Kisses and Lies (5 page)

“Sophia Von und Zu Whatsit?”

“Yes, it’s funny, because you know how Plum hates it when people have the same thing as her, it’s sort of a rule that you don’t have anything the same, right? But Sophia really, really wanted to keep the bag, and apparently, when she came into school with it”—Lizzie puts down her mug and leans forward in her velvet armchair, all excited to be telling us what she considers a prime piece of gossip—“she put it under her chair so Plum didn’t see it straightaway. And then Sophia invited Plum that morning to come to their schloss with them for half-term. Which is amazing, apparently, it’s like an entire castle in Austria and it looks like something out of a fairy tale, and Sophia’s family are really, really posh and fantastically well-connected, so Plum’s been dying to get an invitation there for ages. So of course she said yes. And then Sophia reached down to get her bag and everyone saw it for the first time. And apparently, everyone went absolutely dead silent, but Sophia had just invited Plum to stay, so Plum didn’t, you know, do anything about it. It was sort of like a bargain, know what I mean?”

“Yeah, I do. Okay, so Sophia has one,” I prompt. “Does anyone else have the same bag?”

Lizzie’s nodding vigorously. “Lucy has one. Lucy Raleigh.” Lizzie’s eyes go moony and puppylike, the way they do when she mentions Plum’s name. Which is interesting, because I’ve never seen Lizzie look like this about anyone but Plum.

“Who’s Lucy Raleigh?” Taylor asks.

“You don’t know?” Lizzie is incredulous. “She’s, like, incredibly pretty and cool. She’s at St. Paul’s Girls’. She was at the club tonight, did you see her? She was wearing a D&G top and Made by Lou jeans”—she stops for a moment, narrowing her eyes—“and,” she finishes triumphantly, “a Guess jacket. I think it was Guess,” she adds conscientiously. “I think she was the first person to have one of those bags. I haven’t seen her with it for ages, though.”

Sophia was at the party when Dan died, but that was six months ago, and according to Lizzie’s story, her sister only recently gave her the bag. So she’s in the clear. I must say, I’d have found it very hard to believe that Sophia had anything to do with killing Dan. I used to be in the same history class as her at St. Tabby’s, and as a result, I know that Sophia has about as many brain cells as a newt. Organizing anything that complicated would be out of the question for her—the mental strain would put her in a coma for weeks.

“And no one else has one of those bags?” Taylor asks.

Lizzie shakes her head. “No one we know. They didn’t make that many.”

Well, that’s definite. If there’s one subject Lizzie’s an expert on, it’s handbags.

Suddenly, the coziness of Lizzie’s sitting room turns suffocating. I’ve got a clue.

Taylor’s eyes are gleaming: I can see she feels exactly the same. Lucy Raleigh. Who goes to St. Paul’s Girls’. And is incredibly pretty and cool. Could she have anything to do with Dan’s murder?

Oh, there’s one more thing to clear up.

“Does Sophia’s sister hang out with Plum’s lot at all?” I ask, just to make sure there’s no chance that the sister was at Nadia’s party.

Lizzie looks amazed. “God, no! She’s much older. She’s, like, married!”

Well, that rules the sister out, which means we can completely concentrate on this Lucy Raleigh. My mood is improving by the moment: we have a real clue here to focus on. And in the taxi, I talked myself out of real suspicions of Plum. Maybe I’m wrong, but thinking it over, I do have my doubts that it’s in Plum’s character to carry out such a complicated and sneaky plot. Plum’s all about direct confrontation. Maybe, if I find out more about Lucy Raleigh, it’ll turn out that she’s much more the type to kill someone in the kind of way Dan was murdered.  .  .  .

“So you think that maybe Lucy got the note that was meant for Nadia?” Lizzie’s asking.

Our blank expressions would completely expose us for total liars, if it weren’t Lizzie we were dealing with. We really have to work on our reflexes if we want to be super–spy girl detectives.

“Yeah!” I say, several beats too late, as Taylor chimes in with an overenthusiastic series of nods.

“Oh, I hope she gets together with him,” Lizzie sighs wistfully. “It sounds incredibly romantic!”

I BLUSH ALL OVER REMEMBERING IT

“Elbows off the table, Scarlett. And sit up straighter.”

I jerk myself up, horrified to realize I’ve committed an error as basic as propping my elbows on the table while at lunch with my grandmother. I must have been miles away.

“Sorry, Lady Wakefield,” I mutter.

My grandmother has decreed that while I’m a pupil at Wakefield Hall, I have to call her Lady Wakefield at all times, so that nobody thinks I’m getting any special treatment from her. I sort of understand that if it were just in public, as she is, after all, the headmistress—but having to call her Lady Wakefield in private too is really odd.

“So, tell me about the friends you’re making here,” my grandmother instructs.

I’ve just forked up some peas and am chewing ten times before swallowing, a rule my grandmother insists on for good digestion. So it’s a few seconds before I answer her.

“Um, I’m mainly friends with Taylor McGovern,” I say eventually.

“The American girl with the archaeologist parents?” my grandmother says, but it isn’t really a question. She knows every single girl in the school from the moment they first step through the doors of Wakefield Hall. It’s rumored that she has dossiers on everyone, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find out that was true.

I nod, then remember this isn’t considered a sufficient answer.

“Yes, that’s her. She’s quite sporty. We work out together a bit.”

My grandmother nods, and cuts another bite of chicken. It’s all bland food, again because of her digestion. Poached chicken, boiled carrots and peas and potatoes. Oh well, at least it’s better than school food, which is the one consolation for having to spend every Sunday lunchtime with my grandmother in her private dining room, sitting up straight with my elbows off the table, practicing the arts of polite conversation and good table manners.

It’s very hard to do both simultaneously, I find.

I look around me as my grandmother chews her chicken. She has a whole private suite of rooms which she chose when she was converting Wakefield Hall into a school, and naturally, she picked the nicest ones. The dining room is in the old conservatory, so it has a glass ceiling and partly glass walls. When it’s raining it’s really dramatic to sit in here and watch the water pour down over the roof, feeling safe and warm inside. The woodwork is painted pale green, and there are big plants in china pots arranged in niches around the room: like everything my grandmother does, it’s simple and elegant. She uses it for big dinners for school governors and particularly favored parents (rich/titled/influential ones, that means) and so the table is huge enough to accommodate twenty people. It’s always strange to be sitting at one end of it, our two places neatly set with the family Minton china and monogrammed silver-ware and crystal water glasses, with a whole expanse of polished wood stretching away from us, occupied only by branches of silver candelabra set at regular intervals.

It makes me feel incredibly self-conscious.

So does my grandmother, because she’s so perfectly in control of herself. Her white hair, trimmed into a neat bob, is always smooth and elegant, much smarter than an old-lady bun at the back of her head. Her eyes are bright and blue and see everything, especially the things you don’t want her to see. She wears pastel twin sets and tweed skirts and I’ve never seen her without her pearl necklace and earrings. They’re family heirlooms, which is one of the reasons she always wears them; the other is that pearls should be worn as often as possible, because they get their luster from the oils in your skin. That’s what my grandmother says, so it must be true because she’s always right. Every movement my grandmother makes is precise, and she never says a word she doesn’t mean.

You can see why it would be intimidating to have to spend every Sunday lunchtime with her, can’t you?

“And how are your studies progressing?” she asks.

I writhe. This is so awkward—when your grandmother’s your headmistress, too, how can I possibly answer that?

Then I have a stroke of inspiration.

“I’m really behind in Latin,” I say. “I didn’t realize it’s taught much better here than at St. Tabby’s.”

My grandmother’s ears prick up with interest.

“Really?” she says with a casualness that’s about as believable as a cat telling you he’s just sleeping outside a mousehole by coincidence. “Tell me more.”

“Oh”—I spear, chew, and swallow a piece of carrot—“nothing, really. It’s just that all the girls here are so far ahead of me. They’ve all been writing Latin for years. At St. Tabby’s, we mostly translated it, we didn’t do that much writing.”

My grandmother lays down her fork and wipes her lips with her monogrammed linen napkin.

“I had no idea standards were so shoddy there,” she says happily.

I nod, wide-eyed.

“I didn’t realize that till I came here,” I say, which may be overdoing it a bit, but it doesn’t matter. Grandmother launches into an exquisite denunciation of lazy exam boards, modern curricula in general, and St. Tabby’s in particular, which carries us all the way through the removal of our main-course plates, our gooseberry fool for dessert, and coffee (served in china cups so fine you can almost see the coffee through them—I’m always terrified of breaking them). St. Tabby’s is one of the best girls’ schools in the country, and for Grandmother to have found a chink in its armor has absolutely made her day. We’re a competitive family, the Wakefields.

I congratulate myself on having found a subject for lunchtime conversation on which my grandmother can happily hold forth for hours. I’ll find something else to criticize about St. Tabby’s next week. And then I can just sit there and nod and avoid as much as possible having to practice the art of making polite conversation.

This pleasant mood lasts all the way out of my grandmother’s private apartments, down the elaborate central staircase, and through the big main door of Wakefield Hall. Once in the fresh air, though, my mood shifts, no matter how hard I try to keep that feeling of elation. It’s always hard for me when I have to go back to Aunt Gwen’s.

I struggle with feelings of jealousy toward Taylor all the time. Because Taylor doesn’t live at Wakefield Hall. Like the rest of the girls, she just boards here. She has a proper home to go back to, a cozy one where people are happy to see her, and probably make her breakfast. Even Lizzie, whose dad is never around, has that palace to live in and Lucia alternately coddling and tough-loving her. Whereas for me, this is it. A room grudgingly provided for me by Aunt Gwen, who copes by pretending I don’t exist. And I can’t say any of this to Taylor. It would be much too much poor-little-orphan-me.

I don’t often think about my parents, because there isn’t any point, and besides, I was too young when they died to remember them well. I just have snatches of memory, like those old-fashioned slide shows you see sometimes in films, where they project a bright image at you for a few seconds before someone clicks something and it snaps away to another slide.

I’m almost down the drive now, almost at Aunt Gwen’s house, which is actually the old gatehouse, tucked away in a nest of trees beside the main gates. I wonder if I’m feeling strong enough to go through my special box, where I keep things that remind me of my parents. Photos of us, when I was little. My baby book. A scarf my mum knitted for me. It’s not very good—it has a lot of dropped stitches—but I find that really endearing, because she was obviously rubbish at knitting but persisted anyway, because it was for me.

I pass the stand of cypresses that conceals the gatehouse from the drive, and as I round them and the house comes into view, I jump and nearly drop my bag, and all thoughts of anything but what’s immediately in front of me are wiped from my mind.

Jase Barnes is sitting on the garden wall. Looking pretty hot in a bright orange shirt and black jeans.

He must be waiting for me.

Oh my God. What have I got myself into?

Last week, I sneaked into Nadia’s flat. Which is when I found out that Nadia saw Dan’s EpiPen in what she thought was Plum’s handbag—and when I worked out that Dan was poisoned by peanut oil on the crisps. I ran all the way back from the Wakefield tube, so excited by my twin discoveries that I couldn’t wait to tell Taylor everything I knew. Someone killed Dan. It really wasn’t my fault that Dan died. And that, in turn, meant I could kiss a boy without being afraid that he might drop down dead at my feet, like Dan did.

So when I raced back to school that evening, and I saw Jase Barnes by the dining hall—gorgeous Jase Barnes, who every girl in the school must be in love with, but who seems surprisingly interested in me—I chased him down like a dog. I ran after him, and I made him stop, and I put my hands on his shoulders and reached up and kissed him  .  .  . and then, thank God thank God, I ran away straight afterward without hanging round to embarrass myself even further.

Aaah. I blush all over remembering it.

But at least he didn’t die.

Which is pretty obvious, as here he is, in the flesh, jumping down off the wall when he sees me with what I can’t help hoping is enthusiasm. His bright golden eyes are gleaming. I hope he doesn’t think I’m going to throw myself into his arms again. I don’t think I have that quite in me right now.

“Um, hi,” I say, walking toward him, because I have to, as he’s standing between me and the gatehouse, and praying with every fiber of my body that I’m not so red right now that I resemble a tomato in clothes.

“Hey,” he says, and I do think it’s totally unfair that because he’s the color of those soft caramel centers you get inside really nice chocolates, I can’t tell whether he’s blushing too. He does run his hand over his scalp, which is totally unnecessary, because his hair is tightly cropped in tiny dark curls, so maybe that’s sort of the boy’s equivalent of blushing.

We stand and look at each other for a long moment. I’m shifting from foot to foot, trying to find the words to say that I’m in a hurry and need to go inside Aunt Gwen’s, because honestly, I’m wishing he hadn’t come to find me. Of course, I’m flattered, but this is just too confusing for me to deal with right now.

“I like your outfit,” he eventually says, grinning.

Automatically I look down at myself, and am immediately struck with horror, because I completely forgot that I’m wearing clothes suitable for lunch with my grandmother, according to her very strict rules. Which are: a brown pleated skirt, a navy sweater, tights, and sensible shoes (not boots, which are not to be worn with skirts). No makeup—that goes without saying. I look like I just time-traveled in from the 1940s.

“I just had lunch with my grandmother,” I manage to explain, sure I’m blushing even more. I’m cursing the fact that practically every time I see Jase, I’m either Sunday-morning scruffy or Sunday-lunch prim. Why couldn’t I be all dressed up like I was last night when I bump into him, just once?

“It’s very, um—” he starts.

“Ladylike?” I suggest.

“Well, that’s one way of putting it,” he says, grinning even more.

“I have to buy clothes just for seeing her,” I find myself saying, so he won’t think any of this stuff is actually something I might like. “I never wear anything like this the rest of the time.”

“Not even the shoes?” he says, keeping a straight face, so I think for a moment he’s serious, and look down at my shoes—brown leather, sort of loafers with a little stacked heel—before I realize that he’s joking.

“Oh yeah,” I agree. “I love these so much I cry when I have to take them off.”

“I’d cry when I had to put them on,” Jase says, and we both burst out laughing.

I meant to say hi, have a quick conversation, and then go inside as soon as I could. I don’t want to be rude to Jase, of course I don’t. He’s utterly gorgeous, and though I don’t know him that well, I’ve really liked what I’ve seen of him. I definitely want to hang out with him more, get to know him, kiss him again  .  .  . but only when the dark cloud of Dan’s death, still hanging over my head, has floated away for good. Awful and selfish as it sounds, I’d like to be able to hide Jase away in a cupboard so no other girl can get to him, and then take him out when I’m ready to play with him.

But Jase isn’t a doll. A doll couldn’t make me laugh despite myself, or lure me into the middle of a funny conversation when I intended to say a quick hello and goodbye. I’m more confused than ever.

“Um, I was wondering,” Jase starts, and then grinds to a halt. He clears his throat. “Um  .  .  . are you up to anything right now?” he asks.

“Well, I’ve got some homework to do  .  .  . ,” I say, and then I could bite my tongue off. How boring does that sound? And it wasn’t what he was asking at all, I know that.

“Oh,” he says, looking disappointed, and he shuffles his feet as if he’s going to walk away.

“But that won’t take all day  .  .  . ,” I hear myself adding quickly. “I’ve just got, um, a couple of hours’ work to do.”

Which is a total lie. I can’t believe these words are coming out of my mouth. Despite my best intentions, I just couldn’t bear the sight of him walking away from me disappointed.

I must be the weakest-willed girl in the world.

“Oh, good,” he says enthusiastically, a lovely smile lighting up his face. “Do you maybe want to go see a film or something later on, when you’ve got that done? There’s the new James Bond in Princebury—it’s on at four—”