Follow Me Down (5 page)

Where my French was competent, if a little awkward, she chatted breezily, bantering with Dominic and Sam, who were also fluent. Within a few moments, everyone at the table was rapt and when she had their attention, she explained why she spoke French so well. She told them the story of her mother running away to Paris, about her parents’ apartment with its second-hand brass bed and how her sister Edith was named after Edith Piaf, who was born under the lamp post across the street. When she was done, you could have heard a pin drop.

It’s impossible to describe Scarlett to anyone who hasn’t met her, which is why I’m so desperate for Jumoke to meet her. I’m in awe of her, I know, and it’s silly – like I have a hopeless crush – but at a school like Crofton, she is nothing but light and colour. I don’t know if I would have survived the last three weeks without her. After dinner last night, when everyone was on the lawn outside the teacher’s dining room trying to impress Hannah with better – brighter, funnier – stories, Scarlett stopped me as I was about to join in and pulled me into the shadows around the side of Sadon Hall. When we were far enough away, she grinned, the light from the dining-room window hitting her cheek, making her blue eyes look like they were made of glass.

‘This is so boring, Adamma. I want to dance.’

‘I covet that dress,’ I told her as she raised one arm and twirled.

She perked up at that. ‘Olivia’s going to kill me dead. I bought it with her credit card.’ She threw her head back and laughed, clearly unrepentant.

I sniggered, too. ‘What about your card?’

‘Daddy cut it up after the
Waiting for Godot
incident.’

‘Ladies,’ Sam said, appearing from nowhere.

Scarlett put her hand on her hip with a playful smile. ‘Got a fag?’

He pulled a pack of cigarettes out of the pocket of his jacket and opened it. Scarlett took one, put it between her red, red lips and waited for him to light it. When he did, he held the pack out to me, too, but I refused, stunned as I watched Scarlett inhale then blow the smoke towards the sky. I had no idea she smoked.

‘I have some of this, if you prefer,’ he said, taking a silver hip flask out of his other pocket and holding it up to me with a proud smile.

‘What is it?’

Scarlett didn’t wait for him to answer, just thrust her glass at him. I had a moment’s hesitation as I watched him pour some of whatever it was into her glass, thinking of who was gathered a few feet away. When she saw me watching, she smiled and I knew what she was thinking, so I held my glass out too and she cheered. She thinks I’m so prim;
You’re such a princess
, she tells me whenever she watches me pour a can of soda into a glass or catches me checking my make-up between classes. Maybe I am. I’ve never drunk from a hip flask before.

I hadn’t even taken a sip before Dominic came around the corner, his eyebrow arching when he saw us huddled in the shadows.

‘And then there were four,’ Scarlett said with another grin.

He looked at her and nodded towards the party. ‘Hannah’s looking for you.’

‘Shit,’ she muttered, flicking her cigarette into the bushes.

I watched as she downed her drink then walked around the corner towards the light of the lawn. When we lost sight of her, Dominic turned to Sam, who took the hint and followed her back to the party. When we were alone, I tensed, waiting for Dominic to smile and say something charming, but he frowned.

‘What are you doing?’ He took the glass and sniffed it, then tossed the contents into the bushes. ‘Is that how you’re going to impress Hannah? With the smell of Jack Daniel’s on your breath?’

‘Give me a break. It wasn’t even a shot,’ I snapped. Of all the people I expected to get a lecture on drinking from, I didn’t think it would be Dominic Sim. He sounded like my father. ‘Scarlett just downed a whole glass. Go tell her off!’

He shook his head, then turned back towards the party. ‘Keep doing what Scarlett does, Adamma,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘See how far you get.’

I was furious, but I’ve been thinking about it all day. He’s right, I know. Scarlett has her spot on the
Disraeli
, she doesn’t need to try out like I do, so drinking wasn’t my brightest moment. I’m not usually so easily swayed, but there’s something about Scarlett. She reminds me so much of Jumoke – she’s wicked and funny and has an answer for everything. I love our lunches by the canal, waving at the brightly painted barges as they go past and, when it’s too cold to sit outside, giggling on the top row of the bleachers, the pool below us, big and bright and blue. She makes me do things I would never usually do, like sneak out of Burnham on a Sunday afternoon and drive around Ostley in The Old Dear with the windows down and the sun on our cheeks.

She shouldn’t be driving, because she’s only sixteen and doesn’t have a licence yet, but her parents don’t seem to mind as long as she stays in the village. They don’t seem to mind about a lot of things, actually. They’re so cool, much cooler than my parents. I mean, I know my parents could be way worse, but they’re not as liberal as they think they are; they think I’m too young to be in a serious relationship (another reason they were so keen to move to the UK, because it would put some distance between me and my boyfriend, Nathan, who my father thought I was seeing far too much o
f
) and they never let me drink apart from a glass of champagne on special occasions. But Scarlett’s parents aren’t like that
at all
. Last Sunday, her mother didn’t say anything when we took a bottle of red wine from the kitchen and drunk it in the big yellow music room. She just grabbed a glass and came in and danced to Fela with us.

I guess that’s why Scarlett is the way she is – so brave, so restless – because her parents let her do whatever she wants. She always knows a window at school that’s been left open or a door that’s unlocked, and if it isn’t, we have the master key. Today we got into the new observatory, which still smelt of paint, the chairs covered in canvas drop cloths and the new telescope wrapped in plastic ahead of the unveiling on Saturday.

‘Be sure to thank Dominic for this the next time you see him,’ she’d told me, giving the telescope a playful pat. ‘His family donated it.’

‘Wow.’ I raised an eyebrow. ‘That’s quite a donation.’

‘Almost every boarding school in England has one. Or a new library. Dominic would never go to school otherwise; in the last year he’s been kicked out of Harrow and Eton. It’s a good thing his family have more money than God.’

‘What do they do?’

‘I don’t know, but they’re obscenely wealthy. His father invented the Internet, or something,’ she said with a regal shrug. ‘His parents spend most of their time travelling between Seoul, California and here, so Dominic never sees them, which is why he’s so horribly misunderstood.’

‘Have you known him long?’ I asked, stepping over a paint tray and roller and walking over to where she was standing.

‘As long as I can remember,’ she said, tipping her head back to look up at the domed roof. ‘He’s the boy next door.’

‘Really?’

‘Sort of. Technically he lives in Burbage. His house is on the other side of the canal, directly opposite mine. When we were little, we used to meet on the bridge, make paper ships and race them.’ She turned to look at me. ‘I always made mine out of a different coloured paper because he cheated.’

‘I didn’t realise you were so close.’

‘He was my first –’ she shrugged – ‘
everything
.’

I looked away, suddenly out of breath. ‘I had no idea.’

I was about to ask her if she loved him, but she’d already moved on, her eyes bright and a brush in her hand as she dared me to paint something rude on the wall.

I’ve never met anyone like Scarlett. Dominic has flirted relentlessly with her since I started at Crofton, but Scarlett hasn’t said a word. Yet she wants to know everything about me, about every boy I’ve kissed, every girl I’ve thought of kissing, about every crack in my heart. It’s as if my life is a cake she wants to gorge on while she doesn’t tell me a thing. Just the same old stories about her mother and Paris and the second-hand brass bed.

If I told Jumoke, she’d say that she had something to hide.

THE DAY AFTER

MAY

Signing the paperwork to get my car towed took forever, so I was late for my meeting with Madame Girard and had to run back to Burnham. I was in such a rush that I didn’t see Orla waiting for me until she grabbed my sleeve and led me around the side.

‘Orla, wait,’ I gasped, almost tripping on a tree root that had punctured through the grass. ‘I can’t. Not now, I’m late.’

She ignored me, finally stopping outside the door to the laundry room. ‘I saw him,’ she said, eyes wet, her fingers still curled in the sleeve of my cardigan.

‘Who?’

‘That policeman, DS Bone. The one you wanted me to speak to after –’ she stopped to suck in a sob – ‘after –’ she tried again, but couldn’t say it. ‘You know?’

I knew.

‘Bones was here?’

‘I saw him coming out of Headmaster Ballard’s study.’

‘Did he see you?’

She shook her head. ‘I hid behind a tree.’ She laughed and sucked in another breath. ‘How pathetic is that?’

‘It’s not pathetic, Orla.’ I frowned. ‘It’s not pathetic at all.’

‘Is that why he’s here?’ she asked, her eyelashes sticky with mascara.

‘He can’t be. That was
months
ago.’

‘But what if he is? What if he tells everyone?’

‘He won’t.’ I reached over and wiped a tear away with the pad of my thumb.

‘How do you know?’

‘Because he
can’t
tell anyone. He doesn’t even know your name.’

‘So why is he here, Adamma? What if everyone knows?’ Her gaze flicked to the path and I turned to see Molly walking out of Burnham, the sun on her hair making it look even blonder. Orla lowered her voice. ‘What if it’s around school already?’

‘If it was, one of us would have heard.’

She nodded, but when I took a step back, she asked me where I was going. I told her that I was going to speak to him and I heard her release a breath.

‘You are?’

‘Don’t worry.’ I squeezed her arm. ‘I’ll find out, OK?’

‘Thank you.’ She pulled me into a hug. I could feel her trembling and when I smelled her sweet, pink perfume, I hugged her tighter. When she let go, she wiped her cheeks with the heels of her palms. ‘You won’t tell him my name, will you? I don’t want my father to find out. He’ll blame himself. He saves me from everything.’

‘Of course I won’t. Now go inside. I’ll text you when I’ve spoken to him.’

‘Thank you, Adamma.’

‘I have my one-to-one with Madame Girard, so I need you to cover for me, OK?’ She nodded. ‘Tell her that I can’t make it because someone tried to break into my car last night and I’m in the car park getting it towed.’

She nodded, but she looked so scared that I hugged her again.

I waited for DS Bone on the hood of his car, a battered green thing I’d nicknamed Kermit. I’d almost finished reading my newspaper when finally I saw him walking through the car park, his white shirt too bright in the sunlight, like something from a commercial for laundry detergent. I haven’t seen him since February, but he looked the same, tall and lean, though his cake-batter-coloured hair was shorter and noticeably lighter than the moustache/beard combo he was experimenting with, no doubt in an attempt to look older. It wasn’t working. But at least he hadn’t surrendered to the cheap suits police detectives seem to insist on wearing and was in jeans and a pair of aviator sunglasses that were too nice to be chasing criminals in.

He didn’t see me, he was too distracted as he undid the top button on his shirt and loosened his tie, so when I jumped down from the hood of his car, he stepped back.

‘Hey, Bones,’ I said with a grin.

‘Adamma,’ he said, hands on his hips, the corners of his mouth twitching.

‘How’s it going?’

‘Good,’ he said warily. ‘You?’

‘I’m good. How funny! Bumping into you here.’

‘I know,
how funny
, bumping into me, here, by my car.’ I saw the top of his eyebrow spring up over his sunglasses. ‘What do you want, Adamma?’

‘Why so suspicious, Bones? I’m just saying hello.’

‘OK. Hello, Adamma,’ he said, reaching into the pocket of his jeans and pulling out his keys. He opened the car door, then said, ‘Goodbye, Adamma.’

‘So why are you here?’

He stopped, fingers curled over the top of the open car door. ‘There it is.’

‘Come on, Bones.’ I winked theatrically at him. ‘You can tell me.’

The corners of his mouth twitched again. ‘You know I can’t.’

‘Please, Bones,’ I said as he started to get into the car. ‘My friend, the one I told you about, is worried sick. She thinks you’re here to talk to her.’

He stopped, then turned to face me again. ‘Tell her not to worry.’

‘So you’re not here about that?’

My heart thumped suddenly, but I tried to ignore it.

‘No.’

‘You’re here about Scarlett, aren’t you?’ I blurted out when he turned back to his car.

‘The case has been passed on to me, yes.’ I wanted him to take his sunglasses off, even though I didn’t know what would be more unnerving: being able to see his eyes or not.

‘I thought you were CID?’ I said, trying not to give into the panic punching at me. ‘Why has the case been passed on to you? Why? She ran away.’

‘Look, don’t panic, OK—’ he started to say, but I didn’t let him finish.

‘What’s this got to do with CID? She hasn’t even been gone a day.’

‘Actually, she has; she left this time yesterday.’

‘Yeah. But . . .’ I breathed, but he interrupted me this time.

‘CID being called in doesn’t mean anything, OK?’ He held up a hand. ‘We’re just being careful. If her family didn’t own half of Ostley, no one would give a shit.’

‘You weren’t called in last time.’

‘I have to get back to Swindon and I’m sure you have a lesson to go to.’ He nodded towards the main hall. ‘If you have any questions, speak to your housemistress.’

‘My
housemistress
? What the hell? Don’t give me that, Bones.’ My hand curled around the strap of my bag. ‘What’s going on? Her sister’s going out of her mind.’

‘It’s fine. I just spoke to her.’

‘Fine?’

‘Yes.
Fine
.’

‘So Scarlett’s OK? You know where she is?’

He sighed heavily and I thought he was going to fob me off again, but he took his sunglasses off, rubbed the bridge of his nose, then put them back on. ‘If she isn’t back by tomorrow morning, which she will be, then we’ll issue an appeal.’

‘An appeal?’ I repeated, but the word didn’t feel real –
appeal
– like a sweet that fizzes on your tongue then disappears. ‘So she hasn’t run away?’

‘That’s all I can say right now, Adamma.’

He turned and climbed into his car, but before he closed the door, I grabbed it with my hand. ‘It was you. You called the theatre about the tickets.’

‘I have to go,’ he said without looking at me.

I let him close the door, and watched as he drove out of the car park. As soon as he turned out of Crofton, I ran back to my room and got my other cellphone out of my tuck box. It took an eternity for the menu to load, but as soon as it did, I called him. It went straight to voicemail and something in me wilted. I wanted to hang up, but I made myself wait for the beep, then breathed, ‘It’s me. We need to talk about Scarlett.’