Kisses and Lies (11 page)

DOUBLE TAKE

Whistles blow. People shout and slam doors. I almost expect to see puffs of steam rolling down the platform. There’s something about a long train journey that makes me think of a scene from a film—the train pulling out of the station, a journey beginning that may change your life. I should be hanging out the window, waving goodbye to someone with a handkerchief in my hand. But there’s no one on the platform to see me off, because I told Lizzie to go, after her fussing round my compartment nearly drove me mad.

She thinks I’m going to stay with friends from St. Tabby’s that my grandmother doesn’t approve of, which is why I had to use her as cover. I hinted that there was a boy involved, which of course got her sentimental heart beating extrafast, and naturally explained why I needed to organize a clandestine stay in Scotland behind my grandmother’s back. I must say, I haven’t found a lie yet that Lizzie won’t swallow.

I wish Taylor were waving me goodbye. Or, even better, sitting in a bunk above mine. But I doubt Taylor will even hear my name mentioned at the moment without spitting.

I do seem to have a special gift for alienating my friends.

The train jerks into motion. I know it isn’t pistons and steam engines and men shoveling coal into open fires anymore, but it feels like it for a moment, as the carriage rattles and creaks beneath my feet. I sit down on the berth and watch through the window as the Caledonian Lowland Express slowly pulls out of Euston, London’s lights sparkling orange and white against the dark midnight sky.

“Tickets please!”

I get up and struggle momentarily with the catch of my compartment door, finally managing to open it. A conductor stands there, the strap of his ticket machine straining across his stomach. He looks at my ticket and says, “Traveling alone?”

I nod. He makes a harrumphing sound. I don’t know what it means.

“Cooked breakfast from six for first-class passengers in the lounge car,” he says. “If you want something to eat now, you’d better make tracks for the buffet in ten minutes or so. We’re going to run out of sandwiches, I can tell you that for nothing.”

“I had dinner already,” I say.

He harrumphs again. “Sensible,” he says. “Couple of stops before Glasgow, but nothing to worry about. I’ll give you a knock at seven, before we get in. Make sure you’re all right.”

I manage a smile at him by way of thanks. He heaves up his ticket machine, which has slipped below his potbelly, and waddles on down the corridor. I close my door and go back inside the compartment. The bed is all made up; my suitcase is stowed away. I should put on my pajamas, brush my teeth in the basin, and go to sleep. But I’m not tired. I sit back down and stare out of the window again. We’re heading north out of London, the concentration of central-city lights already fading. We’ve got all of England’s backbone, and some of Scotland’s, to travel up till we get to Glasgow the next morning.

I’m mad to be doing this. I’m mad to be going at all, of course, but in the more narrow scale of things, I’m mad to be going up to Ayr on the night sleeper—which means two trains, because there’s a change at Glasgow station at seven in the morning, when I’ll be bleary-eyed with sleep. I could have flown to Prestwick airport and got a taxi from there to Castle Airlie: that’s what Mrs. McAndrew suggested.

But I couldn’t face that. It would be such a short flight—I’d be there in an hour. Somehow, I needed more time for the journey, more time to acclimate to the terrifying situation I’m getting myself into. When I found the overnight sleeper, it seemed perfect. Lizzie said it would be romantic. But then, Lizzie’s an idiot. How can it be romantic, when I’m by myself in a single berth?

At least I can afford a first-class compartment, so I don’t have to share. I barely use my trust fund, and anyway, my grandmother’s secretary, who gets the bills for my emergency credit card, never raises a fuss about my spending. Sometimes I wonder how high I could go before she would.

I reach for my phone. But then I remember what the time is. I want to ring Taylor, but it’s too late, and I don’t know if she’d talk to me anyway.

I tried to talk to her after our row, but she didn’t acknowledge my existence. I rang her and e-mailed her in an effort to find another way through, but she blanked me out. And then, for the next couple of days, I was overwhelmed with organizing myself for the trip to Castle Airlie, working out the train up to Ayr, wondering what to bring. I thought I might ring Taylor once I was there, to tell her how it was going, ask her for advice.  .  .  .

But I’d really like to ring her now. I feel very alone suddenly, rocking gently from side to side in this train compartment, traveling all the way up to Scotland by myself.

I pull off my jeans and slide under the covers, not bothering to put on my pajamas. I can’t deal with being naked right now, not even for the brief time it would take me to strip off while I’m changing. I don’t even brush my teeth. I turn off the light and lie there in the hard uncomfortable bunk, thinking about what I’m going to face tomorrow morning.

There is Callum McAndrew, Dan’s brother, who just might be responsible for Dan’s death. That’s an awful thought, but someone did murder Dan, and the trail seems to lead back to his family. Lucy, Callum’s girlfriend, was at the party—and Nadia saw Dan’s EpiPen in what might well have been Lucy’s handbag. It would have been pretty easy for Lucy to get Dan’s EpiPen from him. All you’d have to do would just be to ask him if you could look at it for a minute, just out of curiosity, and then create a small diversion and “forget” to give it back. I checked out Lucy’s online profile again, and discovered she lives in Ayrshire too, so I’m hoping she’ll be around a bit hanging out with Callum while I’m there.

Even though I have a couple of new suspects, the motive is still unclear. Why would anyone have wanted to kill Dan? When I thought it was Plum who had killed him, her motive was incredibly weak, and to be honest, the more I think about it, the less I see Plum as a sneaky murderess. Plum never does anything without an audience. It would be completely out of character for her to secretly plot and execute such a clever plan to kill someone and then never breathe a word about it. Like I said before, if Plum was going to commit a murder, she’d stab someone or push them off a building in front of a crowd of people and then announce loudly that it was all their fault in the first place.

And Nadia’s sure Plum never went behind the bar.

It’s much too much of a coincidence to think that the person who had Dan’s EpiPen in her handbag isn’t the person who killed him. This was a well-orchestrated, carefully worked-out plan. So, with Plum looking increasingly unlikely as a suspect, Lucy Raleigh, with her connection to Callum, is the best possibility I have.

My brain is racing so much with all this speculation that I’m sure I won’t be able to fall asleep. I close my eyes, and immediately the rocking motion of the train, plus the exhaustion and stress of the last few days, tip me over and I fall into sleep as easily as turning off the night-light.

I wake up in a panic a few hours later, because the train is grinding and shifting and the noises have given me an awful nightmare. Then I remember that we stop at a station called Carstairs, where the Lowland Express splits into two directions, one for Edinburgh, one for Glasgow. Once I remember, I’m reassured that I haven’t overslept completely and ended up in some railway siding in the Highlands.

Although I had wanted it this way, it’s no fun doing this on my own. I have to look after myself the whole time, instead of having someone else with me to help me and cheer me up. Since I fall asleep again on that self-pitying thought, I toss and turn restlessly. I’m more than ready to get up at six and stumble down the corridor to the dining car. It’s actually quite nice and old-fashioned and I think the waiter feels a bit sorry for me, because he keeps asking me if I want anything else, topping up my coffee and juice, and giving me extra bacon rolls and croissants. Nerves and greed make me eat the lot. At the end he slips me three minipackets of shortbread, saying, “In case you get hungry later, then!” with a wink.

By then I’m so buzzed on a potent cocktail of coffee, fried pig meat, sugar, and complex carbohydrates that I cope with the arrival at Glasgow and the change to the train for Ayr without much panic. Especially as the ticket collector makes sure that I know which platform I’m going to. Everyone is sort of taking care of me now, which is nice, and it makes me feel a bit less lonely than I did at five o’clock this morning. But as the little local train chugs down toward Ayr, stopping every five minutes at another little local station, any thoughts of loneliness fade as a much more pressing emotion floods in.

Fear.

What on earth have I done? What have I let myself in for? All the McAndrews are going to hate me, and I wouldn’t blame them if they did. Besides, as an extra incentive to get the McAndrews to meet me, I’ve told Mrs. McAndrew that I have something of Dan’s I wanted to give back, which was a total lie. I’m gambling that I can sneak into Dan’s room and fish something out to give her, but what if that doesn’t come off? What if Dan’s room has been cleaned out, or what if someone catches me at it? Should I just pretend I left it at home? But then what should I say it was?

By nine o’clock I’m in such a state of nerves that I seriously consider not getting off the train at all, just sitting still till we get to wherever it terminates and working out how to get back to London from there as quickly as possible.

“The next stop is Ayr,” the crackly loudspeaker says. “Next stop Ayr. Please take all your belongings with you when leaving the train.”

In my heightened state of nerves, it sounds like it’s saying “Abandon hope all you who are prepared to die,” and my hands are actually shaking as I pull down my suitcase from the overhead rack.

The train chugs into Ayr station and pulls, groaning, to a halt. The doors take so long to open that I find myself hoping there’s a malfunction, they won’t open at all, and we’ll just have to go on to the next stop.

But then, with a tired old whoosh, they finally slide open and I lug my suitcase out onto the platform, pull up the handle, and tug it in the direction everyone else is going, toward the exit, my heart beating so fast and heavy it’s almost unbalancing me. Mrs. McAndrew said someone would come to meet me at the station, but she didn’t say who. Maybe he or she will be holding a sign that has KISS OF DEATH GIRL written on it. Wouldn’t that be priceless?

However, when I walk out through the gate, I see my escort straightaway, but I do a double take because I don’t actually believe what I’m seeing. He’s leaning against a car, hands in his jeans pockets. He’s tall, with wide shoulders and long legs, wearing an old cable-knit sweater which was once probably a cream color and now is so faded it’s almost colorless. His jeans are equally old and battered, and his work boots are mud-stained. His dark brown hair’s close-cropped, and his eyes are gray, the color of lake water, fringed with dark lashes so thick that if he were a girl, you’d think he was wearing mascara. His dark brows are pulled down, and his jaw is set and sullen, his shoulders hunched.

He didn’t want to come, I can tell that immediately.

That observation pops into my head a split second before I feel my legs begin to buckle under me. My head’s spinning. I can’t breathe. Someone behind me exclaims as I start collapsing, but I can’t make out what they’re saying.

All I can see is Dan. Dan McAndrew, the boy who died last summer after I kissed him.

Dan McAndrew’s ghost is leaning against that car, looking as if he would rather be anywhere but here.

And then my legs give way completely, and everything goes black, and I can’t see anything. Not even Dan’s ghost.

PART TWO: SCOTLAND

THE BEST THING THAT COULD HAVE HAPPENED

I’m lying in something so soft that this is how I imagine it would be to float on a cloud. Soft and yielding and very very deep. I feel miles down, coddled in layers and layers of fluffy cloud. My eyelids are so heavy it’s as if they have weights on them.

I can’t open my eyes, but I can hear voices. Loud voices, but not right next to me. Muffled somehow.

“I can’t believe no one told her!”

“I thought she would know—”

“How would she know?”

“She might have known—”

“Someone should have told her anyway, just to make sure—”

A third voice cuts in, much lower, but it silences the other two.

“Will you two stop squabbling!” it hisses. “You’re right in front of the puir wee girl’s room!”

Something creaks. It’s a door opening. I hear footsteps, and I force my eyelids open, blinking because it’s bright. I see little flowers, lots and lots of little blurred blue flowers on a white background. The flowers come into focus, filling my vision. I try to turn my head and find that I can, and as I do the flowers slide sideways and I see a room. Big window with heavy blue curtains drawn back, wooden floors, a pale blue rug by the bed.

The footsteps reach me. It’s a woman in a corduroy skirt and a green jumper. The bed must be very high, because I can see a lot of her body even though I can’t tilt my head yet.

“Oh good,” she says in a very comforting voice, “you’re awake. The doctor said to come in and check on you. She would have been worried if you were passed out much longer. You hit your head a wee bit when you fell, apparently.”

“Passed out?” I manage.

“Och yes, dear, you fainted. Right in the middle of Ayr station. Causing such a commotion, I can’t tell you. You puir wee thing!”

She sets something on the table by the bed.

“Do you feel you could sit up, hen?” she asks.

I nod. She leans forward and helps me, putting pillows behind my back so I’m propped up.

“That’s better, isn’t it? I brought you a nice cup of tea, do you think you could take some?”

“Yes, please.”

She reaches to the bedside table, picks up a little tray, and sets it on my lap. There’s a milky cup of tea in a big cup and saucer, and a plate of what looks like chocolate slices. I pick up the tea and drink it down so fast I surprise myself.

“Thirsty, aren’t you?” says the woman, smiling. “Eat something too. It’s millionaire’s shortbread, I made it myself. The doctor says you need to get some sugar down you. For the shock.”

Dutifully, I pick up a piece of chocolate slice and bite into it. There’s caramel under the chocolate, and shortbread under that. It’s delicious.

“Tasty, eh? Good girl. Tea and shortbread, there’s nothing like that for setting you up again when you’ve had a shock.”

Listening to her has been very calming, a soft gentle flow of words that I sense she doesn’t need me to respond to. But everything’s coming back to me now: the boy I saw just before I fainted. Dan, leaning on the car. I saw Dan’s ghost. The teacup rattles on the saucer—it’s a miracle I don’t drop it. I look at her in panic.

“I saw  .  .  . ,” I babble. “I saw  .  .  .”

“Och, hen, you saw puir Dan’s twin brother, didn’t you now? No one told you he had a twin, did they? That was Master Callum you saw at the station, not a ghost. That’s what you were thinking when you fainted, wasn’t it now?”

I put down the cup on the tray and burst into hysterical tears. The next thing I know, she’s taken the tray from me and is sitting on the bed, hugging me. I sob into her woolly shoulder, a great flood of sobs that I’m completely unable to control.

“Moira, is she all right?” says another woman.

“She’s just had the shock of her life, Mrs. McAndrew,” answers the woman who’s hugging me. Moira. “But now she knows it was Master Callum she saw, she’ll be doing much better. Won’t you, hen?”

I nod into her shoulder, which is completely damp by now.

“Scarlett?”

I raise my head and make an awkward drag across my eyes with the cuff of my own sweater. Mrs. McAndrew, Dan’s mother, is standing by the bed.

I remember her from the inquest: It would be impossible to forget her because her coloring’s so striking. She looks like she’s out of a fairy tale, not a real, flesh-and-blood person. She’s very thin, with white white skin and red red hair. Her eyes are slightly slanted and greenish. I remember Mr. McAndrew, too—he was big and dark, his features all dragged down and saggy from grief. I realize that Dan and Callum must take after him, at least physically, because he was tall with big shoulders, just like his sons.

Callum wasn’t there at the inquest, of course. I could scarcely have failed to notice him, could I?

Though Mrs. McAndrew’s face is drawn and weary, she’s looking at me with concern, I can tell.

“Scarlett, I’m Flora McAndrew,” she says, her Scottish accent much lighter than Moira’s burr. “I’m so sorry no one told you about Callum. I think we all assumed you knew already that Dan had a twin.  .  .  .”

I shake my head.

“What’s done is done,” says Moira, handing me a handkerchief. “Blow your nose, hen.”

“Are you feeling better?” Mrs. McAndrew asks as I honk into the hankie. “It must have been an awful shock, seeing Callum like that.”

“Yes, thank you,” I say, lowering the hankie.

She manages a sort of smile at me. “You had a long journey up here, you must want to wash and change. Why don’t we leave you alone for a little while? Moira’s unpacked for you and put away all your clothes. There’s a bathroom just next door, and you’ve got fresh towels on the dresser. Why don’t you have a shower, or whatever you want, and come downstairs when you’re ready?”

I realize that my scalp’s itchy and I’m probably a bit smelly. She’s absolutely right—I really need to wash.

“Thank you,” I say again.

Moira stands up and smiles at me. She has bright red hair, so bright it must be dyed, cut in a raggedy bob a bit like a doll. But from the lines on her face, she must be at least fifty or sixty. Oddly, the hair color suits her. She has very bright blue eyes, and they’re twinkling at me now. It’s a real smile, unlike Mrs. McAndrew’s, which is definitely forced.

I don’t blame Mrs. McAndrew for not being able to smile at me properly, I reflect as the two women leave the room, closing the door tactfully behind them. I don’t know if I’d be much good at smiling at the girl who might have killed my son, even if she didn’t mean to. But one very positive thing has come out of my fainting fit on seeing Dan’s twin brother. By complete chance, I’ve arrived at Castle Airlie as a victim, needing to be looked after. Someone who needs sympathy, rather than the mistrust I’d expect considering the circumstances.

I remember the voices I heard before Moira came in. Nobody realized I didn’t know Dan had an identical twin, so nobody thought to tell me. It wasn’t their fault, but it meant I got a terrible shock, and needed taking care of. So they’re starting off on the wrong foot with me—and that gives me a lot of extra leeway. I’m in a much better position to ask questions than I would be otherwise. As I climb out of bed and start pulling off my creased and rumpled and, yup, slightly smelly clothes, I realize that, weirdly enough, seeing Dan’s ghost is the best thing that could have happened to me.

I hope my clothes are okay. Both Moira and Mrs. McAndrew were wearing A-line skirts and sweaters, in an old-fashioned, we-live-in-the-country sort of style, and sensible chunky shoes. It’s actually the kind of thing I wear to lunch with my grandmother, but I didn’t bring any of those clothes here. I decided to put on a pair of jeans (dark blue, not black, because you’re not supposed to wear black in the country), a dark gray sweater, and a bright blue T-shirt that’s almost the same color as my eyes. And turquoise earrings, ditto. I think I look smart enough without being overdressed, but for all I know, I’ve got it completely wrong. It’s really hard to work out what to wear when you’re staying with people you don’t know that well. If you get it wrong, it’s so obvious that you don’t fit in, and then they’re never really that friendly with you for the rest of the time you spend there.

I cross my fingers that I’ve got it right.

But it may never be an issue, as I may fail to find a way downstairs and be marooned up here in this corridor forever. “Come downstairs when you’re ready.” It sounds so easy, doesn’t it? But I’ve been wandering along the corridor for ten minutes now, looking for a staircase, and I still haven’t found one. This place goes on forever. I thought I was about to find a way down when the corridor took a sharp left and became, for several meters, a sort of gallery, with small windows looking out over a rich marsh-green landscape outside. But at the end of the gallery, there’s nothing but another endless corridor hung with pictures, just like the one my room is on. There are doors on either side that I’m much too nervous to open.

I have to keep going, though. I shut my bedroom door behind me, and I’ll never recognize which one it is. I can’t go back even if I wanted to.

Downstairs, I can hear voices, but I can’t work out where they’re coming from. Still, I think I’m getting nearer. At the end of this corridor, it turns left again—that’s weird. I feel like I’m going in a circle. And then the perspective opens up unexpectedly to a huge landing. I’ve found the staircase, and it’s doubled. Two wide wings of stairs, carved from ancient oak, carpeted in a very faded pale blue and red pattern, swoop away from each other out over the great hall below, return to meet each other, and then join in one dramatic final descent to the hall.

This is a Scarlett O’Hara staircase. I’m not dressed for this. I should be wearing a huge crinoline skirt and carrying a fan. I pause at the top of the closer flight of stairs, getting up my nerve for the scary task of making this descent to meet the McAndrews, when a door below me slams and a boy’s voice yells:

“This is bullshit! She shouldn’t be here!”

I freeze.

“Callum, please  .  .  .” I hear hurried footsteps, a woman’s heels clicking on a wooden floor.

“I had to pick her up and put her in the car!” Callum McAndrew, Dan’s twin brother, yells. “I didn’t even want to talk to her. You shouldn’t have made me go and collect her from the station.”

“I thought it would be easier for you—you’d have a bit of time alone with her—”

“Well, you were wrong, Mum, weren’t you?” he says bitterly.

“Oh dear,” Mrs. McAndrew wails, “I hope I haven’t made a dreadful mistake! I thought it would give everybody closure to meet her and talk about Dan  .  .  . and she said she had something of his she wanted to give us back—”

“I don’t give a damn what she’s got of Dan’s!” Callum yells. “What could she have? She hardly knew him. And this whole closure thing’s ridiculous, Mum! You know we all think it’s ridiculous. Nobody wanted her here but you!”

“Your father thought—” Mrs. McAndrew starts weakly.

“Dad will go along with anything you say, Mum. You know that. Catriona and I always thought it was bollocks to invite her.”

I’m overwhelmed with the urge to run away and hide in my room for the next two days. The level of hostility Callum McAndrew has toward me is really intimidating. But then I think of my grandmother sitting behind that enormous desk, her spine as straight as if it were made from steel. My grandmother, who took over Wakefield Hall when my grandfather died, and single-handedly turned it into a school to stop it being sold out of the family. She’s never run from a fight in her entire life.

If I’ve inherited anything from her besides my Wakefield looks, hopefully it’s that courage. I have to start walking down the stairs; I might as well confront the worst as soon as possible. Slowly, reluctantly, I take one step down, and then another and another, my trainers making no sound on the carpet.

“Cal?”

Though this new voice is muffled, it’s a girl, definitely younger than Mrs. McAndrew. It must be the sister, Catriona.

I hear a door swing, and another set of footsteps. Craning over the edge of the balustrade, I see her crossing the enormous hall below me. It’s like a gigantic living room, with a fireplace at the far end that’s big enough to roast a whole horse in. The stone floor is partly covered here and there with carpets which would fill a normal room, but in this huge space, they look like small bedside rugs. There are groups of sofas, upholstered in velvet and big floral patterns, and lots of occasional tables holding silver candelabra and flower vases. The girl weaves her way around a couple of ancient-looking high-backed armchairs and I see her clearly: pretty, blond, slim, wearing jeans and a white sweater, her hair pulled back in a smooth ponytail. Although it’s standard country wear, her jeans are the latest cut and fit her perfectly, while her sweater, with its high ribbed waist and elegantly puffed shoulders, is obviously by some very expensive up-and-coming designer. She looks as if she’d smell of delicate, subtle perfume only available from a handful of sophisticated boutiques.

“He’s very upset, Lucy,” Mrs. McAndrew says rather unnecessarily.

My ears prick up. Lucy Raleigh, Callum’s girlfriend! Wow, it was definitely worth coming to Castle Airlie. In my first few minutes here, I’ve already found her. Relief rushes through me: this visit’s obviously going to be as painful as lying on a bed of nails, but it won’t be for nothing.