‘Joe’s right. The watch had to come from somewhere. How better to disguise your own crime by accusing another?’
‘Oh my gosh, you’re right!’ Raven pushed away from his chest and gazed up at him. ‘I’m such an idiot! How could she do that to me?’
Anger was better than tears even if it did mean losing the hug. ‘But don’t do anything drastic.’ He knew her well enough to realize she didn’t always think her reactions through.
‘Why not? I’m going to murder her.’
‘No, you are going to outwit her.’
‘Huh?’
‘Listen to my man, Raven,’ Joe said. ‘You’ll only end up in worse trouble if you burst in and accuse her. She’ll say you’re lying to cover up what you’ve done.’
‘But that’s not fair!’
They had to deter her from doing anything rash or she might upset the investigation. If things worked out, she’d get her payback when they took down the scheme. ‘No, it’s not. But haven’t you heard that revenge is a dish best served cold? Put yours in the deep freezer.’
‘You want me to find some self-control? I don’t have much of that,’ Raven said grumpily.
‘It seems we are all fated to learn new things today.’ Joe grinned at Kieran. ‘Aren’t we?’
Thefts—accusations—and now blaming Raven, who was convenient because she had neither power nor influence: Kieran knew they had to be watching the early stages in the process of reeling in Gina’s connections. Both he and Joe were eager to find out exactly how that was done so they could understand more of the scheme they were investigating. Once Raven had gone back to her new room in the infirmary wing, they went in search of her ex-best friend and found her standing on the edge of the crowd that circulated around Hedda and Toni, a humble new planet in their binary solar system. The gang hung out in the sixth form common room, occupying the best sofas by the huge Tudor fireplace, its gothic cast iron grate keeping the logs in check, no flames in the hearth at this time of year.
‘How do you want to play this?’ Kieran asked Joe as they approached.
‘Good cop/bad cop works for me. You needle her; see what you can provoke her to say … ’
‘My pleasure.’
‘And I’ll then rush in all sympathetic, defending her from you. It’ll help convince them I’m on their side.’
‘Joe!’ cried Hedda, treating his appearance as if she’d caused it. She held out her hand, pearl-pink polished nails beckoning him closer. ‘We were just talking about the prom. Are you planning to go?’
‘I guess so. How’s it going, guys?’ Joe included the rest of the crowd in his greeting. ‘Gina, isn’t it? Welcome back.’ He took a seat beside her.
Gina preened under his attention. ‘Thanks. You have to be Joe Masters.’
‘So my reputation precedes me. Don’t believe anything anyone has said. Whatever it was, I wasn’t there and even if I was, I couldn’t possibly have done it.’
She laughed, smoothing a neat hairstyle that needed no tidying. Kieran only knew about fashion from the pages he scanned past in the newspapers, but he thought he recognized some of the latest designer trends worn by thirty-year-old executives, not sixth formers. Now he gave it some thought he realized all the girls in the group around Hedda and Toni were displaying similar tastes.
‘You won’t have met my friend Kieran.’ Joe waved towards him.
‘He’s the one who got stuck with Raven in Dance,’ said Hedda. ‘Poor guy. Be nice to him.’
Gina nodded towards him. ‘Hi, Kieran. I hear you walked out on her. We don’t blame you. I’ve moved group too.’
‘Actually, she’s been great. We’re still working together in that class.’
‘Isn’t he cute! He’s too nice to say a bad word about anyone, even if they earned it.’ Hedda patted the seat beside her. ‘Come and sit with me, Kieran. You need to hear the latest. It’ll change your mind about the Crow.’
‘I doubt that.’ But he sat down.
Hedda placed a finger on his wrist. He moved his hand. ‘You know Raven’s got a problem with stealing.’
‘No, I don’t know that. You are making a supposition based on no empirical evidence that would stand up in court.’
His flat tone appeared to wrong foot her, as it did not fall into the usual script. He suspected she too often set the agenda of the conversations around her. ‘Oh. Well, she has. Everyone else knows. Anyway,’ she turned to Joe, thinking to find a more sympathetic audience, ‘Mrs Bain has finally taken action. I wouldn’t be surprised if Raven isn’t suspended by the end of the day.’
‘Yeah, flap away, Crow,’ Toni added with relish.
‘So how did you find out she’s been stealing?’ Joe asked, giving no hint he disliked their attitude. That was why he always got to play good cop.
‘We all suspected, naturally, what with Raven envying all the rest of us for our wealth, but Gina provided the proof.’ Hedda flicked her brown eyes at Kieran. ‘Evidence that even a court would not be able to question.’
‘You’ve got that wrong. It’s the job of a court to test evidence.’ Bad cop strode out to throw his weight around. ‘Gina has made an assertion. Why take her word over Raven’s? Is she a reliable witness?’
Gina gasped. ‘Of course I am—I swear it. I found that watch in our room. She’d had the nerve to hide it among my things. I was shocked—I thought we were friends!’ Odd—Gina was displaying none of the usual signs of the liar, no flicker in her expression. He wished he could take her pulse and test her skin temperature to check what was going on as she spoke. Even better, wire her up to a lie detector.
‘So you concluded it had to be her—why?’
‘Because she’s my roommate, duh. Or was. I asked for her to be moved.’ Gina folded her arms. ‘She needs help; I’m hoping the school will take action.’
‘What about you? Couldn’t you have put it there?’
Gina gave a strained laugh. ‘And then what? Forgotten about it?’
‘You tell me.’
Joe shook his head. ‘Hey, Kieran, lighten up. Gina wouldn’t do that to a friend. I mean, that would be way beyond cruel.’
Gina nodded eagerly. ‘That’s right—I don’t do that kind of thing. And I … and I’ve only just got back and Hedda’s tote had gone missing and I wasn’t even here!’
‘But the bag turned up almost immediately. It hadn’t been stolen, had it?’ Kieran trapped her gaze. She was grasping.
‘That was Raven’s story,’ sneered Hedda.
Good cop breezed in to defuse the tension. ‘But the good thing is that everything’s gone back to its owners. Let’s not fall out over it, especially as we’ve only just got to meet Gina.’
Kieran shrugged, pretending he didn’t care one way or the other. ‘Just saying.’
‘So, Gina, you came back late.’ Joe gave her a warm smile. ‘What kept you away from meeting me earlier, hey?’
‘My course overran.’
‘I’m so pleased you’re here now. What course was that?’
‘Personal development.’ She did not seem very forthcoming with the details, even with Joe fixing her with his flirt-o-dar beam.
‘Oh? Maybe I need some of that. What d’ya think? Would I like it?’ Joe put his ankle on his other knee, arm lightly draped behind her.
Gina shrugged. ‘I guess. I found it really useful.’
‘So where was it held? What kind of things did you get up to?’
‘At the manor. We did all sorts of things.’
‘Neat. Like what?’ He risked giving it a final push but Kieran sensed they had hit a wall.
Hedda cleared her throat. ‘I’m sure it was all the usual boring stuff. I think we’d better get to class. Gina, are you coming? See you later, Joe.’
‘Yeah, later.’ Joe got up with the others and, accidentally-on-purpose, bumped into Gina, dropping his pencil case and text books. ‘My bad. Sorry.’
The group helped him pick up his belongings. Kieran noted that Gina handed
Joe the plastic pencil case. Excellent. They had the fingerprints they had agreed to harvest. They were going to check them against the jewellery box Gina had given Raven before Gina underwent her personality change. While it was far-fetched to think someone else—what Raven had called the ‘evil twin’—had returned in the place of the real Gina, they could at least eliminate that possibility.
‘Talk later, OK?’ Joe called to Gina and Hedda.
‘Don’t forget: stay away from Raven,’ Hedda called back. ‘She’s bad news.’
‘If you’re seen with her, people here won’t like it,’ added Toni.
The girls walked off, kitten heels clicking.
‘Was that a threat?’ Kieran murmured as Joe tucked the pencil case in a plastic bag at the bottom of his backpack to preserve the prints.
‘Yeah, Key, I think it was.’
‘Excellent. I like threats. It means we’re getting close to something they don’t want us to know.’
Raven set out her belongings on the shelf in the box room she had been allocated. It had until recently served as overflow accommodation for the sick bay to isolate contagious cases. She hadn’t missed the implication that she was being treated like a disease.
It was so unjust. The more she thought about it, the likelier it seemed that Gina had been behind the thefts from the start, even in the time when they had been friends. Looking back, Gina had hinted she was getting tied up in knots dealing with her bossy father. Nothing was ever good enough for him. Towards the end of last term, she’d started behaving recklessly, telling Raven that if she couldn’t please she might as well annoy her dad. Swinging from mood to mood, she had ‘borrowed’ stuff from Raven without asking but Raven had assumed this was a best-friends thing and made no fuss, not wanting to upset her. It brought her up short to realize she had probably never really understood Gina, not realizing her behaviour was the cry for help. And now it was too late. Gina had found another way. She’d divorced her old self and everything that had gone with it, including Raven. But why turn so viciously against her?
And it wasn’t just Gina. Another of those poisonous notes had been left for her to see on arrival in her new room. She hadn’t bothered to open this one but chucked it straight in the bin. It appeared she had a talent for making enemies.
Raven spread her duvet on the bed, trying the thin mattress. The room felt like a prison cell. It even had bars on the window, some hangover from the days when they feared feverish students would throw themselves out. She found everything about it depressing.
There came a gentle tap on the door and Kieran put his head round. Boy, was he a sight for sore eyes: earnest jade green gaze, ruffled hair and strong arms that had held her so kindly earlier. She shouldn’t like so much the way his body moved but, hands up, yes, she had noticed. It was just as well he couldn’t hear her thoughts.
‘Settled in?’ His eyes swept the room and he frowned.
‘Yeah, I know: it looks like a nineteenth-century lunatic hospital.’
He came in and shut the door. ‘Actually, Victorian asylums in the main were quite progressive institutions, replacing the torment of the old Bedlams with good diet, fresh air, and gentle exercise.’
‘Good to know.’ Raven felt better having him in here; he was her breath of fresh air. ‘All I need are a few posters and maybe this place will be passable. Did you need something?’
‘I just called back to say I can’t rehearse this weekend. Joe and I are going home.’
‘Oh. OK.’
‘We’re back Sunday evening.’
‘Have fun.’ She watched as he examined the things on her dresser top. He paused at a photo of her with her parents.
‘This is a nice picture.’
‘One of my favourites. That was the last holiday before … our last time together.’
‘Let me guess: that’s Cape Cod.’
‘That’s right. Do you know it?’
‘I’ve never been, but I recognize the lighthouse. I’ve made a study of them.’
She laughed at his geekiness. ‘As one does. Dad adored the coastline. I expect your family holiday on private Caribbean islands.’
His mouth turned down at the corners. Wherever they had gone, he hadn’t appreciated it. ‘Something like that.’
‘Do you have brothers and sisters?’
His hand paused on the frame containing a picture of her granddad. She hadn’t noticed any family pictures in his room; neither he nor Joe put their backgrounds on display, which was unusual. Nearly everyone had a picture of someone somewhere in their bedroom. ‘Yes. A sister. I mean I did. She died seven years ago.’
‘Oh, Kieran, I’m so sorry.’ Maybe that was why he had no photos: painful memories.
‘So am I. Sorry for you about your mum and dad.’
‘How did she die, your sister?’ Raven appreciated the fact that finally he was opening up to her even if the subject was so sad.
‘It was heart failure when she was fifteen.’
‘So young? That’s terrible.’
‘She had Downs but they didn’t pick up on the heart problem until too late.’ His expression tightened.
That was scandalous. Raven thought that his posh parents should’ve been able to afford the best doctors in the country, but she didn’t want to state the obvious. She could imagine the parental guilt of realizing you had missed something so vital.
He turned. ‘But you’d’ve liked Hannah. Everyone loved Hannah—you couldn’t help it.’
‘Then I’m really sad not to have had the chance to meet her.’
Kieran made a visible effort to drag his thoughts away from his loss. ‘So, no brothers and sisters then?’
‘No, I was the only one. Mom couldn’t have more kids. I would have liked more family. With just my granddad, it doesn’t feel enough somehow.’
‘There’s no one else?’
‘No. I never expected to end up this way. My parents, they didn’t tell me, you see. Pretended everything was fine, that Mom was just having treatment for something routine. I was too young to know the difference. When she died, I realized I had been the only one not to know, not to be prepared.’
‘Maybe they lied because they thought it best for you?’
‘I’m sure they did, but they were wrong. Nothing is worse than a life based on lies.’ She rubbed her arms, trying to drive away the chill of memory. ‘Then Dad went off to war. Told me he’d be fine. I knew by then not to trust that kind of promise. He couldn’t keep it. I was dumped with family friends, the Boltons, while they worked out what to do with me. That was … not good.’ Understatement of the year.
‘That’s tough—to lose everything familiar all at once.’
‘Yeah, it was. Life with the Boltons was hell too. The boy picked on me, spread rumours at school—stupid lies about me being on drugs.’
‘Which you weren’t.’
‘Absolutely not. He was the one with the problem, it turned out. Then Granddad came to the rescue.’ She unpacked a few more toiletries for her dressing table. ‘Odd to think there’s barely anything left of my parents.’ She smiled sourly. ‘I suppose this all sounds weird to you, seeing how you live.’
‘It doesn’t sound weird in the least.’ He gestured to her jewellery box. ‘May I borrow this?’
Raven began to regret her outpouring; would he want to distance himself now she’d told him all that ugly stuff? ‘Of course—but what do you want it for?’
‘A still life for Art. I like the shell decorations.’
‘Yeah, take it.’ Raven tipped out her earrings. ‘I’ve gone off it anyway, seeing how the giver has turned out to be a heartless liar.’
He held out his book bag. ‘Can you put it in there please? I don’t want to knock off one of the shells.’
She dropped it in. ‘It’s not that special. I wouldn’t care if you did.’
‘Thanks, Raven. I’ll look forward to seeing you when I get back.’
‘Just don’t change on me, OK?’ She was ge
tting anxious now when anyone went away, having seen what happened to Gina.
He smiled with his usual confidence. ‘I won’t.
The flimsy lock gave way with a crack. Raven jolted from sleep, hazily grasping that her bedroom had been invaded.
‘What the heck are you doing?’ She rolled to take a defensive position, crouched on the bed.
Six students dressed in black surrounded her, white pillow cases over their heads so that she could not see their faces. Last time she’d witnessed this was when she first joined the school—part of the initiation rite for a newcomer. Some of her alarm subsided.
‘Geez, guys. Piss off and annoy a first year, why don’t you?’ These rites were frowned on but those that did still go on at school were supposed by tradition only to involve new kids. She reached for the light to chase them away but before she could, the nearest one made a grab for her. She broke his hold on her ankle with a kick to his stomach. He bent over, clutching himself, breath whistling between his teeth. Oops—not his stomach then.
‘Get her!’ gasped the one she had just emasculated.
Three boys dived and managed to catch her arms and legs. Wriggling, she was lifted her off the bed. ‘Put me down, you jerks!’ She was angry more than scared. The last week had been bad enough without these idiots putting the seal on it this Saturday night.
‘Raven Stone, you’re not wanted here,’ said in the leader in a hoarse voice. She didn’t recognize it: male, purposely speaking low to disguise his tones, or maybe because he was still recovering. From the silhouettes, some of the gang were girls, the majority boys. They carried her through the doorway and out into the corridor.
‘Cut it out. This isn’t funny.’ Raven struggled, managing to get one arm free and elbowed the nearest pillowcase in the face, following through with a heel of the palm shove to the region of the nose of a second. They dropped her. She sprang up and raced down the corridor, bare feet thudding on the lino.
‘She’s getting away!’ shouted a boy.
Heart pounding, Raven headed for the door to the outside, planning to take refuge in her grandfather’s cottage the other side of the gardens. Even with nothing on her feet and shorter legs than them, she was moving ahead. Thanks to Jimmy Bolton, she knew how to run. She began to hope she’d get away. The fire door was only metres away across the foyer. All she had to do was crash into the bar and she’d be out.
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