But Callum doesn’t meet my eyes, which is good, I suppose. Better than an angry stare. He mutters a brief “All right” of acknowledgment at the two of us as he passes, and turns away to where Taylor’s standing by the car. He unlocks the driver’s door as Ewan strides round the other side of the car; Ewan glances at me and Jase over the slant of the roof, a harder expression in his hazel eyes than I’ve ever seen.
He’s cross with me because he thinks I led Callum on, I realize, wincing. And I can’t blame him either.
There’s no way I can launch into a long explanation of the circumstances behind my apparent jump from one boy to another tonight. Not now, anyway, when everyone’s exhausted and we need to get going. Ewan reaches out and grabs the keys from Callum abruptly, as if he’s got a bone to pick with him too. Probably he’s just knackered, but the atmosphere’s so heavy with tension you could cut it with a butter knife. I feel really guilty for having precipitated this, especially when I ended up having such a wonderful time while both Callum and Ewan, who had all the bother of bringing us to the party, are visibly cross and tired. It doesn’t feel fair.
“We should hit the road,” Callum mutters as Ewan levers himself into the driver’s seat, the car creaking with his weight. “The girls have to sneak back into school before it’s full daylight.”
“Yeah, I know,” Jase says, with an edge to his voice, wrapping his arm round me.
Wow, I think. Tonight I ran away from Callum and ended up with Jase, and Jase is the one who’s acting aggressively. How does that work?
Streaks of pale pink are beginning to flood gently into the pale gray sky. A bright dot of sun stretches into a clear white line of light on the horizon, the pale pink darkening to rose, infusing the dawn, as Jase and I stand side by side and watch the sun peek into view.
“I’ll let you get back,” he says, bending to kiss me, taking his time, making the point to Callum that he might have kissed me at the start of the evening, but Jase is the one who’s ended up with me. “Call me later, okay?”
“Okay,” I say, really happy that he’s kissed me, but awkward that it’s happened in front of Callum. I just peck him back, and then dive into the car after Taylor, landing almost on top of her because of the angle at which it’s parked.
“You on your bike, Jase?” Taylor calls.
“Yeah.” Jase tilts his thumb at it, pulled up on the far side of the road. “Scarlett, maybe I can see you this evening?”
“I should be able to get out for an hour or two, at least,” I say eagerly through the window, filled with happiness at this sudden shift from not knowing when I’ll see him next to planning meetings on a daily basis. “I’ll text you as soon as I know our schedule, okay?”
Callum opens the glove compartment, pulls out a can of something, and pops it open, handing it to Ewan.
“Emergency driving rations,” he says shortly.
Taylor and I crane our heads: It can’t be beer, I think nervously. If it is, and Jase spots it—
But it’s Irn-Bru, that weird Scottish orange sort-of-energy-drink. Ewan mutters thanks and tilts his head back, glugging it down as he starts the car. I swivel in the backseat as Ewan bumps the car down the bank and onto the dirt road again; I’m watching Jase pull out his helmet and straddle his bike, and I raise my hand to him, waving through the back window. He looks up, sees me, and waves back, his hand now encased in its heavy gauntlet. I subside back into the seat, grinning from ear to ear with happiness. To my amazement, Taylor, smiling widely, wraps an arm around me and pulls me against her, something she’s never, ever done before, her whole body loose and relaxed.
Wow, Taylor’s actually being physically affectionate. She and Ewan must have done more than just play bongos together, I think, closing my eyes. It’s odd; we’re in the back, curled up against each other, smiling as we relive our happy memories of the night we’ve just spent, while in the front the two boys’ backs are as stiff and straight as if they’d been taking tips in posture from my grandmother’s etiquette guide for students. I assume that Callum’s pissed off that Ewan managed to have a nice time with Taylor, while Callum was left in the cold, and that Ewan’s embarrassed about the situation, but, really, what do I know? I’m scarcely an expert on boys. I only really know one of them.
And that’s more than enough for me, I think happily as the motion of the car and the cozy hug with Taylor rock me to sleep.
Taylor crashes out too: Callum and Ewan have to wake us both up when we arrive back at Fetters. I blink, yawning deeply, as Ewan says shortly:
“You’d better leg it—it’s getting bright.”
I expect Taylor to acknowledge him in some way: touch his shoulder, maybe, or even kiss him through the open window. But she’s out of the car before me, tossing a goodbye over her shoulder, crossing the street without looking back. Even in my exhausted state, I’m taken aback by this. Maybe she’s being sensitive to the fact that Ewan and she got on well while Callum was left spinning, the third wheel, but even so, it seems a bit curt. I assume she’s going to text him as soon as we’re back in our room.
I echo her goodbye and add a thank you for good measure as I tear out of the car too, so relieved to be away from the deep awkwardness of the situation that, despite my tiredness, I’m positively sprinting as I vault over the wall and run back across the lawn to the fire escape. We chin ourselves up, swing our legs onto the stairs, and dash up as fast as we can without making the metal framework creak too loudly. Taylor puts her finger to her lips as we reach Plum and Susan’s bedroom window, which we passed on our way down. I nod to show I remember, but the litter of cigarette butts on the sill would have identified it for me even without her reminder.
The curtains are half open, and I can’t help peering in as we reach it, wondering if everyone crashed in Plum’s room after their impromptu party. But what I see is not at all what I expect.
The layout of the bedroom is just the same as mine and Taylor’s: a single bed on each side, a patterned strip of carpet running down the center. The difference between our bedroom and this one is that here, one of the beds is unoccupied. And the other one has two girls in it, lying very close together to fit onto the narrow mattress.
Susan seems fast asleep, her fair hair drifting over Plum’s chest, her head cradled on Plum’s narrow chest. There’s a blanket drawn up over the two girls, but I can see them clearly in the pale morning light; Plum’s head is on the pillow, one arm around Susan’s waist, the other cradling her head. Gently, she’s stroking Susan’s hair, looking down at the top of Susan’s head with a softness in her gaze that, in anyone else, I wouldn’t hesitate to call love.
I shouldn’t be staring. This isn’t any business of mine. But I’m paralyzed by the sight. I honestly don’t know what’s more of a shock: realizing that Plum and Susan are a couple—or seeing Plum behave this tenderly to another person.
My God, I think. She’s actually human after all.
Taylor is pulling at my arm to move me on; and then, over my shoulder, she sees what I’m looking at, and she freezes too. That must have caught Plum’s attention, because she looks up. And before I can duck, her eyes meet mine.
It feels like that moment lasts forever. Plum’s hand has stilled on Susan’s hair; we’re all as motionless as statues. Plum’s green eyes are wide now with sheer panic. I’ve never seen her look this scared.
I’m almost hypnotized.
“Come on!” Taylor hisses, and we turn away from the window, though not before I dart a final glance back at Plum. She still looks stricken with fear.
“Who saw that coming?” Taylor mutters, when we’ve hoisted ourselves off the fire escape onto our own windowsill and back into our room.
“I literally can’t process it,” I say in a heartfelt voice. “It’s too juicy.… I’m too tired.…”
“I know,” Taylor says, giving such a deep yawn it sounds like she’s pulled it up from the soles of her feet. “I’m way overloaded.”
“She was always
having a go at you about being gay!” I say, yawning in return, so hard I almost split my jaw. “Like it was a bad thing!”
I start to pull my clothes off.
“Well, she must feel weird about it if she’s keeping it a secret,” Taylor says, her voice already thick with sleep. She kicks off her shoes, her jeans hitting the floor a second afterward.
“I can’t believe it,” I mumble, undoing my bra and crawling under the covers in my knickers, too tired to put on my pajamas.
“I can,” Taylor says, her mattress creaking as she climbs into bed.
“You know what, though? They looked really pretty together,” I say drowsily, my eyes closing, exhaustion hitting me like a ton of bricks to the back of the head.
Taylor starts to say “Mmn” in agreement, but halfway through she falls asleep and the “Mmn” morphs into a rumbling snore.
That’s so funny, I think. I have to tell her she did that.… And then I hear my own breathing heave into a snore as I pass out as well.
fifteen
“GHOSTS AND GHOULIES”
It’s dark down here. Dark, and eerie, and very, very cramped. This is the first time since stopping gymnastics (where it really helps not to be too tall) that I’ve been happy I’m barely five foot three. The taller girls are having to duck every time we pass under a lintel, and they’re tripping in their heels on the cobbles.
“None of these young leddies are claustrophobic, are they?” the tour guide, a burly old man dressed in a frock coat and wig, asked Miss Carter ten minutes ago, when we were all gathered in the bright, shiny guest shop, with no idea of the subterranean tunnels into which we were about to descend.
Plum started to say something, but Miss Carter was too quick for her.
“Oh, they’re not so claustrophobic they can’t visit dimly lit nightclubs on a regular basis,” she said cheerfully, raising a guffaw from the guide. “I’m sure they’ll be fine.”
Still, these tiny rooms, these narrow passages, are enough to induce claustrophobia in anyone. It’s the atmosphere, the chilly, damp air seeping through the uneven brickwork, and the ghost stories at which the guide is hinting that make us shiver. He herds us into a room that’s mercifully big enough for us all to stand at one end, huddled together for warmth and companionship, as he paces at the other, pounding the cobbled stone floor with his silver-topped cane for extra emphasis as he explains to us with relish exactly where we’re standing. We climbed down a wooden staircase two stories below street level, but it feels as if we’re buried alive.
“Up there,” he says, reaching up to the ceiling with his cane and tapping it, “up there is the center of Edinburgh. The Grassmarket, the Royal Mile. Edinburgh’s finest Old Town streets, thoroughfares any capital city would be proud to boast. Perhaps you young lassies have been there already, spending some of your fathers’ hard-earned money on the shiny trinkets you love, eh?”
“Sexist,” Taylor mutters in my ear.
“But down here”—he swings his cane down and pounds the stone floor, so loudly that Lizzie whimpers in shock—“down here is where the poor people of Edinburgh lived, three centuries ago. No toilets down here! None of the modern luxuries you’re used to! The rich people’s servants would shout ‘Gardez loo!’ and throw their brimming buckets of waste out the windows! Do you know what I mean by waste, young leddies? Human waste! Buckets of it, running down the streets, the alleys—alleys like this one. Imagine it all, under your feet, day after day. Stinking, nasty filth! Edinburgh was known as Auld Reekie in the nineteenth century, because of all the smoke from the breweries and mills, but it reeked much more with all that excrement, wouldn’t you think?”
“He’s enjoying this way too much,” Taylor hisses.
“And not just human waste either!” he continues gleefully. “Right here”—he walks over to the long wall behind him and taps at a series of projecting, ancient metal rings, heavy with rust—“here is where their animals would live! Imagine, living right next to your animals, day in, day out, with them of course adding to the waste that would pour down these stone runnels, down the side of the steep castle rock on which we’re standing.…”
“There does seem to be rather an obsession with fecal matter of all kinds,” Jane mutters to Miss Carter.
“Who can tell me what kind of animals there would be tethered here?” the guide is asking.
To my surprise, it’s Susan who pipes up.
“Cows,” she says in her soft, quiet voice. “For milk.”
“Exactly! Well done, young lassie! Cows, for milk! And, in due time, for meat as well,” he says. “The puir animals would be led in here, never to leave again. They’d be slaughtered where they stood, when they were old, and their blood would run down these gutters—”
“Let me guess,” Luce, who’s always had a sarcastic sense of humor, suggests dryly. “Mingling with the poo and the wee?”
“No!” he says triumphantly. “Made into black pudding, the fine Scots delicacy whose main ingredient is nice rich blood!”
He rolls the r of rich theatrically, and lingers on the word blood so long that Lizzie and Sophia giggle nervously and cling together.
“Perhaps we could move on to the history?” Ms. Burton-Race says loudly. “Could you explain a little bit about the architecture of this place? I understand where we’re standing was originally not closed in like this?”
“Indeed!” the guide says, grinning widely. “Imagine, if you will, that all this above us is open sky, for so it was for centuries. People shopped here, came to visit their lawyers, had their saws sharpened, bought their bread, had their clothes altered. And they lived here too, in these tiny rooms. Where we’re standing right now was known as the Fleshmarket. Can anyone tell me why?”
“Prostitutes, I imagine,” Plum drawls. “Standing in doorways. Like in Amsterdam. Only without the red lights, because they hadn’t been invented yet.”
The guide looks completely taken aback. I have to hand it to Plum—at least she’s managed to stop him in his tracks. He scratches his head, sending his wig askew.
“No,” he says eventually, sounding very disapproving. “Not at all. This is Edinburgh, young leddy, not the Continent.” He makes the rest of Europe sound like an absolute hotbed of vice. “No, this was where the slaughtermen did their grim business. The butchers. And over there”—he gestures across the room, to another narrow alley—“that was Skinners’ Close, where the tanners would make leather from the skins. Och, there’d be a stink in the Fleshmarket and Skinners’ Close!”
He’s getting back into his rhythm now.
“But of course, then, as I said, there’d be open air above our heids! To carry some of the reek away! Then, during the seventeen fifties, in came the town council, who built the floors above that you see today, to make their smart Royal Exchange, where people could do their shopping in more comfort. Shutting the people of the closes in”—he lowers his voice to a whisper—“like rats in a maze.”
Although we all know everyone would still have been able to get in and out, we still can’t help shivering. That’s the feeling of being buried alive, bricked up in these passages, with no daylight above us. It’s very eerie, and our guide smiles in triumph as he sees our reaction.
“Och, and I haven’t even started on the ghost stories!” he says, leading us into a smaller room with a wooden floor that creaks as we file in one by one, since the doorway is so narrow. I’m one of the last, and as I wait in the corridor, a cold breeze glides along the back of my neck, as if a door has been opened somewhere down the passageway.
Only I haven’t seen any doors.
I swing around, and out of the corner of my eye, I spot a dark shape slipping across the close, disappearing into a room farther down.
“Who’s there?” I say quickly, involuntarily. “Taylor?” I nudge her, my heart racing. “Did you see that?”
“See what?” she asks.
“I thought I saw something—someone—”
“Oh plea
se,” Nadia says loudly to Plum as I walk into the room. Rough floorboards shift underfoot. “Did you hear that? Scarlett’s trying to pretend she saw a ghost. How pathetic and attention-seeking!”
“There are many stories of ghosts down in the closes,” the guide says immediately. “A woman in black, called Mary King, comes and goes as she pleases! And I’m about to tell you all the story of the plague that ravaged Edinburgh”—much rolling of the r on ravaged—“and the ghosts and ghoulies that haunted the Coltheart family in 1685, in this very room.…”
He’s indicating that we should all sit on a long bench along the wall. Alison and Luce are already taking places next to each other, and as I meet Alison’s eye she nods at me. It’s an acknowledgment of the fact that ever since the night out at the Shore, we have what Ms. Burton-Race, in her lectures, would call a détente. That isn’t as big a deal as having actually made peace; it’s more that you’ve mutually decided not to be hostile to one another. Luce, seeing Alison nod, looks up as well and actually flashes me a half smile.
Wow. That’s a nice change. I wish I could enjoy it more. I still think Alison and Luce, with their physical dexterity and their grudge against me, are the most likely candidates for having set the smoke bombs and left me that note, though it would really kill me to think that one of them had pushed me over the stair rail. And Taylor’s suggestion that they could have slipped the antihistamines in my water, but that Alison had had a fit of conscience and saved me when it looked as if I might seriously injure myself, or worse, also makes sense.
Well, if it was Luce and Alison behind the attacks, I have the sense I’ll be safe from now on. After the Shore, after hanging out with the boys and walking back to school together, they’ve softened toward me. Neither of them has ever been fake; they say what they mean, and mean what they say. They wouldn’t nod or smile at me if they were still furious with me. (Of course, if they knew we’d sneaked out last night to go to a party with Callum and Ewan, they’d probably be livid with jealousy, but mercifully, they have no idea why Taylor and I look so tired today.)
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