Allie felt sick. ‘How did they …?’
‘Lucas found her – they’d only been going out a couple of months. He’d stayed here to spend Christmas with her. When she didn’t come down to dinner on Christmas Day he went up to her room to check on her, and … Happy Christmas, everyone.’ She sighed. ‘They pumped her stomach, made her see a shrink. Lucas stuck by her side every inch of the way. When she was better he broke up with her. She started going out with Gabe three weeks later.’
‘No wonder …’ Allie’s voice trailed off.
‘What?’ Rachel asked.
‘After Jo … you know. Lucas didn’t seem surprised.’
‘Yeah, well. He wasn’t,’ Rachel said dryly.
‘But why is everybody – why is Lucas – still her friend?’
‘You’ve met her,’ Rachel said. ‘Ninety-nine per cent of the time she’s the sweetest, kindest girl you’ve ever met. People forgive her the one per cent. Besides, she’s one of them.’
‘One of them?’ Allie asked.
‘You know, her family’s wealthy, her parents went to school here, some of them knew her when she was little. She’s Cimmeria all the way,’ Rachel said.
As Allie sat still for a moment, thinking, a somewhat horrible thought occurred to her.
‘What do you know about me?’
Rachel looked doubtful. ‘Are you sure you want to know?’
Allie nodded. ‘I can take it.’
Obviously uncomfortable, Rachel thought carefully before answering.
‘OK, I know very little about you and I consider what I do know to be unsubstantiated.’ She paused, looking apologetic. ‘But here goes. The name Sheridan is unfamiliar to everybody, so you’re not legacy unless it’s on your mum’s side. You’re an only child as far as everyone knows. Your parents have government jobs of some sort. You grew up in south London. You have a criminal record. Your parents sent you here as punishment. You’re on scholarship. You found Ruth’s body.’
Allie swallowed hard. When it was all reeled off like that …
‘God, I sound like such a loser.’
‘Hey, I didn’t mean it that way.’ Rachel looked worried. ‘I don’t really know much about you. I don’t think you’re a loser.’
Allie considered this, then shot Rachel a challenging look.
‘What about you?’
‘What about me … what?’ Rachel said, puzzled.
‘Tell me the gossip about you.’
Rachel smiled. ‘Fair enough. OK. Let’s see. Rachel Patel, daughter of Rajesh and Linda Patel. Born in Leeds. Father Asian, mother not. Father was a scholarship student at Cimmeria, now an international security expert; works for a couple of governments. Top secret stuff. On the Cimmeria Board – very influential. Rachel has one sister, Minal, who is twelve. Rachel’s mother has two PhDs – overkill if you ask me – and runs a private medical research firm not far from here, where the family has a palatial home on several acres. Rachel has perfect scores in most things, especially science, and wants to be a doctor when she grows up. OK?’
Allie smiled, but her eyes were serious. ‘OK.’
They were even.
Jo didn’t show up in biology Monday morning.
Unable to handle not knowing what was going on, Allie stayed after class to ask Jerry where she was.
‘Jo broke The Rules quite seriously, as you know, Allie.’ He took off his wire-framed glasses. ‘So she’s been given what we call in-house suspension as punishment.’
‘What’s that?’ Allie asked.
He wiped the lenses with a clean white handkerchief. ‘It means, once she’s released from the infirmary, she must stay in her room. Her meals and classwork will be brought to her there, but she cannot take part in any normal activities.’
Allie twisted the hem of her white shirt around her fingers as she considered his words. ‘How long will she be … suspended?’
Jerry perched his glasses back on his nose. ‘Just a week, as long as she abides by the restrictions, keeps up with her work and doesn’t break any more rules.’
‘Am I allowed to see her?’
He shook his head. ‘No contact, I’m afraid, Allie. She is meant to use this time in isolation to reflect and study.’
Allie stared at the floor while he spoke but then she looked up at him, her face filled with concern. ‘Is she better? She wasn’t … you know … her normal self yesterday.’
Behind the sparkling lenses his brown eyes were kind. ‘I’m afraid I haven’t seen her. Ask Eloise or Isabelle – they’re overseeing her punishment. But I’m sure she’s fine.’
Allie nodded. ‘Thanks Jerry.’
So, Jo is busted but not expelled, Allie thought as she walked down the hallway. Lucas was right.
She wondered if Jo was still crazy or whether she was back to normal, and then felt disloyal for wondering. But she couldn’t pretend that what happened the day before had not made her doubt whether she really knew Jo after all.
Talking to Jerry had nearly made her late for English, and when she walked in, most students were already in their seats. She sat down next to Carter, who was doodling on a corner of his notebook.
‘Hey.’
‘Hey back.’ He looked up to smile at her for a second, then returned to his drawing.
‘Where have you been?’ Allie asked, pulling books out of her bag. ‘I haven’t seen you since yesterday morning.’
He gave her a significant look. ‘You know. Stuff.’
She raised her eyebrows but let it slide.
‘Jerry says Jo’s under house arrest for a week,’ she said, flipping through the pages of her book.
‘Serves her right,’ he said, adding as an afterthought: ‘A straitjacket wouldn’t hurt either.’
‘Good morning, class.’ Isabelle’s voice saved Allie from thinking of a riposte. ‘Recently we read works by T.S. Eliot, and last week I asked you to read a work that influenced his writing heavily, the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, translated quite famously by a man named Edward FitzGerald. We discussed Mr FitzGerald on Friday …’
After all that had happened that weekend Allie had no memory of Friday’s class at all. She decided she’d have to take Isabelle’s word for it.
‘Let’s start with my favourite passage, Stanza LXIX. Clare,’ she turned to the pretty blonde girl, ‘could you read it for us please?’
Allie felt a rush of jealousy tinged with guilt – Clare had been Carter’s date to the ball, and Allie had been avoiding her ever since. She remembered the look in Clare’s eyes when she looked up at Carter with a kind of adoration. But Carter had been looking at Allie at the time.
Standing, Clare read in a sweet, bell-like voice:
‘’Tis all a Chequer-board of Nights and Days
Where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays:
Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays,
And one by one back in the Closet lays.’
‘Thank you, Clare,’ Isabelle said.
As the student took her seat, she cast a hopeful look at Carter but his eyes were on his notebook.
What a mess, Allie thought, drawing a black heart on a clean notebook page and then stabbing an arrow through it.
Isabelle leaned against a desk. ‘Now this is an almost existential piece of writing – most of you will remember the basic theories of existentialism from earlier this term, if you do not, get ye to the library as this will be on your test – that I love both for its bleak view of life and its dark humour. The balance is quite unique. So, what do you think he’s saying?’
When Allie read the passage on Sunday, she’d had a flashback to Jo’s abortive chess lesson a few weeks ago. But before she could raise her hand, Carter’s voice surprised her – she didn’t think he’d been paying attention.
‘I think he’s saying we’re pawns. And that fate decides what happens to us – who we marry, when we die. But what about personal choice? Don’t we make decisions? Isn’t that power?’
‘Precisel
y,’ Isabelle said. ‘On the other hand, isn’t our personal choice affected by what fate throws at us?’
‘But that’s absurd.’ Sylvain’s distinctive voice came from the back of the room, and Allie turned in her seat to see him. ‘Everything is up to us. We have all the power. Fate does not exist. How can it?’
‘Typical,’ Carter muttered.
Sylvain glared at him. ‘What is that supposed to mean, Carter?’
Before Carter could reply, Isabelle stepped between them. ‘I’m glad you’re both taking poetry so seriously, but I’ve never had an argument in my classroom over Omar Khayyám before and I’d rather not have one now. Now, then, I think we’ve exhausted my favourite passage. The next passage I’d like us to look at …’
Throughout the next week, the school returned to a kind of battered normality. The smell of smoke gradually disappeared, and work began in the great hall. A skip appeared outside the west wing, and students were regularly asked to avoid the main hallway between the great hall and the skip. The distracting percussion of hammers and drills soon became a tedious part of daily life.
Lisa was sent home to recover from her injuries, and without her or Jo around, Allie found that she spent most of her time with Rachel. This meant she spent most of her time in the library, as that was where Rachel appeared to live. So Allie was not at all surprised when Rachel suggested they go to the library to study after class on Friday afternoon. Lucas came along reluctantly, on the grounds that he had a paper due on Monday and he hadn’t yet even looked at the coursework.
Rachel had proved to be an ideal study companion for science homework, since she knew everything.
‘You really are a science geek,’ Allie marvelled, making a face as Rachel explained the biological structure of tapeworms, her eyes fairly glowing with interest.
Looking up from his books, Lucas said: ‘Why do you think I hang out with her? It’s not like she’s fun or anything.’
Rachel elbowed him in the ribs and turned to Allie. ‘Science is my thing, but you can help me with French. French is definitely not my thing.’
‘Don’t mention French to Allie,’ Lucas warned her. As they both looked at him blankly he mouthed ‘Sylvain’.
‘Oh don’t.’ Allie buried her face in her hands.
‘Too soon?’ Lucas asked.
Allie nodded, but Rachel was struggling not to giggle.
‘What?’ Allie asked.
‘It’s just,’ Rachel snickered, ‘you broke up with Sylvain. That’s like breaking up with, I don’t know, God or something.’
She and Lucas were both now giggling uncontrollably. ‘Just about every girl in this school wants to go out with him and you just dumped him.’
Allie felt her face redden, and she looked around to make sure nobody had heard them.
‘Will you shut up?’ she hissed. ‘Seriously!’
As they tried to control themselves, with Rachel wiping the tears of laughter from her eyes, Allie turned the pages of her book, frowning. ‘Well, he was a wanker,’ she muttered defensively.
That set them off again only this time Allie found herself joining in. It was, she had to admit, kind of funny. In an awful way.
That night after dinner, bored of the library, Allie retreated to the common room to read her English assignment. Even after a week of trying to catch up, she was still behind on her work. Despite the fire and Ruth’s death, teachers had been ratcheting up the pressure, and she had mountains of chapters to read. But by nine o’clock, she was half-asleep, curled up in a deep leather chair near the unplayed piano in one corner of the room with her head resting on one hand and the words on the page in front of her starting to swim. When a piece of paper folded into a tiny square was shoved in front of her, it took her a moment to absorb what was happening.
‘Your mate Carter asked me to give it to you,’ Lucas whispered, putting a sarcastic emphasis on the word ‘mate’.
‘What? Where is he?’ Allie asked, sitting up and looking around her.
Lucas shrugged. ‘I passed him in the hall a few minutes ago. I gotta run. We’re playing cricket out front.’
Glancing around to make sure nobody observed her, Allie unfolded the piece of notebook paper. Carter’s neat handwriting filled only a few lines at the centre of the page.
Allie
We need to talk.
Come and find me at 9:30, in the library. I’ll be
in the ancient Latin section in the back left
corner. Don’t let Sylvain see you looking for me.
C
Allie’s heart beat faster. As soon as she finished reading the words, she folded the note in half to hide its message and slipped it between the pages of her book.
The next twenty minutes went by slowly as she tried to read but found it impossible to concentrate. Finally, at nine twenty-five, she gathered her things and, stretching theatrically to indicate how tired she was in case anyone was watching, she rose from her chair.
‘Well, I guess I’m off to bed,’ she said to nobody before heading for the door.
Once out in the hallway she stopped and flipped through her papers, waiting to see if anybody followed her out. When nobody came out after her, she headed for the library, stopping to look over her shoulder before opening the door.
Inside, the room was full but hushed, and as she walked across the soft rugs she flipped through the pages of her notebook as if looking for something. Occasionally she peered at book numbers on shelves, then as if she hadn’t found what she sought, moved on.
I should be an actress, she thought. So convincing.
Gradually she made her way past the wall of elaborate panelling where the senior student study cubicles held their strangely violent murals, and then on to the section on ancient languages. The further back she went the fewer people she saw. By the time she reached the bookshelves lining the back wall there was nobody around at all.
Unsure where the Latin books were kept, she moved aisle by aisle, pulling heavy books off the shelves to determine the language. But although she found rows of dusty leather-bound books in Greek and entire stacks in Arabic, she found no Latin.
‘Why have they hidden the Latin books?’ she muttered. ‘Is this some sort of clever joke? Like, if you want to read Latin you have to go the …’
‘Allie.’
The whisper that cut off her random thoughts came from somewhere ahead of her, in the very back corner of the room.
‘Carter?’ The lighting was dim. As Allie squinted to see who’d spoken a hand reached out of the shadows and pulled her into the space between two towering bookcases.
‘Jesus,’ Allie said. ‘A simple “Hello” would do.’
Carter didn’t smile. ‘I’m sorry, I just wanted you to get back here before everybody in the library wondered what you were doing hanging out in the ancient languages section talking to yourself.’
‘A paper on ancient Rome for history class.’
Allie was delighted with her cover story, but Carter didn’t look impressed. ‘We’re studying Cromwell.’
‘I’m working ahead,’ she said defensively. ‘We must study Rome at some point.’
‘Very convincing.’
As she took in his humourless face, her heart sank. ‘What’s wrong, Carter? What’s with all the intrigue? Why didn’t you just come get me in the common room?’
‘Look, we have a problem.’ Crossing his arms, he leaned back against a bookcase as if he was trying to put distance between them.
‘Right,’ she said. ‘What’s our problem?’
‘From now on, if anybody asks you what you saw Friday night, you tell them that Ruth killed herself, OK?’
Allie opened her mouth to protest, but he held up his hand and kept talking. ‘Because as far as everyone’s concerned she did, OK? She killed herself.’
Silence fell as she thought about what he was saying. ‘But I know that’s not true,’ she said.
‘Do you?’ he said. ‘How do you know? Because of your
background in forensic science? It was dark, Allie. There was a lot of blood. You got freaked out. But there is no way you know whether or not Ruth killed herself. So stop playing detective.’
‘Did Isabelle send you to tell me this?’ she asked angrily.
‘Nobody sent me.’ She locked her eyes on his, looking for any sign of evasion, but he did not look away.
He reached out for her hand. ‘I’m on your side, Allie. I really am.’
‘Then I don’t get it!’ she said, yanking her hand free. ‘Why are you doing this? I saw what I saw.’
He stepped closer to her. ‘Look, Allie, word is getting around that you were with her when she died.’
‘That I … What?’ Allie stared at him.
‘And that you were the last person to see her alive and the only person to see her dead body.’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t …’
He chose his next words carefully.
‘Allie, there’s a rumour going around that you had something do with Ruth’s death.’
TWENTY-ONE
The next morning, Allie walked down the stairs at six forty-three precisely. Her hair was pulled back snugly in a ponytail that bounced with every step. She looked drawn, but resolute.
When she’d left Carter the night before, she’d gone to the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face. She’d stayed there for some time, staring at herself in the mirror, replaying their conversation in her head.
‘How can anybody think I had something to do with Ruth’s death?’ she’d asked him, aghast. ‘That’s insane. I hardly knew her. Why would I want to hurt her?’
‘It’s a set-up, Allie.’ His face had been grim. ‘They’re also saying that you got Jo drunk up on the roof, and that you’ve got … mental problems.’ She opened her mouth to protest and he held up his hand. ‘Whoever is spreading this stuff knows it’s not true. They’re messing with you.’
‘But why? Why would anybody want to do that?’
‘Some people feel threatened by you.’
‘How am I threatening?’ she asked plaintively. ‘I’m nobody,’
‘I’ve told you before, I don’t think that’s true,’ he said. ‘And neither does anybody else.’