‘Imogen Heath has always been a good girl at heart,’ they
said
to each other in the staff room, ‘but who would have expected that vain little package Romily de Lisle to start caring about something other than lipstick and fashion? And what about Allegra McCorquodale? We always knew she had a brain, but no one guessed she’d ever start using it …’
Gradually, as the girls began to recover from the shock of what had happened to Sophie, they looked towards their own futures. Allegra even had a boyfriend, Freddie, who was at Radley. They wrote each other chirpy, unromantic letters and met in pubs off Sloane Square during holidays and exeats, usually ending up at someone’s house where they could kiss and grope each other. She kept the other two endlessly entertained with stories of how far she and Freddie were getting. Imogen was working hard and, urged by the English teacher to apply to Oxford, had decided she would try for Christ Church, one of the largest and grandest colleges. Allegra followed suit, although without quite as much encouragement as Imogen received, and said she planned to apply to Lincoln. ‘It’s where my family always goes,’ she explained vaguely when asked. ‘Xander’s going there in the autumn.’
Imogen had had no idea that you could have a family college, where you would expect to follow in your relatives’ footsteps, but apparently you could. Knowing that Xander was going to be at Oxford gave Imogen a tingling, excited feeling in her stomach. Ever since the wedding in London, she’d nurtured a secret crush on him, wondering when she would see him again, but he’d proved much more elusive than he used to. Not so long ago, she and Allegra had spent their time planning how they could get away from her irritating brother – now all she could think about was how their paths might cross; but Xander was always off staying with friends or travelling abroad on some adventure. She had caught a tantalising glimpse of him at Foughton over
the
Christmas holidays and he’d looked more handsome and grown up than ever, but she’d barely been able to exchange more than a few stammering words with him. Now she dreamed of seeing him at Oxford, and it sent her back to her studies, determined to win her place.
‘Do you like this colour red?’ Allegra said, showing her toe nails to Imogen as they sat on the bed.
‘
Très chic
,’ Imogen remarked. ‘But this grey blue is sooo trendy … I totally love it. I’d wear it on my fingernails if I could get away with it, but someone’s bound to notice and make me take it off.’
‘You could pretend you trapped all your fingers in a door,’ suggested Allegra.
‘Ho-ho.’ Imogen frowned at her favourite colour. ‘Do you really think it looks like bruises?’
The door was flung open then and they both glanced up, startled, as Romily came in, tears streaming down her face.
‘What is it, Rom?’ Allegra asked, jumping off the bed, not caring that her scarlet nails were still wet. She rushed over and put her arms round the other girl, who started crying hard.
Romily raised her face, leaving a damp patch on Allegra’s top. ‘I’ve just been talking to my mother. She says she and my father have decided that I’ve got to leave Westfield.’
‘What?’ Imogen gasped, and jumped up as well.
Romily nodded, sniffing, her brown eyes full of tears. Her mascara left inky trails down her cheeks but she wiped them away with the cuff of her exquisite white shirt.
‘But why?’ demanded Allegra.
‘They’ve just heard about …’ Romily looked reluctant to say the words ‘… about you know what.’
They all swapped glances. They knew what she was referring to.
‘But all the parents got a letter, didn’t they?’ Allegra said.
She
sat down on the chair by her desk. ‘And it was in the news, all over the papers, we all saw it … Christ, everyone saw it. Remember how we had the press outside the gates for weeks? How Miss Steele forbade us all to talk to them? How could your parents not have known?’
Romily turned her eyes up to heaven and said, ‘Because they’re not like other people! They live in their own little bubble, you know that. They’re hardly ever in London. Maybe they were at the château, or on Chrypkos, or in New York or Switzerland – I don’t know. They don’t really care about things like this – they know what’s going on in high society, or politics, or fashion, or art. They don’t give a stuff about what happens at a girls’ school out in the middle of nowhere.’
‘Not even if you’re there?’ Imogen asked tentatively. She’d seen Romily’s parents only once, when they attended a speech day. Usually nannies and personal assistants escorted her to and from school, along with the mandatory bodyguard. The de Lisles had been stunningly glamorous, like creatures from another world. They’d seemed more highly coloured and textured than the people around them, as glossy and polished as fine porcelain. Their clothes, their hair, everything about them had screamed money: not just a bit, but oodles and oodles of it. It had made the other Westfield parents – the bankers, stockbrockers, lawyers and businessmen – look a little bit dowdy by comparison. Even the richest British ones, even the most aristocratic, couldn’t compete with the sheen of French sophistication and the utter glamour of their haute-European lifestyle. At least, that was how it had seemed to Imogen. ‘And didn’t they get the letter from Miss Steele?’
Romily shrugged. Suddenly, she looked very young and lonely. ‘I shouldn’t think they ever saw it. All correspondence goes to the office. The secretaries would have
opened
it. They read all of it – they even précis my reports into one paragraph so my parents don’t have to waste too much time over them. They probably didn’t think it was worth bothering them over something so minor. Or they put it in a file for someone’s attention and it’s only now that it’s been noticed.’
‘But why should they care now?’ asked Allegra.
‘Oh.’ Romily shrugged. ‘My mother has decided that the school is obviously a den of vice and the wrong sort of people go here. So I’m leaving at the end of term.’ Her lip trembled. ‘She wanted me out immediately! I said no, I wouldn’t walk out. So we’ve compromised. I can stay till the end of term.’
‘Oh, Romily!’ They stared at each other, hardly able to believe that their little triumvirate was about to be irreparably shattered. ‘But what are you going to do? Where will you go?’
Tears flowed down her cheeks. ‘I don’t know. Mama has suggested some other schools – French and Swiss, mostly. Or a kind of finishing school where I would learn cookery and that kind of thing. She doesn’t seem to think I need to go to school at all. She said that education is often vulgarising, and that she knows plenty of intellectuals – a few hours of conversation a week with them and some reading is all I need, apparently. She’s already asked her friend Professor Levy-Lande of the Sorbonne to make a list of everything I should read by the age of twenty-one – all the classics.’
‘Shakespeare? Shelley? Keats? Dickens? That kind of thing?’ asked Imogen, interested.
Romily frowned. ‘Well … more like Racine, Molière, Proust, Voltaire … you know, the classics.’
Allegra looked envious. ‘Oh my God, so you get to live in Paris? Go shopping? Have dinner parties with the cool people your parents know?’
They all knew that the de Lisles, with one foot in the world of art and the other in shipping and international business, mixed with the cream of world society: famous artists, esteemed writers, the leading politicians of the day, along with singers, actors, directors, and people who were famous simply for being beautiful, rich and carefree – they all dined at the de Lisles’ magnificent Paris flat, stayed at the wonderful properties all over the world, holidayed on the de Lisles’ yacht or on their private Greek island of Chrypkos.
‘Do you really want to stay here instead?’ asked Imogen, finding it hard to believe.
Romily looked agonised. ‘Of course I do!’ She sank down on to Allegra’s pink leather pouffe and wrapped her arms round her bare knees. ‘I know my life sounds fabulous – and I’m very lucky, I realise that. The stuff my grandfather left …’ She trailed off. She didn’t need to explain. Everyone knew that Vincent de Lisle’s legacy of hundreds of canvases was worth millions. He was one of the most famous artists of the twentieth century, and his work continued to break records in sales-rooms all over the world. Romily had owned several pictures in her own right since she was born; that alone made her worth millions, even without her mother’s shipping inheritance. ‘But my family’s life isn’t like other people’s. Wherever I go, I have to have bodyguards and protection if I’m not on private property. Before I was allowed to come here, my parents paid for perimeter fencing and cameras round the whole school, and a security lodge where everything is monitored by guards on duty twenty-four hours a day.’
‘Really?’ Allegra looked astonished. ‘You never said anything!’
‘It’s all kept quiet,’ Romily said unhappily. ‘It was one of my guards who found Sophie that night. He knew we smoked up there – I had to tell him so they didn’t report
seeing
smoke. Then I had to beg him not to pass on what we did in the attic to my family. I didn’t want anyone here to know about the guards. I’d never have heard the end of it. The first thing I learnt in life was always to be discreet and not draw attention to myself unnecessarily. And that’s what I love about being here – I get to be normal. Just like everyone else. No one really knows or cares who I am here. Once I’m out, I’ll never hear the end of it. That’s why I want to stay. I feel safe. To you it might be shabby and boring and the end of the world, but to me, it’s just … home.’
Imogen went over, put her arms around her friend and hugged her. Romily was right: school was about what made them the same, not what made them different. Stuck inside this old place, she easily forgot that Romily came from another world. But how sad it was that, to her, this was home! No matter how much Imogen loved Westfield, to her it was nothing like home and her own room and her mother and father who cherished her. If school was better than Romily’s home, what did that say about her family life?
Romily leant her head on Imogen’s shoulder and sniffed loudly. Just then there was a knock and the senior house prefect put her head round the door. ‘OK, guys! That’s enough now. Back to studies for prep, please.’
‘Midnight meeting tonight!’ whispered Allegra as the other two got up to obey instructions. ‘In Romily’s room.’
The girls had not met at midnight for a long time now. The activities of the Midnight Girls seemed too closely bound up with the tragedy that had shaken the school, and none of them had wanted to recall that terrible night. They did all in their power to avoid remembering: not one of them had walked across the patch of ground where Sophie had fallen, or even looked at it.
The news that Romily would be leaving Westfield was
important
enough to resurrect the habit, however. As the old clock in the hall ticked round to midnight, two pairs of feet ran lightly down the corridors and into Romily’s room. It was definitely the nicest study in the whole boarding house, partly because Romily’s mother had somehow secured permission for her own interior decorator to come to Westfield during the summer holidays and make it over. While the other girls had standard issue magnolia walls covered in posters and pages from magazines, mud-brown curtains and Formica-veneer desks, along with a well-trampled dark carpet that might once have been patterned, Romily had pale green walls, curtains in cream silk sprigged with tiny green and gold flowers, and delicate antique furniture. She slept in a single mahogany sleigh bed, with a lusciously downy silk duvet like a mound of whipped cream. Most important, though, was the built-in wardrobe that stretched along one entire wall, in which Romily’s fantastic clothes were carefully stored.
‘I wonder who’ll get this when you’re gone?’ Allegra said, as they settled themselves down on the bed.
Romily shrugged. ‘It’s my legacy, I suppose. Maybe they’ll let you have it, Allegra, if you want it.’
She shook her head. ‘It would be too weird. Besides, it’s everything about you that makes it so lovely: your furniture, your clothes, your style. Once you’re gone, it won’t be the same.’
‘Papa wanted me to have one of Grandfather’s paintings on the wall – just a small one. But Miss Steele wouldn’t allow it. Too much of a security risk.’
‘I’m not surprised!’ exclaimed Imogen, laughing. It was hilarious to imagine a real Vincent de Lisle hanging in one of the sixth-form studies.
‘Shhh!’ Allegra gave her a warning look. ‘I know it feels safe in here, but we never know who’s creeping along the corridors.’
‘I can’t believe we’re going to be separated,’ Imogen whispered, serious now.
‘It was going to happen anyway,’ Romily said in a brave tone. ‘Once A-levels are finished, you two will go to university here. My parents don’t want that for me. My mother is determined to have me home so she can start preparing me for life beyond school. She thinks eighteen is plenty old enough to start getting on with the serious things in life.’
‘Like what?’ asked Allegra.
Romily shrugged. ‘Social life, I suppose. Society, fashion, the seasons …’
The other two stared at her. It seemed strange to them that anyone could pretend such things were a serious pursuit, a worthy way to spend one’s life. Society was simply frivolous fun, wasn’t it? Parties were indulgences, not things to devote oneself to.
‘But we thought we had another whole year,’ Imogen said wistfully. ‘Anything could have changed in that time. Now you’ll definitely be leaving.’
‘The thing is,’ Allegra said in a low voice, giving the other two a solemn look, ‘we need to make a promise between ourselves. About what happened.’ She bit her lip and a troubled expression passed over her face. ‘We’re the only ones who know the truth about … about Sophie. We are the only witnesses. We have to make a solemn vow, that we’ll never, never tell. We must promise on everything we hold sacred – on our
lives
– that it will stay a deadly secret, and that we’ll stay friends forever.’
They were all quiet for a moment as they recalled the scene in the attic above the dormitory. It was almost a year ago already. They had only just begun to recover from the horror of it.