by Lucy Carver
‘We didn’t have much in common.’ Besides dead parents.
‘She’s cool. She’ll do anything I tell her.’
Wow, on my great-great-grandmother the suffragette’s grave, I wasn’t going to let that one go by. ‘You like girls who do everything you tell them? Funny – I wouldn’t have put Lily in that category. Is that why you dumped her? Or was it because she was pregnant?’
The who-dumped-who issue was what got to him, not the pregnancy. After I’d used the word ‘dumped’ twice in quick succession, he stood up and lurched across the room to wipe condensation from the window and stare out at the snow. Things were quickly coming to a head.
‘You knew she was pregnant – right?’
‘Sure I knew.’
I decided to push even harder. ‘But you didn’t want to keep the baby?’
Suddenly short of breath, Jayden slumped down on the bench beneath the window. He looked terrible and it took me by surprise.
‘Sorry,’ I murmured.
We waited an age without speaking. ‘It wasn’t mine to keep,’ he said finally.
‘Honestly?’ I watched him like a hawk – every flickering muscle around his eyes.
‘Yeah, really. Lily told me straight that I wasn’t the father.’
Didn’t I swear to Paige there was this whole new can of worms ready to be opened? Trying to keep a lid on my impatience, I let some more time pass.
‘Sorry,’ I said again, then a completely new idea hit me between the eyes. ‘Did you think Jack Cavendish was the father? Is that what you wanted to drag out of him at Tom’s party?’
Feral Boy had taken Jack away from me and cornered him. Jack had told me that Jayden wanted to know if he and Lily were back together. Jayden was putting two and two together – Lily back with her old boyfriend, making babies – and coming up with five.
‘It wasn’t Jack,’ I told him now with condensation streaming down the windowpane and the hot chocolate going cold. ‘Jack and Lily had moved on, they were mates – nothing else.’
‘Yeah, right.’
‘They were. Jack wasn’t the baby’s father.’ I was a little bit shaky myself by this time and found a way out by shifting the focus. ‘Listen, Jayden – are you sure Lily was telling you the truth? She wasn’t just letting you off the hook?’
‘Why would she do that?’
‘Because she was Lily and she did crazy, self-destructive things. Maybe she didn’t want to trap you into a long-term relationship just because she was having your baby, so instead she lied to you and said it wasn’t yours.’
He shook his head. ‘I thought of that. I put pressure on her to let me take a paternity test once the baby was born. She agreed to that at least.’
‘OK, I get it – you decided you definitely weren’t the father so you ended it?’
He laughed, stopped, laughed again. ‘Actually Lily ended it.’
I did a double take. Why had loved-up Lily done the very thing that would break her heart? ‘Did she give a reason?’
‘In a text. She said her family had told her to finish it, which might have been an excuse – I’ll never know. Anyway, I’m clear in my own head that they did have total control over what she did. And the brother – he definitely didn’t like the sound of me.’
‘Adam?’
‘Yeah, Adam.’
There was plenty here for me to work through. For a start, Jayden didn’t seem like a guy to keep a lid on his temper or to follow a rich man’s rules. And of course Lily was volatile too. I began to picture a new scenario for Lily’s final hours – the email calling her home to face a family crisis (maybe Adam somehow finding out that she was still in contact with Jayden), followed by Lily panicking and finally deciding she needed out of her old life, packing her bag, writing the email to Jack and sneaking out through the grounds. She didn’t get very far though before she ran smack bang into Jayden, hiding in the woods – full of jealous rage and frustration. Big argument. Vicious insults are flung in each other’s faces. Jayden loses control . . .
‘Don’t even go there.’ Jayden read my mind. Or his gaze was so intense that was how it felt.
‘I’m not saying –’
‘Yes, you are. You figure I was crazy-jealous.’
‘No.’ I could tell by his angry tone that this conversation was almost over.
‘You’re wrong – I didn’t want Lily back. She’d kicked me into touch – I’d moved on.’
‘You were already with Ursula?’
He nodded and I sighed. First Jack and now Jayden – everyone had moved on from poor Lily.
‘End of story,’ Jayden said. He got up, opened the door and let in an icy blast and a flurry of snow. He mumbled a last, throwaway line before leaving. ‘You need to find out what was in the pathologist’s report.’
‘You sod off back where you came from!’
Alex had me backed up against a dirty brick wall. I could see Micky and Ursula grinning over his shoulder. All three had jumped me as I’d slid and slithered my way back to the Bottoms to collect my bike. They’d dragged me along the main street and flung me into Alex’s dad’s dingy, oil-stained workshop.
The smell of petrol and the pressure of Alex’s hand round my throat made me gag. I was struggling to breathe.
‘Stop stirring it.’ Ursula the she-wolf leaped to her boyfriend’s defence. She pulled Alex back and came right into my face. ‘The murderer – the guy who supposedly killed your slut mate wasn’t from round here. It wasn’t Jayden.’
You need to find out what was in the pathologist’s report. It was true. Now that Alex wasn’t trying to throttle me I began to think straight. ‘I wasn’t accusing him.’
‘So why did you come here?’ Ursula grabbed my arm and manhandled me towards the door. ‘Look outside – it’s not what you’d call visiting weather.’
Actually the snow was easing and the yellow council trucks were already out, spewing grit across the roads.
‘Yeah, whatever it was, why couldn’t it wait?’ Micky asked.
Of the three, he seemed the least likely to snarl and bite. I turned to him. ‘Listen – if you found out there was a chance your best mate had been murdered, would you hang around and wait for better weather?’
He sucked air between his teeth. Alex grunted. Ursula shoved me out on to the pavement, where I skidded and sprawled forward on to my knees.
‘We don’t want any of your lot snooping around.’ This was Alex trying to be reasonable. ‘St Jude’s means trouble – always, end of!’
It was Micky who helped me to my feet and pointed me in the right direction. ‘Leave the bike here. Call a taxi,’ he suggested.
I nodded and set off along the street into the glare of the gritting lorry’s headlights. As it trundled by, I felt a sharp spatter of salt and gravel against my legs. I turned my head to see if the others were following me, found that I was alone outside St Michael’s church and took out my phone to order a cab.
I made the call and slipped the phone back into my pocket, prepared to wait. Then I saw a red car crawl into a driveway, heard the engine cut and a door slam. After that a motorbike edged out of Meredith Lane on to Main Street – a single headlight, the low purr of a powerful engine, rider crouched low over the handlebars.
There was a slow-motion moment when the rider turned his handlebars and trained his headlight on me – enough time to wonder why he’d done that and to hear the purr turn to a roar as he accelerated towards me, to see that a visor completely covered his face.
He was ten metres away and accelerating, five metres and ploughing through deep snow on to the pavement.
‘Move, Alyssa!’ Tom yelled from across the street.
I flung myself backwards under the lychgate, staggered into the churchyard, stumbled and fell against the nearest gravestone. Sacred to the memory of Alfred Ernest Hathaway, 1837–1891. The motorcyclist braked and swerved. He clipped the gatepost, skidded away.
Tom ran across from the Old Vicarage and helped me u
p. ‘Are you OK?’
Apart from the fact that I was covered in snow and shaking like a leaf. Apart from the fact that a guy on a motorbike had just tried to kill me.
A log fire burned in Tom’s living room. The bottle-green curtains were drawn and early Christmas cards stood on the mantelpiece.
‘Am I crazy, or was that deliberate?’ I asked. One minute I was calling for a taxi, the next I was face down on Alfred Ernest Hathaway’s grave.
‘Difficult to tell.’ Tom wouldn’t commit. ‘All I know is I saw you caught in the headlight, not moving out of the way.’
‘He didn’t stop,’ I pointed out. The total opposite – he’d clipped the gatepost then swung back across the pavement on to the gritted road. You could see the arc of the tyre prints.
‘So he was over the limit.’
‘Maybe.’ I remembered that a motorcyclist had parked outside the Smith’s Arms. Could it have been the same one?
‘He was over the limit and he didn’t want to get done for drunk driving.’
‘Nice guy!’ The warmth of the flames was thawing me out. ‘You didn’t get his number by any chance?’
Tom shook his head. ‘It was over in a split second.’
‘I know. I just get the feeling . . .’
‘That he wanted to run you down?’
I nodded. ‘But when you come out with it like that, I do begin to sound a little crazy, don’t I?’
Then again, when your roommate is dead, your world view does darken and you begin to see everything through a sinister glass.
Tom cancelled the taxi and made me wait for someone from the school to pick me up. ‘You shouldn’t be alone,’ he said as he called St Jude’s.
‘We may be some time,’ D’Arblay warned. ‘The snow’s bad and traffic is backed up all the way into Ainslee. Is Alyssa happy to wait where she is?’
Tom told him yes and made me take off my wet boots. He put them by the fire to dry.
‘Where are your parents?’ I asked.
‘At work. Not back until late.’ He sat down beside me, picked up the remote and flicked on the TV, running through channels with his feet up on the coffee table, as if nothing had happened.
‘Thanks,’ I told him.
‘For what?’
‘You saved my life.’ And that’s not a sentence I expect to say very often.
An episode of The Wire came up. ‘That’s OK. Let’s say you owe me.’
‘I do?’
‘No – I’m kidding.’
‘Not funny.’ I could say whatever I liked to Tom, and vice versa, and it would stay low key. He was just one of those easy people. And I guess I liked him, basically, because he’d taken care of Lily at his party.
‘Don’t give her any more of anything. I don’t know what she’s had, but she definitely can’t take any more of whatever it is.’
We were forty-five minutes into The Wire, during an ad break, when the doorbell rang and Tom answered it. I could see and hear him through the open lounge door.
‘Come in,’ he told Paige and Jack, my Jack. ‘She’s in the TV room.’
Paige rushed in first, carrying cold air with her. ‘Jesus Christ, Alyssa! Didn’t I warn you not to see Jayden?’
‘It wasn’t anything to do with Jayden.’ I sprang to Feral Boy’s defence as Jack came into the room. ‘This was some random guy on a motorbike.’
Jack pushed past Paige and took hold of me. He held me close before he started to fire questions at me. Was I sure I was OK? Was I in shock and did I need to see a doctor? Did I call the police? Did anyone get the guy’s number?
When he’d run out of steam and I’d answered the best I could, given that he was half squeezing me to death, he relaxed his hold.
‘D’Arblay drove us,’ Paige told me. ‘He’s waiting in the hallway.’
I took a deep breath and turned to Tom. ‘Thanks again.’
‘No problem.’ Still normal, still easy, even though Jack had made it plain that he should step aside now because he, Jack, was taking over from here.
‘You ready?’ he asked, one arm round my shoulders.
‘Bye,’ I told Tom as I shoved my feet into my steaming boots, put my jacket on and tucked my hair inside my collar.
‘Bye,’ he said, going back to The Wire.
Out in the hallway, the bursar stood expressionless. ‘The traffic is easing,’ he reported. ‘We should be home in fifteen minutes.’
In danger of dying one minute, receiving a traffic report the next. That’s how weird life is.
D’Arblay opened the door to lead the way to the car. There was an old-fashioned wooden coat stand by the door, loaded with jackets and scarves, with a shelf underneath for boots and bags. Tom’s family wasn’t the tidiest – there were slippers and sandals from last summer, sports bags, a shopping basket and Lily’s overnight bag. Or what looked exactly like Lily’s bag, unzipped with a pair of jeans spilling out and a glimpse of silver sequins.
It took a while for me to register.
‘Come along,’ D’Arblay insisted.
Paige went ahead. Jack waited for me. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.
I pointed to the bag. His eyebrows shot up and he spread his palms in a gesture of confusion. Then we stepped outside.
‘I spoke with Dr Webb,’ D’Arblay informed us on the way back to St Jude’s. ‘He intends to make strenuous efforts to identify the motorcyclist.’
‘Yeah, like we have the registration number!’ Paige scoffed from the front seat. ‘We know the colour, the make, the model – everything.’
Jack sat holding my hand in the back of the car. ‘Do you remember anything, Alyssa?’
For once in my life I was forced to admit that my freakishly accurate memory had deserted me. ‘It was dark, the headlight shone in my eyes.’ Then I was face down on top of a grave. I tried to link it with the bike I’d seen outside the pub in Upper Chartsey, but even supposing it was the same one I didn’t have any more details, except maybe it was a neon green colour. ‘No, sorry.’
D’Arblay drove at twenty along narrow, snow-covered lanes. ‘We’ll contact the police, of course. And Dr Webb has informed your aunt.’
I was looking at the back of his head, noticing how his ears stuck out and working out how much his leather gloves had cost, trying not to take in what he was telling me.
‘She agrees with us.’
‘How do you mean – she agrees with you?’ Paige asked.
D’Arblay steered the car past the huddle of journalists and then through the carved stone pillars at the entrance to St Jude’s. ‘Alyssa’s aunt wants Alyssa at home for the rest of the term. It’s clear to everyone after the trauma of recent events that she needs complete rest and recuperation.’
‘You can’t decide that,’ Paige argued. ‘What if she doesn’t want to go?’
‘That’s irrelevant,’ D’Arblay said. The grounds of St Jude’s had never looked more beautiful under their pure white covering of snow. The house itself looked like a painting by a Dutch master. ‘Tomorrow afternoon at the latest Alyssa leaves for Richmond.’
chapter eight
Aunt Olivia doesn’t do afternoon tea. At that time of day she’s usually on a train or a plane looking at spreadsheets, sending emails. But this Tuesday she sat with me in the Art Deco surrounding of Bentley’s, an up-market tea shop in Ainslee – light oak panelling, faux-medieval tapestries on the walls, antique Clarice Cliff teapots set on a high shelf.
She was wearing Jaeger from head to toe – lilac silk scarf, grey cashmere sweater, tailored black trousers, plus her usual businesslike expression as she poured her Earl Grey into a bone china cup. ‘OK, Alyssa, I need to know what’s really going on. Why do they want to send you home?’
‘Don’t worry, I’m not being suspended.’ It wouldn’t have been the first time it had happened so I felt I had to reassure her.
‘And you like the school?’ She gave me a sharp, inquisitive look.
‘I do.’ My answer didn’t have to
be thought out. I do. I like St Jude’s. I like Bryony Phillips and the French teacher, Justine Renoir. I like the library and the science labs and the freedom the staff give you to follow your own interests. I especially like Paige, Zara and Jack.
‘You want to stay?’
‘For sure.’ For the first time ever I was starting to feel that this was where I might one day be comfortable with who I was.
‘So what’s this all about? I know it’s to do with the poor girl who drowned, but tell me more.’ I saw Aunt Olivia glance at her watch as she sipped her tea – no surprise there.
‘I was Lily’s roommate so they think I must be suffering from stress.’
‘Understandable under the circumstances.’
‘Yes, but what they don’t realize is that I’ll be under even more stress if they send me home. I need to be here, Aunt Olivia.’
‘Why? What good can you do?’
‘I can keep an eye on Paige for a start. She’s Lily’s other roommate. It’s hit her hard.’
‘And?’
‘I want to be on the spot while the police investigate. They might want to ask me some questions about the last time I saw Lily.’
My aunt’s expression changed from detached curiosity to something approaching concern. ‘The police are investigating Lily’s death?’
‘Yes. Didn’t you know? You saw the reporters at the gate. It’s been in the news.’
‘I don’t pay any attention to news reports. I assumed that the poor girl had committed suicide.’
‘So did everyone – at first.’ Fiddling with my teaspoon, I hesitated over how much to tell her before deciding to leave out the bit about the request for a second pathologist’s report because that was unusual and anything out of the ordinary would freak her out more than she probably already was. ‘If you were me and you’d found out that something suspicious could be going on, wouldn’t you want to know more?’
‘I don’t like mysteries, certainly.’
I’d relied on the family sniffer-dog gene, inherited from my Bletchley Park great-aunt and I had Aunt Olivia hooked. ‘So that’s why I want to be here.’
My aunt nodded her elegantly coiffed head. ‘That’s all very well as far as it goes, Alyssa. But this D’Arblay man – he seemed insistent.’