Kiss of Death (7 page)

Aunt Gwen’s eyes are bulging with satisfaction at having made a perfect grammatical point. This kind of triumph is meat and drink to her.

“Up there is the Royal Mile,” Ms. Burton-Race says, pointing at the street that rises up the hill next to the Parliament. “Full of nice shops. Including lots of cashmere,” she adds cheerfully, prompting murmurs of excitement from the St. Tabby’s girls.

“I hope they have Brora,” Nadia says excitedly to Plum. “I can’t get
enough
Brora scarves.”

“You have two hours, girls,” Aunt Gwen announces. “Be back in the Holyrood car park at one. Then we’ll go back to school for lunch.”

“I think I can see a Starbucks up there,” Sophia hisses to Lizzie. “We can get a wrap or something.”

“I don’t suppose there’s a sushi place round here, is there?” Plum asks no one in particular. “I’d kill for a miso soup.”

Only a couple of sad limp history freaks from (of course) Wakefield Hall follow Aunt Gwen and Ms. Burton-Race under the bus-shelter roof into the Parliament. The rest of us split immediately into our own little nuclei, not wanting to walk up the Royal Mile together in a solid mass. Luce and Alison, I notice, have already crossed the road and are making their way up the street. Taylor and I are hanging back to let Plum, Nadia, and Susan stroll off and put some distance between us; we’re in no hurry.

“Hopefully, Plum’ll say something rude about not finding any sushi in Edinburgh, and someone will punch her,” Taylor speculates.

“Or head-butt her,” I suggest. “That’s called a Glasgow kiss, but maybe they do it in Edinburgh too.…”

“What are you two talking about?” asks a male voice beside us, full of laughter, and I spin round to see the distinctive dark red curls and freckled face of Ewan, the Mac Attack guitarist. “Did I hear you saying you wanted to give someone a Glasgae kiss?”

I blush, even more when I see Callum behind him, raising his eyebrows in amusement.

“Already planning mayhem?” he says. “Holyrood’s made you both bloodthirsty.”

“You’re not wearing your kilts,” Taylor says to them, and I feel my own eyebrows shoot up; coming from anyone but Taylor, I would have called that comment downright flirtatious.

“It’s a wee bit chilly for that,” Ewan says, grinning down at her.

“And more than a bit windy,” Callum adds. “We don’t want to be flashing half of the city, do we?”

Ewan mimes holding down a skirt, his mouth pursing into a shocked O, like a startled Marilyn Monroe in the famous photo of her in the white dress. I giggle stupidly, and hear Taylor following suit.

We actually sound like a pair of girls flirting with a pair of boys. Normal girls, who’ve never saved anyone’s lives, or discovered dead bodies, or investigated murders. Or seen their boyfriend ride away from them on his motorbike, because he’d found out something so awful about his family that he couldn’t bear to stay a moment longer.

I remember drinking champagne with Dan last summer, and how light and bubbly and happy it made me feel, as if my head were a balloon, floating up and lifting me away. That’s the sensation swirling through me now. I feel delightfully giddy, as if nothing at all matters in the world but this moment, now, being silly and laughing and feeling, to be honest, hugely flattered that Ewan and Callum seem to have tracked us down somehow.

Because I don’t think they regularly hang round on a cold March day outside Holyrood Palace, waiting to chat up girls emerging from the gift shop with princess items in their dark blue plastic bags.…

“Funny meeting you guys here,” Taylor’s already saying. She does have a way of getting straight to the point.

“Oh, we heard your teachers saying last night you were headed to Holyrood,” Ewan said casually. “Thought we might drop by and try to rescue you from the Scottish Parliament tour.”

“Man, it’s
deadly,
” Callum said seriously. “It goes on for hours, and by the end you feel like they’ve sucked your brains out through your nose.”

“Like the Ancient Egyptians,” Taylor says, turning to him. “They did that with crochet hooks. For embalming.”

“Girls don’t usually know that,” Callum says, looking a little taken aback.

Ewan snorts with laughter.

“Callum!” Plum’s voice cuts through our chatter like a high-pitched chain saw. “And, uh, your friend from the band!” She swirls past Taylor and me to embrace Callum as if she hasn’t seen him for years. “What fun! Fancy seeing you here! So!” She tosses her mane of hair back over her shoulders and flashes him and Ewan her best, most dazzling smile. “We’ve got two hours to kill! What
shall
we do?”

Callum darts a look at Ewan, then at me and Taylor. It would take a braver man than him to tell Plum he didn’t come here to meet her, and actually, I don’t want him to. Not only would it provoke an awful scene, it would mean that, for the rest of our time in Edinburgh, at least, Plum would try to punish Taylor and me for her own humiliation. I can stand up to Plum, but it’s exhausting: I’d much rather fly under her radar than be her target. Look what happened to poor Alison and Luce.

So when Callum yields to force majeure, points up to a nearby hill, and says something about maybe grabbing a sarnie and going to hang out up there, we know that everyone is now invited. Ewan, rolling his eyes at us expressively, is already pulling out his mobile and making a call as the boys turn to lead the way, Plum, Nadia, Susan, and Lizzie clustering along in their wake.

“Should we skip it?” I say to Taylor quietly. “I mean, I’d rather have to wear a princess T-shirt to tea with my grandmother than hang out with Plum.…”

“I kind of want to,” Taylor says, and though she shrugs at the same time, I know her well enough to read her message and be aware that it’s her words I should listen to, not her gesture.

Right,
I think, watching Ewan, who’s tall enough to see clear over everyone else’s heads, swivel round with flattering interest to look for Taylor and me. Talking urgently into his phone, he jerks his head at us, indicating that we should join the group, and in response, Taylor starts to follow.

Taylor likes Ewan,
I conclude.
Cool.
Ewan seems really nice and funny. I’ve never really thought about who would suit Taylor, but I can see that a comic like him, who loves to pull faces and entertain, would balance dour, tough Taylor very nicely.

And just then, Callum turns too, making sure we’re part of the posse, and as his gray eyes meet mine, I have a sudden flash of memory once more. Of our kiss at Glasgow airport. Totally surprised that it was happening; totally surprised that I was attracted to him. And totally surprised too that grumpy, gruff Callum could kiss that sweetly.

God. Now I’m really confused. Maybe it’s not such a bad thing after all that Plum just elbowed her way into our little quartet.…

six
“MISFORTUNE SOOTHED BY WISDOM”

The direction the boys are leading us in is so unpromising that I start to hope Plum will decide she doesn’t want to join them after all, especially as they refuse to tell us where we’re going. We’re walking away from the Royal Mile and the shops, away from everything that looks at all appealing, up past a row of neat little modern houses, and under a nasty old railway bridge whose dripping girders elicit screams of disgust from Nadia, who covers her hair theatrically with her hands. We clamber up a flight of steep stone stairs cut into the cliffside and into a narrow little park where a couple of people are walking their dogs.

“This is
it
?” Nadia exclaims disparagingly, and I sort of take her point, especially as an Alsatian chooses that moment to squat down and poo on the grass, staring at us with orange eyes.

“Guid boy!” exclaims its owner, a shaved-headed young man bustling over with a plastic bag wrapped round his hand.

“Ugh,
foul,
” Plum says, turning away pointedly as we reach the end of the park and promptly double back on ourselves, taking a couple of steps down a steep drop again—

And then I see what at first I think is another little park, green and lush, sloping away to a stunning view beyond. I gasp in appreciation of the sight, which is framed by two high stone pillars. Gateposts. A sign on the right-hand one says
NO ACCESS TO LOWER CALTON ROAD,
but someone—doubtless a boy—has scrawled over it in marker pen,
CREEPY CORNER.
A huge iron gate gapes open beyond the pillars, outlining a wide stone path that leads into—

“It’s a cemetery!” Taylor breathes. “Oh
wow
!”

She’s darted past Plum and the other girls, who have stopped to light up cigarettes, and is through the gate already, walking down the path, looking around in wonder.

“Scarlett!” she calls. “Come look at this!”

“She really likes cemeteries, right?” Ewan says, grinning at me as we follow Taylor inside.

I grin in response. There’s something very charming about Ewan. He’s definitely good-looking, with those dark red springy curls and that attractively bony face, but even if he weren’t, the charm would still be there; it comes from his energy, which is bouncy and irrepressible and hugely positive.

“Taylor’s not, like, a huge goth or anything,” I say. “I think a lot of it’s the history. You know what Americans are like. They go mental for anything that’s a few hundred years old.”

“They’re like little houses!” Taylor exclaims, openmouthed, staring at the tombs. The cemetery has plenty of burial stones, huge and imposing in carved gray granite, but it’s also lined with tombs that really are like tiny one-room houses, with high walls and open doorways you can walk through. Just the sky above for a roof, and earth for a floor.

“The burying place of Alexander Henderson, Merchant, Edinburgh,” Taylor reads, looking up at the lintel of one. She walks inside to study a stone plaque affixed to one of the walls. “And here’s the names of the rest of his family. Where
are
they all?”

Ewan points to the ground we’re standing on.

“Under here,” he says cheerfully.

“Buried or cremated?” Taylor asks, looking at the packed earth with its loose topping of gravel.

“I dunno,” he says. “Want to dig down and try to find out?”

She laughs at this.

“Sorry,” she says. “I guess I ask a lot of questions.”

“No worries,” he says easily. “Hey, do you two like to climb stuff?”

Taylor and I exchange amused glances.

“You have
no idea
who you’re talking to,” I say.

The cemetery falls away in an almost sheer drop down the side of the hill; Edinburgh seems to be built on nothing but one hill after another. Stunning views of Holyrood, the Parliament, and the near-mountain beyond are spread out before us like a perfect postcard photo as Ewan leads us down the slope. We vault over tombstones, feet sinking into the lush green grass, jump up and down a series of stone steps that lead up to a whole array of tombs, one after the other, like a miniature terrace of houses.…

“It’s like people could live here!” Taylor marvels, but I’m focused on our destination: a turret, three stories high, almost in the far corner of the walled cemetery, wide and fat with a castellated top. Tilting my head back, squinting into the clouded sunshine, I see that there’s a metal staircase running round the top story, but it doesn’t seem to reach down to the ground.

“You can sort of climb up onto that tomb next to it and jump over,” Ewan’s saying. “There’s a trick we found. It’s not too hard. I’ll show you— Oh.”

He’s staring, mouth agape, at Taylor, who’s already scaling the side of the turret, finding a series of hand- and footholds in the open brickwork.

“Jesus,”
he says devoutly.

“She does a bit of rock climbing with her family,” I say. “In the holidays.”

I dart a glance sideways to see if he’s put off by how good Taylor is; I know sometimes boys don’t like it when you can do physical stuff really easily. Jase threw a fit when he heard I’d ridden his motorbike, even though he did say I was amazing afterward.

“Will you look at her go,” Ewan marvels as Taylor swings one leg onto the top wall of the tomb beside the turret, hauls herself up, and climbs onto the metal staircase.

This is one of the reasons I love Taylor. It would never, in a million years, occur to her to pretend she couldn’t manage something, or let a boy show her how to do it, just to get him to like her. It simply isn’t in her DNA.

“Coming?” he says to me, already round the side of the tomb, where a big piece of projecting stone forms a sort of step we can climb onto. “Unless you’re going to go all Spider-Man like her.”

I grin.

“No, she’s better at that stuff than me,” I admit.

I can’t help looking back toward the cemetery entrance, though, where the rest of them are still clustered. I’m seeing what Callum’s doing … whether he knows we’re over by the turret.…

“I called for reinforcements,” Ewan says as I notice more boys milling around the group. “Callum gave me the nod. We thought we’d be swamped otherwise. Those glamour-girl friends of yours seem to need a lot of attention, eh?”

“They’re not our friends,” I say quickly. “Just in the same year as us.”

He grins. “I can’t exactly see them climbing up here. They wouldn’t want to break their fingernails, right?”

“Are you two going to move your asses and get up here?” Taylor calls from the top of the turret. “The view is awesome!”

“Coming, hen!” Ewan says, winking at me, and we climb easily enough up onto the tomb, levering ourselves over onto the metal staircase. The turret door is locked, but, as Ewan said, it’s easy enough to climb onto the staircase rail and pull yourself up onto the roof from there.

“Wow,” I say, raising a hand to shield my eyes. Taylor’s dark, shaggy hair is flapping in the breeze, blowing over her face in straight lines; it looks very striking, I think. Ewan seems to agree with me. He’s staring at her in appreciation.

“So,” he says, “you’re some kind of Action Woman, eh?”

“Us marines don’t like to boast,” Taylor says, deadpan.

They’re getting on so well, they don’t need me. I take in the view instead, realizing that behind Holyrood there’s a whole range of green hills rising and falling softly into the distance, peaking in that shale-topped mountain that towers over the city. The downs are green and lush, a much-needed contrast to the gray stone of the Edinburgh houses. It’s not a pretty city by any means; it’s a strong one. Hard stone, with nothing to soften it. I feel sorrier than ever for poor spoiled, indulged Mary, Queen of Scots, brought up in French luxury, sleeping on silks and velvets and goose down, thinking she would be cozy in France forever, and then wrested out of her pampered nest and sent across the steel-gray sea to this windy, hard country where her pretty face and her charm would do nothing but count against her with the grim, dour lords who ran her kingdom.

No wonder Taylor seems to be taking to Edinburgh like a duck to water,
I think. If Taylor had been in Mary’s shoes, the Scottish lords would be whimpering by now in fear.

Ewan is leaning on the castellations next to Taylor now, pointing out various landmarks, I imagine, answering the questions she’s firing at him. I’m definitely a third wheel here. The sound of me swinging myself back down over the edge of the turret, finding the staircase rail with my feet, and maneuvering back down to the metal rungs again is covered by the whip of the wind; I don’t think they even notice my departure. I drop to the ground thirty seconds later, dust myself off, and step out from the narrow niche between the turret and the tomb, into the main cemetery again.

And then I yelp loudly in surprise. I even jump back a step.

Because there’s a corner tomb to my right, just along from the turret. It has a short flight of steps inside its doorway, leading up to something I can’t see. And someone has just jumped down from there in one big leap, over the narrow stone lip below, arriving on the grass in a perfectly judged piece of drama that shocked the living daylights out of me.

It’s Callum McAndrew.

“Did you think I was a ghost?” he asks, smiling at me.

“I don’t know what I thought!” I say, cross with him. “I could have tripped and turned my ankle or something! You shouldn’t startle people like that!”

“Nah, not you,” he says. “I just watched you climb down that thing.” He nods at the turret. “You’re not going to fall over just because I jump out of a tomb and give you a wee surprise.”

I narrow my eyes, but he’s right.

“It
was
a shock,” I say a little sullenly.

But why am I being sullen?
I think. I’m glad to see Callum, after all; I was looking for him earlier.

I can’t help it. I’m feeling really weird around him all of a sudden.

I take a deep breath and tell myself it’s natural that I should feel strange, alone for even a few minutes with Callum McAndrew. Conflicting feelings are whirling round my brain. I remember how hostile he was to me for so long, when we met before. That awful, life-altering afternoon, in a ruined tower near his parents’ estate, that ended in a death. Callum kissing me, and me kissing him back. A kiss that was supposed to be goodbye forever, because nothing could ever happen between us; not after his brother’s death, not after what we’d been through.

Callum is running his hand over his short, almost shaved hair, in a way that I recall very vividly from last year, but he isn’t saying a word. He’s waiting. Waiting for all my tangled thoughts to untwist themselves.

And the fact that he’s prepared to wait for me to work out what I think is strangely liberating. It means I blurt out the first thing that comes into my head.

“At Airlie,” I say, naming his parents’ castle, “you were always grumpy with me. And now I feel grumpy with you.”

I don’t know how he’ll take this, but, unexpectedly, his face cracks into a beautiful smile.

“I
was
a grumpy bastard with you,” he admits. “But not always. That’s not quite fair.”

His gaze is focused on my mouth now, and I know what he means; he’s remembering our kiss.

“D’you think you could get over the bad temper a bit quicker than I did?” he’s asking. “Like, maybe”—he pretends to look at an imaginary watch—“in the next couple of minutes?”

“I’ll do my best,” I say.

“Hey!” He throws his arms wide. He’s wearing one of his oversized knitted Arran sweaters—dark gray like his eyes and unraveling at the wrists—over faded, ripped blue jeans. Callum’s definitely not a dandy. “It’s sunny! In Scotland! D’you
know
how rare that is? And we’re in a cemetery! What could be more likely to bring a smile to a girl’s face?”

That does make me smile. And just then, a gust of wind brings Plum’s high, carrying voice to our ears. We can’t hear what she’s saying, but the sound has Callum flinching.

“That girl brings me out in hives,” he says, grimacing. “Come on.”

He’s dashing around the side of a row of tombs tall enough to hide us from anyone approaching. I follow him, the sun warming my face as we sprint downhill and come to a stop with our backs to a high obelisk. In front of us is a stone wall set with something genuinely unusual.

In keeping with the grim, unadorned style of the rest of the city, the other tombs and gravestones have no flourishes or decorations, just the chiseled names of their occupants. But this is a big stone panel set into the wall, beautifully carved with a tableau: a younger man kneeling to an older one, who’s holding his hand gently. They’re both wearing Greek robes. On either side of them is another panel, projecting farther from the wall to frame the central one, each depicting a naked figure leaning dejectedly on a staff. There are Greek urns carved underneath, and decorative curlicues running up the sides of the panel and over the top.

It’s still quite austere by normal churchyard standards; no weeping women or guardian angels. But because it’s not sentimental at all, that makes it even more moving. I stare at it for a while in silence, absorbing the images, feeling calmer as I do, though I don’t know why.

“Look,” Callum says eventually, leaning forward, indicating the words carved directly below the figures of the two men.

“Misfortune Soothed by Wisdom,” I read.

“I like that a lot,” he says quietly. “Don’t you?”

I think about everything Callum and his family have gone through in the past year. Their losses. The secret Callum, Taylor, and I carry about the truth behind Dan’s death. And I find myself reaching for his hand, wanting to give him some comfort. His fingers close around mine gratefully, warm and tight. We stand there, looking at the carving, its graceful lines and calm message soothing our raw spirits as the older man in the corner soothes the younger one. Just as it was intended to do.

To the Memory of
Andrew Skene

it reads underneath. And then:

Born 26 Feb 1784
Died 2 April 1835