Kisses and Lies (4 page)

I turn to watch Taylor slipping through the crowd. She bends down, as if she’s dropped something, and then she’s simply gone, disappeared. Though she’s big-shouldered and packed with muscle, Taylor moves surprisingly smoothly, and there doesn’t seem to be a ripple in the crowd around where she ducked down.

Meanwhile, Plum is still giving the table-dancing everything she has, wiggling and shaking, her long hair flying from side to side as she tosses her head around in a way that I’m sure would make me want to puke my guts out if I had a few colored martinis inside me. Her skinny legs flash up and down, and when she does that squatting move again, which makes all the boys whoop, I’m pretty sure that everyone in front of her is definitely, as promised, seeing her knickers. I don’t get why it’s sexy to look like you’re about to go to the loo—even her face is all twisted up like she’s constipated—but clearly there’s a lot about being sexy I’m just not aware of, because it’s going down fantastically with the crowd.

Plum’s halfway through popping out her bum again when it happens. Up till now, the situation’s been fairly contained: Plum’s lot are crowding round the table to watch her, people are looking up from the pleb section to see what’s going on, but no one else seems that bothered—though I do notice the bouncers guarding the VIP area are looking over at the booth and talking into their headsets.

Then it all goes to hell in a handbasket.

It looks like the table’s tipping under Plum’s feet. She falters. The expression on her face changes from constipated to alarmed. She wobbles, and then she sits down heavily on the table, her legs shooting up in the air. The table tilts drastically. The drinks on it go flying, and everyone screams and jumps back.

Oh my God, what if Taylor’s underneath it? Forget getting caught, she could be badly hurt! I’m on my feet, running toward the table, all concerns about getting spotted by Plum forgotten in my concern for Taylor. As I push into the crowd I see Nadia right by the table, her hands outstretched. It looks like she’s trying to steady it. Ross is reaching out to help Plum, who’s trying to stand up, but just then the table does a huge heave, and her heels slip on the surface, probably from all the spilled sticky alcohol. She does a spectacular half spin, her arms flailing, looking like nothing so much as a figure skater on drugs. Despite the gravity of Taylor’s situation, I start giggling—I can’t help it—and someone next to me starts giggling too, and swiftly the entire group is howling with laughter.

Ross has grabbed Plum by one arm and is hauling her off the table. She slips and spins around as he grabs her, and her feet kick the air. People start screaming and ducking as her long pointy heels whip scarily close to them. I duck down too, partly not to get a heel in my face (I notice that Plum is wearing ankle boots like mine, which goes to show how spot-on the salesgirl at the boutique was in advising me to buy them), and partly to see if I can spot Taylor. It’s such a free-for-all by now, though, that there are so many bodies down here with me I can’t see anything at all. I try to crawl, but someone bumps into me from behind and I get stuck.

A deep voice is booming above the table and suddenly there’s a wave of shoving and pushing. Panicky, I manage to get my feet under me and stand up, scared I’m going to get trampled, and as I come up level with the table again I see several bouncers, head and shoulders taller than everyone else, their big black-clad arms reaching out to clear the area. One of them is yelling:

“Everyone back up! Back up right now!”

I still haven’t seen Taylor, which is making me frantic for her safety. I try to slip under the arm of the bouncer in front of me, but he catches me and pushes me back roughly. And just then, on the other side of the area they’re trying to clear, half hidden behind the burly shoulder of another bouncer, I see a shock of blond hair, ruffled up messily. Below it is a pink and white face, its eyes round with shock, its mouth open ditto, and as its eyes meet mine, its lips move and it mouths “Scarlett?”

Oh God. It’s Simon. Simon, who had a crush on me and got me invited to that fateful party where my life went completely off the safe and sensible rails on which it had been running up till that point. Simon, who tried to chat me up at the party, but was sent packing by Dan. Simon, who’s still calling “Scarlett!” at me and struggling to get past the bouncer who’s holding him back, which would be funny if the situation weren’t so dire, because it’s like watching a Chihuahua trying to fight a rottweiler.

My only hope is to get out of here right now and pray that Simon thinks he made a mistake in recognizing me. At least I’ve had the presence of mind not to acknowledge him in any way. I slip back till I’m completely concealed behind the huge bulk of the bouncer beside me, and then I just keep going, retracing my steps, down the stairs and out of the VIP area. At the back of the room, I turn to get a last look at the chaos still raging up on the dais. One of the bouncers has grabbed Plum and is frog-marching her down the steps.

I know I should get the hell out of here, but I can’t resist waiting for a moment to see what happens next.

“No dancing on tables!” the bouncer’s yelling at Plum. “House rules! No dancing on tables!”

“Don’t you know who I am?” Plum screams in fury.

“You could be Princess Beatrice and you still couldn’t dance on the table!” the bouncer booms back at her. “Now settle down, or you’ll be barred for life!”

Ross runs down the steps and starts saying something to the bouncer. I see him reach into his jacket pocket and I assume he’s going for his wallet, trying to bribe him so he won’t bar Plum. Reluctantly, I turn away. I still can’t see Taylor up in the VIP area, so I duck into a side room and pull out my phone, thumbing out a frantic text:

U OK?!

No immediate answer. I wait for what seems like ages. By now, everyone’s heard that there’s been a riot in the VIP area, and people flood toward the archway that leads into it till a couple of bouncers appear and block the way. A few people emerge, but not Taylor. I’m on tenterhooks by now, all kinds of scenarios frantically running through my head: she’s been injured, she’s trapped under the table, she’s been caught going through Plum’s bag and hauled off by the bouncers, who are calling the police. My heart is pounding madly, my phone sweaty in my hand. It feels like hours before my phone finally buzzes with a message, and I stab so urgently at the button to see it that I miss, hit the wrong one, and it takes me ages to get back to the text menu and finally see:

MEET ME OUT BACK

Oh, thank God. I tear through the crowd, which is hard because everyone’s pouring the other way, but I make it through by dint of much shoving and pushing and I run up the stairs and out and duck under the velvet rope and stand there for a minute, not knowing which way to go, till I have a brainwave and pant to the doorman:

“Where’s the back exit?”

He jerks his head to the right. I take off, running as well as I can in these heels, and just as I turn the corner of the building someone grabs me and I yelp, spinning round, and Taylor’s voice says:

“Run!” We both shoot back the way we came, to the front of the club, where Taylor—who’s faster than me, because she’s not wearing heels—makes for a taxi that’s just dropped off a group of partygoers. She grabs the door they’ve just slammed and hauls it open again even before the driver’s had time to switch on the orange For Hire light.

We slump on the seat, gasping for breath.

“The bouncers started putting everyone out the back,” Taylor pants. “I suddenly realized Plum might see you—”

“Where to, ladies?” the taxi driver interrupts, turning round to look at us through the opening in the glass. He’s quite old, with silver hair and a jolly face. “On to your next party?”

“No, we’re done for the evening,” Taylor says.

“Oh, what a shame,” he says, making a tut-tutting sound. “Two pretty ladies like you should be dancing till dawn.”

I giggle, mostly at Taylor’s appalled expression at being called a pretty lady. Fishing in my bag, I pull out the slip of paper on which I’ve written Lizzie’s address, and read it out to him.

“All righty,” he says, setting the cab in motion. “Home, James, and don’t spare the horses!”

I look at Taylor.

“Did it go okay?”

“Yes and no,” Taylor says, still keeping her voice low. “I got the phone, I deleted the video, that’s all done—but, there’s a situation with the handbags.”

“What?”

Taylor sighs.

“Limited edition, my ass. There were two bags exactly the same under that table,” she says. “When Nadia saw Dan’s EpiPen in Plum’s bag, she could’ve made a mistake. It might not have been Plum’s bag after all.”

“Two?” I’m so incredulous I can barely get the word out.

Taylor nods grimly.

“Oh my God!” I exclaim. “That means—”

“Yeah.” Taylor’s had more time to think this through than I have. “It might have been someone else besides Plum who took Dan’s EpiPen.”

I stare at her, my heart sinking.

“This is awful,” I say.

Taylor nods glumly. I slump back into the corner of the taxi. This is so miserable. Twenty seconds ago, I was flying. Operation VPD had gone fantastically: we were well on course to find out everything that Nadia had to tell us, getting closer to solving the mystery of Dan’s murder. And now, it feels like we’re back to square one.

Plus, it might not even be Plum who killed Dan. I realize I was really hoping to find out that Plum was guilty. Plum’s such a bitch; it would make complete sense for her to be a killer. She even had a motive—she was so keen on Dan she told people she was his girlfriend, which totally wasn’t true. If she was jealous of his flirting, that could have made her want to kill him  .  .  . couldn’t it?

But now that I think it over, I have to admit, reluctantly, that maybe it isn’t that strong a motive. And the way Dan was killed was so sneaky. Poisoning the crisps with peanut oil, positioning them in front of him  .  .  . I don’t see Plum carrying out a plan that cunning. She’d be much more likely to stab someone in a fit of temper, or push them off a cliff, and then claim it was their fault for provoking her.

Everything I thought I knew for sure has just dissolved. I slump further into the corner of the taxi seat, curling up in a ball. We’re no closer to solving Dan’s murder than we were at the start of the evening. All this for nothing. I’m so disappointed I could burst into tears.

“ARE YOU IN THE POOL?”

“Cannonball!” Taylor yells, and hurls herself into the air, arms wrapped around her knees. The next second there’s a gigantic splash that temporarily blinds me. Crossly wiping my eyes and blinking, I see water pouring over the edge of the pool and running into the channel cut into the marble drainage surround. Shock waves from the impact lap around me; it feels as if Taylor’s displaced half the water in the swimming pool.

I’m not in the mood for cannonballs. To be honest, Taylor’s obsession with them is annoying me. I’m still pretty depressed about the fact that I thought I was getting close to solving Dan’s murder, and now I’m back to square one again. It’s okay for Taylor, because it isn’t personal to her. But this means everything in the world to me, and I’ve just been dealt a crushing blow. I really think Taylor could be a bit more sympathetic. Instead, she isn’t even noticing that I’m paddling around in the shallow end, dispirited and listless. She’s hauling herself out of the water again for another cannonball instead. I turn away so I don’t get a faceful of water this time.

“Cannonball!” she yells again, just before another half-ton of water shoots out of the pool in her wake.

I suppose it’s not her fault that investigating Dan’s death just isn’t as important to her as it is to me. For Taylor it’s something to do to relieve the crushing boredom of life at Wakefield Hall Maximum Security Prison, and, of course, a great opportunity to train up in those PI skills she wants to improve. And sometimes she forgets that to me, this is much more than just a way to kill time. I mop the spray from her impact out of my hair and reflect that, in the end, I’m the only person I can truly rely on a hundred percent. That’s only normal, I suppose. We’re all alone in the end.

But I hate acknowledging it.

Suddenly, watching Taylor cavort around in the deep end, a deep rush of loneliness washes over me. Am I over-relying on her? Maybe I am, if the fact that she’s not focusing on this disappointment as much as I am is upsetting me this much. Perhaps I need to lean less on Taylor and stand more on my own two feet. I was so happy to make friends with her because when I met her my old friends had dumped me (my own fault, so I shouldn’t really complain). Taylor doesn’t have anyone else either: she’s as much an outsider at Wakefield Hall as I am. After some initial mistrust and hostility, it’s amazing how quickly we’ve bonded. But have I rushed things too much? Do I need to get more balance in my life and not assume that Taylor will always be there for me?

Ugh, too many questions, and all of them miserable. I dive underwater to shake them off, swimming slowly along the bottom of the shallow end, wishing I could stay down here forever and never have to come up to face the problems on the surface.

Believe it or not, we’re in the basement of Lizzie’s house. Which, besides the heated swimming pool, has a private cinema, game room, and, for all I know, a bowling alley and tennis court as well. When we realized we would have to stay in London tonight—because we couldn’t go out late to a club Saturday night and get back to school at two in the morning—Lizzie offered to put us up. It took us both by surprise, as, to be honest, we haven’t really been that nice to her. But she was quite excited by the idea.

“Lizzie doesn’t really have any friends, does she?” Taylor said earlier. “When I asked Mademoiselle Fournier if I could stay over at Lizzie’s tonight, she sounded happier that Lizzie had someone to stay with than that I had someone to visit.”

“Honestly, I could have told my aunt Gwen I was staying with a pedophile I met when he picked me up in the knickers section of Marks and Spencer’s, and she wouldn’t have batted an eyelid,” I said sourly.

“Yeah, but your aunt Gwen hates you,” Taylor pointed out with brutal frankness.

“She doesn’t think much of Lizzie, either. She sniffed when I said who I was staying with. And when I said she was a friend of ours, I know she didn’t believe me.”

Taylor shrugged. “Well, maybe we’re the closest she’s got.”

“That’s pretty sad. We should be nicer to her.”

Taylor pretended to gag, but beneath that tough exterior is a slightly—slightly—softer heart, and she was actually quite polite to Lizzie this afternoon as Lizzie proudly showed us to our rooms. (Yup, we have one each, and they’re huge, and they’re both en suite. All this in Chelsea, the most expensive area in the whole of London. Lizzie’s dad clearly has more money than God.)

We didn’t realize there was a swimming pool, though. Lizzie was too absorbed in showing us her built-in handbag and shoe cupboards, plus her wet room and Jacuzzi. We found that out from Lucia, the Romanian live-in housekeeper, who let us in when we got back from the club.

“You want something to eat?” she asked, stone-faced, when we’d finished apologizing for making her get up to let us in. (“Is okay. Is my job. Miss Lizzie say perhaps you not come back with her.”)

“No, that’s fine,” I said wistfully, kicking Taylor, who always wants something to eat. But I knew if we said yes, Lucia would have to get it for us, and she had clearly got out of bed to let us in—she was in her dressing gown and slippers, and her eyes were all blurry with sleep.

“You have drink?” Lucia asked. “Watch film in cinema? Swim?”

“I’m sorry,” I said blankly, “I must have misheard you, but I thought you said  .  .  .”

Five minutes later the lift doors pinged open, and Lucia led us out and down a beautifully tiled corridor. She pushed open a door. We gasped.

“Hot towels there. Swimming clothes there. Sauna there,” she pointed, though we were too mesmerized by the delicate cloud of steam rising off the bright blue water of the swimming pool to really focus on her directions. “Toilet also.” She indicated the far side of the pool, which is set in pale pink–tinged marble. “Behind the pillars.” Those were marble too, of course.

“Thank you so much,” Taylor said fervently.

“No problem.” Lucia actually cracked a tiny smile. “You good girls. Not drunk. I not smell drink when you talk.”

“Um, thank you,” I said, profoundly grateful we hadn’t had a cocktail in Coco Rouge.

Lucia turned to leave.

“You drink water now,” she said over her shoulder. “For the sauna.”

“Yes, Lucia,” we chorused.

I surface from my underwater swim, wishing my aunt Gwen were more like Lucia. I don’t mind a bit of tough love. And Lucia was nicer to me than Aunt Gwen’s been my whole life.

“Show me how you spin round so fast in that somersault you do on the trampoline,” Taylor calls, pulling herself out of the pool with one smooth flex of her powerful upper body.

“I’m not really feeling like it,” I mumble, treading water.

“Oh, come on, Scarlett!” Taylor puts her hands on her hips. “I know tonight was disappointing, but we’re in a private swimming pool—that’s got to cheer you up a bit!”

Now I feel like I’m being a misery guts, and dragging Taylor down with me. Guiltily, I instruct her:

“You need to get into the tuck as fast as you can. Snap your arms down like you’re throwing a ball, and by the time they come down, your knees should be tucked tight into your chest.”

“Throwing a ball,” Taylor says, raising her arms above her head and trying it out. “Okay, here I go!”

She runs toward the edge of the pool, jumps up, tucks up, and in that precise moment a voice booms out from nowhere, bouncing round the tiles and marble so loudly that Taylor’s tuck somersault goes completely haywire.

“Are you in the pool?” the voice says.

Taylor throws out her arms wide, I don’t know why, but it completely stops her spin, and she lands facedown in the pool, her arms splayed wide and her knees still tucked up to her chest. I laugh so hard I double up. The expression of total shock when she comes up again makes me laugh even harder. And I don’t even feel bad about laughing at her. After all, not a minute ago she was lecturing me about needing to cheer up.

“Are you in the pool?”

“Aaaah!” Taylor gasps for breath, coughing out water. To my shame, this is somehow even more funny than the belly flop. Maybe it’s because I’ve never seen Taylor be anything but in complete physical control of herself.

“Are you in the pool?” the voice asks again.

“Who the hell are you?!” Taylor shouts back. Her face is bright red: she’s literally livid.

“It’s Lizzie!”

“Stop screaming at us!” Taylor yells.

“Sorry, it’s the intercom! It makes everything sound really loud! I’m coming down!”

Lizzie bursts through the door a few minutes later, all excited. I bet Lucia would have smelled drink on her breath.

“Hey!” she says, beaming. “Are you enjoying the pool? Isn’t it great? And what about that scene in the club! Wasn’t it crazy? Plum had a complete meltdown! I was scared, but it was really exciting, too! And how did your top-secret mission go? Did you find everything out?”

“Not really,” I say, sighing. “It turned out to be much more complicated than we realized.”

“Oh, that’s a shame!” Lizzie actually looks disappointed on our behalf. “I know, why don’t I make some popcorn? And we can have cocoa with mint Baileys and marshmallows in it? That’s my favorite!” She claps her hands in glee, like a little girl. “I’ll go and start the popcorn machine. Meet you in my living room. Take the lift to the third floor and turn left, all the way down the corridor. Ooh, this is going to be so much fun!”

“I never thought these words would come out of my mouth,” Taylor says as the door bangs shut behind Lizzie, “but I gotta say, sometimes being Lizzie’s friend seems like a really good deal.”

Naturally, the pool changing room is well stocked with fluffy toweling robes and assorted spa-type slippers, so ten minutes later we’re curled up in front of a roaring fire in Lizzie’s sitting room, mugs of hot, minty, and slightly alcoholic cocoa in our hands, a bowl of popcorn between us, and the very comforting popping sound of another batch cooking up in the machine. This is the life.

Or it would be, if I weren’t feeling, very strongly, that tight little knot inside my stomach, which is the perpetual reminder I have of Dan’s death. That knot’s always with me, but sometimes I don’t feel it as much as others. Right now, it’s like a stone in my stomach, hard and cold, because I’m so disappointed about tonight.

But also, I’m really enjoying this coziness, and my cocoa is so delicious it’s competing with the tight knot for attention. It’s weird feeling torn like this.

That’s another reason I’m so keen to solve Dan’s murder. I want to be able to feel just one feeling at a time. I want to get rid of the stone in my stomach.

“I feel like we’re in a ski resort in Colorado,” Taylor comments, blowing on her drink.

“It’s cozy, isn’t it?” Lizzie beams. “Sometimes I make my cocoa and take it into the Jacuzzi to watch TV. That’s lovely too, though you can’t see the fire. So what was the problem tonight?” she continues, so happy to feel she’s at the center of something that her eyes are shining like headlights.

Here’s the thing: we can’t tell Lizzie anything important, as she’ll just babble it to everyone she knows in an effort to show off how she’s in our confidence. She knows, of course, that something’s going on between us and Nadia, something secret and complicated and important. Still, everyone involved has kept her completely in the dark. But Taylor and I had a quick brainstorm downstairs, and we decided that there was one issue on which Lizzie might actually be helpful. It’s her special subject, after all.

I sigh. “It sounds silly,” I say, “but Nadia wanted our help. You see, there’s a boy she likes, and she thinks he likes her. Only she’s not sure. And a few nights ago, they were out at a club, and she was sitting with Plum’s handbag next to her—”

“The Marc Jacobs limited edition!” Lizzie interrupts excitedly, eager to show off that she knows Plum’s wardrobe.

“Exactly. And she thinks this boy thought it was her bag—Nadia’s, that is—and put in a note for her.”

This part of the story is very weak indeed. I mean, who leaves notes nowadays? I keep talking quickly before Lizzie starts to realize it doesn’t quite make sense.

“Only the thing is, it wasn’t Plum’s bag after all—she got confused, ’cause quite a few girls have the same bag, apparently, but she didn’t realize. So she really wants to find out who’s got the same bag and see if any of them got a note in it that wasn’t meant for them.”

I look dubiously at Lizzie: is she actually falling for this? I didn’t have time to come up with a better story. Luckily, the cocktails at Coco Rouge and the Baileys have dissolved any shred of common sense she might have possessed.

“That’s so romantic!” she breathes. “And now he doesn’t know that she didn’t get the note, so he might think she doesn’t like him.  .  .  . It’s sort of like Romeo and Juliet, isn’t it?”

“Um, yeah,” I say, tilting my head to one side and trying to make my eyes go misty. This also means I avoid catching Taylor’s eye, which I don’t think will be a good idea if I want to keep being convincing. I leave it a moment, then say thoughtfully:

“I don’t suppose you have any idea who else has that bag, do you?”

Lizzie almost jumps up and down in glee, her Baileys cocoa slopping dangerously near the edge of her mug.

“Of course I do!” she says excitedly. “Sophia has one! She only got it last month, her sister gave it to her because she was bored with it, but Sophia really likes it, she takes it everywhere, even if it doesn’t really go with what she’s wearing.  .  .  .”