Glancing up, he caught Allie’s eye and motioned for her to sit across from him on the floor. After a brief hesitation, she did as he requested.
‘We can talk about anything,’ he explained, ‘as long as we look like everyone else. People see what they want to see.’
When he looked up from the board, the light caught his eyes and fractured like sunlight on water.
‘I haven’t played chess since…’ Allie’s voice trailed off. She picked up a ceramic pawn; it was cold in her hand. The colour of snow. ‘Well. I used to play with Jo.’
‘I remember.’ The compassion in his voice made her feel better and worse all at once. She was glad when he let the topic go. ‘You be white.’
‘Now,’ he said to everyone else. ‘Pretend to watch us while you talk. And try to keep your voices low.’ He glanced back at Allie with an encouraging smile. ‘Your move.’
Seeing that he was serious, Allie’s hand hovered over the board for a moment. Then she chose a pawn and slid it forward one square. He countered instantly with one of his own.
‘They’re holding Eloise in one of the old staff cottages,’ Rachel said, her voice low and steady. ‘We saw Raj and Jerry and the whole Scooby gang heading into the school from somewhere, and then leave again. Zoe followed them.’
In the middle of a move Allie paused, a pawn forgotten in her hand. ‘By herself? Was that safe?’
‘Of course it was safe,’ Carter snapped before Zoe could speak. ‘The teachers aren’t going to hurt her.’
His tone was unnecessarily sharp and Allie shot him a reproachful look before turning back to the game. The moment in Isabelle’s office was obviously over.
She slid the pawn next to one of Sylvain’s – close, but just out of reach.
‘Whatever,’ she whispered so quietly only Sylvain could hear. Across the chessboard he smiled at her conspiratorially and she found herself smiling, too.
‘Tell them what you found,’ Nicole whispered to Zoe, who sat next to her.
‘They’re in a cottage – not Mr Ellison’s. Another one, near the pond in the woods. Kind of rundown, really overgrown.’ She studied the chessboard critically. ‘You’re not using your bishop right, Allie.’
Perplexed, Allie looked at the piece with its mitred top and wondered what would be the right way to use it.
‘I know that place,’ Carter said. ‘It used to be staff housing but then they quit using it for some reason a few years ago. I think it needed repairs or something and Isabelle never got around to it.’
‘Did you see Eloise?’ Rachel leaned closer. ‘How is she?’
Zoe shook her head. ‘I only heard her. They all went inside and then I could hear them talking. They said the key didn’t work. They kept asking her for the right key.’ She looked around the group. ‘What does that mean?’
Sylvain moved his queen forward four squares.
‘They had a key they thought would open Isabelle’s office,’ Carter said. ‘They tried it while we were in there. Scared the hell out of us but they couldn’t get in.’
‘What’s that about?’ Rachel asked. ‘Why would it matter if the key didn’t work?’
An image of Eloise standing in front of Isabelle’s door flashed in Allie’s memory.
‘Eloise had a key to Isabelle’s office,’ Allie said. ‘She was holding it in her hand when I saw her that day – the day I thought she was the spy. I told them about it.’
‘They must be trying to find that key,’ Nicole said thoughtfully. ‘They’d want to make sure it was secure so no one could use it.’
‘But she gave them the wrong key?’ Carter looked puzzled. ‘Why would she do that?’
‘Maybe she doesn’t have the right one any more,’ Rachel suggested.
‘Then who does?’ Sylvain asked.
No one had an answer to that.
Rachel broke the silence. ‘What did you two find in the office?’
Allie let Carter describe what they’d learned. When he finished, the others looked stunned.
‘So they knew this was going to happen all this time?’ Rachel sounded shocked.
Sylvain’s queen and a knight suddenly cornered Allie’s king.
‘Check,’ he murmured, arching one eyebrow.
Allie glared at the board but couldn’t find a way out. ‘Balls.’
‘What if our parents try to pull us out?’ Zoe asked.
They all fell silent.
‘That guy dragged Caroline to the car,’ Rachel said. ‘Are they going to do that to half the people in this room?’
‘What can we do, though?’ Allie asked.
Sylvain picked up a discarded chess piece. Holding the white knight in his hand, he looked at it thoughtfully for a moment. Then he held it up.
‘We can warn them.’
Sylvain’s statement caused an instant outcry. How could they do that? If they did, wouldn’t everyone know what they’d been up to? How should they say they found this information out in the first place? Besides, it wasn’t like they could send everyone an anonymous email. If they spread the word, the instructors would find out what they were up to and put a stop to it.
It was Rachel who’d found the solution.
‘Never underestimate the power of gossip,’ she said simply.
They all looked at her with blank incomprehension.
‘I do not understand?’ Nicole looked around for an explanation.
It was Carter who figured it out first. ‘Oh you are awfully clever, Rachel,’ he said, as understanding spread slowly across his face. ‘Tell the gossips and they’ll tell the world.’
‘Exactly,’ Rachel said. ‘We tell five of the biggest gossips in the school what Nathaniel’s doing, and that their parents might be coming for them next.’ She looked at them expectantly but they still didn’t get it. She rolled her eyes. ‘They’ll tell everyone else… Come on, you lot! It’s better than Facebook. Everyone will know what’s happening by sunset and it won’t be traceable.’
As they absorbed this information, the others exchanged looks.
‘And what happens then?’ Nicole asked the question that was in all their minds.
‘Then they can make a choice,’ Sylvain said. ‘What happens after that is up to them.’
‘What could they do, though, really?’ Carter asked. ‘Run away?’
‘They could run away,’ Allie said. ‘Or they could fight back.’
EIGHTEEN
The next morning, Allie was up and out in the frigid walled garden by six. It was the first real day of pretending everything was normal when nothing was. Her stomach was tight with nervousness and excitement – today they would put their plan into action.
She’d nearly forgotten about detention amid all the excitement, but as they all split up to their respective dorms the night before Carter had called after her, ‘See you in the garden, bright and early…’
Allie had stopped in her tracks, staring at him in disbelief.
‘Seriously? Do you think Isabelle actually expects us to stick to detention with all this going on?’ She swung her arm around in an irritated gesture.
‘Uh… yes?’ He shot her a look that said he thought she was being dense on purpose. ‘You have indefinite detention. Indefinite. She will not be happy if we just decide not to show up because of the apocalypse we haven’t been told about.’
‘Fine.’ Allie stomped up the stairs after the other girls. ‘Because I have nothing better to do.’
‘I’m busy too, you know,’ he’d called after her but she hadn’t looked back.
Clutching a torch, she slipped through the open garden gate. The weather had warmed slightly, and the frozen earth had thawed into a soupy mud. Her head filled with thoughts of spies and Nathaniel, she sloshed through it in search of Mr Ellison.
She found him setting up at the edge of the orchard, whistling tunelessly to himself as he worked.
‘My best worker is the earliest one,’ he said cheerfully. ‘How are you today?’
‘Fine.’ She stood up straight, trying to look fine.
‘That’s good,’ he said. He carried a massive armload of equipment out of an open shed. ‘Makes an improvement. Feel good and others around you will feel good by association.’
Allie didn’t notice she’d wrinkled her nose in disbelief until he waved a finger at her. ‘It’s true. Try it if you don’t believe me. You’ll see.’
‘OK…’ Her tone was doubtful.
‘You’re going to be working in the berry section today.’ He handed her a rake and clippers. ‘Getting the bushes ready for spring. Follow me and I’ll show you what to do.’
They headed back across the dark garden.
‘Where’s Carter?’ Allie asked, jumping over a muddy hillock.
Mr Ellison’s brow lowered. ‘Late is all I know.’
‘Oh.’
The gardener was demonstrating how to tell the leafless blueberry branches from the blackberries when the sound of fast heavy footsteps made them both turn.
Before Allie realised what Mr Ellison was doing, he’d moved in front of her wielding a heavy iron hoe in his right hand as lightly as she might hold a pen.
The gardener was very tall, about six foot five, and always had a lumbering gait, but suddenly he seemed capable of great swiftness and grace. Seeing this, Allie felt both awe and despair. Was nobody at Cimmeria what they seemed to be?
Within seconds, though, he’d relaxed and she heard him murmur under his breath, ‘What is wrong with you, boy?’
Standing on her toes, she saw Carter pelting it across the mud, his torch flickering on and off weakly.
‘Sorry,’ he panted, skidding to a stop in front of them. ‘I overslept.’
‘Late.’ Mr Ellison uttered the word with the same contempt some might use for ‘Traitor’.
As Allie watched in astonishment, Carter hung his head. ‘I’m sorry, Bob,’ he said. ‘I can come back later to make up the time.’
‘We’ll see about that,’ the older man muttered. But he seemed mollified by Carter’s contrition, and soon he left them working on the berry bushes alone.
After Carter’s mood swings the day before, Allie approached him with wariness. She didn’t know what was going on in his head – but he couldn’t just pick her up and put her down when he wanted to, like a toy. They were either friends or they weren’t.
It wasn’t easy work – the blackberry thorns were like tiny daggers and the way they worked through gloves and sleeves seemed almost malicious.
‘Ouch, you bleeding, bloody, stupid… plant!’ Yanking off her glove, Allie examined the dot of blood on her fingertip. ‘I am never looking at blackberries in the same way again. They are vicious little bastards.’
‘You OK?’ Carter, who was gathering pruned branches for burning, glanced over at her with a mixture of concern and amusement.
It was the first time he’d spoken to her directly and Allie looked up at him in surprise but recovered quickly, giving a nonchalant shrug. ‘I’ll live. I guess nobody was ever thorned to death.’
‘As far as we know…’ he said.
‘Maybe it was covered up by the berry industry.’
They exchanged a smile; Allie relaxed a little.
As she pulled the glove back on, she thought about the way Mr Ellison had leapt in front of her a few minutes before. ‘Is Mr Ellison Night School?’
Carter’s expression darkened. ‘Yes and no.’ He looked around to make sure the gardener was nowhere near. ‘He was once. He went to school here. Studied philosophy at Oxford. Went to work in the City for one of the big banks. Then something happened – something bad.’
Allie tried to imagine Mr Ellison, young and dapper, in a suit. It was almost impossible. She’d never seen him in anything but dark green overalls. Never seen him without dirt on his hands.
Allie stared at Carter, willing him to continue. ‘Do you know what happened?’
‘All he’ll say is that he made a mistake that hurt a lot of people. Whatever it was, it was bad enough that he quit and never went back.’ He threw a long branch into the compost pile. ‘He’ll never forgive himself.’
The story was sobering. The idea that you could make a mistake – just one mistake – and your whole life could be ruined was frightening.
Allie’s thoughts drifted back to what was going on here right now. And she wondered if any mistakes of that magnitude were being made. She was fairly certain they were.
‘I wonder…’ she said.
‘I think…’ Carter said at the same time.
They both stopped and chuckled awkwardly.
‘Sorry.’ Carter waved a twig at her. ‘You go first.’
‘It was nothing,’ Allie said. ‘I just wonder if Eloise is OK out in that house by herself. I wonder if she’s scared.’
‘First of all she’s not by herself,’ Carter said. ‘They’d never leave her alone. She probably wishes she was by herself. And second…’ He looked at her speculatively as if trying to decide how much to say. ‘Don’t get too married to the idea of Eloise being innocent just because Nicole thinks she is.’
Allie stared at him, a rising sense of panic tightening the muscles of her throat. ‘Wait. Don’t tell me you think she’s really the spy?’
‘I don’t know if she is or isn’t. I just don’t think Nicole’s theory proves she’s innocent. And I wouldn’t assume she didn’t do it.’
‘Why not?’ Allie’s voice took on a defensive tone. ‘She couldn’t have done the chapel thing, right? I mean, not on her own.’
She hadn’t realised until he’d taken it away from her how much her belief in Eloise’s innocence mattered. She wanted that belief back.
His eyes were as bitter as dark chocolate. ‘Nobody around here is really innocent, Allie. Surely you know that by now?’
‘I should have known you’d be talking instead of working.’
Mr Ellison’s voice cut off Allie’s planned response. Looking up, she saw the gardener striding towards them, his green uniform already a bit muddy. Knowing what she now knew about him, she liked him even more somehow. There was something compelling about suffering – something uniting.
I’ll talk to Carter later, she thought. I’ll make him see that he’s wrong. It’s not Eloise. It just isn’t.
Allie endured her classes with barely controlled impatience. None of the Night School instructors showed up to teach. A variety of teachers were shuffled in from other classes to take over and the whole exercise felt slapdash and annoying.
Word had also been passed out that Night School training was temporarily suspended – no explanation was given.
That afternoon, Allie and Rachel stood on the landing of the grand staircase, pretending to chat casually. Suddenly, Rachel straightened. ‘Target sighted. Six o’clock. Battle stations.’
‘Aye aye, Captain.’ Allie followed her gaze. The vivid red of Katie’s lush mane of hair made her easy to spot as she paraded up the stairs at the centre of a group of genetically perfect friends.
‘What have you heard again?’ Allie’s voice was unnecessarily loud.
Rachel waited to answer until Katie had nearly reached them. ‘Half the kids in the school will go. And nobody knows who. It’ll be just like Caroline only times a hundred.’
‘That’s horrible.’ Allie feigned shock. ‘What can we do?’
Katie stopped walking so abruptly the girls with her had to backtrack to rejoin her, but she waved them away with an irritated flutter of her fingers.
‘Go on. I’ll catch you up.’
After a moment’s hesitation they walked on. When they were out of earshot she turned to Rachel. ‘What were you just saying, geek girl?’
Dropping the pretence, Rachel filled her in on what they knew. As she listened, Katie leaned against the wall, letting her head fall back until it thumped against the carved oak panelling.
‘So this is what they’re up to.’ She looked pale. ‘I should have guessed when Caroline left. How could I be so stupid?’<
br />
Allie frowned. ‘They? Who?’
‘My parents. Of course they have a plan. And of course it involves dragging me out of Cimmeria and ruining my life.’ Turning to Allie she said, ‘I tried to warn you something was coming. That Lucinda was losing it. But you wouldn’t listen.’
‘Wait,’ Allie said. ‘Your parents are on Nathaniel’s side?’
Katie levelled an exasperated look at her. ‘Of course. Don’t be ridiculous. Haven’t you been paying attention at all?’
Allie ignored the insult. She stepped closer to Katie, looking into her eyes. Challenging her. ‘What about you? Are you on his side?’
Her directness seemed to catch Katie off guard; she shook her head so hard her red hair swished. ‘No. Never.’
Her response was so passionate, so spontaneous. Allie had to believe her.
‘What are you going to do if they send someone for you?’ Rachel asked.
For a second, Katie didn’t reply. When she did speak, her voice sounded strained. ‘I don’t know. But they will have to kill me to get me out of here. I’m not going like Caroline.’
‘You’d really stand up to your parents like that?’ Allie asked, surprised.
Katie’s eyes glittered like chips of ice in the winter sun. ‘I loathe my parents, Allie. I’m not going anywhere with them. And that slimy creep Nathaniel can kiss my perfect arse.’
Her cut-glass accent made even obscenities sound elegant and funny. It reminded Allie painfully of Jo, and she felt that sudden sense of loss that took her by surprise at the strangest moments, like falling into a hole you couldn’t see.
Tilting her head, she studied Katie appraisingly. Maybe she’d misjudged her.
As if aware of Allie’s reconsideration of her, Katie turned her haughty gaze back to Rachel.
‘What can I do to help, geek girl? Say the word. It’s yours.’
NINETEEN
All the next day the gossips did their work with relentless efficiency. By dinner that night, there was no subject of conversation within Cimmeria Academy except the rumour that parents were pulling their children out of school.
Fracture ns-3 Page 14
