Bet Your Life (23 page)

“I can’t stand to see you throw your future away.”

“You don’t care about me. You’ve never put me first. You just want your own way and you’ll do anything to get it. You’re using me to hurt Mum and you don’t care if you hurt my feelings too.”

“You’ll look back on this, and you’ll regret it, Jessica.”

“The way you regret leaving us so you could have your mid-life crisis?” I stood up, aware all of a sudden that my knees were shaking. “I would have done anything to bring you back. I begged you to come home. You never listened. You broke Mum’s heart and now you want to do it again.”

“You’re wrong, Jessica,” Dad said, and his eyes were suddenly sad. “Her heart was never mine to break.”

At that, Mum got up and ran out of the room. I followed, only pausing to glare at Dad. She was quicker than me, though. By the time I got to her bedroom door, she had locked it, and nothing I could say got a response from her. I leaned against the wall for a bit, then slid down to the floor. There was no reason for me to be there but I couldn’t move, somehow. I was shivering as if I had a fever.

Someone was running up the stairs. They stopped at the landing, then came toward me. I didn’t look up. I knew who it was.

Will sat down beside me. “Are you all right?” he asked, very quietly, so Mum wouldn’t be able to hear.

I nodded.

“That was pretty fierce.”

I nodded again.

“Is your mum all right?”

“Probably not.”

Will looked up at the locked door. “Has this happened before?”

“She doesn’t like to cry in front of me.” I locked my arms around my knees. “Dad used to make her cry a lot.”

“So that’s a yes.”

“I suppose. It was worse when I was younger. Then it just got to be normal.”

“Normal,” Will repeated. “I see.”

“Normal is whatever you’re used to and I didn’t know any different. As far as I was concerned, we were just a normal family. Just like yours.”

He gave me a look. “It’s not quite the same.”

“Not quite. But similar.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? You know all about my family. Why didn’t you talk to me about yours?”

“Because I like to pretend it doesn’t bother me,” I said.

“Whereas actually…”

“I’m fine.”

Will nodded. “They did a good job of messing things up, didn’t they?”

“Except us. We’re all right.”

“Better than all right.”

“Pretty amazing.”

“Go us.” Will took a second, then said, very carefully, “I understand why you’re so protective of your mother. And I understand why you don’t think she would do anything to break up my parents’ marriage.”

“Do you think I’m right?” I couldn’t look at him.

“I don’t know. She has scruples but my father doesn’t. It depends on whether she can stand up to him.”

The two of us sat in silence for a moment, considering it. I sighed. “Based on this evening’s showing, the answer is no.”

“You never know,” Will said.

“I kind of do know. But I wish I didn’t.” I put my head down on my knees. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault. You don’t have to apologize.”

“Not for that,” I said, and then wished I hadn’t said anything. I could sense Will looking at me, deciding whether to pursue it or not. And then, for whatever reason, he didn’t.

In fact, he didn’t do anything. We just sat there, not talking, not touching, for a long time.

I could have stayed like that forever.

16

One of the best things about living by the sea is that you have a perfect place to go when you want to be moody and think dark thoughts. The next day I sat on a bench, alone, looking out across Port Sentinel’s deserted beach to the gray waves rolling in to the shore, feeling dismal. It was Bonfire Night.
Remember, remember, the fifth of November
, but all I wanted to do was forget about my worries. I’d left a grim house, where Mum was still hiding in her room and Dad was lurking, trying to corner one or both of us so he could continue his lecture. In sympathy, Ella had brought me breakfast in bed and stayed in my room for a while, listening to music and talking about anything except family issues. The closest she got to controversy was when she asked, all innocence, if Will had stayed for long the previous evening.

Not long enough
was the answer I didn’t give her. He’d left after some friendly
I-hope-everything-works-out
remarks, without trying to talk about our relationship or our breakup or anything else. Maybe he thought I had enough to deal with as it was. I would almost have been glad of some distraction from the gnawing worry in the pit of my stomach that Mum was about to make some very bad decisions indeed. I was desperate to talk to her but she wouldn’t talk to me. There was nothing I could do except wait to see what happened.

It was quite nice to be on my own with my thoughts. Ella was with Hugo, who had been impatience personified while we were shut away. Eventually, he’d stormed up the stairs and demanded that I let her go.

“She is my friend. She came to see me,” I pointed out, standing in the doorway of my room while Ella giggled behind me.

“And then she met me. The end.”

“She didn’t get much of a chance to meet anyone else.”

“So it was first time lucky. So what?” Hugo bobbed and ducked, trying to see round me to where Ella was sitting. “Come on, Ella. The day is wasting.”

“In a while.”

She sounded amused, and embarrassed, and I took pity on both of them, shooing her out to join him. I loved seeing them so happy together. It was all so cute and straightforward that I felt envious. None of that for me. Nothing as easy as liking someone and being liked in return. I couldn’t help wondering what would have happened if I’d met Ryan first, when I arrived in Port Sentinel. If I had fallen for him instead of Will, I could have saved myself maybe half the trouble I’d got into so far.

“Jess!”

I looked round to see Beth rushing toward me along the promenade, her face pink, one hand in the pocket of her coat.

“What’s up?”

“I’ve been looking for you.” She sat down close beside me and leaned in, her Harriet-the-Spy glasses sliding down her nose. “I’ve got Seb’s phone.”

“What took you so long?” I patted her head. “Good work, sidekick.”

“I thought it would be somewhere obvious, like Seb’s room, but it wasn’t there. I had to go to Mum’s ultra-secret hiding place to find it.”

“Where’s that?”

“On top of her wardrobe.” Beth rolled her eyes. “She couldn’t actually be any more obvious about it. She might as well have a sign pointing at it, saying
Interesting Things Here
.”

“What sort of things?”

“Diet pills, mainly. Money. Letters from her old boyfriends.” Beth shrugged. “I’ve been through it a zillion times. She’s never noticed.”

“What if she notices the phone is gone? Won’t she go mental?”

“She’d put it right at the back. I don’t think she was planning to go looking for it for a while. Anyway, she’s distracted. Séverine is here.”

“Seb’s mum?”

“The one and only. Mum’s really tense about her and Dad spending so much time together. She thinks Seb’s mum is trying to flirt with Dad.”

“Is Seb’s mum very glamorous?”

“Think Angelina Jolie. Older than her, obviously, but like that. All hair and drapy clothes and big lips. She’s really up herself.”

“Is she upset about Seb?”

“I suppose so.” Beth sounded dubious. “Anyway, Mum is so busy trying to be superwife she’s not really that interested in what I do. Mum can’t stand Séverine. And it’s totally mutual.”

“I suppose it must be hard for her to see your dad with a new wife.”

“Especially since she was the one who broke them up,” Beth said calmly. “No, I don’t blame either of them for being a bit twitchy. But it’s very useful if you want to nick something.”

I regarded her with awe. “You look so innocent.”

“Appearances can be deceptive.” She grinned at me. “People always underestimate me because I look young.”

“I won’t,” I promised. “And I’m really grateful. This is exactly what I needed.” In more ways than one. I was feeling far more cheerful already. Emotions were messy. Facts I could deal with. This mystery had a beautiful simplicity compared with everything else in my life.

“It’s freezing here. Why are you sitting on the promenade?” She looked up and down the seafront, at the dog walkers and joggers who were the only people mad enough to be out. “No one else is sitting.”

“I like to be different. Anyway, I like the cold.”

“We were supposed to be going to St. Lucia.” Beth sounded doleful. “I bet we won’t be able to, if Seb is still ill.”

Or the unthinkable alternative; if he was dead. “Probably not.”

“It’s so unfair.” She gave a weighty sigh. She was shrewd and startlingly mature, but when all was said and done Beth was thirteen, I reminded myself. And Seb had not been the most pleasant older brother so far. I couldn’t blame her for being disappointed.

“Beth. The phone?”

“Oh yeah.” She took it out and handed it to me furtively. “I don’t want anyone to know I took it.”

“Your secret is safe with me.”
Seb’s secrets, on the other hand …
I looked at Beth sternly. “Have you switched it on?”

“Yes. But just to check it was working. I wasn’t sure. I mean, look at the state of it.”

The phone was incredibly dirty, the casing gritty and smudged from being in the drain. “Are you sure the police don’t want it?”

“Positive. Dad asked. Dan told him to keep it for when Seb wakes up.”

It sounded as if Dan didn’t want to know what was on the phone. Hear no evil, see no evil.

“Aren’t you going to switch it on?” Beth asked.

I weighed it in my hand. “I’ll do it in a second.” This bit was awkward. “But, Beth, I’m not sure if you want to see what’s on here.”

“Why?” Her face paled.

“I’ve found out a couple of things about Seb. Things he did to people. I’m absolutely not saying he deserved what happened to him, but I’m not having any difficulty finding enemies who might have wanted to hurt him.”

“I knew it.” Her shoulders slumped. “Dad is going to be so upset if it turns out he was to blame for all of this.”

“Look…” I hated to say it, but I had to. I was starting to see this from Dan’s point of view. Investigating crimes wasn’t a harmless little hobby. Seb was a real person with people who loved him, who wanted to think the best of him. It wasn’t up to me to shatter their illusions. On the other hand, Guy was in custody, potentially in a world of trouble.

I had to ask.

“Do you want me to stop asking questions? Just leave it? If it’s going to do more harm than good to know, maybe it would be better to quit now.”

Beth was made of sterner stuff than I’d thought. “No way. Whatever he did, he chose to do. That’s his responsibility. You’re not making any of this up, are you?”

I shook my head.

“Well, then. He thought he was untouchable.” She sniffed, and I couldn’t tell if it was the cold that was making her nose pink, or if she was trying to hold back tears. “He was wrong.”

“OK. If you’re sure.”

“I’m sure.” She stood up. “But I don’t want to see it. You’re right. You can tell me about it if you like, but seeing it is different.” All of a sudden she looked very young.

“Good idea.”

“Do you remember the PIN?”

“Six nine six nine.” I grinned. “Hard to forget.”

“That was his idea.” She huddled into her coat. “Thanks, Jess. Don’t get too cold.”

“I won’t,” I promised. I watched her walk away, her legs spindly and too long for her body, like a wading bird. She’d grow into them, and her looks, even if she never became as spectacular as Seb. As he had been, I reminded myself, thinking of the battered face I’d seen in the hospital. It was anyone’s guess how he would look when he recovered.
If
he recovered.

I switched on the phone, still amazed that it worked. It took a few seconds to warm up, then demanded the PIN. I put it in, sure that Beth would have got it wrong. It would be too easy if it just worked at the first time of asking.

Except that it did. I stared at it for a second, then tried to work out what to look at first. The phone beeped as hundreds of missed calls and unread text messages and e-mails downloaded off the server. Then it beeped again, more urgently, and a big “low battery” warning flashed up on the screen.

I made up my mind to start with texts. I scrolled past all of the
Get-well-soon
ones, and the
OMG-I-just-heard
ones from the previous Sunday, until I got to the ones Seb had read and answered. Guy Tindall’s name jumped out at me and I clicked to see the conversation, scrolling down past a couple of messages confirming the arrangements for Saturday night’s pre-disco party to one that made me stop.

You are dead.

My heart rate shot up and then slowed as I read Seb’s response. It was a grinning smiley-face, so maybe I was over-reacting since I knew what had actually happened. So what had provoked Guy’s message? There was nothing in the messages before that. It had to have been an e-mail, or a phone conversation, or something relating to the pictures he’d sent. Which might, it occurred to me, be on the phone. I zoomed through some more texts, seeing names I knew and nothing much that was interesting. There were some flirty ones from Immy where she went as far as suggesting that he take her to the fireworks. Judging by his side of the conversation, I didn’t think Seb had been all that keen, but she got her way in the end, promising that she would make it worth his while.

“Oh, Immy,” I said out loud, “he can’t be that amazing.” Seb Dawson was toxic, it seemed to me. She should have been running away from him, not trying to get him interested in her again. Some people never learned.

The phone displayed the first line of the last text in each conversation, which was quite useful for quick scanning, and that was all I could really do. The battery indicator was a thin red line, almost invisible. I’d get a few minutes more out of it, and then I’d have to find someone who had a phone like this who could lend me a charger since mine wouldn’t fit. That was a problem I would have to deal with, but for now I scrolled up and down, trying to guess from the names and the messages whether it was worth my while to click. One of them caught my attention because it was just a number, with no contact information. The last text began:
Good choice, mate
. Which wasn’t the sort of thing you texted to a random number, I thought. It was the sort of thing you said to someone you knew. I opened the message to read the whole conversation, and was immediately disappointed. There were only two messages. The first read:
You win. Cash?