Plum’s reapplying lip gloss, presumably to look as fabulous for Starbucks as possible. Susan, pale and ethereal, catches the attention of more than one of Nadia’s targets; long, almost colorless hair hanging down her back, her white skin nearly translucent, Susan looks like a beautiful ghost. I’m surprised all over again that Plum has chosen Susan as her Wakefield Hall best friend. Like Lizzie, Susan seems amenable to going along with whatever a stronger personality suggests. But I’ve seen Susan come to class with a stinking cold—red nose, swollen eyes—and still be more beautiful than the rest of us put together. I wouldn’t have thought Plum would appreciate the constant competition.
Maybe, I think, Plum’s so confident that she assumes everyone’s always looking at her.
It’s an enviable attitude. I watch Plum pass Susan her lip gloss so she can use it too, flash a smile at the group, and purr:
“Actually, a nice hot latte would be rather perfect. I’m dying of cold.”
Beside me, Taylor’s saying something to Callum. I look at her, thinking how lucky I am to have her as my best friend, a girl who’d run into a building she thought was burning to try to save me. I hope I’m as good a friend to her. But all I bring Taylor is danger, drama, and dead bodies.
Still, I notice that Ewan’s looking down at her with open appreciation.
Maybe being friends with me has brought Taylor something positive, for once, I think, brightening up. Who knows? Maybe I’ve accidentally introduced her to a Scottish boyfriend!
seven
“YOU’VE ALWAYS HATED ME”
“So, Scarlett! What do you have to say for yourself?”
Aunt Gwen’s staring at me severely. She’s marched me into a small teacher’s office, got me to sit down in the hard wooden chair in front of the desk, and then—very unfairly—not taken the seat behind the desk herself, which would at least maintain a decent, proper distance. No, instead she’s propped her wide, tweed-skirted bottom against the desk, leaning against it just a couple of feet away, so she’s not only too close but also towering over me, her bulbous green gobstopper eyes staring down at me with extreme disapproval.
That last part is only what I’m used to. Aunt Gwen always stares at me with extreme disapproval.
She also seems to be expecting something from me, but I have no idea what. I’m nervous; I shift restlessly in my chair. It feels like I’ve been sitting down for hours. After lunch (cold egg and cress sandwiches, limp in the middle and curling dryly at the edges; thank God we all grabbed panini and wraps from the coffee shops down the Royal Mile) we were herded into the assembly hall and subjected to not one, but two lectures: Ms. Burton-Race on Mary, Queen of Scots, and her son James, who succeeded Elizabeth I as king of both England and Scotland. That was actually pretty interesting. Unfortunately, it was followed by Aunt Gwen on the geology of Scotland, which was just as leaden and soul-destroying as you’d imagine. There were a lot of photos of bits of stone that all seemed to look exactly the same. I think Taylor and I would have carried out a suicide pact if we could have worked out a way to kill each other simultaneously.
We staggered out, all of us girls mad-eyed and staring. I wouldn’t have been surprised if our hair had turned white and our faces wrinkly; it felt as if Aunt Gwen’s presentation had gone on for forty years. And then, just as Taylor and I were escaping to the grounds behind the school to do something physical to let off steam—anything: throw rocks at trees, jump up and down screaming—Aunt Gwen practically grabbed me by the scruff of my neck and dragged me into this office. The look of pity and sympathy in Taylor’s eyes was awful to see. Like I’d just got out of prison, but at the last moment they’d decided that I wasn’t pardoned after all, and I had to do ten more years in maximum security with Aunt Gwen as my personal jailer.
Eventually, I crack under pressure.
“So, um, what?” I ask, which sounds ruder than I meant to. Aunt Gwen stiffens visibly. Hastily, I add:
“I don’t know what you mean, Aunt Gwen. Is this something about the geology lecture?”
I really hope she’s not going to start questioning me about the strata of Edinburgh limestone, or whatever it was she was banging on about before. That would be totally unfair.
“Last night!” Aunt Gwen snaps angrily. “I’m asking you about last night, of course! You were the last one out of the school building! You must, at the very least, have some idea who let off the smoke bombs!”
My mouth drops open. I never expected this.
It doesn’t occur to me for a moment to tell Aunt Gwen the truth of what happened yesterday—or, rather, early this morning. I know perfectly well that she won’t believe me; she’s much more likely to accuse me of having delusions of grandeur, thinking I’m important enough for someone to want to take some sort of vengeance against me.
“I don’t know anything about it, Aunt Gwen,” I say weakly. “I really don’t.”
She clicks her tongue impatiently.
“I don’t believe you, Scarlett,” she says, looking down her nose at me. “I can tell you’re keeping something back. Was Taylor McGovern in it with you? Are you protecting her?”
I shake my head so vehemently it hurts.
“You’ve had Taylor in your geography class for nearly a year, Aunt Gwen,” I say. “You must know her well enough by now—she’s much too responsible to do anything as stupid as letting off smoke bombs in a school building.”
This is a really, really good point, and it holds Aunt Gwen for a good few seconds. She rocks back a little, her A-line skirt swishing around her sturdy calves.
“So she knew what you were up to!” she says eventually, regrouping her forces. “And she tried to get back into the school to stop you!”
“Why would I do that?” I ask, getting cross now. Being defensive never works with Aunt Gwen; I should know that. I need to go on the attack myself. “I’m not that stupid either! And you know how much I like my sleep! I’m the last person in the world to get out of a nice warm bed in the middle of the night and run around playing practical jokes!”
This isn’t a bad point either. Ever since my parents died, when I was four, I’ve lived—pretty miserably—with Aunt Gwen in the small gatehouse on the grounds of Wakefield Hall. The gatehouse isn’t that big, and I grew up in much closer proximity to Aunt Gwen than either she or I liked, but that does mean that she knows perfectly well the truth of what I’m saying. If there were a Sleeping Like the Dead event at the Olympics, I’d definitely be on the British team. Apart from the events of the last year—a lot of climbing out of my room late at night to see Jase, and, one wonderful time, his climbing in to see me—I sleep through the night so soundly that it practically takes an alarm clock strapped to my ear to wake me up. Aunt Gwen has had to bang on my bedroom door more times than I can remember.
So she knows I’m not exactly a night owl, likely to flit around the corridors of Fetters in the early hours of the morning, doing my best to wake everyone else so they’ll get up and play with me too.
“It’s more likely to be someone from St. Tabby’s,” I continue, pressing my advantage. “No one from Wakefield plays practical jokes like that. We’ve never had something like this happen before.”
We’re all too subdued at Wakefield Hall, too beaten down by the harsh rule of the teachers, the atrocious food, and the prison-type conditions to have any energy for elaborate practical jokes. Besides, Wakefield is a very serious school. Its entrance exams are famously difficult to pass, its interview process grueling. My grandmother’s aim was to create an intellectual powerhouse for the brightest girls, and she’s succeeded; it’s one of the top girls’ schools in the country. But that means its pupils are much more likely to be studying in the evening, determined to pass their exams with flying colors and be admitted to the university of their choice (Oxford, Cambridge, or the LSE) than to cover the contents of each other’s rooms in toilet paper or painstakingly balance flour-bomb traps for their enemies on their doorjambs.
Not, of cou
rse, that anyone at St. Tabby’s does that either. Apart from the fact that it’s not a boarding school, St. Tabby’s girls are much too sophisticated for practical jokes. As Ewan pointed out earlier today in another context, it would completely mess up their fingernails.
Aunt Gwen is frowning deeply now. She’s steepled her fingers together under her chin and is rocking back and forth. This makes her look completely bonkers, and I shrink back in my chair in fear, getting as far from her as I can.
“I can’t trust you, Scarlett,” she says finally. “You’re always in some kind of trouble. Ever since that unfortunate young man died last year—”
“That wasn’t my fault!” I say furiously.
“—and you were expelled from St. Tabby’s—”
“I wasn’t expelled! Plum was expelled! I was asked to leave because of all the photographers and TV cameras outside school!”
“—you have been a thorn in my side,” she continues coldly, as if she hadn’t heard a word of my protests. “Sneaking around with Jason Barnes—the son of the gardener, for God’s sake. Your judgment is simply appalling. That young man was arrested for killing his own—”
“He didn’t do it! You know he didn’t! They let him go!”
“Thank God at least he’s had the decency to take himself away from Wakefield,” Aunt Gwen says, “and I hope that will be an end to the whole sordid situation.”
I’m so angry at her for using the word sordid that I actually can’t speak; I know now what it means to be choked with rage.
“But your decision-making skills are so poor, and your capacity for getting into trouble is so high, that I can’t believe a word you say.” She sighs. “I will be keeping a very close eye on you from now on.”
“How dare you!” I shove my chair back and stand up, my hands bunching into fists. “You’ve always hated me! You hated my mother, and you’ve always hated me! I didn’t ask to come to live with you! I’d rather have gone anywhere else at all!”
“Which,” Aunt Gwen snaps, “makes two of us.”
“And those smoke bombs were set as a trap for me!” I blurt out, so furious now that I’ve completely forgotten my very sensible resolution not to breathe a word of this to Aunt Gwen. “Someone called me into the stairwell and tried to push me downstairs!”
“Really,” Aunt Gwen says in an utterly incredulous tone. “And who was this person?”
“I don’t know! I couldn’t see anything in the smoke!”
“How very convenient. And why didn’t you say anything about this last night?”
“Because I knew you wouldn’t believe me! And I was right!”
I can’t stay here another moment; I’m scared I might say something awful, something I’ll regret. Honestly, the way I feel, I’m scared that I might even slap Aunt Gwen just to wipe that nasty smirk of disbelief off her face. I turn and storm out of the room, slamming the door behind me as hard as I can. Miss Carter, coming down the corridor, looks at me with concern and starts to say something, but I can’t stop; I dash past her, out the main door, and round the side of the building, looking for Taylor. I know she’ll be outside, and I know she’ll be doing something physical.
I find her on one of the all-weather tennis courts, trying and failing to bounce a football as if it’s a basketball.
“Stupid English sports,” she says crossly when she sees me approaching. “At least at Wakefield there’s a netball court, so I can shoot some hoops. Boys’ schools don’t even have netball, and these stupid balls don’t work properly.”
Then she takes in my expression, and she straightens up.
“Uh-oh,” she says. “What happened with you and your aunt? You look like you just killed her!”
“I really, really want to,” I say between clenched teeth as I walk onto the court. “She just accused me of setting off the smoke bombs last night. Because she says I can’t stay out of trouble. And she was really rude about Jase being the gardener’s son. All that awful class stuff she bangs on about.”
“Oh, crap,” Taylor says, knowing how furious that makes me.
“She said I have terrible judgment and that she can’t believe a word I say.”
Taylor’s grimacing like a gargoyle.
“And,” I finish, “she even suggested that you might have been in on the whole smoke bomb thing with me.”
To my surprise, this doesn’t make Taylor as angry as I expected; instead, her dark brows draw together into a straight line, which usually means she’s thinking hard.
“Well, that’s just stupid,” she mutters.
“I know!”
“Huh.”
The football’s resting by Taylor’s feet. She kicks it into the air, catches it, and drops it so hard to the asphalt of the court that it actually bounces back into her hands.
“Cool,” she says abstractedly.
“Taylor!” I say crossly. “Did you hear what I just said?”
“Did you tell your aunt that someone pushed you?” she asks.
“Yes,” I admit. “I didn’t mean to, but she got me so angry it just came out. I didn’t tell her about the note, though.”
“Oh yeah, the note,” Taylor says, bouncing the ball hard again, her arm muscles swelling with the effort. “I’ve hidden that in a book in the library here. The Encyclopedia Britannica. H to J–K. I think it’ll be pretty safe there.”
“Okay.” I’m still cross and puzzled by her failure to be sympathetic about the Aunt Gwen situation. “But—”
“Let’s go kick this around on the soccer field,” she says, tossing me the ball. I stagger: it’s really heavy. “I’ll be in goal. You can try scoring.”
“It’s ‘football pitch,’ ” I correct her. “And—”
“You can work off some steam,” she says. “Plus, no one can do anything bad to you when you’re running round trying to score goals. You’ll be safe, and I can do some thinking.”
“All you’ll be thinking is how humiliated you feel that I’m scoring so much,” I say snarkily as we walk off the tennis court.
“That’s right,” Taylor says, “trash-talk away, little girl—cheer yourself up, go ahead.…”
But I can tell she’s not fully engaged with me. Even as we duel on the football pitch—and despite my boasts, I don’t score much, as Taylor unsurprisingly turns out to be a fantastic goalie—I can see that, no matter how much she’s throwing her body around to block the ball, her brain’s somewhere else entirely.
It’s particularly annoying because, even without her concentrating properly, she’s much better than me at football. Sometimes I do wonder why on earth I was stupid enough to be best friends with a natural athlete.
eight
AN UNKINDNESS OF RAVENS
“Waste not, want not!” Miss Carter says brightly from behind a long table set up in a corner of Fetters’s dining room. “Come and get your water bottles, girls!”
Next to her is Jane, holding a marker pen. The Wakefield Hall girls, used to this routine on any school trip, are lining up already, each taking a bottle on which Jane has marked their name, carrying it over to the tap at the dining room sink to fill it up.
Well, almost all of the Wakefield Hall girls. Plum’s sipping coffee with the St. Tabby’s posse, Susan by her side; she’s looking over, appalled, at the activity going on at the trestle table.
“What on earth—” she starts.
“We have a very strict environmental policy at Wakefield, Plum!” Miss Carter says, fixing Plum with a firm stare. “No bottled water, and names on all your water bottles so that you’re all responsible for your own plastic.”
“God! My AmEx is the only plastic I could give a damn about,” Plum drawls, “and I’m not exactly responsible with it.…”
Susan giggles appreciatively, which fires up Miss Carter.
“Right! You two are carrying everyone’s water to the coach!” Miss Carter snaps. “Now get on your feet this instant and come over here for your bottles!”
Plum bites her lip
and reluctantly pushes the bench back from the table so she can get up, Susan following on her heels. The other girls fall in line behind Plum, even the St. Tabby’s ones. Miss Carter is the gym mistress, which means she’s more than capable of making Plum run laps around the grounds or do tons of press-ups if Plum doesn’t behave, and Plum can’t afford to get chucked out of Wakefield Hall, as her parents will go ballistic and cut off her trust fund if she gets expelled from two schools in a row.
“This is a very good idea,” Ms. Burton-Race says approvingly to Miss Carter. “Recycling bottles, using tap water …”
“Oh, Lady Wakefield’s terribly opposed to bottled water—she’s madly keen on waste-not-want-not,” Miss Carter says, smiling. “It’s the unofficial school motto.”
It’s true; my grandmother says she learned thrifty habits growing up in wartime. She recycles what she calls “kirbygrips,” hair grips whose plastic tips have come off; she insists that all the canteen’s leftover bread go to the Wakefield Hall hens; she even saves the last slippery oval of her Bronnley Royal Horticultural Society gardeners’ soap and sticks it onto the new one, to avoid wasting any. She regularly lectures us at morning assembly on ways to make do and mend, and occasionally she takes it into her head to stroll through the dormitories, looking for wastebaskets in which some unfortunate girl has thrown an empty toiletry bottle rather than walk down the corridor to the proper plastic-disposal bins. Naked terror of my grandmother’s spot checks has made us a school of nervous, obsessive recyclers, flinching at the mere idea of a teacher catching us coming back from Wakefield village with a newly bought bottle of Buxton water in our hands.
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