Scarlet Wakefield 02 - Kisses and Lies

by Lauren Henderson

  I look at Catriona, who’s still curled up, hands wrapped around her knees. It could be a defensive posture, but she seems more comfortable than frightened. I have the feeling Catriona has seen this scene (without my participation, of course) quite often in the months since Dan’s death. She pulls a face at me, a cross between a grimace and a grin.

  “Lucy and Callum have been going out for two years,” she explains. “She’s really protective of him.”

  “I can see that.”

  Catriona grins, a proper one now.

  “Yes, she doesn’t exactly make a secret of it, does she? I think it gets on his nerves quite a lot. But Dan’s death made Lucy go into overdrive—she fusses around Cal like a mother hen.” She looks thoughtful. “It’s weird—I didn’t think they were getting on well at all before Dan died. In fact, I was sure they were going to break up. They don’t have that much in common, really. But they’ve got closer and closer ever since. It’s like his death brought them together.” She shivers. “Everything in this family falls into before and after Dan died. That’s the only way we classify anything anymore.”

  I nod. “That’s exactly the way it is for me, too. Exactly.”

  We sit in silence for a few moments, each of us lost in our own thoughts.

  “I’m sorry about Lucy going after you, Scarlett,” she says eventually.

  I shrug. “I never thought coming here would be easy.”

  That’s true enough. But I don’t think I’d quite taken in how hard it was going to be, either.

  I glance at Catriona. She’s actually looking quite sorry for me. So I take a gamble and ask her the question that’s been dying to get out since she first offered to show me round Castle Airlie.

  “Do you think I could see Dan’s room?”

  I stand in the middle of Dan’s room, on one of the few patches of floor that isn’t completely covered with random stuff, and swivel around slowly, amazed by what I’m seeing. I don’t know quite what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this. Catriona said that Dan’s room had been left just as it was when he went down to London that last time, because their mother couldn’t bear to have anyone touch it, so I wasn’t assuming it would be one hundred percent tidy.

  Believe it or not, I’ve never been in a boy’s room before. I actually had a shiver of excitement as Catriona walked me down the corridor and pointed at a door to indicate which one was Dan’s. Finally, I’m entering boys’ territory, a world I know barely anything about (no brothers, no friends with brothers of the right age). This was Dan’s room, the boy I’d had a crush on for years, the only boy I’d ever kissed. And now I’m going into his world, seeing how he lived, where he slept, what his favorite things were.

  Though the only reason I’m here is because he’s dead.

  It’s exciting, but morbid. I can rummage here as much as I want: Dan will never come in to catch me. I can spy on him and learn his secrets, but it’s meaningless, because he isn’t alive for those secrets to matter anymore.

  Though, surveying the room as best I can, I honestly doubt that Dan had any secrets. It looks as if everything he had is on public display. Actually, it looks as if he accidentally let off some nitroglycerine in here and the entire contents of his bedroom exploded and stuck to the walls.

  I don’t know where to even start describing Dan’s room. Even though the room is big and has lots of light from the two windows, there’s a dank, musty smell in here, probably from the piles of dirty clothes and smelly shoes festooning every surface, as if Dan got undressed by spinning very fast so his clothes got fired off his body in all directions. Maps are pinned all over the walls in the spaces between shelving units: London, New York, Amsterdam, Paris, Tokyo. Dan clearly had dreams of traveling the world, getting out of rural Scotland. There are stacks of CDs, tottering in precarious hand-built towers, and video games ditto, with a game box in the corner next to the old TV. Various guitars, mostly dusty, lean against the walls, with old hats propped on their heads. It should look cool, but actually I think it’s a bit pretentious, as if Dan has copied something he saw in a magazine. It feels self-conscious. I’m embarrassed for him.

  There’s a corkboard on the far wall, above the desk. I pick my way toward it, nearly turning my foot on something that slides away from me, lurking beneath a pile of old jeans. The board is pinned with articles, film tickets, stubs of tickets to band gigs: Powderfinger, African Soul Rebels, Placebo, Papa Roach, and one called the Translucent Frogs of Quuup. Blimey. On the wall beside the corkboard are posters, ripped and faded: Spider-Man, a scary one for the next Batman film. There’s a European Rail timetable on the pile of stuff on the desk. It’s very thumbed about and greasy with use. I look at some of the books—lots and lots of Calvin and Hobbes comic books, arty books on graffiti. They’re all pretty bashed about too. I don’t think Dan took care of anything he owned.

  On top of a pile of comic books, I see a mobile-phone charm and pick it up. It’s a miniature TARDIS from Doctor Who, the TV program, a little blue police box in a transparent plastic shell. It’s just the kind of thing I’m looking for: something small that Dan loaned me that I want to give back, my extra cover story for coming to Castle Airlie. Even if someone’s been in Dan’s room since he died, there’s so much clutter here that there’s no way they’ll remember having seen this charm on his desk. I slide it into my pocket.

  Then I notice something else on top of the pile of books: a library ID card, laminated, with a photo of Dan on it. I pick it up and look at the photo. Dan’s hair flops over his forehead in that way that always made me flush, and just seeing this image provokes the same physical reaction in me now. I run my finger over the card, reading what’s stamped on it: Dan’s name, his London address, his date of birth.

  It’s in October. This month. I pull my phone out of my jeans pocket and check the date on the calendar: no, I haven’t made a mistake. Dan’s birthday is next Tuesday, the nineteenth.

  Which means it’s Callum’s birthday too. Their eighteenth birthday, probably the most important, most exciting birthday anyone ever has. And Callum will be celebrating it alone, for the first time in his life.

  I’m suddenly feeling a lot more sympathetic to Callum’s angry outbursts than I was half an hour ago.

  I put the ID down and look around me once again, trying not to panic. Because I’m scared that Dan’s room is going to defeat me. There’s just so much mess here that I don’t know how to start searching it. I’ve got the charm, which is what I came for, but it seems really stupid to have the opportunity to look around for potential clues and not to take it. I start to walk toward the bed and hear something snap below my foot. When I look down, I see it’s an old alarm clock that I’ve just broken. I didn’t even notice it.

  The bed is so nasty—I sit down on it and then jump up straightaway. The sheets smell as if they haven’t been washed in ages, which, considering that Dan died six months ago, must be true. I bet, from the state of the room, they were pretty smelly even before he left for London.

  This is the kind of thing that would really put you off dating boys.

  I find myself fervently hoping that Jase’s room is nothing like this.

  Can’t think about Jase right now, can’t think about Jase . . .

  I bend down and look under the bed. Piles of magazines about guitars, a big shoe box containing a pair of new Timberlands, never to be worn. Nothing that could possibly be called a clue. I straighten up again and notice, on a table beside the bed, a couple of boxes that stand out from the rest of the clutter. They’re white with black writing and a yellow insignia that I’ve seen on Aunt Gwen’s prescription bottles. I pick one up and open it.

  It’s full of EpiPens.

  Just one of these would have saved Dan’s life.

  And I realize, strange though it is, that despite the investigation of Dan’s death revolving entirely around the mystery of his disappearing EpiPen, and whose bag it was in, that I’ve never actually seen one.

  Each EpiPen is p
ackaged individually in a smaller box. I take one out and slide out its contents. It’s a clear plastic tube with bright yellow labels on it, and inside is a long stubby pen, wider than my thumb, with a gray cap on one side and a black tip on the other. Tilting it, I can see that the needle comes out of the black tip. You just put it against your body, take the cap off, and press, and the needle injects you with a lifesaving dose of adrenaline. Nothing could be easier.

  If you have your pen safe in your jeans pocket, where it was supposed to be . . .

  Doing my best to repress the memory of Dan’s tortured face, his hands frantically scrabbling at his jeans pockets for his medicine, I slip the pen back into the box and close it up. Dropping it back into the larger box, I close the lid and replace it on the bedside table. I take a deep breath, pushing every bad memory out of my head. I close my eyes for a moment, trying to center myself, and when I open them, I’m looking at the built-in bookshelves next to the bed. They’re piled haphazardly with books, CDs, and various bits of electronic stuff: an MP3 player, a digital camera, a Polaroid camera . . .

  Hmm. I didn’t think they even made Polaroids anymore. Leaning in, I notice that there are a couple of packets of film for the camera propped beside it, still unwrapped and looking fairly new.

  It seems a little odd that Dan would own a digital camera and still be buying film for a Polaroid. What would he need it for? I kneel on the bed and reach up to the shelf where the Polaroid is sitting. I take it down and look at it. Not much dust—there’s way more dust on a lot of the books. This camera has been used a lot more recently than other things in this room. I reach behind to the far part of the shelf, to see if there are any photos there. Nothing.

  I scan the shelves, but I don’t see anything looking like a photo album. Not that I’d really expect Dan to have anything that organized. There are a couple of notebooks, but I flick through them and find no loose photos inside, just notes from what looks like research for essay projects.

  I flop back down on the bed again—by now I’m getting used to the smell and the greasiness of the sheets—and look around the room feeling hopeless. I could be in here all day, going through everything, and still fail to find a few Polaroid photos: they don’t take up much room. Clothes and stacks of magazines are piled up as high as the mattress in some places: all of them could have Polaroids inside. And there’s an old steamer trunk at the foot of the bed, plus a huge wardrobe, both of which, I imagine, will be stuffed with more things of Dan’s that would explode out if I opened them. . . .

  I close my eyes and try to think what I would do. Where would I put photos I’d taken? Probably close to the camera, because why move them somewhere else? And if they were just casual photos of friends hanging out, they’d be in view. Or some of them would be pinned up on the corkboard. But they’re not, which suggests that Dan didn’t want them on public display.

  So, by this logic, they would be hidden somewhere near the camera. I open my eyes again, looking straight at the shelf where the camera was resting. There are a couple of hardback books leaning next to where it was, held in place by the MP3 player. One’s called Schott’s Original Miscellany, and the other one’s called White Wings Over Vienna.

  Schott’s Original Miscellany I’ve heard of: it’s a collection of weird facts, the kind of thing boys like. White Wings Over Vienna, though, doesn’t sound anything like a book a seventeen-year-old boy would read. Also, it doesn’t sound anything like the titles of the other books in Dan’s room: it’s not a graphic novel, or a nonfiction tome on graffiti or street logos. I kneel up and pull it off the shelf, curious about its contents.

  And as I do, the book tips toward me and flutters open, and something falls out onto the bed.

  It’s a Polaroid photograph.

  I sit back down on the bed, opening the book, and immediately realize why the title was so incongruous. Dan must have picked it out simply because it was the right size, and fairly solid, not because he was remotely interested in the subject. Though you can’t tell until you open it, the central part of the pages have been cut out with a razor, leaving a large section inside, large enough to conceal whatever you don’t want people to find. Drugs, maybe. Or money. But in this case, it’s a stack of Polaroids.

  Of half-naked girls.

  I don’t know what I was expecting to find, but this has really shocked me. I dump the photos out onto the bed and turn them over gingerly, embarrassed and feeling a bit dirty to be even looking at them. It’s not just that the girls aren’t wearing much in the way of clothing. That would still be embarrassing, but not as bad as this. They’re actually posing like the girls on the covers of men’s magazines, their fingers in their mouths, their bottoms sticking out, their hands squeezing their breasts. Eww. This is so wrong. I shouldn’t be looking at these. I reach one particularly salacious photo—of a girl lying on her back, hooking one finger in her G-string and pulling it down, pouting at the camera—and actually feel myself blushing before I realize that it’s Plum.

  God. I look at it more closely. Plum has practically no breasts at all—they look like two flattened fried eggs. No wonder she was jealous of mine when they popped out earlier this year. She must wear a Wonderbra every day.

  Then I feel creepy for poring this closely over a photo of a practically naked Plum. I flick back through the Polaroids to see if I recognize anyone else. There’s Sophia, the countess who goes to St. Tabby’s and hangs out with Plum’s set, lying on her tummy, pushing back her hair with a fleshy white arm, looking awkward, as if she wants to be anywhere but on a bed with a camera in her face. I think another face is familiar, a girl I saw out with them that night at Coco Rouge, a skinny blonde with a big gummy smile who’s as happy to be posing as Sophia is uncomfortable. And—oh my God—I think that’s Nadia, though her back is toward the camera and you can’t see her face. But those slender pale brown arms hung with gold bangles, lifting that mass of blue-black hair off the nape of her neck . . . it does look like Nadia.

  She’s standing in a bathroom, completely naked. No wonder she wouldn’t show her face. A few other girls have done that too—hidden their faces in pillows, or turned so Dan couldn’t get their face on camera.

  But, as I reach the end of the stack, I see one particular girl who I’m sure wishes she’d turned her face away from the lens.

  It’s Lucy.

  I goggle at the Polaroids—there are three of them, in a sort of rough sequence. Lucy’s incredibly pretty face, with its round blue eyes and upturned nose, is unmistakable. She’s in her underwear, like most of Dan’s other photographic subjects, and it looks to me from the background as if she’s lying on Dan’s bed. Her legs are up in the air, propped against the wall in a pinup girl pose, and she has a cigarette in one hand and a glass of wine in the other. She’s tilting her head back to let her long blond hair trail over the pillows in a messy, sexy tangle. She looks very attractive, but also very self-conscious, as if she’s practiced lying like this in front of a mirror to get it exactly right.

  There’s absolutely no innocent explanation for these photos. Lucy, by all accounts, has been going out with Callum for a long time, and these look comparatively recent: Lucy’s hair, her makeup, even the sophistication of her pose, all indicate that these couldn’t have been taken a few years ago, say, before she and Callum got together.

  I understand now why Lucy was so passionate on the issue of Dan’s character versus Callum’s. Whatever the circumstances under which these photos were taken, she must have asked for them back, and Dan must have refused.

  And I think I understand the answer to my earlier question—why Dan had a Polaroid camera as well as a digital one. I bet he managed to convince a lot of them to pose for a Polaroid, rather than a digital camera or a mobile phone, because it makes only one picture. You can’t post a Polaroid on a Web site, or send it to everyone with a click of a button.

  You just make the girl feel she’s really special, and you kiss her and give her something to drink, and you grad
ually coax her into taking some clothes off, and you bring out the camera, and you say it’s just for the two of you to giggle over, because she looks so pretty and you want to have her with you looking just like this even when she’s not around. . . .

  I shiver.

  Could this have been me? Could I have been talked into taking my clothes off and posing for Dan, just like all these other girls?

  And how many boys did he show these trophies to?

  Five minutes later, I’m crossing the drawbridge once again, but this time on my own. I have to get out of Castle Airlie. It feels like a rat trap at the moment, with me as the rat, scurrying down corridors, jumping at my own shadow, not feeling safe anywhere.

  I don’t mean unsafe in the sense that anyone’s going to step round a corner and swing a broadsword at my head—though there are plenty of swords hanging decoratively on the walls, and Callum certainly looks strong enough and angry enough to wield one in my direction. No, I mean that I’ve had quite enough shocks for one day. This morning, I fainted. It’s barely lunchtime, and already I’ve learned, thanks to Lucy and then my very unpleasant discoveries in Dan’s room, that Dan was probably just looking at me as another notch on his belt, another trophy to collect.

  Ugh, those Polaroids. I shiver at the thought of them. I shiver at the thought of myself, giggly on a couple of glasses of champagne, agreeing to do some sexy poses for Dan’s collection. It’s all too easy to say you’d never do something; although I’d like to think that I’d be strong enough to resist, my brief experience with Dan and then Jase has showed me that a sexy boy can make your head spin in a way that makes you feel drunk even though you’re stone-cold sober. What if I were drunk, and Dan asked me to do something I knew I didn’t want to, but wanting to please him won over my resistance, because I was afraid to lose him? Maybe that was what happened to those girls.

  Though I have to say that some of them looked more than happy to be posing for the camera. Plum in particular was definitely giving it her all.