Elise is already on the phone. ‘Hi, it’s Elise. Elise Bond, Sadie’s mum. That’s right. I’d like to arrange a meeting with Adam Racki, please—it’s extremely urgent. What? I’m afraid I’m not going to go into detail until I’m in the room with him. No, I’m not going to do that. Sorry, but this is highly sensitive. Carolyn Mordue, Bronnie Richardson, and Kendall Donovan will also be at the meeting—if you tell Adam that, I’m sure he’ll be able to work out what it’s concerning.’
‘Bronnie . . . move!’ Kendall snaps at her. ‘I’m not going to your meeting and I’m not sitting here . . . Let me leave, please.’
Bronnie looks at Elise for direction. God, she’s so pathetic. Hasn’t she got any ideas of her own? Elise nods as she’s saying, ‘Tomorrow at four? Is that the soonest? . . . All right, tomorrow at four, then.’
Bronnie shuffles out of the booth. As soon as she’s moved aside, Kendall’s on her way—grabbing her bag, hurrying to the door. ‘Kendall, please be at the meeting tomorrow,’ Elise calls after her. ‘There’s no point running away from this.’
Kendall’s gone. Good. I don’t want to have lunch with her any more than she wants to have lunch with me.
‘No tabloids, Carolyn.’ Elise raises her eyebrows at me. ‘It’s not necessary. Adam won’t be able to let Ruby stay, not after this, and once the gutter press gets hold of it, they’re uncontrollable. You think they wouldn’t turn on you? They would. You don’t want them pointing the finger at Jess, do you?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Once they find out that Ruby spent the best part of a year making Jess’s life a living hell, who do you think they’ll figure might go after Ruby with nooses and malicious graffiti?’ Elise smiles as if she’s trying to help. Managing expectations. ‘Ruby’s main victim: Jess. Or her mother: you, Carolyn.’
No, that can’t be right, I want to say. Surely no one would suspect Jess and me of anything. Does Elise suspect one of us? Both of us?
A waiter arrives at our table with a tray of food. I was starving a few minutes ago. Now I’m wondering if I’ll be able to eat a single mouthful, or ever come here again.
The next morning, after making myself some late breakfast and then throwing it away uneaten, I decide to work on my musical and ignore the mountain of university work that I ought to tackle, that I ought to have tackled weeks ago. It’s becoming almost second nature to pretend that the work I don’t want to do simply isn’t there, which is a bit scary. I remind myself for the four hundredth time that we cannot afford for me to lose my job. Today, for the first time, I notice that, despite this being as true as it’s ever been, there’s a part of me that’s arguing with the official line, saying, You know what? We’d be fine. We’d be absolutely fine if I handed in my notice and never went back to the law faculty.
No, there isn’t, I tell myself firmly. There is absolutely no part of me that’s saying that or even thinking it.
I hate to admit it, but I can almost understand how Kendall Donovan ended up so deep in denial. Did she convince herself that the references she faked for Ruby were real, because only she, as her mother, knew Ruby’s true inner goodness? I can imagine her kidding herself in that way.
Which is not what I’m doing with Jess. It’s not the same at all. I know Jess wasn’t responsible for the noose—it’s beyond doubt.
I push these thoughts out of my mind and turn my attention to an unfinished song from my musical that’s needed a last verse for a while. I wrote the first two verses in the summer, and I’ve tried writing the final verse at least a dozen times, and always ended up deleting it. None of my draft final verses so far have escalated and advanced the song sufficiently, and I really want some significant ramping up of scale and bite at the end.
It’s not a key song in the musical; it’s sung by a group of minor characters and is part of the subplot rather than the main plot, but I love it and want to keep it if I can only think of a way to wrap it up properly. It’s the song that will cause controversy if the show ever reaches a stage or an audience—maybe that’s why I love it so much, troublemaker that I am. It’s called ‘Can We Drug You?’ A group of horrible teachers sings it to a rebellious (but good and slightly heroic) pupil who has done nothing wrong apart from having ideas and opinions the teachers don’t like. They’re explaining that the only way they’ll let him out of the Detention Unit is if he agrees to be drugged into silent obedience. People will no doubt think it’s a comment on the ADHD phenomenon and Ritalin, but it’s not. It’s about how those in power hate and fear original thinkers.
People? What people? Face facts: No one’s ever going to see your musical or hear the song.
I tell the discouraging voice in my head to fuck off and stare at my screen—at the two verses I’ve already written. Suddenly, I have an idea: Teenagers, traditionally, don’t need to be persuaded by their teachers to take drugs. It’s something they do for fun.
I start to type . . .
Can we drug you?
With a staff member’s sign-off, it’s all aboveboard.
Please don’t shrug! You
know cool teenagers take drugs of their own accord.
As you glug, you
feel your mind calming down, all stress melting away.
Hate to bug you,
but this term has been tough. Let’s improve it today.
With an ‘Oh, what the heck!’ chuck this muck down your neck.
Can we drug, can we drug, can we drug you?
Yes. I like this. I really like it. It needs something more at the end, though. A final flourish . . .
Catatonia’s a breeze!
Just say, ‘Thanks, Miss—yes, please.’
Can we drug, can we drug, can we drug you?
I hear footsteps on the stairs outside my room and slam my MacBook shut.
The door opens. It’s Jess, with her phone in her right hand as it almost always is these days when she’s not on stage. ‘I need to talk to you about Ruby.’ She frowns. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Working.’ And I should have been. I feel terrible, suddenly—as if reality has just strolled into the room and woken me up. If we lost my salary, Dan would have to close his shop and go out and earn proper money. Much as I’ve wished he would spontaneously decide that’s what he wants to do, I don’t want him to be forced into it.
Once you get to where I am professionally, it’s almost impossible for them to sack you, but if I keep neglecting to do the work they pay me for . . .
Professor of Law at the University of Cambridge. Remember that description, because that’s what you are. You’re not Lin-Manuel Miranda. Lots of people would give anything to have your job.
‘If you’re working, then why’s your laptop shut?’ Jess asks impatiently, as if exposing her mother’s lies is only item one on her tediously long to-do list.
I need to start being more careful. Her antennae are super-alert; she misses nothing. ‘I . . . because I heard you coming.’
‘I might have had one quick question and been gone by now. Why would you close down your computer?’
‘I didn’t close it down, I just closed it. I can open it in a second, it’s not a big deal. Why are you interrogating me?’
Jess narrows her eyes. She wants me to know I’m under suspicion. ‘Are you having an affair?’
I laugh. ‘No.’
‘Then what? The way you said “no,” like, “No, it’s not that”—’
‘Huh? I said “no.” Just a normal “no.” ’
‘Mum, every time I come in here, you slam your laptop shut like you’re some kind of spy. Are you a spy?’ Her phone buzzes. She glances at it, murmurs, ‘Fuck off, Bel,’ then turns back to me. ‘That girl’s so thick, I swear to God. Ugh, I don’t even care—lie if you want. Everyone else does.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Bel and Sadie have obviously got a secret they’re desperate to shove in the rest of our faces. They’ve been doing that stupid “Let’s talk later, when no one’
s around, about that thing only we know” and then denying there’s anything they’re keeping from us. I don’t care, I’m so over it. Point is . . .’ Jess sighs. ‘You never listen to me, and you reeeally need to. I know you think Ruby put the music box in my locker, and did all the other shit, but she didn’t. The noose thing—’
‘You mean the noose that coincidentally ruined your song and turned Ruby into a sympathy-deserving victim who therefore couldn’t be the perpetrator?’
Jess shakes her head. ‘Listen to yourself. You hate her so much, you can’t even talk about her in a normal way. You start ranting like a maniac. Your voice has, like, actual key changes.’
Ruby killed someone. Did you know that? Does that change your view of things at all? I don’t say that, because I agreed with Bronnie and Elise that we wouldn’t tell the girls until after we’d spoken to Adam Racki. Maybe Jess will never need to know that she was targeted for persecution not merely by a teenage bitch but by a cold-hearted psychopathic killer. With any luck, Ruby Donovan will be on a plane back to America this time tomorrow and we’ll never need to worry about her again.
I haven’t even told Dan about what Elise found out in America. I’m so used to thinking of myself as the problem-solver in our family, I can’t bear to present him with an as-yet-unsolved problem. Or maybe I don’t want to discuss it because I might blurt out all my fears, fears I’m ashamed of having: that even now, Adam Racki will take Ruby’s side as he did last year. He’d say he didn’t—that he was impartial, and simply trying to find a peaceful resolution—but that’s a lie. He could and should have expelled Ruby for what she did to Jess, and he didn’t. In my book, that’s taking her side.
‘What do you want me to say, Jess? Yes, I think it was all Ruby. All the things: the music box, the graffiti, the noose. Don’t you, really? I mean . . . who do we know is a nasty piece of work? Ruby. Who’s demonstrated that she likes making you miserable? Ruby. She went too far with the music box, and everyone was shocked. Suddenly, something had happened—she’d done something—that wasn’t passive-aggressive but was straight-up blatant aggressive, and everyone was all “Poor Jess,” people you don’t even know that well hugging you in the corridor and telling you they think you’re great—and not only students. Teachers too. Isn’t it likely that Ruby, who’s been so jealous in the past that she’s spent months trying to make you feel like shit, might be jealous again, might think, “What can I do to make people feel sorry for me instead of Jess?” Hence the graffiti, the noose . . .’
‘No! Mum, you don’t know Ruby like I do. Yeah, she can be a bitch, but she’s not insane. And this noose thing is properly crazy. And so is . . .’ Jess stops.
‘What? What else is crazy?’
‘It’s not a thing. It’s a person.’
‘Who?’
‘Imogen Curwood. She’s insane, Mum.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. Nature or nurture, take your pick.’
‘No, I mean—’
‘No one else can see it, but you’d have to be blind not to. I think it’s her. All of it. The music box happened the day she joined the school. The same day.’
‘But . . . Imogen didn’t know you when you found the music box. Had you even met her?’
Jess shakes her head.
‘Then why would she want to do that to you? How would she know that “Castle on a Cloud” was your song?’
‘I’ve no idea. But there’s something not right about her, Mum. She’s sneaky and creepy and . . . kind of . . . what’s the word. Ghoulish. There’s something ghoulish about her. She makes me shiver, just thinking about her.’ Jess stops. She seems to be weighing up whether or not to tell me something. ‘Ruby says there was a blond hair wrapped around the noose,’ she says eventually. ‘Same blond as Imogen’s hair.’
‘Even if that’s true, a hair can come from anywhere. And that’s if it’s true. Given the source . . .’
Jess rolls her eyes. ‘There’s no point talking to you about it. You’re convinced Ruby has to be the villain of everything. Mum, her finding that noose didn’t only mess up my song, it meant she didn’t get to sing hers. She didn’t even make it onto the stage. I know Ruby. You don’t. You only hear about her secondhand from me.’
And now from Elise. I try to look open-minded.
‘Ruby knew the audience was full of theater agents and producers,’ Jess says. ‘There’s no way she’d sabotage herself like that. I mean, I was excited about singing for that audience, and I’m not desperate to be a musical theater star the way Ruby is.’
Then why the hell are we paying a fortune for you to train to be one?
Is it my fault? I might be the one earning nearly all of the money these days, but am I also the one to blame for wasting it? Have I pushed Jess towards musical theater because it’s the world I want to live in and can’t?
‘You don’t need to be desperate to be a star,’ I say. ‘You do need to realize that you’re the most talented student in your year, and you owe it to your talent and to the world to—’
‘Ugh, not this speech again. I’m trying to persuade you, the most stubborn woman in the world, that you’re wrong about Ruby. With the music box and the graffiti, okay, I wouldn’t swear on my life, but the noose was not her. Apart from anything else, the psychology’s all wrong.’
Having made her point, Jess looks down at her phone and starts to text, moving her thumbs as quickly and deftly as if texting were her first language.
‘What psychology?’ I ask.
‘Hang on, I just need to reply to Bel.’
More thumb-jabbing. Then Jess looks up. ‘Ruby. She’s all about status. That’s her thing. She fears more than anything that her status will take a dive—that she’ll fall totally off the grid. Don’t ask what the grid is. It’s not a real thing. I can’t explain it. Point is: Ruby’s so insecure, she can’t handle it if she’s not seen as the most powerful and popular person in any group. That’s why she spent months trying to undermine my confidence. I seemed more powerful to her, only because I don’t really give a toss about status or what anyone thinks of me. Or, I did seem like that, until she started her shit, and then I seemed unhappy and unconfident for a while, which is what she wanted. She knows that if someone’s a victim of any kind of bullying, that lowers their status. Didn’t some kids get bullied at your school?’
I nod.
‘Right. And weren’t they the lowest status kids? The least powerful, the least attractive friendship options?’
It’s a good point. I remember trying to be as kind as I could to Debbie Lynam, who’d been ostracized by most of the girls in our class, at the same time as hoping that no one would see me talking to her in case her social untouchability rubbed off on me.
‘Most girls at the Academy are popular or very popular,’ says Jess. ‘Ruby’d rather die than arrange to make herself look like the most hated girl there—the only one getting a noose left where her costume should be, and fucked-up graffiti about her scrawled on walls. It’s so humiliating. She’d never do that to herself. Pity’s not what she wants. It never has been. She wants . . . social capital. Or she did. I’m not sure what she wants now—probably just to find out what sick fuck is doing all this shit to her.’
‘And she suspects it’s Imogen?’
‘Yeah, she does. And I know it’s Imogen. It has to be.’ Jess looks down at her phone. ‘And here it is,’ she declares triumphantly. ‘The proof! The noose wasn’t Ruby. See? I knew it.’
‘What proof?’ I ask.
Jess’s thumbs are flying again: ninety words a minute with only two digits. It’s impressive.
Having sent her message, she shoves her phone in her pocket and says, ‘Bel’s just texted saying her mum was in the costume room all evening until the noose was found, apart from about ten minutes—and during that time, Ruby was in her line of sight the whole time. I’ve asked her to find out where Imogen was during those ten minutes. Unless Bronnie says the same about her—that she could l
iterally see her, which I highly doubt she will, then . . .’ Jess shrugs.
I finish her sentence for her: ‘Then Ruby has an alibi, and Imogen doesn’t.’
‘I’ll be interested to hear from Bronnie whether that’s true or not, about the crucial ten minutes and her being able to see Ruby all that time,’ says Elise a few hours later. We’re in her car, driving to the meeting with Adam Racki. She rang me at lunchtime and offered to pick me up on her way in, even though I live nowhere near her. ‘There’s something I want to tell you, before we meet the others,’ she said.
So far, she hasn’t told me and I haven’t asked. I don’t want to give her the satisfaction. Last time, like an overeager idiot, I said, ‘Tell me!!’ I’ve resolved not to do that again.
‘Bronnie could have made a mistake,’ I say. ‘She could be remembering incorrectly. I mean . . . this is Bronnie Richardson we’re talking about.’
I want Ruby to be responsible for every bad thing that’s happened. I need someone to find proof that she killed this Vee girl, and I need to hear, in a few months’ time, that she’s in prison in America.
‘True,’ says Elise. ‘What’s also true is that Jess is absolutely right: Imogen Curwood is creepy. I’ve had the girl at my house overnight, remember? That whole night was deeply weird—and that was Imogen’s doing. Sadie agrees.’
‘So you’re with Jess on this?’ I ask her. ‘It’s all Imogen, all the dodgy, scary stuff? Imogen and not Ruby, the probable murderer of Vee?’
Elise seems to be thinking about it. Then she says, ‘No. I still say it’s Ruby. There are two problems with the theory that it’s Imogen. One: Exactly like American Vee, Imogen happened to fall down some stairs when Ruby was right there with her.’
‘Exactly,’ I say. This is the kind of reasoning I like.
‘There’s an undeniable link there,’ says Elise. ‘Two girls, on two separate occasions, end up at the bottom of flights of stairs, and there’s Ruby Donovan at the scene of the so-called accident, both times, in two different countries. Part of me thinks that can’t be a coincidence.’
The Understudy Page 14