by Lucy Carver
August 22nd – P’s house. J texted me twelve times!!!
August 23rd – P’s house. Right now P hates L and loves Mistral. God, I despise horses – stupid, smelly crap machines!!! Only 5 texts from J today – MISS HIM!!! G and H arrived The day just got ten times worse.
August 24th – no entry. August 25th – no entry. How weird was that? I flicked back and forth through the diary and discovered that in the whole year she’d only missed one other day, right up until the day she disappeared. Yeah, that was definitely right – a gap on March 14th, which was marked The T’s birthday – blank page – and now again for the two days when Guy Simons and Harry Embsay had stayed at Paige’s house to watch her compete at Burghley. The two blank spaces told me absolutely nothing, or maybe everything, I needed to know.
A chime from the carriage clock on the mantelpiece of the gothic fireplace made me realize that I’d stayed in the old library longer than I’d planned, so I closed Lily’s diary and slipped it into the front pocket of my bag, ready to sprint across the quad for my French conversation class with Justine. ‘J’ai un problème, mademoiselle – un grand mystère. C’est Lily – le vingt-quatre d’août, the vingt-cinq d’août, elle n’a pas écrit son journal!’
I was heading for the door when I came across D’Arblay speaking with Adam Earle in the European History section, a side annexe to the main building, where they obviously thought no one would interrupt them. I heard them just in time to backtrack and stay close without being seen.
‘Yes, the new information in the pathologist’s second report raises more questions than it answers,’ D’Arblay was agreeing with what Adam had just said. ‘I appreciate how difficult it must be for you and your parents.’
‘Very frustrating,’ Adam said. ‘One part of me still says that this is a small, unexplained detail in an otherwise clear-cut case of suicide. But then of course I do understand that Inspector Cole has to investigate all possibilities.’
D’Arblay agreed again. ‘The police have asked the hospital pathology department to double check their autopsy procedure, just in case there has been room for error.’
‘An irregularity?’ Adam surmised. ‘Something procedural that might account for the missing tooth.’
‘Exactly. In any case, Adam, please accept my deepest sympathy for the delay.’
‘The family needs closure – my mother especially.’
‘How is your mother?’ D’Arblay made another cheesy attempt at deepest sympathy.
Adam didn’t reply so I had to imagine a shrug or a shake of his head before he moved quickly on. ‘The real reason I’m here, D’Arblay, is to offer you some reassurance over the question of funding for the school.’
‘Ah yes.’ The bursar was back in brisk business mode where he was totally at ease. ‘That was an unfortunate incident. While we understand the personal pressure on your father at the present time, we still felt it wise to ask our lawyers to address the legal situation – in other words to study the original agreement between Robert Earle and the St Jude’s Foundation. Of course the withdrawal of his generous donation would do great damage and we’re hoping that in the cool light of day your father will reconsider.’
‘That’s why I’m here,’ Adam assured him. ‘To calm troubled waters.’
‘Good, good,’ D’Arblay murmured.
‘I’ve looked into it myself and as a matter of fact there is no legally binding contract between my father and the school, but in spite of that I hope to persuade him that the obligation is a moral one.’
‘Very good.’ D’Arblay sounded less confident now that the media mogul’s donation depended on his discovery of a sense of honour.
‘Lily did well here at St Jude’s,’ Adam explained. ‘I would say she even thrived.’
‘Thank you, Adam.’
‘She developed her artistic talents and she made good friends.’
‘We all miss her.’ (Cheesy again.)
It was so fake it made me want to puke all over the section of shelves containing books about the French Revolution. We do – we miss her! We feel it in our battered, bruised hearts. We don’t just say the words!
‘If only she could have kept her personal life on track,’ Adam sighed, ‘this terrible tragedy might never have happened.’
I pictured a nod, a sigh then back to business. ‘So I can inform the principal that you’ll work to secure the original agreement?’
‘Tell him that I’ll do my best.’
There was some handshaking and more murmuring before the two men emerged from the annexe and headed for the door. I stayed hidden until they’d left.
What now? I was already late for my French lesson – ‘Je suis en retard. Je suis désolé, Mademoiselle Renoir’ – and I felt one of my sudden urges to talk to Adam Earle, the person behind the suit. I watched from a library window as he exchanged a final handshake with the bursar and walked slowly towards his car. Reckoning I still had time to intercept him, I left the library by a side door and sprinted towards the car park.
Adam was opening his car door as I slipped into the passenger seat.
‘Alyssa!’ he said in a way that suggested he expected trouble, but was ready to deal with it.
‘Do you mind?’ I said hurriedly, one eye on the journos at the gate. ‘I thought we could talk.’
‘Here?’
‘No, while you’re driving, if that’s OK.’
He nodded and didn’t say anything as I slid out of my seat and curled up on the floor. ‘Why the cloak and dagger?’ he asked once we were clear of the journalists and I was sitting normally again.
‘I don’t want to attract attention – it might not be good for my health.’ I explained about the Toyota incident and the attack on Paige’s horse.
Even Adam couldn’t conceal his surprise. ‘You say you’re being threatened, intimidated – for what reason?’
‘Maybe because they think we know too much.’
‘“They”?’
‘Whoever killed Lily.’
‘If Lily was in fact murdered!’ Adam’s guard was up again as he drove along the familiar lane. ‘I take it the police are following it up?’
‘Yeah, they’re trying to trace the guy who stole the Toyota and the kid with the Stanley knife, who it turns out is the same person.’
He reacted again – not in a big way, just by raising his eyebrows a notch. ‘You’re sure about that?’
‘Yeah, I saw them both. His role is to scare us and he’s definitely doing a good job.’ Too good a job, with my roommate in intensive care. ‘I don’t think the plan involved actually hurting Paige – that was just the way it worked out.’
Adam stared at the narrow road ahead, evidently trying to block any normal, sympathetic response to the surprise news. His car tyres swished through deep puddles, throwing spray at the windscreen. ‘This Toyota/knife guy – you’re saying he’s scared you might have a vital clue that could lead to my sister’s killer?’
‘I guess.’
‘And do you?’
I paused for a long time, watching the windscreen wipers’ metronome motion and wondering how far I could trust Lily’s big bro. ‘Paige and I were there the day Lily died, right up until she packed her bag and left,’ I said in the end. ‘Five days later we watched them pull her body from the lake. We’ve gone over and over it in our minds.’
‘So if anyone can work out what happened it would be you and Paige?’
‘But right now just me.’ I thought again of Paige in the ICU, pictured the beeping, erratic graph of her heartbeat.
‘You shouldn’t be here,’ Adam decided.
‘In the car with you?’
‘No – here at St Jude’s. You should be at home while the police sort everything out.’
‘That’s exactly what Dr Webb said, and the bursar. They both put pressure on me, but I refused to leave.’
Stopping at a T-junction, Adam turned left on to a long, straight Roman road running parallel to Hereward Ridge. ‘I
appreciate your loyalty and determination on Lily’s behalf, Alyssa. But I agree with –’
‘No,’ I insisted. ‘Lily would’ve done the same for me or Paige – if.’
‘I hear you. If it had been one of you in the lake. But it wasn’t. So where does that leave us with all this? Are the police anywhere near to finding an answer?’
‘Not really.’ This was me being realistic, watching the dreary, rhythmic to and fro of the wipers.
‘So you’re absolutely sure it has nothing to do with errors in the autopsy procedure?’
‘How could it?’
Adam stared ahead along the straight, narrow road. ‘You’re saying it was murder, even though there were no other signs of violence?’
I seemed to be waiting forever for a non-automaton, behind-the-suit reaction. We were discussing the death of his sister, remember.
In the end it was like buses – you wait all day for one and two come along together.
‘For Christ’s sake!’ Without warning Adam raised his fist and slammed it against the steering wheel. The car veered violently on to the wrong side of the road then swerved back again. He gripped the wheel until his knuckles turned white.
Where did that come from? And, by the way, thank God for seat belts.
He slammed on the brakes and punched on his hazard lights – the beginning of reaction number two. ‘How long is it going to take to clear this mess up? How many more people have to suffer? First Lily, then you, Alyssa, now Paige.’
‘And your mother,’ I reminded him, which really broke down his robot defences.
Pulling up on the frozen verge of the Roman road, Adam slumped forward over the steering wheel. ‘My family is falling apart. I don’t think we can get through this!’
‘I’m sorry,’ I began.
But he shook his head and pulled himself upright. ‘Anna is in hospital,’ he told me more calmly.
‘I know.’ Even then I noticed all the small things – the fact that he called his mother by her first name and that he wore a ring on his wedding finger even though Lily had never mentioned a wife.
‘She’s convinced they’ll never let her out, that she’s in there for the rest of her life. She says she wants to die.’
‘But it won’t always be like this. They can treat her depression like they did before.’
This seemed to pull him back from the emotional brink. ‘You knew about that too? Did Lily tell you?’
I shook my head. ‘Lily didn’t talk about Anna. It was in the press at the time it happened.’
‘Yeah, that was ironic. The Earles own half the world’s media, yet even pre Twitter we couldn’t keep Anna’s breakdown off the front pages.’
‘I guess there are things that even you can’t control.’ I didn’t plan to be mean and after I’d said this I regretted it. After all, the guy was suffering enough.
Adam gave a hollow laugh. ‘You know what Anna’s done? She’s only turned her back on the psychiatrists and gone religious on us. Yeah, right! She asked for them to let a rabbi visit the clinic and they said yes. Apparently she opened up and relived the events of the last few weeks with him – poor guy, it must have felt like being hit by an express train.’
‘Your mother’s Jewish?’
‘Non-practising until this latest meltdown. I guess it’s like a drowning man crying out for help . . .’ When Adam realized what he’d just said, the simile proved too much and he broke down a second time. ‘I’m sorry, but this latest thing with Anna – I wasn’t expecting it. Honestly – not after how well she coped with the news of Lily being pregnant. Back in September she had the strength to stand up to my father. She said Lily should be allowed to keep the baby if that was what she wanted. All that mattered was that Lily should be happy.’
I remembered what Anna had told me – that Robert Earle was in favour of ending the pregnancy. ‘He didn’t agree?’
‘You’re kidding. He was still in Chicago but he went right ahead and fixed up for her to have an abortion. He wouldn’t listen to Anna or Lily, just went ahead and made the arrangements.’
‘And that’s why he ordered Lily to come home – to have an abortion?’
‘Yeah, and she obviously suspected what he’d planned.’
‘That makes sense,’ I agreed. ‘But we think that she never really meant to get on the train. She just packed her bag and planned to disappear for good. That’s what Paige and I worked out from the email she sent Jack.’
‘So what happened? We know that she never even left the school grounds.’
‘Sorry, I can’t answer that.’
‘Do you think she’d arranged one last meeting with the baby’s father – the boy from the village? Is that what you’re saying?’
Which is where I had to go over more of the ground I’d covered with Anna and explain to Adam that Jayden wasn’t the daddy after all, that he’d really loved Lily and had wanted to be there for her regardless. Stick man wasn’t the villain – it was someone else.
‘And if it wasn’t Jayden, who was it?’ Adam asked with a touch of the familiar robotic detachment.
I didn’t know this either, I confessed. Not yet. Not for sure.
‘Give me a name.’
‘I can’t.’
You’re reading this and thinking that the first name that comes to mind is ‘Harry Embsay’ and I admit I was tempted to share this theory with Adam, but Harry was still no more than guesswork and gut feeling so I had to keep him to myself for now.
‘But we’re supposing it was someone she knew?’
‘I’m not even sure about that – sorry.’ If only Lily’s diary had given me more to work on, instead of two blank pages. ‘I was wondering, though – can they still do a DNA test?’
‘To establish paternity? I guess so.’
‘Well, I think they should if they haven’t already – so they can make a match when we find the right person.’
Adam agreed that he would contact the coroner as soon as he got back to his office. He turned off his hazard lights then signalled and eased back on to the road before he had one more little, human blip.
‘Poor Lily,’ he murmured, short and sweet.
‘Poor Lily,’ I sighed, short and angry.
She was bipolar and sixteen, for God’s sake, pregnant either by a guy she didn’t love or by a total stranger, hurtling towards an abortion she didn’t want. Things couldn’t have got any worse.
Then they did. She came face to face with psycho killer. The end.
chapter thirteen
Christmas was looming. So was the end of term.
‘I swear I’m going to miss you every day, every hour, every minute of the holiday,’ Jack told me in the stable yard where we’d shared our first kiss all those weeks – a lifetime – ago. ‘I don’t want to go home.’
‘Not even if your dad lets you drive the Maserati around your country estate?’ This was me, trying to lighten the atmosphere. Boys’ toys – vroom-vroom.
‘No, Alyssa – you’re supposed to say, “I’ll miss you too, Jack.” We’re meant to kiss and swear eternal love.’
That’s one in the cornucopia of good things about Jack (maths genius who knows everything there is to know about conic sections, he of the amazing quads, hottest boy on earth) – he can do lightness yet still come through with the genuine emotion. I kissed him in between the bits and bridles of the spotless tack room where the kid in the hoodie had hidden. For a few precious moments I lost myself in that embrace.
‘A kiss but no promises,’ I warned.
‘No eternal love?’ He pouted then said, ‘You’re right – nothing is forever.’
After that he grinned, went into the tack room and got on with tipping feed into a bucket and adding water, giving it a stir. He and I had agreed to help Guy Simons look after Mistral while Paige was in hospital – the very least we could do.
Outside in the floodlit yard, cold rain came down. There were puddles everywhere and the sky was leaden. Bored horses stared out ov
er their stable doors, knowing that no rider would show up until the weather brightened. I smiled back at Jack then carried the bucket across the yard into Mistral’s stable.
Smiled then sighed. It was hard and perhaps not even right for me and Jack to stay cheerful and in love after what had happened to Paige. You realize how much my world view has shifted since the heady few days leading up to Tom’s party? Look back and you can see how that was paradise and this is pure and simple hell.
‘I wonder how Paige is,’ he murmured, reminding me that we hadn’t had an update recently. ‘What do you say we go and visit once we’re done here?’
‘Yeah, good – if they’ll let us in.’ I opened Mistral’s door and put his feed down in his usual corner, stepping back quickly before he shoved me to one side in his eagerness. When I came out and re-bolted the door, I looked up at the security camera that had failed to capture the evidence of the attack on Mistral – one glance was enough to throw me back in time and trigger total recall.
‘Where is he?’ I asked Paige, rushing into the stable yard as soon as I’d recovered from almost being knocked down by Harry and Franklin.
‘Where’s who?’ She carried Mistral’s saddle into the tack room, leaving him tethered to the wall. She went in and didn’t spot the kid in the hoodie hiding in there. She came out again as if everything was normal.
‘Harry Embsay. He almost ran me down, for Christ’s sake!’
Pause and think further back. Out on the edge of the woods Harry had laughed at me and galloped on. This meant he should’ve arrived back at the stables before me. So where was he?
‘Not back yet,’ Paige had replied.
Why not? Had he deliberately stayed away because he’d known what was about to happen?
I remembered Paige brushing Mistral and speaking sweetly to him, telling me that Harry was an idiot, but that he hadn’t tried to mow me down on purpose.
‘Yeah, but it wasn’t deliberate.’
‘I don’t know – maybe it was.’
Yes, definitely it was on purpose now that I reran it. If at first you don’t succeed in scaring Alyssa off the scent of Lily’s killer by employing a hit man to stage a motorbike accident, then try, try, try again with a thousand pounds of horseflesh to turn Paige into a quivering wreck, to get us both hauled out of school early.