Bet Your Life (7 page)

Mum was pink, embarrassed by all the attention. “I wasn’t looking for compliments. But I do feel guilty about how little I contribute.”

“Have you talked to Nick about it?” I asked.

“I can’t.” She looked terrified. “He doesn’t really talk to me. I say things and he just looks at me and then goes into his office.”

“He sounds great,” Ella said.

“Not the most sociable of men.” Tilly leaned her chin on her hand. “Probably because he’s so attractive—when he first came down here every single woman within ten miles tried to chat him up.”

“Most of the married women tried too,” Jack said slyly.

Tilly glared at her husband. “
I
didn’t.”

“No, but you were pleased when he came to your exhibition and admired your work.”

“He’s got good taste.” She smiled at Mum. “And he likes you. I know it. He likes your photographs and he likes having you in the gallery. You must stop worrying so much.”

“Why break the habit of a lifetime?” I asked, and then squeaked as Mum threw a roll at me.

“Add Nick to the list of Port Sentinel’s must-sees,” Ella whispered to me. “I like an older man.”

“Noted.”

I didn’t think Mum had heard our conversation but she got the gist, or at least an innocent version of it. “You should come and see the gallery, Ella. The building is fascinating. Most of it is an old barn that was behind three of the houses on Fore Street. The gallery’s entrance is in one of them, but the barn behind has been completely converted. The original building dates from 1607.”

“Wowzers,” Ella said obligingly.

“It
is
pretty stunning,” I said, and winked at her when Mum turned back to join in the general mayhem of conversation. It was as good a reason as any to go and admire Mum’s boss, strictly from a distance. And from the way she was sneaking covert looks in Hugo’s direction, I thought Ella would be happy enough to admire Nick from afar, no matter what she said about older men.

*   *   *

Dinner over, we all drifted into the big sitting room off the hall. After the kitchen, it was the warmest room in the house. Petra and Tom sat on the floor in front of the television watching
Doctor Who
with acute concentration. Hugo sprawled on a small sofa with a book propped on his chest. Ella and I lay on the floor in front of the fire, talking, while Mum edited pictures on her laptop, frowning and muttering to herself.

Tilly came and stood in the doorway, surveying us. The rain was tapping at the windows.

“Are the cats in?”

“Aristotle is on my bed,” Hugo volunteered.

“And Di?”

“I saw her in the garden earlier,” I said.

Tilly groaned. “Stupid cat. I’d better go and get her in.”

“I’ll go.” I jumped up.

“Really? It’s raining.” As if to prove her point, the wind blew a scattering of drops against the window.

“I don’t mind.” I wanted to leave Ella on her own so Hugo could join her, or blow his chances once and for all by ignoring her. He’d been distant all evening. This was his opportunity to make amends or make an exit from Ella’s plans for the week, did he but know it.

I hadn’t said any of this to Ella, but she passed on the opportunity to join me in the kitchen; I left her staring into the fire, looking quite ravishing in a big woolly jumper, with her hair loose around her shoulders.

Now or never, Hugo.

I opened the back door and peered out into the garden. Except for the rectangle of light at my feet, spilling out from the kitchen behind me, it was entirely dark. I couldn’t see Tilly’s studio at the end of the garden, or even the path that led to it. The rain was falling more softly now, but persistently. It gurgled in the gutters and pattered on fallen leaves. I strained to hear a rustle in the bushes or paws on gravel.

“Diogenes,” I called into the darkness, not too loudly. I could have wished the Leonards were less inventive about their cat names. “You idiot cat, where are you?” I cranked the volume up just a little. “Diogenes!”

One minute I was alone. The next, a figure stepped into the light, Diogenes cradled against his chest. The cat was staring up at him adoringly, her face pillowed on his shoulder. His face was half in shadow, but I would have known those hands anywhere, and the easy way he moved. I caught my breath, wondering how I could ever have mistaken anyone else for him. Will came toward me and then stopped short, out of reach.

“Looking for this?”

All my life.

I didn’t say it. I didn’t say anything. I stood back and held the door open and he walked in. He didn’t touch me, or even look at me as he walked by. There was no reason why I should feel close to fainting as his sleeve brushed mine, shedding water that soaked through the wool of my jumper. It was cold.

A reminder, as if I needed one, that getting too close to Will was a bad idea.

5

When I turned round, Will had already put the cat down on the floor. She was rubbing herself against his legs, her eyes half closed with pleasure.

“Wearing your catnip aftershave again?”

“How did you know?” He reached down and stroked Di. “It’s nice to see her. Nice to be missed.”

“Oh, you were missed.” The words seemed too significant once I’d said them and I started filling the kettle, just to have something to do. “Tea?”

“Yeah.” He leaned on the countertop, watching me, in all my makeup-free scruffiness. I had dragged my hair into a knot on top of my head but I knew it was untidy. I also knew I couldn’t do anything about it without looking vain. Of course I was wearing my oldest jeans and a hoodie that was too big for me; it was as if I’d known he was coming and had taken steps to look as unattractive as possible. I glanced at him and noticed he’d taken off his coat. It was hanging on the back of a chair, dripping. He was wearing a fisherman’s sweater with the sleeves pushed up a little. His arms were still tanned from the summer. Naturally, obviously, he looked stunning, but he also looked different somehow, and I couldn’t allow myself to stare at him for long enough to work out why.

“How are you?” he asked. Well, it was as good a way of starting a conversation as any.

“Fine,” I said, a little too brightly. “You?”

He shrugged. “Fine.”

“How’s your mum?”
Straight in there with the tough questions, Jess. Nice one
.

“She’s doing all right. Much the same.”

“How’s the new school?” Safer territory.

“Making me work hard.”

“But do you like it?” I asked.

“It has its good points. It’s not here, for starters.” I flinched and Will saw it. He added, casually, “It’s just nice to be somewhere no one cares who my dad is.”

“Are they nice? The other students?”

“Mainly.” He relented. “I’ve met some nice people.”

I heard
people
and thought
girls
. There was no way to ask. But I looked at him, with his hair a little ruffled and the fading tan that made his eyes look very light, and thought there was no way he wouldn’t attract attention from any female with a pulse.

Speaking of which, I really needed to start paying attention to what he was saying rather than how he looked. I’d just missed a question. “Sorry?”

“I asked how you were finding it.
Your
new school, I mean.”

“It’s fine.” Sentinel College was a good school; a state school but one generously funded and resourced by wealthy parents. I had wondered why they didn’t just send their little darlings to boarding schools elsewhere, but Hugo set me straight: when you’d been expelled three or four times and had come very close to getting a criminal conviction for drugs, your parents tended to want to a) stop wasting money on your education and b) keep you nearby. Guilt funded a lot in Port Sentinel, I was learning.

“Fine,” Will repeated, grinning. “Doing a good job on improving your vocabulary, anyway.”

He looked relaxed, I realized. The strain that had put shadows under his eyes had left him. I concentrated on pouring boiling water into the mugs. “Oh, come on, what do you want me to say? It’s not amazing. There are some nice people in my year. I quite like some of the teachers. I’m doing all right. Keeping up with my homework. Making friends.”

“Better than your old school?”

“In some ways,” I said carefully.

“So you’d say you’re settling in well.”

“When did I say that? With the whole Freya thing—”

“You started off with a reputation and you haven’t been able to shake it. You’d better do something to distract them. Give them something else to talk about.”

“Like what?” I didn’t know what he was getting at.

He didn’t answer me straight away, and when he did speak, his eyes were focused on the counter in front of him. “I got back last night. I saw you at the fireworks.”

I held myself very still, waiting. “Hugo told me.”

“I saw you with Ryan.”

“I didn’t think you’d be there.” Great. Now it sounded as if that was why I’d been happy to rub up against Ryan, with about as much dignity as Diogenes had shown earlier.

“I thought it was a good place to catch up with people. Find out what I’d missed while I was gone.” A flick of a look from eyes that were suddenly as dark as smoke. “And I was right.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Absolutely nothing.”

“Because you sound as if you’re jumping to conclusions.”

“Just saying what I saw.”

“What you saw was Ryan making sure I didn’t die of hypothermia. Someone stole my coat.”

“Stole it.”

“Took it. Dumped it in a ditch.”

“Why?”

“How should I know? I don’t even know who it was.”

He was looking straight at me now, and I couldn’t tell from his expression what he was thinking. “I thought you said you were making friends?”

“You know there are a lot of people in Port Sentinel who have a grudge against me because of what happened in the summer,” I said flatly. “Here’s the news: people can be mean-spirited.”

“Did you report it?”

“To the cops? No. Of course not.” I laughed. “It was from Fine Feathers. It cost about three quid. Anyway, I got it back.”

“From the ditch.”

“It’s hanging over the bath upstairs if you want to check. Probably still oozing scummy water. I should just throw it out. It needs a miracle worker, not a dry cleaner.” I crossed my arms tightly, holding onto myself, holding myself together. “All these questions. Anyone would think you didn’t believe me.”

Will was frowning, and he had gone back to studying the counter. “It’s none of my business.”

“I’m not trying to hide anything from you. You can ask whatever you like.”

One eyebrow lifted a millimeter. “Anything?”

“Within reason,” I said, feeling the color wash into my cheeks.

“How many questions do I get?”

“One.”

“But I want to ask two.”

“Well, I suppose you can ask. But I might not answer.”

“You have nothing to hide, remember?”

I lifted my chin. “Go on. Ask.”

“What’s going on between you and Ryan?”

“Nothing.” Will looked skeptical and I sighed. “He likes me. He wants to go out with me. I keep saying no. That’s why he keeps asking—he hates being turned down. And I don’t really know what to do about it.”

He took a second to reply. “Is he bothering you?”

“No. Not at all. It’s just a little frustrating that I can’t stop people talking about it. I like him, but as a friend. Not even a friend, really, because you can’t be friends with someone who keeps trying to stick their tongue down your throat.”

“I can imagine that gets awkward.” Will’s tone was Sahara-dry.

“Awkward is not the word.” Just as it was more than a little awkward to be talking about it with the one person I would have liked to be kissing. I didn’t dare look at him. “Anyway. He’s been kind to me and he’s tried to persuade everyone to get to know me before they make up their minds about me. So I’m grateful to him and I can cope with the flirting. And what you saw last night was just friendly. He was helping me out.”

“You must think I’m blind,” Will said, quite calmly. “I saw him kiss you.”

“When he was saying good-bye? It was a joke, really. As I said—friendly.”

His mouth twisted just a little before he lifted his mug and hid it from my view. I remembered that he was Dan Henderson’s son, and although they had little in common apart from their looks, they both had a temper. Dan’s just ran nearer to the surface than Will’s. But underground fires could smolder for years before they burned themselves out.

“It’s really not a big deal.” I meant because it had just been a typical bit of opportunism from Ryan, but Will misunderstood.

“Not if it happens all the time.”

“No, that’s not what I said.”

“It’s fine. To borrow your word. None of my business.” He grinned at me and I blinked, confused. I hadn’t imagined that he was angry about Ryan pawing me, had I? Because I
wanted
him to be? This version of Will was so far from angry that he was yawning, and stretching. “Sorry. I could sleep for the whole of half-term. The last few weeks have been busy. Lots of late nights.”

And I was back to imagining the pretty girls who kept him up late.

“Well, you should get some rest tonight. There’s nothing much going on.”

“Except Harry’s party.”

“Harry?”

“Knowles. He’s planning to have a party every night this week.”

“I know. Ryan told me. But I didn’t think
you’d
know.”

“I have my ear to the ground. I know everything that’s going on around here, I think.”

Will drained his mug and came round to the sink to rinse it. I scooted sideways to get out of his way, fighting down the urge to touch him as he stood facing away from me. I wanted to run my hand across his broad shoulders and down his back. I wanted him to turn round and press his body against mine. I wanted to remind myself what it was like to kiss him, even though I thought I remembered it pretty well.

“And are you going?”

“To the party?” Will shook his head. “But I do want to go out. The house is too quiet. That’s why I came over.”