying us. Stephanie and and Lance died as they lived,  dramatically and together. I am offering all my inheritance (if there is any ) as reward to find the killers of my family."