Killing You Softly (14 page)

In the sports hall below, the Ainslee Comp team trotted out in their blue and white kit, Tom at their head. A referee in a black tracksuit soon followed them from the changing rooms.

‘So Will ignores Scarlett’s pleas for help.’ Taking the phone from Hooper, I scrolled through 29th and 30th December, on into 31st to double check that Will hadn’t
replied.

The referee blew his whistle and the match began. Trainers squeaked on the polished wooden surface; the ball was kicked out of touch and thudded against a side wall. Loud claims were made for
the throw-in.

‘No – there’s nothing from Will to Scarlett,’ I muttered as I scrolled on.

Hey, Marco – fancy a game of footie?
I read.

Marco had sent a reply.
Maybe. When?

Friday. After school. Sports hall.

So far, so normal, except that Marco had sworn to Jack and me that he refused to play soccer because he wanted to do the opposite of what his dad was pressurizing him to do. Anyway, the
arrangement was made and the proof was in front of our eyes – Marco playing for St Jude’s alongside Jack, Will, Lee Irwin (IT prodigy) and Danny Wells (chemistry genius).

‘Here – pass to me!’ Lee yelled at Danny. He received the ball, trapped it under his left foot, turned towards the goal and took a shot.

Goal! Our team swamped Lee with celebratory hugs.

I glanced again at the texts between Will and Marco, and in a fit of curiosity switched from Will’s messages to contacts and found Marco’s name on the pale blue screen.

Marco Conti. Mobile 07763 159080
Option boxes:
Send message. Face Time. Share contact. Add to favourites 07763 159080.
The synapses in my brain flashed into action and I felt my heart suddenly
pump hard and fast.

‘What’s up, Alyssa?’ Hooper queried.

I remembered without looking it up on my phone the row of red emoticon hearts, the unfamiliar number – 07763 159080.

‘I do not understand!’ Galina threw up her arms in wonder when I told her that Marco Conti had sent me red hearts. ‘Why are you sad, Alyssa? A boy like Marco
– and you, so beautiful. English rose and Italian stallion – you are perfect together!’

We were in our room. I’d gone there before the end of the five-a-side match to try and work out if Marco’s red hearts were still in the category of creep-Alyssa-out clues and found
Galina examining her self-dissolving stitches in the magnifying side of her make-up mirror. ‘Why so sad?’ she said when I told her who had sent the hearts.

‘I’m not sad,’ I argued.

‘No? You look in bad mood.’

‘I don’t know if Marco is genuine or if he’s trying to spook me. Anyway, I already have a boyfriend. I’m confused.’

‘Why? It is simple. Marco comes to St Jude’s. He knows me and Eugenie, but no one else. He looks around at beautiful girls. He sees Zara and Charlie.’

‘And they see him,’ I reminded her. ‘They pay him loads of attention. Anyway, Charlie is officially his girlfriend now – why doesn’t he send her hearts?’

‘Maybe he does.’

‘OK, maybe. But if Marco is serious, what do I do next?’

To Galina the answer was obvious. ‘If you want to be with Jack, ignore them,’

‘I do!’

‘Easy then. Let Charlie have Marco.’

‘But do I mention any of this to Jack?’ I wanted to know.

She shook her head and tutted, sighed and said definitely no – don’t tell Jack.

‘OK, thanks, Galina. Will you come back with me to the sports centre? We could watch the football match together.’

‘Are you crazy?’ she cried. ‘I have more things to do, better things.’

‘Such as?’

‘I meet someone,’ she said, tilting her head to one side and giving a small, coy smile. ‘Someone special.’

‘Give me a clue. Is it someone I know?’

‘Of course,’ she answered, still smiling.

‘Who is it? Come on, tell me. We’re friends, remember.’

‘It is secret,’ she whispered. ‘I get ready. I meet him. Later I tell you who.’

Cool – she must be feeling better, I thought. ‘So be good,’ I told her as I walked out. ‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.’

You know my fondness for agony-aunt columns, so here’s one to contemplate:

Dear Problem Page Pamela. I am in a long term relationship and I love my boyfriend very much. But I also have an admirer who sends me secret messages
. . . [OK, delete
‘sends me secret messages’, insert ‘sent me a secret message’ – best to be completely accurate]
Do I let my admirer know that I received the message and that
I’m not interested in him? In the interests of honesty and openness, do I tell my boyfriend what’s happening? Or do I ignore the whole thing and hope that my admirer loses interest?
Please help.

Pathetic, huh? Of course, I would follow Galina’s advice about keeping quiet and I’d never write a letter like that. It was just in my head as I rushed back to the
sports hall to meet up with Jack.

By the time I got there, I’d made my decision.

‘Hi – did you win?’ I asked my showered and shiny-clean boyfriend.

‘A draw – three-three. Where were you? I thought you were going to watch the match.’

‘Coffee?’ I suggested, steering him out of the way of Will, Luke and Marco. ‘I watched the start then something came up.’

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Will pause by the sports-centre exit and delve into his rucksack. Luke and Marco said something to him then walked on. Will tipped all his belonging out of the
bag on to the floor.

‘Nothing bad?’ Jack asked me.

‘No, I had to dash over to my room and check something with Galina – that’s all.’

‘Cool,’ Jack said as he put coins into the coffee machine and it started to hiss and spit cappuccino froth into a paper cup. He smiled at me – oh, that smile! ‘We were
rubbish,’ he told me. ‘Will played like an idiot and Marco never passed the ball, just tried to do it all himself. OK, he looks the part, but he’s not a team player.’

‘Quelle surprise!’

‘Yeah – really!’

The smile lingered on his lips, the lips that I always want to kiss. ‘Coffee to go?’ I suggested as the machine filled the second cup. I offered Jack two plastic lids and led the way
downstairs.

‘Why? Where are you taking me?’

‘Your room?’ I suggested. Jack was one of the lucky ones – he had a single room at the end of the boys’ dorm, his own personal space, and we had two whole hours before
the eight o’clock curfew. ‘And let’s skip dinner.’

The smile turned into a grin as he slid his arm round my waist.

We passed Will at the exit, still unzipping pockets and searching in his bag. ‘Hey, Jack, do you have a minute?’

‘No, actually.’

‘Just call my number,’ Will muttered.

‘Sorry – aren’t you the guy who punched me in the stomach?’ Jack reminded him. ‘Why would I suddenly want to call your number?’

‘I lost my phone – that’s why. Just do it, will you?’

Jack shrugged. ‘Sorry – out of battery.’

We walked on hand in hand, leaving Will in a major strop until I acted like I’d remembered something and retraced my steps. ‘Oh, Will,’ I said. ‘Hooper was looking for
you earlier.’

‘Piss off, Alyssa.’ Will stuffed everything back into his bag – football kit, shower gel, deodorant, towel.

‘Please yourself,’ I told him. ‘Hooper said it was important. Oh yeah, silly me – now I remember. Actually, he found your phone.’

Jack’s room is just a place to dump his stuff. There are jeans and socks on the floor, a tangle of cables and adaptors trailing from his desk connecting to his TV and
iPad, or waiting to recharge his phone. You have to fight your way through all this to get to the bed. The only object he’s chosen to display is there on his windowsill – a white
ceramic head with areas of the brain mapped out –
‘Intuitive, reasoning, selfish propensities, reflective facules,’
etc. Yes, ‘facules’.

Before Freud and Jung, they used to measure the bumps on your skull to work out your personality type – thanks to L. N. Fowler of Ludgate Circus, London. He wrote, ‘For thirty years
I have studied Crania and living heads from all parts of the world and have found in every instance there is a perfect correspondence between the conformation of the healthy skull of an individual
and his known characteristics.’

If you had a big bump in your cranium just behind your left ear it meant you were brave, a big bump below and to the right meant you were a sex addict – my twenty-first-century
terminology, not Mr Fowler’s.

It’s a joke now, when you think about it, but Jack liked his ceramic head enough to put it on his windowsill.

Anyway, we stepped through the chaos and sank on to the bed under the eyeless socket of Fowler’s head and I knew I was in the best possible place to escape from the so-called real world
– here, in Jack’s arms. We held each other for a while and let the world melt away, getting physically close and allowing me to forget the taunting messages, the creepy feeling that
someone was breaking into my room and watching my every move.

Have I said recently that Jack’s smile lights up the room? I guess so. But I haven’t mentioned his abs or his sculpted torso or those perfect tennis-player’s quad muscles just
above the knee. Well, I admired them all again as he stroked my cheek, cupped my chin between his hands and softly kissed my lips.

But when the kissing stopped Jack lay on his back, arms behind his head, looking thoughtful.

I turned on to my side. ‘So?’ I asked.

‘So?’

‘What are you thinking?’

Now here’s a rule I’ve learned since then and it deserves upper case initial letters – Never Ask a Guy What He’s Thinking. It’ll end badly, believe me.

‘Nothing,’ he said, without giving me eye contact.

‘Yes – you’ve got something on your mind.’

He shook his head. ‘It’s nothing. Forget it.’

‘Have I done something wrong?’

Retrospective rule number two – Never Invite Blame. It’ll end even worse.

‘Honestly, Alyssa, I don’t want to talk about it.’

I guess I fell into a small panic at the idea that Jack was hiding a problem from me so I went on digging the hole. ‘Something I
said
?’ I asked.

Jack sat up and propped a pillow behind his back. ‘No – if you really want to know, it’s something Hooper told me after the match.’

‘What?’

‘He said you found out who texted the hearts message.’

Thanks for nothing, Hooper! ‘It was Marco,’ I muttered. ‘I recognized his number on Will’s phone.’

‘Yeah – Hooper said,’ Jack interrupted. ‘So when did you plan on telling me?’

‘I didn’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because it’s not important.’ I tried to sound calm, but inside I was flailing in deep water, far from shore like a woman who can’t swim. ‘Not waving but
drowning’ – as Stevie Smith once wrote. She was a poet-contemporary of my own lion aunt, Lady Caroline Stephens, code breaker at Bletchley during the Second World War. Stevie admitted
in the poem that she was too far out all her life, not waving but drowning.

‘Not important when Marco Conti sends you a loved-up text?’ Jack countered.

‘OK, then – it matters. But I didn’t tell you because I thought it would upset you. And I was right – it has.’ By this time I was swinging my legs over the side of
the bed, struggling into my clothes.

Jack did the same. ‘I wouldn’t have kept it secret if it was the other way round – I’d have come clean,’ he insisted.

‘Why are we fighting over this?’ I wanted to know.

‘Because you asked me what I was thinking and I told you.’

‘And you should be pleased, not angry.’

‘How do you work that out?’

‘Because now we don’t have to worry about the red hearts being one of the clues, part of the trail set by the killer,’ I explained. ‘It’s just Marco being stupid.
Now, can we stop arguing?’

‘Yes, if you swear here and now that you didn’t do anything to encourage Conti to send that text.’

In Stevie Smith metaphorical terms I was back on dry land, striding out of the water and, hands on hips, standing up for myself. ‘Jack, wait – did I just hear that properly?
You’re suggesting that I led Marco on?’

‘I didn’t say that,’ he answered sullenly.

‘You implied it. I can’t believe it would even enter your head.’ I was standing up and fighting back, ready to walk away. ‘Let me spell it out – Marco sent a stupid
message. I deleted it.’

Picture it – my bare feet shoved into Uggs, jacket zipped, door slammed behind me. End of episode where Alyssa loses it with Jack and immediately regrets it.

By the time I’d crossed the quad with its shitty little heaps of dirty, melting snow and climbed the stairs to my room I felt hollow, as if all my insides had been gouged
out of my body. I ran down the long corridor, past Zara and Connie’s open door, ignoring Eugenie as she came out of her room and flinging open the door to Room twenty-seven.

Jack and I had argued over nothing – I needed to bury my head under my pillow and not talk to anyone until my innards were back in place and I was calm again, which might be several days,
the way I was feeling right then.

Eugenie must have realized something was wrong because she followed me into the room. ‘Alyssa, are you OK?’

‘No!’ I groaned, curled up on my bed in foetal position.

‘Don’t tell me – you and Jack are over.’

I sat right back up in shock. ‘No. What makes you think that?’

‘I saw your face – you looked tragic. That can only mean you two had a terminal fight.’

‘Not terminal,’ I protested weakly.

‘But a fight?’

Nodding, I made the effort to clear the mess on Galina’s empty bed and create room for Eugenie to sit down. ‘Jack’s jealous of Marco.’

‘You’re kidding,’ Eugenie gasped. ‘What about Marco and Charlie? Aren’t they an item?’

‘Don’t ask me. Anyway, Jack sees Marco as a threat.’

‘As any guy would,’ she acknowledged. ‘But don’t worry – it’s good that Jack’s jealous.’

‘It doesn’t feel good.’

‘Not right now, I agree. But it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work it out – jealousy basically means that he cares.’