Cassie had never imagined someone so old could be beautiful. But this woman was. Fragile, impossibly thin, like a cobweb, but still strikingly lovely. If that was what Paris life did for you, Cassie wasn’t just sticking it out, she was staying for ever.
The smile on her face died as the limousine driver closed the door with a soft clunk and slid back into the driving seat. Wasn’t he even going to help the old girl up the steps? What kind of a chauffeur was he? Cassie glared at him and then at her fellow students, who weren’t taking the slightest notice of the old woman.
‘Unbelievable,’ said Cassie loudly. Dumping her case at the foot of the steps, she went to the woman’s side.
‘Do you need a hand?’
Slowly, so very slowly, the old woman turned her head.
Cassie almost flinched. The woman leaned on her silver-handled stick as if it was all that was holding her up, yet there was nothing feeble about that gaze. Her eyes glittered fiercely. They weren’t hostile, though. More … assessing.
Her skin was like crazed porcelain, translucent and webbed with lines. Perfectly white hair was swept up into a chignon. The bones of her face might have been lovingly sculpted out of granite. Cassie swallowed hard.
‘I mean, if you’d rather I didn’t … I don’t want to sound …’
Pale lips pursed. ‘Are you offering to help me, young lady?’
‘Well, yes.’ Cassie fidgeted, feeling a little stupid.
‘How perfectly charming of you!’ The imperious coolness melted into a sparkling smile. ‘May I take your arm?’
Awkwardly, Cassie held it out, and gnarled fingers curled round her bicep. For an instant Cassie thought of the swan in the courtyard, its webbed feet gripping the bronze girl like talons; then she shook herself and smiled back. Behind them she heard the leopard-purr of a powerful engine, and the black car slid away.
‘So lovely to have a young body,’ murmured the woman.
‘What?’ Cassie blinked. ‘I mean, I beg your pardon?’
‘A young body,’ she smiled, ‘to help me. How kind you are.’
The grip on Cassie’s arm felt surprisingly steely, but the rest of the woman was as light as a leaf skeleton. Cassie took care as she helped her up the steps. There seemed to be a lot of them.
‘Thirteen steps,’ mused the woman, as if reading her mind. Pausing to take a breath, she stared up at the classical façade of the school. ‘It’s been so long since I was last here, but I remember these steps as if it were yesterday. You’re new, my dear, aren’t you?’
‘Is it that obvious?’ Cassie grinned.
Her laugh rang like a gentle bell. ‘Yes – but in the best of ways. Take my advice, ah …?’
‘I’m Cassandra. Everybody calls me Cassie, though.’
‘Cassandra! How lovely. I shall call you Cassandra. And I am Madame Azzedine, but you will call me Estelle. And my advice is that you should take all that the Academy has to offer.’
Halting again, Madame Azzedine turned to her, fierce with excitement. ‘It is the finest of schools. Indeed, the Academy is so much more than a school. Make the most of all that it can give you, Cassandra, and it will change your life. For ever. Do you understand me?’
‘Er … yes.’
Madame Azzedine gave a sharp laugh. ‘I think perhaps you do not. Not quite. But you will learn, my dear. You will learn so much. The Academy can change your life.’
They were only a few steps from the top now, and the old woman’s breath came in rapid, shallow gasps.
‘That’s what I want.’ Cassie almost wanted to place her hand on the one that gripped her arm. But touchy-feely wasn’t in her nature, however strong her instant empathy with this kind, imperious woman. Anyway, she wouldn’t put her bitten nails anywhere near that paper-skinned, immaculately manicured hand.
Madame Azzedine put the hand to her chest for a moment, catching her breath. ‘What is that, Cassandra? What do you want?’
‘I want to turn my life around—’
‘Turn it?’ As they reached the top of the steps, Madame Azzedine released Cassie’s arm. ‘No! The Academy will teach you to conquer life, to beat it into submission and bend it to your will. True graduates of the Darke Academy take life by the throat, Cassandra! Remember that!’
A strange shiver ran down her spine, but Cassie shook it off and grinned. ‘I will,’ she said. ‘I will!’
Smiling, Madame Azzedine clasped both Cassie’s hands in hers. ‘Good!’
A cough from the shadowed doorway, and Cassie almost jumped out of her skin.
‘Madame, welcome.’ A squat, sombre-uniformed man inclined his head. ‘Sir Alric is expecting you.’
She laughed gaily. ‘But of course he is! Excuse me, Cassandra, my dear. And good luck.’
‘Thank you, Madame Azz— um, Estelle,’ mumbled Cassie.
‘And may you have many, many rewarding years at the Academy.’ Madame Azzedine gave her a contented smile. ‘I’m entirely sure you will.’
CHAPTER TWO
Cassie watched the old woman go, a little uneasy. She’d liked Madame Azzedine. Very much. It was just that …
Oh, for God’s sake. It was just that Cassie was out of her depth. Poor old thing, she must be a hundred in the shade. How old did she think Cassie was? At fifteen, she’d have two or three years at the Academy, max, rather than many of them – assuming she didn’t drop out, or get thrown out. Madame Azzedine might look fabulous for her age, but she was losing it a bit. She was no one to be afraid of. She was elegant and confident, that was all. It was time Cassie learned to be the same.
Still, Cassie thought crossly, at least she had a rough idea how to behave like a human being – unlike the staff around here. That porter, or whatever he was, didn’t even offer the old girl a hand. The hatchet-faced bruiser simply tagged along as she limped into the vast, baroque hall. Moments later they were both lost from sight.
Cassie shrugged. Nothing to do with her. Remembering that her case was still at the foot of the steps, she turned on her heel and ran back down, light-footed and even a little light-hearted.
Her heart went crashing right back into her trainers. A small group had gathered in a semicircle around her abandoned case and, as she approached nervously, the Japanese girl gave her a sidelong smirk.
‘Perhaps we should call the gendarmes,’ she announced loudly. ‘I mean, it could be a bomb.’
‘Oh, Keiko. I think even terrorists have a little more class.’
The speaker was an American boy, but he couldn’t be more different from the guy Cassie had seen earlier. This one wore designer spectacles, leather loafers, crisp chinos and a polo shirt with a recognisably expensive logo. He looked like he’d just given his credit card a serious workout in that avenue outside.
‘Now, Perry,’ drawled an English boy, his hands casually in his pockets. ‘Don’t be uncharitable. There’s such a thing as shabby chic.’
Keiko sniggered. ‘Richard, how patronising. The poor are always with us, remember.’
‘Now you’re being unkind, Keiko,’ said Perry, nudging Cassie’s case with his toe. ‘The poor, after all, have a certain working class charm. This is more … what do the French say? Petit bourgeois?’
Richard raised an eyebrow so high it was lost in his dark floppy fringe. ‘Oh, Peregrine. Now who’s being petty?’
For about three seconds Cassie wanted to crawl into the nearest hole and die. The impulse passed, and the tight little burning ball of anger exploded into life. She swore, spectacularly.
‘Get your hands off my stuff!’ Jumping down the last few steps, she shoved Keiko aside.
Keiko looked absolutely livid, but Cassie had been in a scrap or two in her time. She clenched her fists – she could handle this stuck-up bitch. Perry the American stepped back, taking a sharp breath that sounded almost scared, but Richard only folded his arms, smiling.
‘This ought to be good,’ he murmured.
Cassie tensed, half-expecting Keiko to leap at her throat, but
after a moment the beautiful girl laughed.
‘I never touched your “stuff”, scholarship girl. I wouldn’t soil my hands.’
Cassie’s ragged nails were digging into her palms. Oh, she’d love to punch that smirk off Keiko’s face. But it was obvious that the smug little vixen wasn’t going to go for anything as bourgeois as a fistfight. Anyway, wouldn’t they just love it if she got herself expelled on her very first day?
No way. Not worth it.
‘OK,’ seethed Cassie. ‘Now you’ve proved I’m better than you are.’
‘My God,’ said Perry. ‘How dare you talk to Keiko like that?’
‘Oh, I like it that she dares,’ drawled Richard, with a lazy wink at the American boy. ‘This could be entertaining! Now, Peregrine, run along. This is Few business.’
The dismissal was so peremptory that Cassie expected Perry to argue, but he backed obediently away and, with a last scowl at her, turned and jogged up the steps to the school entrance.
Richard draped a friendly arm around her shoulders. Cassie wanted to wrench it off and shove him away, but she could feel how strong he was. A wrestling match would hardly be cool, especially if she had no guarantee of winning.
‘Come on, now, um … what’s your name?’
‘Cassie Bell,’ she muttered.
‘Well now, Cassie Bell, lighten up. We all want you to enjoy your time here. Perry and Keiko were having a little joke. Not a very funny one, I grant you,’ – he got a filthy look from Keiko for that – ‘but you’ll have to develop a thicker skin. If you want to survive, that is.’
Cassie bit back a sharp reply. The trouble was, she wasn’t sure about anything. Maybe this really was how élite students behaved; how would she know? She didn’t know how to behave, any more than she knew what on earth she was doing here. She didn’t belong …
‘You want to fit in, don’t you?’ Richard’s voice was silky in her ear. ‘I’ve got your best interests at heart, believe me—’
‘Hey, English!’
The brash voice had an accent Cassie couldn’t quite place. A second later, a girl burst on them like a tornado of energy, knocking Richard’s arm away with a playful slap. She was tall, lithe as a sapling, her hair a dark, glossy tumble. Her brown eyes were fierce.
‘What are you up to, English?’ She wagged a slender finger in Richard’s face. ‘This girl, she’s new, yes? Turn off that beastly charm of yours!’
‘Ah, bella Isabella!’ Passionately Richard seized her hand and kissed it, making Isabella’s mock scowl twitch at the corners. ‘I love your Latin temper as I love your flashing eyes. Yet you so misjudge me! Keiko and I were just acquainting young Cassie Bell with a few school rules—’
‘Cassie Bell? Cassandra?’
Isabella turned. For an instant she looked startled, but then she smiled.
Cassie tried not to smile back. She didn’t trust any of these self-assured, self-centred jerks. ‘Yeah. So?’
Isabella laughed. ‘So you’re coming with me.’ Her grip on Cassie’s arm was looser than Richard’s, and with her other hand she seized the handle of Cassie’s case. ‘Let’s get you away from the riff-raff.’
With a flirtatious grin at Richard, but ignoring Keiko altogether, Isabella hauled Cassie off towards an arched colonnade at the edge of the courtyard, the case rattling and rumbling behind her.
‘Hang on a minute.’ Digging in her heels, Cassie jolted Isabella to a standstill. ‘Don’t shove me around. Who d’you think you are?’
Her aggression only made the beautiful girl hoot with laughter.
‘I don’t think, Cassie, I know! I’m Isabella Caruso. I’m your new roommate!’
*
‘Tell me that’s a print.’
Cassie came to an awestruck halt beside a massive gilt frame.
Still tugging Cassie’s case along the pale-blue carpet, Isabella turned, frowning. ‘What? Oh, the Monet? No, of course it isn’t a print, silly. None of them are. Do come on, Cassie.’
Tearing herself reluctantly away from the painting, Cassie followed. She was trying to look cool and uninterested and at home, but she had a terrible urge to creep along behind Isabella on tiptoe. Any minute now, someone would come along and suss her out, and then she’d be out on her ear like the fraud she was.
There’s been a dreadful mistake, they’d tell her coldly. A case of mistaken identity. You can find your way back? To Cranlake Crescent, where you belong? Naturally we will pay your fare. You look as if you need the charity …
In the meantime, she might as well soak in the atmosphere. God, this was beautiful. She’d imagined such buildings existed, but only in fairytales. Didn’t you need silk dresses and crinolines to hang out in a place like this? Or at least a ball of string to stop you getting lost for ever? The gilded hallways and corridors and arches seemed endless, the corniced ceilings so high she was getting a crick in her neck from staring at the gods and monsters playing in the painted sky. The soft carpet muffled even the squeaky rumble of that Saver Price suitcase.
Watching Isabella trundle it along, Cassie blushed. Second-hand Saver Price at that, and it looked as if it might fall apart at any moment. No wonder the rich brats had laughed.
‘OK, not far now. You are going to love it, Cassie— Ah!’ Isabella tugged her to a panelled door, jabbing a finger at the polished plaque set into the wood.
CASSANDRA BELL
ISABELLA CARUSO
‘You see? Roommates!’ Isabella could barely contain her excitement, but Cassie was struck dumb as the door swung silently open.
‘You like it?’ Isabella went from joyful to mournful in an instant. ‘You don’t like it!’
At last Cassie found her voice, but it was hoarse. ‘Like it? I can’t … There must have been a mistake.’
‘No mistake.’ Cheerful again, Isabella tossed Cassie’s case on to one of the silk bedcovers, right next to a small mountain of designer-label luggage.
Knowing she must look as out of place as her case, Cassie felt a jab of homesickness for the cramped pit she’d shared with two other girls at Cranlake Crescent. Now, instead of compost walls and vomit-coloured skirting boards, she had rose paint and gilt, and – for God’s sake – a chandelier. Instead of a communal bathroom that smelled of damp and toenails, she could see through a second door into an Edwardian-tiled bathroom with a claw-footed tub. Instead of squabbling over make-up and CDs with girls as foul-mouthed and hard-bitten as she was, she had a roommate who looked and acted like an exotic film star. Yet so far Isabella actually seemed … nice.
‘This isn’t a room, it’s a palace.’ Cassie didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Weak at the knees, she slumped down on the antique silk bedspread. She leaped straight back up, afraid of creasing it.
Isabella was watching her thoughtfully. ‘Aha. I see the problem.’
‘Oh yeah?’ Cassie tensed. If this improbably beautiful girl wore even a suggestion of a mocking smirk, she’d slap it straight off her face.
‘You think you are so much better than us, hey?’
Not what she’d expected. ‘Hang on a minute, you—’
Isabella waved a hand airily. ‘I know, I know. You have worked hard to get here, yes, yes, blah-blah. Well, Miss Hoity-Toity Scholarship Girl. You may have earned your place here, but I’ll have you know that some of us have bought it!’
For perhaps two seconds Cassie stared open-mouthed at Isabella before she saw the girl’s wide mouth twitch. In an instant she was grinning too, and then they both dissolved into laughter.
Isabella flopped back on to the soft mattress. ‘You see? We are going to have fun, Cassie Bell. You and me, yes? Never mind that bore Perry Hutton, or those hoity-toity snobs from the Few. I shall teach you all about the Academy. Anyway,’ she winked mischievously, ‘Richard is cute and good fun, yes?’
‘Yeah, sure. Whatever you say.’ Cassie reached nonchalantly for her case, but she was grinning like a loon. She’d never made a friend quite so instantly. Actually she’d barely made
any friends at all, she thought ruefully. ‘And in return, I’ll teach you some proper English. Nobody says “hoity-toity” any more, OK?’
‘No?’
‘We say, “Keiko’s really up herself”.’
‘Up herself. Right!’ Isabella giggled.
‘So who are the Few? Are they sort of prefects or something?’
‘Something like that. Let’s not talk about them just now. No! Don’t unpack. Come on.’ Isabella grabbed her hand. ‘We are going to explore!’
*
‘Tell me about the scholarship! Come on, scholarship girl!’
Cassie gave Isabella a sidelong smile. Scholarship girl. The more Isabella used the term in an affectionate way, the less it would sting when someone like Keiko used it as a jibe – and Cassie had a feeling her roommate knew that.
‘Nothing to tell. There was kind of an exam, but it wasn’t that hard.’
‘I bet it was,’ said Isabella solemnly. ‘I bet I could not do it. I came to the Academy because my father is very rich. In here?’ She tapped her temple. ‘I’m as thick as a log.’
‘As a plank,’ said Cassie dryly, ‘and you are not. Anyway, there was an interview too. They wanted to know everything. What I’d studied, what I thought, where I came from. Like they were picking my brains. Just as well Patrick coached me.’
‘And he is …?’
‘Don’t give me that!’ Cassie laughed. ‘He’s my key worker at the home, OK? He’s lovely. Pity he isn’t the manager.’ She gave an angry shiver as she remembered that night last month. Waking in the night as usual, she’d overheard the familiar, whip-like voice cutting into the new girl, a skinny, sullen, tear-stained eleven-year-old. Self-harming, is it now, miss? What won’t you do for a bit of attention? I’d cut a bit deeper if I were you. ‘Jilly Beaton’s a vicious cow. Inspectors love her, but she’s a cow when they’ve gone.’
‘Back home in Argentina,’ sniffed Isabella, ‘cows are very important, but they know their place.’
The horrible memory dissipated on the spot. Stifling a laugh, Cassie elbowed Isabella in the ribs. ‘Anyway, Patrick’s great. I dunno what I’d have done without him. He kept badgering me to go for the scholarship. Said somebody else he knew had won a place and I could do it too, if I tried. And know what? He was right.’
Secret Lives Page 2
