Authors: Lauren Henderson
“You have some petals down there.…” I reach out to pick them off where they’re caught on her back pocket, but she slaps my hand away.
“So”—I start down the staircase, hoping she’ll follow—“you snogged Callum?”
“It was an accident,” she says in a small voice from behind my shoulder.
I retrieve the suitcase, which doesn’t seem to have broken, and start to pull it round the walkway to the dormitory wing.
“That sounds interesting,” I say, keeping my voice deliberately neutral.
And then it all bursts out from her in a flood as she dashes to walk beside me.
“I always liked him,” she confesses. “Even when we were up at Castle Airlie. But obviously, it was all so messed up then—and you kissed him at the airport, so I didn’t think about him anymore. Well, not
much,
” she adds honestly. Taylor’s always brutally honest. “But I thought we’d never see him again, and you’d kissed him, so that sort of made it clear that I wasn’t going to have a chance with him. Then we bumped into him at the gig, and I thought he was
gorgeous.
But you and Jase were sort of broken up, and you’d kissed Callum before, so I just sat back to see what would happen with you two.”
“Ewan was really into you,” I comment.
“I know. He was putting his arm around me and kissing my neck at the party when we went off to explore, so I had to tell him I didn’t like him that way and not to do that anymore.”
“Wow. Is that what you really said?”
“Sure!” Taylor sounds baffled. “I’m always really straightforward with boys.”
“Good for you,” I say, bouncing my case round the corner of the building. “I think I’d make up a lot of pathetic excuses. Your way’s much better.”
“So then it was a bit awkward,” she goes on. “We hung out with some other people and played bongos for a while—”
“You’re really good at those,” I comment.
“I know,” she says smugly. “I’m better than Seth. He hates that. Anyway, we decided to come back and see what you were doing, and Callum said you’d gone for a pee, so we hung out, and I started playing bongos and Callum was playing his violin and Ewan saw some people he knew and went off to play with them, and I sort of lost track of time.” She clears her throat. “I mean, I knew your aunt wasn’t going to sneak up and attack you at a quarry party, so I wasn’t worried about you.”
“Was Seth there?”
Taylor snorts. “
Right.
I was really going to tell my older brother to follow us when we snuck out to go to an all-night party with boys,” she says contemptuously. “Sometimes I can totally tell you don’t have brothers.”
I bow my head, duly reproved. We’ve reached the fire doors for the dormitory; Taylor holds them open. I bump my case through and pick it up as we climb the stairs.
“So we stopped playing, and Callum said we sounded amazing together, which we did,” she goes on. “And then we just looked at each other for a bit, and suddenly, um, it was obvious that we had a connection. It was like the music made it happen. And he looked really surprised. Like he hadn’t been expecting it at all. But then he sort of leaned toward me, and I asked if, you know, anything had happened with you. Because he was into you before, I could tell. And he said yeah, you’d kissed, and it was weird cause there was nothing there, and he thought that was partly why you’d gone off. And I believed him.”
“It was true,” I confirm, looking at her as we reach the top of the stairs. I pause, seeing her relax in relief. “And it
was
weird. Like plugging something in and turning it on, but then it just doesn’t work.”
“I’ve had that with boys,” Taylor says. “It’s like there’s no
there
there.”
I giggle.
“Exactly.”
“And the next thing, we were kissing,” she says, blushing now, her cheeks on fire. “I think it might have been me who kissed him first.”
“And there was a
there
there,” I say cheerfully.
“Um,
yeah
. So we totally lost track of time. And then I freaked out and rang you, and you were with Jase, and I said to Callum you’d got back with your ex, and he said it was weird you’d never mentioned him, and I said it was a messed-up situation, and then he said …”
She trails off.
“Go on,” I prompt.
“He said, ‘Why are we talking about them when we could be doing this?’ and he kissed me again. A lot,” she finishes, grinning from ear to ear.
“Oh, Taylor.” I reach out and put an arm around her shoulder, hugging her awkwardly. “I’m really happy for you.”
“We’re going to try to go on seeing each other,” she says, shrugging, trying to sound cool, when it’s blindingly obvious that she’s anything but. “Sort of see what happens. But it was—” She gives up trying to be cool, and looks directly at me, fire-engine red, her eyes shining. “It was—” She gulps. “I mean, neither of us ever felt anything like that before. We both said it.”
“Poor Ewan,” I say wryly.
“Yeah, Callum felt a bit bad,” Taylor admits. “Apparently Ewan’d been going on about me a lot.”
“It’s chemistry, though,” I say, thinking of me and Callum, and me and Jase. “I thought I had it with Callum, but maybe it was just the drama of the situation. Or maybe it was there before, but now all I can think about is Jase, so I don’t have it with anyone else. Anyway, that’s chemistry—you can’t fake it and you can’t change it.”
“So true,” Taylor says dreamily.
“You know what? I’m
starving
,” I say, realizing all of a sudden that I haven’t eaten for ages. Which is very unlike me. All the pent-up tension from the last few days is draining away; Jase and I are stronger than ever, I’ve started a real relationship with my grandmother, and Taylor and I have confided everything in each other and come out the other side.
Taylor looks as if she’s unloaded the weight of the world off her shoulders.
“Me too! Hey, we don’t have to bike to the village right now. I forgot I’ve got cookies in my room,” she offers. “Chocolate chip.”
“I could eat a whole tin,” I say, setting off down the corridor.
We’re almost at her room when a bedroom door opens and Plum’s head pops out.
Damn,
I think.
I totally forgot.
Plum had to come back to school with us when the field trip finished early, because her parents are skiing in Verbier and not due back for two days; all the other Wakefield Hall girls had parents who could come and pick them up from King’s Cross station. I assumed we would try to stay out of her way as much as possible, but there’s been so much else going on that her presence in school was pushed to the back of my mind.
She looks as if she’s been crying. Her eyes are swollen and puffy, and I think it may be the first time I’ve seen Plum without any makeup at all.
“I was waiting for you,” she says, emerging into the corridor. She’s wearing a big T-shirt that comes down to midthigh, the kind you sleep in, and baggy pajama bottoms; her hair’s greasy and pulled off her face in a messy ponytail. I’ve never seen Plum looking the same age as us before, rather than years older and layered in effortless sophistication.
“I wanted to talk to you about”—she gulps—“you know. What you saw the other night. Or what you think you saw.”
“Please,”
Taylor says witheringly. “We know what we saw.”
“Susan had a nightmare,” Plum says weakly. “I was just comforting her.…”
“You’re not really going to try that, are you?” Taylor interrupts. I glance over at her; she gives me an “I’m taking this one” look.
I nod. After all, Taylor’s the one Plum taunted for ages about being gay, as if it were some sort of crime. Plum kept mocking Taylor for being butch. Taylor deserves to get satisfaction for that. Taylor plants her hands on her hips and stares Plum down.
“There’s nothing wrong with being gay!” she says to Plum. “Just admit that you are!”
Plum takes a deep breath.
“Maybe I’m bisexual,” she mutters, shamefaced.
“No one actually
cares
what you are,” I chime in.
“It’s just sad when you have to lie about it,” Taylor says coldly. “And call other people gay, like it’s an insult or something. It’s tragic.”
Plum’s hanging her head.
“Please don’t tell anyone,” she whispers.
“Oh yeah, Scarlett and I are really going to rush right out and gossip about your private life,” Taylor says. “You’re the most fascinating subject ever! We never talk about anything else when we’re by ourselves! We’re
almost
as interested in you and Susan as you are in me and Scarlett!”
Plum’s clearly on the verge of tears.
“Look, rub it in as much as you want,” she mutters. “I deserve it. I completely deserve it. I’ve been a total bitch to both of you. You can torture me as much as you want, just
please
don’t tell anyone.…”
“Why does it even
matter
?” I can’t help asking. “The only person who seems to think it’s a big deal is you. Even when you were going on and on about Taylor and me being a couple, none of the other girls really cared.”
“Self-hating,” Taylor says. “Like I said, totally tragic.”
Plum raises her head, her eyes big with fear.
“My dad would have a
fit,
” she breathes unhappily. “He’s expecting me to make a really good marriage.
No one’s
gay in our world.” She catches herself. “Or at least they’re not out. If my father knew, he’d cut me off without a penny—”
“Nice,” Taylor interrupts. “So money’s more important to you than being yourself.”
“It isn’t—but …” Plum’s voice trails off. She looks hopelessly at me.
“I never thought I’d say this,” I comment as Taylor turns away, “but I feel sad for you.”
Plum swallows hard.
“I’ll agree with every single thing both of you say from now on,” she promises as Taylor walks off down the corridor. “Honestly I will.”
“Eew!” I recoil, revolted. “Yuck! I don’t want you to do that!”
The thought of Plum sucking up, as desperate as she was on the ghost tour, running after me like a Lizzie-like puppy, makes me want to throw up.
“Don’t be a bitch,” I say simply. “Just stop being a horrible bitch. Not just to us. To everyone.”
From Plum’s appalled expression, I can see that she’s going to find that much harder than sucking up.
I start to walk off, pulling my suitcase. Then a last thought stops me, and I stop, swinging around.
“And, Plum, for what it’s worth,” I add, “I thought you and Susan looked really beautiful together.”
That does it. Behind me, I hear Plum burst into tears; she slumps against the doorframe, crying her heart out. I wonder if I should go back, try to comfort her, but there’s nothing I could say to make her feel any better. At least, there’s nothing I can think of. Perhaps it’s a failure in me. Perhaps I’m not compassionate enough. Or maybe it’s that Plum’s atrocious behavior to me over the years has burnt me out.
I’m not comfortable hearing anyone sobbing like that, not even my worst enemy. But my feet are carrying me away down the corridor in Taylor’s wake. And I have no impulse to turn around and go back.
I park my case outside Taylor’s room for the meantime, since there’s no one here to trip over it.
“Matron said they’d move us after you pick out what stuff you want from your old bedroom,” Taylor says, already plopped down on her bed, peeling open a pack of chocolate chip cookies. “I miss Oreos,” she adds wistfully. “These just aren’t as good. I’d’ve gotten Seth to bring some over from the States, but he flew out in kind of a hurry.” She stuffs a cookie in her mouth. “The FunStix are
unbelievable,
” she says, spewing crumbs over her T-shirt. “They’re like straws. You can drink through them. Isn’t that amazing? Cookies you can
drink milk through.
”
“I don’t know why you Americans are so obsessed with milk,” I say, scooping a whole handful of cookies out of the packet.
“Makes us big and strong,” Taylor says, spilling more crumbs as she talks.
“Honestly,” I comment, “even if I were gay for you before, watching you stuff down those cookies would turn me straight. Never let Callum see you eat.”
Taylor goes bright red at the mention of Callum’s name.
Hah,
I think happily.
I’m going to have a lot of fun with this.
And then I think:
Oh God. Was I like that when Jase and I got together
?
“What?” Taylor says, looking up at me, her boob area now a crumb shelf.
“Nothing,” I say as my phone pings in my pocket, signaling an incoming text. I pull it out eagerly. And I’m not disappointed.
“Ooh!” I say happily. “Got to go!”
“I don’t need to ask you why,” Taylor says, reaching for more cookies. “You’ve gone as red as a London bus.”
Trust her to get the last word.
nineteen
BORING AND NORMAL
I stuff down the handful of cookies I’ve grabbed as I go, wanting (a) to avoid Jase being put off by seeing me gorge, and (b) to give my face enough time for the blush to fade. But though I achieve (a), (b) was a waste of time; as soon as I see him leaning against the huge wrought-iron gates to the Hall, next to his parked bike, I know I’ve gone red with excitement all over again.
It’s so unfair that Jase is darker than me, dark enough for a blush to be much less obvious on his caramel skin. But as soon as he spots me, his golden eyes light up, and he opens his arms wide for me to run into; I hurtle into him so fast I knock the breath out of him, and he’s laughing as he hugs me back so tight he squeezes the breath out of me in return. I squeal with everything I have left as he picks me up and swings me around in a big circle, my legs flying out almost parallel to the ground. I cling to him for dear life, my hair whipping round my face, and I have a flash of memory: my father doing this to me when I was really small, my little hands gripping the collar of his shirt, my mouth wide, screaming into his face with delighted terror.
It doesn’t last. I try to picture his face, but the memory fades as quickly as it came.
No one’s done this since I was tiny,
I think. There wasn’t another adult who would have picked me up and swung me through the air after my parents died. I’ve been craving touch ever since, longing for someone to hug and hold. No wonder I loved gymnastics so much; you’re endlessly being pushed and pulled and squashed flat and thrown through the air by big strong hands.
I must ring up Alison and Luce,
I resolve as Jase sets me down.
We could go and get a coffee, talk about what’s been going on with them since I left St. Tabby’s. Maybe go to some gigs in London together. Wow.
I grin.
I sound really grown-up.
“Nice to see you smiling,” Jase says, finally setting me down on my feet again.
I’m dizzy, but that’s not why I throw my arms around his neck; I pull his head down and kiss him and kiss him till we’re both reeling, backing him against the gatepost, wrapping myself around him, kissing him with total and utter abandon.
“Wow,” he says, when we finally pull apart, gasping once more for breath, our mouths soft and moist, our eyes shining. “I didn’t get back a moment too soon.…”
“Do you realize, this is the first time we’ve ever been able to kiss properly in daylight!” I say happily. “Isn’t that amazing?”
“Yeah,” he says, his arms still wrapped around me, his expression suddenly serious. “I can’t actually get my head round it yet. I keep expecting my dad or your aunt to come shooting out of a rosemary bush and start screaming at us to get away from each other.”
We stand there, looking at each other, the fact that both Mr. Barnes and Aunt Gwen are dead truly sinking in.
“I want to say I can’t believe it,” I say in a smaller voice. “But I can. I keep seeing her falling, over and over again.”
“Oh, baby—” Jase pulls me tighter, so that my head snuggles into the hollow of his collarbones. “Are you having nightmares?”
“No,” I say simply. “I’m happy that she’s gone. I don’t even feel awful about it. She always hated me, and then she tried to kill me. I can’t feel anything but incredibly relieved.”
Jase heaves a long sigh against me. “Fair enough,” he says. “I’m the one who’s having nightmares, to be honest. I keep seeing that ambulance pull up outside the school. And them carrying a body out on a stretcher, all covered over.”
“Oh, Jase—” I pull back, looking up at his face.
His full lips are drawn together, the skin across his cheekbones tight. Because I was so zonked by the antihistamines Aunt Gwen gave me, I pretty much passed out after the strain of keeping it together for long enough to talk to the police. And I’d lost any sense of time. My phone was turned off—they made us do that for the ghost walk—and it hadn’t occurred to me, in all the commotion, to turn it on again. Jase, who’d been hanging around outside the school, hoping I’d be able to sneak out and see him for a bit, saw me come back in a cab with Aunt Gwen and then an ambulance rushing up the drive forty minutes later. No wonder he was freaked out.
“I thought it was you,” he says quietly. “I really did think it was you.”
“I’m so sorry I didn’t ring!” I say, my face creasing into a grimace of apology. “I was really zonked—”
He presses both my hands.
“I asked them,” he says. “The paramedics. They wouldn’t tell me much, but they did say”—he pulls a sort of ironic grin as he makes a stab at the Edinburgh accent—“one of them did say, ‘Dinnae worry, pal, this cannae be your gurrrlfriend.’ And the other one went, ‘Not unless his name’s Oedipus, eh?’ And then they both laughed a lot.”
“Wow,” I say, my eyebrows rising. “Black humor.”
“Oedipus married his mum, right?” Jase says. “I remember that from school.”
I nod. “They were talking about Aunt Gwen being a lot older than you.”
“Hey!” He grins wider. “I may not have gone to private school, but at least I learned something at the comp, right?”
“Did you know it was Aunt Gwen’s body?” I ask, boosting myself up to sit on the stone wall.
“Nope.” He shakes his head. “They wouldn’t let me see her. Said she was pretty bashed up. But obviously, I was doing my nut by then. I didn’t know what to do. After everything that happened with my dad, I was worried about being there when the police showed up. So I went back to the bike and started ringing you. I rang for
hours
.”
“I’m sorry!” I wail. When I turned my phone back on this morning, I could have died, listening to his frantic messages—and I didn’t even know it could log that many missed calls. “Thank God for Taylor,” I add. She’d come back to school, seen Jase across the road on his bike, and rung him as soon as she had some idea of what was going on.
“No,
I’m
sorry,” Jase says intensely. He moves toward me where I’m sitting on the wall. “I wasn’t there to look after you. I hate that I wasn’t there. I hate that Taylor’s brother had to save you instead. I should have guessed somehow—I should have been there for you—”
I reach out my arms to him, and open my legs, wrapping them around his waist, hugging him in reassurance. He’s stiff against me, frowning in anger at himself.
“Jase, how could you have known?” I ask, trying to be as reassuring as I can. “All you saw was me coming back to school with my aunt. How could you possibly have known what she was going to do?”
He hangs his head. I reach out and rub his curls, feeling them crunch in my palm; they’re squashed from being under the motorbike helmet. Jase set off this morning from Edinburgh, but it takes a lot longer on the bike than it does on the train. He’s only just got back to Wakefield.
Or so I thought.
“I’ve been to see your gran,” he says, looking up at me. “Just now.”
“Really?” My eyes widen.
“She rang me when I was on the road,” he says. “Asked me where I was, said to come and see her if I was anywhere near Wakefield. I said I was on my way back, to see you.” His eyes gleam gold, a little defiantly. “I thought I might as well say it straightaway. That we’re still together.”
I gulp, still stroking his hair.
“She was never the one who made a fuss about it,” he goes on. “Your gran was always nice to me.”
“She thinks you’re a good boy and a hard worker,” I say, doing my best to imitate my grandmother’s impeccable upper-class accent.
“Well, I bloody am!” he says, and unexpectedly, his face cracks into a huge smile. “She’s bloody right!”
“What did she want to see you about?” I ask.
“You ready for this?” he says more seriously. “She wanted to see if I’d like to live there.” He nods back at the gatehouse, where, until so recently, I lived with Aunt Gwen.
“Wow,” I say. “It didn’t take her much time to work everything out, did it?”
He grins. “That’s your gran for you. She said you wouldn’t be living there anymore. But I can’t go back to my dad’s old cottage, and she’d like me to stay on the estate. There’s a job for life for me here, I know that. Running the grounds.”
I nod. Jase loves gardening; it’s the one thing he’s inherited from his dad.
“And what did you say?” I ask, my heart rising in nervous anticipation of his answer.
I don’t know if Jase will want to stay at Wakefield, not even for the moment, let alone long-term. Just a few months ago he told me that he didn’t know if he’d ever come back, that the guilt of what his father had done to my parents meant that he wasn’t sure if we could ever be together. Now it seems that the two of us are okay; but my future is tied to Wakefield, my inheritance, and if Jase can’t face being here, it doesn’t bode well for us as a couple.
He heaves a long, slow breath, and I feel the blood drain from my fingers and my toes as I wait for his answer. I’ve gone very cold. So much rides on how Jase feels about this, and there’s nothing I can do to change his mind.
“It’s all changed now, hasn’t it?” he says soberly, looking over my shoulder at the bulk of the Hall.
“What do you mean?” My voice is almost infinitesimal.
“Well”—he looks back at me—“your aunt was as bad as my dad, wasn’t she? They were in it together.”
I nod. We managed a short conversation this morning, before he set off down the M1 for London; enough for me to fill him on Aunt Gwen’s revelations to me yesterday.
“So don’t you see?” His eyes are intent, shining bright as stars as he looks down at me. “Your family—my family—they’re as rubbish as each other. At least, the bad seeds are. My mum, your mum and dad—nothing wrong with them. But my dad and your aunt were both bastards. They did their best to ruin our lives.”
I swallow hard as Jase mentions my parents. But I nod in agreement with every word he’s saying.
“So I don’t have to feel bad anymore,” he explains urgently. “See? My dad, your aunt—they were shits. My dad killed your mum and dad. Your aunt tried to kill you. So we’ve both got shitty horrible relatives. We’re even.”
Blood floods back into my face as I realize what he’s saying.
“I don’t have to feel guilty,” Jase concludes triumphantly. “Or that I don’t belong here anymore, ’cos my dad did something so awful that I don’t deserve to be here. I don’t have to stay away from Wakefield.” He beams at me. “I love it here, Scarlett. I mean, I was born here, I grew up here. It’s the only home I’ve ever known. And I had all these ideas for it too. My dad’d never listen to me—he just wanted to keep things as they’d always been. But I was thinking the Hall should grow its own fruit and veg, you know? Make the estate more self-sufficient. There’s so much space, we could use it for all sorts. Bring back the old kitchen garden and the orchard, keep hens, maybe some pigs and sheep—get all the girls here working to grow their own food, learn about farming—”
He breaks off, stepping back, running his hand over his hair, laughing at himself.
“Wow, I’m getting carried away!” he says. “But I’ve been sort of flying ever since I heard about your aunt. I feel like I’ve been freed.” He spreads his arms wide, his motorcycle jacket hanging open over his T-shirt, a huge smile on his face. “Like, it’s not just me! It’s not just my family that’s all messed up! It’s yours too! We’re just the same!”
I’m giggling now in sheer happiness.
“We can have a party to celebrate!” I suggest. “Only people with horrible relatives invited!”
“They’d have to be really bad, though,” Jase says. “Hard-core stuff.”
“Okay, it’d be small and highly exclusive,” I agree. “Oh ick, I sound like Plum.”
And then it occurs to me that, by the sound of things, Plum is the only person I know who’d qualify for an invitation. Taylor’s parents are obviously fantastic; you just have to look at her enviably high self-confidence level to see that. Alison and Luce’s are equally lovely. Even Lizzie Livermore is coddled and adored by her largely absent tycoon father.
While Plum’s expression of absolute fear when she talked about her father spoke volumes. And though she has Susan, Viscount Saybourne would clearly come down on Plum like the wrath of God if he ever found out about his daughter and her girlfriend. Whereas Jase and I are free, finally, to kiss in public.
I’m much better off than Plum. What a strange feeling that is.
Jase snaps his fingers in front of my face.
“And when I do that, you will come out of your trance!” he says, like a stage magician.
“Sorry,” I say, back to reality. “All right, no party. Just the two of us in the Appalling Relatives Club.”
“Works for me,” he says, smiling down at me.
I look at the gatehouse behind him. If I manage to blot out all memories of Aunt Gwen, of how much I dreaded coming back here and having to call it home when it was no such thing, I can see that it’s a charming little cottage, like something out of a fairy tale. Red shutters at its windows, wisteria trained around the door. You wouldn’t exactly think it was the obvious house for a nearly eighteen-year-old boy, but it’s very generous of my grandmother to offer it to Jase.
“Are you going to live there, then?” I ask, nodding toward it.
He glances back too, then turns back to me.
“Not yet,” he says seriously, and my heart sinks. “I’m just not ready for all that.”
“All what?” I ask, my voice tiny again.
“Running my own place. Having to be all grown-up. Because it’s your gran’s house, and she’s doing me a big favor. I’d have to be really careful, y’know? What if I wanted to have some friends round, have a party or something?” He pulls a face. “It wouldn’t be respectful. I’d be looking over my shoulder the whole time.”
“So what are you going to do?” I say, and I’m amazed he can hear me at all, because I’m sure by now my voice has gone so high and squeaky that only dogs can pick up the frequency.
He cups my face with both his hands, his eyes glowing affectionately.
“Don’t worry, Scarlett,” he says gently. “I’m not going far. I’m still going to start my estate management degree at college in the autumn, down Havisham way. I’ve met a couple of lads who’ve been doing the part-time course there this year, that I’ve been on, and they’ve all signed up for the degree course too. Nice lads—we have a good laugh together. We thought we’d find a place we could share in Wakefield village. It’ll probably be pretty slobby—three boys sharing—but I’ll have my own room, and you can come and visit all the time. We can practically live in each other’s pockets if we want to.”