He was drawn not just to her feminine shape, but to the energy and vigour that emanated from her: it was obvious that she wanted to be free, to dance, to feel alive. Her life force was irresistible. He made his way across the dance floor towards her, pushing his way through writhing bodies. The girl he was watching sang as she danced, smiling with pleasure as she moved sinuously to the beat.
When he reached her she was oblivious, continuing to dance alone. Then she opened her eyes and saw him. For a moment she carried on smiling, gazing at him as though sharing her joy with him, then she came to a sudden halt, frozen on the dance floor, her eyes wide. She blinked. She mouthed a single word. He couldn’t hear it against the noise of the music, but he could see clearly what she had said. ‘
You
.’
He smiled at her, nodding slowly. Then he took her hand, leant forward, put his other hand behind her head and pulled her to him, pressing his mouth to hers.
She was too astonished to resist and then, as she appeared to realise what was happening, she relaxed under his touch and began to kiss him back. At first, their kiss was almost unbearably tender: slow, gentle and beautiful. Then it grew more passionate as they both felt the spark between them ignite into flame.
The man felt a tap on his back. He pulled out of the kiss and looked round. Someone yelled, ‘Oi, get a room, mate!’ though their voice was almost lost in the music.
He turned back to the girl. Her eyes were shining now,
her
hands clutching his. He raised his eyebrows at her and cocked his head towards the door. She nodded eagerly and a moment later they were making their way through the crowd, her hand held tight in his so he couldn’t lose her.
Outside the club, they stood on the pavement, taking no notice of the people milling about them.
‘It’s been a long time,’ the man said, smiling at her.
‘I can’t believe it’s you!’ she said breathlessly. ‘What are you doing here?’
He said slowly, ‘I guess I was supposed to find you … I always had a feeling I would, you know.’ Then he kissed her again, wrapping her tightly in his arms as though he was worried she would float away if he let go.
PART 1
Chapter 1
Westfield Boarding School for Girls
May 2000
‘WE REALLY HAVE
to do something about that awful cow,’ declared Allegra.
She sucked hard on her Marlboro Light and puffed the smoke out of the open attic window and into the warm spring night beyond.
The previous term Allegra had discovered the caretaker had the key to the attics and, with her fearless charm, had persuaded him to lend it to her, then had it copied and returned it. ‘Now we’ve got our very own headquarters. Isn’t it brilliant?’ she’d said proudly. She’d insisted that they make the most of the unlimited access to their secret place, and almost every night led the expedition out of the dorms and up into the filthy attic with its mountain of junk – broken chairs, trunks, shabby old desks and boxes – where they could indulge in their favourite vice in private. ‘We won’t be able to do this next year when we move into the sixth-form boarding house,’ she’d said, ‘so we have to make the most of it while we can.’
Now she looked over at the other two. ‘I mean it, she’s totally doing my head in at the moment.’
Imogen knew exactly who was meant. She blew out a stream of smoke, pleased with the nonchalant ease with
which
she did it. No one would guess she’d only been smoking for a few months and that, the first time she’d tried it, she’d been violently sick. She seemed just as cool as the others now. ‘But what on earth can we do?’ she said.
Romily looked blank. ‘What are you talking about?’ she asked as she pulled a packet of Gauloises out of her pyjama pocket.
‘I can’t believe you smoke those things,’ Imogen said, shaking her head. ‘They’re so strong! They make me feel queasy even when they’re not lit.’
‘I can’t believe you waste your time on
those
,’ Romily said, gesturing at Imogen’s cigarette. ‘They taste of nothing. You might as well not bother lighting them and just breathe in.’
‘They’ll do me fine, thanks very much. They’re better for you anyway,’ Imogen replied. She held out the white and gold packet. ‘Lights, see?’
Romily snorted. ‘If you believe that, you’ll believe anything! I’ve heard there’s fibreglass in the filters that goes straight into your lungs and cuts them to shreds. Give me an honest French brand any time.’
Allegra frowned. ‘Aren’t we getting a bit off the subject? I was talking about Sophie Harcourt.’
‘Ah.’ Romily took out a lighter, clicked it into life and sucked at her Gauloise, the strands of tobacco and cigarette paper flaring orange. She exhaled a long plume of smoke. ‘That’s better! I needed that. So … what’s La Harcourt done now?’
Romily hadn’t been in the lesson to witness the event; she had no need of French tuition and was allowed to do other revision while the others rehearsed their verbs, tenses and vocab ahead of the exams.
Allegra made a face and crossed one long slim leg over the other. She was sitting on an old box in her night clothes of flowered cotton shorts and a blue T-shirt, her cigarette
clamped
between her fingers. ‘She threw ink-covered blobs of tissue at me on her ruler. You saw it, didn’t you, Midge?’
‘Yeah.’ Imogen took a puff on her cigarette, which she held exactly as Allegra did hers. ‘She tried to pretend it wasn’t her, but I saw her giggling with Arabella Balmer.’
‘I hate her,’ spat Allegra. ‘She covered my shirt with ink splats, and it won’t come out. It’s the one I got at Camden Market too. She knows how cool it is … that’s why she wanted to wreck it.’
‘She’s
so
jealous,’ Imogen declared, a little pleased that someone like Sophie felt that way about them.
Romily nodded. ‘She hates the fact that we aren’t frightened of her like everyone else is.’
Sophie Harcourt was a powerful force in the fifth form; her wit and forceful personality made her popular, but her ability to turn her gimlet gaze on some poor unfortunate and ruin their life also made her feared. She had a talent for finding the weak spot in others and then teasing and mocking and bullying them until their life became a misery. As a result, everyone tried to keep on her good side or else well out of her way. Except for Allegra’s little group of three.
‘I don’t know why she doesn’t just leave us alone!’ Allegra said, frowning into the night beyond the attic window. ‘What is there to be so jealous about anyway?’
Imogen knew the answer to that: Allegra couldn’t help drawing all eyes to her, wherever she was and whatever she did. She was very naughty, constantly breaking rules and playing tricks – she had once been suspended for a fortnight for organising the biggest food fight the school had ever seen – but her naughtiness was without the personal malice of Sophie Harcourt’s, and everyone loved her for it. Except the teaching staff, of course. But even when she was behaving herself, no one could ignore her for long. Charisma seemed to shimmer out of her, partly because of her beauty –
fine-boned
features with porcelain-and-gold skin, navy-blue eyes, thick blonde hair, and a slender, graceful figure – and partly because of the incredible air of self-confidence that enveloped her. It was as though she knew she mattered, and took it for granted that everyone thought the same. It armoured her impenetrably against Sophie and her cohorts. And then there was the title …
‘She’s jealous now that you’re Lady Allegra,’ Imogen said wisely. ‘Ever since she found out, she’s been ten times worse than usual.’
Allegra sighed. ‘Bother that bloody title! I wish I’d never got it. Everyone’s been different with me since Grandpa died, even Miss Myers. She told me the other day that ladies didn’t run in the corridors and that I had to set an example to the rest of the school. What bloody nonsense.’
Imogen nodded sympathetically, but in her heart she thought that having a title must be wonderful – so romantic, so old-fashioned, so pretty. When Allegra’s grandfather had died, her father had succeeded to the earldom and Allegra had automatically gone from The Hon. Allegra McCorquodale (and no one cared about that, there were plenty of hons kicking about the school) to Lady Allegra, daughter of the Earl and Countess of Crachmore, sounding like the heroine of a Walter Scott novel. Suddenly, she was someone of importance and it had put certain noses out of joint.
‘Sophie loathes us all, for different reasons,’ Imogen said, taking another delicate puff of her cigarette. ‘She hates the way I beat her in everything, especially English. And she’s green about Romily’s money.’
Romily nodded, tapping her ash into a jar lid kept handy for the purpose. ‘I saw her listening in when I was telling you all about Paris, and she had a face like thunder. And I swear she was trying to get my pink cashmere jumper out of my bag the other day.’
‘See?’ Imogen spread out her hands. It was perfectly obvious to her. ‘She feels threatened by us, and by our club. She can’t rule over us like she does everyone else.’
‘I wish she’d leave me alone,’ Allegra grumbled. ‘If she doesn’t, she’ll be sorry.’
Imogen knew that Allegra was too strong-willed to let Sophie victimise her, and was sure that Sophie would be making a bad mistake if she tried to take any of them on. But lately there had been some minor skirmishes – such as the inky missiles fired in French – and there was a feeling in the air that a big battle was not far off.
There was a loud bang from down below in the dormitories at that moment and the girls all froze, staring at each other with frightened eyes. Imogen’s stomach plummeted with a sickening swoop, and her hands began to tremble. ‘What was that?’ she whispered, her heart racing.
They were breaking some of the strictest of school rules: they were out of bounds, at a time when they were forbidden to be out of their cubicles, and they were smoking. Any one of these was an offence worthy of expulsion; taken together, they would mean instant dismissal.
They all listened a moment more, Romily with her Gauloise poised ready to be stubbed out on the jam-jar lid.
‘Oh,’ Allegra said finally, relaxing, ‘it was nothing. An old pipe banging or something. You know what this place is like.’
It’s all right for you
, Imogen thought, her heart still pounding. Allegra seemed cool and unfazed by the terrible risks they were taking, but then, her parents didn’t give a damn what she did and wouldn’t even care if she was sent away from Westfield in disgrace. Romily’s family would no doubt consider the school rules very petty and bourgeois, and simply find an even grander school for her. But Imogen could hardly bear to think of her own parents’ disappointment if
she
spoiled this chance for herself. She could see her mother’s face now, and the look in her eyes if she discovered that Imogen had forfeited her precious and hard-won education for the sake of a stolen cigarette in the night.
Please don’t let us be caught
, she prayed. She knew how dangerous their nocturnal activities were but couldn’t resist them or bear not to be included, even when she risked expulsion. They were a special club after all, with Allegra as their leader, and they did everything together. Allegra had dubbed them the Midnight Girls, because that was when they made their secret treks to the attic, and it made them sound even more special, like a pop group or something. She had led them into all sorts of trouble, from adorning the statue of their founder, Dame Mary Westfield, with a particularly enormous bra and comedy straw hat, to the instigation of the great sock rebellion of the previous year when all girls began to wear forbidden colours of sock and, worse still, around their ankles instead of pulled up to the knee. But this was by far the most serious of her pranks, and every time they made the trek to the attic Imogen was filled with fluttering nerves, though she did her best to hide it.
‘Come on,’ Allegra said, stubbing out her cigarette end, tossing it through the open window on to the roof and then pulling the window shut. ‘We’d better get back to bed.’
The other two disposed of their cigarette ends and got up to make their way back to the dormitory.
Thank goodness for that
, Imogen thought, relief beginning to creep through her.
Another Midnight Girls meeting over and safely done. I’ll be glad to be back in bed
.
She happily followed Allegra down the attic stairs, padding softly after her, with Romily behind. When they reached the bottom Allegra pushed at the door. When it was still only open a crack, she gasped and stepped back, pulling it shut again.
‘Fucking hell,’ she whispered, looking round at the other two with wide, fearful eyes. ‘I just saw Sophie Harcourt walking down the corridor towards us.’
Imogen supported herself against the wall, feeling her knees weaken under her. Her heart started pounding again, and her breathing quickened. Behind her, she heard Romily gasp with fright. If Sophie caught them, they would be reported to Myers before morning and probably expelled by the following lunchtime.
Oh, God, I
knew
something like this was going to happen! Why the hell have we been so stupid?
Imogen asked herself.
‘What
is
she doing?’ murmured Allegra under her breath. They waited, trembling, for three long minutes before Allegra finally said, ‘She must have gone.’
‘Be careful!’ hissed Romily as Allegra slowly opened the door again.
‘Is anyone there?’ asked Imogen, her voice high and breathy with fright.
Allegra poked her head round the door and looked up and down the corridor. ‘She’s gone.’
‘Are you sure it was her?’ Romily asked as they crept out of the attic.
‘Of course I am.’ Allegra frowned and looked back down the corridor away from their dormitory. ‘But where was she going?’
‘Who cares?’ Imogen whispered, desperate to get back to the safety of her cubie. ‘Let’s just get back to bed, for God’s sake. If she’s up and about she may disturb Myers, and then we’ll all be caught.’
‘She was heading towards Kat’s,’ muttered Allegra. ‘Perhaps she’s meeting someone there.’