Scarlet Wakefield 03 - Kiss In The Dark

by Lauren Henderson

  “Her tea set’s all penguins too,” I confess. “And there are lots of coffee mugs.”

  “I just bet there are,” Taylor says, reaching for the remote. “Remind me not to go into the kitchen cupboards. I might actually have a meltdown.”

  I look at her. Neither of us has had a chance to shower since our run; we’re both a bit sticky, sweat stains drying on our T-shirts. But I don’t want to take my clothes off yet. It would feel too vulnerable to be naked right now, with the water pouring down on me. I just want to curl up into a ball on the sofa, with Taylor. And about a hundred stuffed penguins of varying sizes.

  “Hey, let’s find the people with the biggest problems on TV. That’s always the best thing for cheering you up.” Taylor clicks on the television. “Some juicy lie-detector tests and people cheating with dwarves and stuff. Cool. I never get to watch this at the dorm.”

  I don’t think anything will successfully distract me from the fact that my phone feels like it’s burning a hole in my pocket.

  But Taylor’s right, as she usually is. The sight of a lot of larger-than-life people bouncing up and down on their chairs, screaming at each other and sobbing hysterically as they watch their partners making out with sexy decoys in the greenroom of the TV studio, is hypnotically compelling. I manage so successfully to lose myself in their over-the-top stories that when my phone finally rings, I jump in shock.

  It’s Jase.

  “Scarlett?” he says in a low voice. “What’s going on? I’ve got these texts from you, and some voice mails from the police—”

  “Where are you?” I interrupt. I can’t tell him over the phone. I just can’t.

  “At the main gates. The messages from the coppers freaked me out, so I rode up the main road and pulled the bike into the bushes, so they won’t see it. I was hoping you could get out of school or something, and meet me.”

  “Taylor and I are here at Aunt Gwen’s,” I say, jumping up. “Come here, I’ll tell you everything when I see you.”

  “I can’t come there,” Jase’s voice rises. “Your aunt—”

  “It’s okay, she won’t be back for at least an hour,” I say swiftly.

  There’s silence at the other end of the line.

  “Jase?” I say, looking at the phone, thinking that maybe we got cut off for some reason. But no, the line’s still active.

  “Jase?” I say again.

  No reply. I start to panic. Did the police just find him at the gates? I run over to the window. We’re practically next to them; the gatekeeper’s cottage was built so that he, or one of his family, could nip out and swing open the imposing iron gates, curlicued with the Wakefield crest, whenever a carriage needed to pass through. I press my face to the glass, but mostly I see the oak trees that surround the cottage, and beyond them, in glimpses, the iron fence that runs round the perimeter of the Wakefield Hall grounds.

  The doorbell rings. I scream, jump, and dash across the room.

  “Honestly, you’re worse than the people on Jerry Springer,” Taylor drawls, watching a woman the size of a house beating a man the size of the house, naked but for a tie and his boxer shorts, over the head with a wedding bouquet.

  “Jase!” I pull the door open and fall into his arms.

  His leather jacket creaks as he wraps his arms around me, his chin coming down on the top of my head. I know it’s irrational to think that nothing bad can happen to me when Jase is around. I know Jase can’t protect me from all the hurt and pain in the world outside.

  But right now, for a few moments, that’s exactly what it feels like.

  Sometimes an illusion can be really comforting.

  I pull my head back from his chest, looking up into his handsome face. His lips are drawn together and his eyes are more dark bronze than gold. Even the color seems to have drained from his skin, which has an ashy tinge instead of being its usually healthy pale cappuccino.

  “Oh my God,” I whisper. “You already know.”

  ten

  “I WISHED THAT HE WAS DEAD”

  I scan Jase, trying to pick up any clues I can.

  “How did you find out?” I ask him.

  He sighs, hugging me closer to him again. “My gran rang me.”

  “But she told the police she didn’t have your number,” I say.

  He laughs dryly. “My gran doesn’t tell the coppers anything they don’t know already. Nor did my dad, as a matter of principle.”

  Suddenly, he pulls back, looking down into my face, his expression concerned.

  “How did you find out?”

  I swallow hard. “Taylor and I found him near the lake.”

  “Hey, Jase,” Taylor says from the sofa.

  “Hey,” he says distractedly to her, still looking down at me. “So what happened?”

  “We were jogging past the lake and saw the gate wasn’t locked, which seemed weird, so we went inside to see if anything was wrong. Taylor spotted your dad, lying down under a weeping willow.”

  Jase smooths the hair from my face, not seeming to mind that it’s frizzed-up from my run earlier. “I’m so sorry, Scarlett.”

  I take his hand and pull him inside, meaning to take him up to my room.

  “Nuh-uh,” says Taylor from the sofa. “Bad idea. What if your aunt comes back? You’ll really be in trouble then.”

  I glance over at the wall clock, whose little swinging wooden pendulum is—you guessed it—carved in the shape of a penguin.

  “It’s an hour before last-lesson bell,” I say. “She can’t get back here till then.”

  “Oh yeah?” Taylor says grimly. “What if she hasn’t got a class scheduled, and your grandma tells her what happened to her niece, and she decides to come back here and check that we’re not drinking her booze and photographing the penguins doing freaky stuff to each other?”

  “Penguins?” Jase mutters in disbelief. He looks into the living room. “Blimey,” he says, taking in the scene. “Hardcore.”

  My heart sinks; I was so looking forward to being alone with Jase in my room, curling up on the bed with him. But I know Taylor’s right.

  I tighten my hand around Jase’s. “This is so rubbish. We can’t even sit down and comfort each other.”

  “It sucks,” Taylor agrees sympathetically. “Look, I’ll hold down the fort here, okay? You two go off and if your aunt does show, Scarlett, I’ll say you headed back to the library to get a book you need for your homework. Take your phone, so I can text you if she turns up here. Just try not to get caught, because it’ll be both of our asses.”

  “Thanks, Taylor,” Jase and I say, almost in synch.

  “Just be back here by end-of-school bell,” Taylor warns, settling deeper into the sofa. “Oh, and Scarlett? Come back with a library book.”

  “Shall we go to the maze?” Jase suggests. “We’re the only people who know how to get through to the middle.”

  “No,” I disagree. “People might see us going in. And even if they couldn’t get to the center, they could still easily hear us through the hedges.”

  Jase nods.

  “You’re almost as good as Taylor.”

  “Almost?”

  “That detail about the library book was thorough,” he marvels.

  Despite the crisis hanging over us like a huge black thunder cloud, I can’t help cracking a small smile. It means a lot to me that Jase appreciates Taylor.

  “Yeah, it’s great having her on my side,” I say.

  “So what bright ideas d’you have, then, since you’ve shot mine down?”

  “The old temple,” I say immediately. “It’s got lots of places to hide, and we can see anyone coming.”

  To do him credit, Jase never gets grumpy when I have a plan that’s better than his.

  “Sold,” he says.

  At school we call it a temple, because it has that shape. But that’s a nickname. Officially it’s a folly. Built by a Wakefield ancestor in the early nineteeth century on a knoll that overlooks the lake and the Great Lawn, it
does have the indented marble pillars and curving semicircular back wall that make you think of a Greek temple. I suspect it of being an original one, illegally bought and smuggled out of Greece. There was a lot of that going on in the early eighteen hundreds—we studied it in art history at St. Tabby’s—and my grandmother, who’s usually a mine of information on anything relating to the Hall, is always suspiciously quiet on the subject of the so-called folly.

  Not to mention that she gets very cross whenever anyone refers to it as a temple.

  If there was ever an altar here, it’s long gone. Instead, there are three marble benches, placed along the curve of the back wall, so you can sit down and appreciate the vista: the lake, the green sward of lawn beyond, and the side elevation of the Hall, with its stacked terraces leading down to the lawn. I realize, as soon as we sit, that we can actually see the place where Taylor and I found Mr. Barnes.

  I flinch, looking at Jase, who’s staring out over the expanse of water, his expression unreadable, his arm thrown over my shoulders.

  “Cold night to be out,” he says finally. “Cold night to lie out there all alone.”

  “Do you think he went out after you left?” I ask him.

  He shrugs slowly.

  “Why would he? But Dad did what Dad wanted. You couldn’t tell him anything.”

  I rest my hand on his thigh. The sky is still gray, and seems to hang very low above us oppressively, not a hint of sunlight filtering through.

  “I’m sorry about not coming last night,” he says. “To the barn. But you got my texts, right?”

  I nod. “Eventually. But I didn’t have my phone with me. So I sneaked over to your cottage to see if you were there.”

  “Oh, Jesus. You heard the barney? Me and Dad?”

  “I saw it,” I say. “I climbed the cherry tree.”

  Jase looks away. “Dad said a lot of stuff when he was drunk. I don’t think he meant the half of it.”

  “Your dad isn’t you, Jase. Wasn’t you,” I correct myself, sounding so heartfelt that he squeezes me even closer.

  “We fought so much, Scarlett. All the time,” he says, still staring ahead of him at the lake enclosure. “He was never easy. Never. When I was little I used to yell at him that I wished he was dead, and I’d get the back of his hand across my face for it. So I learned not to say it, but there are times I thought it, I’ll tell you. Plenty of times. Last night, for one.” His fists clench again. “What he was saying about you, and your mum—I’ve heard him go on about the Wakefields before, but never like that.”

  “Why did he hate the Wakefields so much?” I ask in a sad little voice. “Did my grandmother and he not get along?”

  Jase shakes his head.

  “It’s as much a mystery to me as it is to you,” he murmurs. “I never understood any of it.” Then he lets go of me, both his hands coming forward to cup his face. “But he was still my dad, you know?” he says into his palms. “I wished he was dead, but I never meant it…. Scarlett, I never meant it….”

  His voice trails off into ragged sobs. His shoulders start to heave.

  Jase is crying in front of me.

  It’s almost frightening, Jase breaking down like this. He’s so strong: strong enough to stand up to his dad for me, to ride a powerful motorbike, to dig ditches, to prune trees with a chain saw. I didn’t realize how much I relied on that strength until I see him hunched over, vulnerable, crying his heart out.

  Physical strength is different from emotional strength, I tell myself firmly. Just because Jase is strong, that doesn’t mean he can’t cry when he needs to.

  And it also means he really trusts you. Because he wouldn’t let himself go like this around anyone but you.

  Tentatively, I slip an arm round him, cuddling up to him as close as I can, and he doesn’t push me away. In fact, he turns to me, his face damp, reaching out for me, and I scooch up even closer, picking up my legs and swinging them over his so I’m sitting partly in his lap and he’s burying his face in my chest, still crying. I stroke his short dark curly hair.

  “I love you,” I whisper into his hair, so faintly I’m sure he can’t hear me. But it’s a huge release just to have said the words to him, and I feel a sense of calm flood through me as I sit there, holding him, hearing him quiet down, too.

  His breath becomes more even. Eventually, he raises his head, wiping his eyes on the ribbed wristband of his jacket, swallowing hard. He looks at me, such sadness in his eyes that it breaks my heart.

  And then our lips meet, his very soft and full and tasting delicately of salt from his tears. I close my eyes and melt into him completely.

  “What a lovely, touching scene,” comes an all-too-familiar mocking voice. “Careful, Scarlett! You’ll make your girlfriend jealous.”

  eleven

  KISS OF DEATH GIRL

  Plum is smoking a cigarette, her long chestnut hair falling down her back, a slim black overcoat belted tightly around her waist with a wide strip of patent leather. She looks fabulously glamorous, like a femme fatale from a French film. All that’s missing is a fog machine for extra atmosphere. Still, the pale trail of smoke, curling upward around her, adds an extra touch of sophistication.

  “You are a busy girl, Scarlett,” Plum says, smiling evilly. “I never saw any hint of this at St. Tabby’s. You were always hanging around with those two little friends of yours. We all thought you were gay for each other. Terribly sweet.”

  I jump off Jase’s lap and stand in front of him, my hands on my hips, shielding him from her sight.

  “From what everyone tells me, you and Taylor got together the moment you came to Wakefield Hall,” Plum says, strolling toward me, her glossy knee-high leather boots definitely not approved school wear. “It’s lucky Jase isn’t the jealous type, isn’t it?”

  I see her staring closely at me, her long, slanting green eyes narrowing as she assesses the effect she’s having. I hear Jase’s motorcycle boots shift in the gravel. I doubt he likes what he’s hearing, but I appreciate the fact that he’s letting me fight my own battles.

  Then again, maybe he’s just too grief-stricken to say anything.

  Plum raises her eyebrows and takes a long drag at her cigarette, sensing an opportunity to strike hard.

  “Though you did get around a bit in your blaze of glory at St. Tabby’s, didn’t you? Short, but packed with incidents.” Plum looks past me, at Jase, who I devoutly hope by now has managed to pull himself together a bit, so that Plum can’t spot signs of his tears and use them against him. “She told you all about her last few days at St. Tabby’s, didn’t she, Jase? But you two are so close, I’m sure you tell each other absolutely everything.”

  Now she’s got me. I’ve tensed up from head to toe. My body feels like one tight coiled wire, about to explode.

  “Oh dear. Don’t tell me you kept mum about it?” Plum says, with her special little pointy smile, where her lips don’t curve so much as strike upward at the corners so her mouth is shaped like a V. “Oh dear. Don’t tell me you haven’t told Jase about your rather lurid past? Two boys competing for your attention, and only one survivor! Terribly dramatic, but just a little bit frightening for anyone who wants to follow in those footsteps, I would imagine.”

  Behind her, two crows sweep by, cawing loudly to each other, the flap of their wings heavy in the still air. They’re loud enough that even Plum reacts, turning her head to watch their flight. I can see how someone could read the appearance of the big black birds as ominous, but strangely, they remind me that there’s a reality beyond this moment, this confrontation with Plum in an ancient stone temple, with Jase sitting behind me, a silent spectator whom Plum keeps attempting to drag into the action.

  The crows have given me respite for a couple of vital moments, with Plum’s eyes off me. Long enough for me to summon up my resolve and decide to go on the attack. There’s only one thing to do in a situation like this: call her bluff.

  So that’s exactly what I do.

  “You kno
w what, Plum?” I say, sitting back down next to Jase, removing myself from the eyeball-to-eyeball staring match, hoping this makes me look more confident. “Jase and I have been so busy with other things that I haven’t had time yet to mention that to him. Why don’t you go ahead and fill in all the gaps in my CV that you think he ought to know? Out of the goodness of your heart, of course!”

  Nice, I think, my heart surging as I see her eyes narrow in anger. Well played, Scarlett. Now she’ll look like a telltale if she tries to say anything to Jase.

  Jase stretches out his hand to me, and I take it. I don’t dare to look at him, though, because I have to focus all my concentration on Plum. She’s much more expert at this game than I am. She’s played it every day for years and years, while I floated in a bubble of nonsnarky, noncompetitive friendship. Silly me! What was I thinking?

  “Oh, I’ll leave it to you to tell him all the sordid details,” she says eventually, doing a throwaway gesture with her cigarette that indicates that kind of thing is very far beneath her. “But let’s just say that you don’t get a nickname like the Kiss of Death Girl for nothing, do you?”

  The leather of his jacket creaks lightly as Jase turns his head to look at me.

  “I read about that in the papers,” he says, his forehead creasing in an effort of memory. “Last year, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I say, swallowing hard. “Last summer. I’ll tell you all about it later. It wasn’t my fault.”

  A boy called Dan McAndrew dropped down dead at my feet after kissing me, my first-ever kiss. So I had to go on what amounted to a quest to find out the truth of what had happened. It was the hardest thing I ever had to do in my life, but at least it gave me the answers I was desperate to find, and allows me, now, to hold my head high and say those four words: It wasn’t my fault.

  God, that feels wonderful.

  Plum drops her cigarette to the ground and crushes it with a practiced twist of her heel.

  “So the ambulance we saw earlier, and the police cars,” she prattles on. “Before I sneaked out here for a fag, they told us some staff member had had an accident, and I just thought one of those noxious cooks had sliced off their hand in the meat grinder and they’d tried to feed it to us in that ghastly chili or something. But it’s more than that, isn’t it?’