Scarlet Wakefield 01 - Kiss Me Kill Me (7 page)

Lady Severs gasps in dismay.

“Surely that’s not necessary!” she protests.

“I’m sorry, my lady. In any case of suspicious death like this, an inquest is mandatory.”

The older policeman gives me a long dubious stare. He may have given up the notion that I’m a drug dealer, but it’s quite obvious that he’s convinced I’m somehow responsible for Dan’s death.

I shiver, remembering Plum screaming at me.

He’s not the only one who thinks that.

“The publicity!” Lady Severs recoils from me, staring down her nose as if I’m what she would call a “common person” who’s dared to talk back to her. It’s her worst look of all.

Now that the initial shock of Dan’s collapse and death is draining away, now that I have some sweet milky tea inside me, the terrible truth of the situation is beginning to take hold of me. I’ve lost practically everything that made my life worth living: my old friends, my new acquaintances, my room in Holland Park (because I really doubt Lady Severs will let me go on living there, now that I’ve dragged her down to the Knightsbridge police station in the middle of the night and caused a huge scandal).

And Dan. I’ve lost anything that might have happened between me and Dan.

I remember his kiss, and tears come to my eyes.

It’s not just the policemen who think I might have caused Dan’s death. Plum did, too, and by now so will everyone else. Though I can’t remotely think of anything I could have done that could have hurt Dan, I was the last person to see him alive.

If the tests and the inquest don’t determine what killed him, every single person who knows about Dan’s death is going to assume that I’m to blame.

And the worst part is that so will I.

PART TWO: A.D.

“It wasn’t your fault.”

I sit and look at those words for a long time. I want to write more, I really do.

But I’m scared.

I pick up my pen and start to scribble over the sentence, canceling it out. Years ago I learnt that to cover up words properly, you write other words on top of them, so that no one can squint and see the letters hiding underneath. So I write over the top. Again and again, till you can’t make out a single letter, just a tangled mass of black ink.

I put down my pen and stare at the paper. And then I realize that, without meaning to, I’ve used the same sentence that I wanted to conceal. I’ve written the same words over and over again, like those old-fashioned films where the teacher makes a schoolkid keep writing a sentence on a blackboard till the whole surface is filled with white chalk.

“It wasn’t your fault,” I’ve written.

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

I pick up the piece of paper and scrunch it up with my hand and throw it in the bin. Where it joins a crumpled-up mass of other papers, all with the same black mass scribbled on them, which is those same words written again and again and again.  .  .  .

And I hate myself. Because I’m a coward. Because I’m not brave enough to look at those words on the page without canceling them out again straightaway.

I’m a coward. And right now I wish I was dead. Because this secret is much too big for me to be able to keep.

A FRESH START

“The most important thing,” my grandmother says, “is that you put the past behind you. You mustn’t dwell. What can’t be cured must be endured.”

It’s all I can do to stop my eyes from rolling up in their sockets. You know, it’s much harder than you’d think to control your eyeballs. They’re used to moving without any conscious effort of the brain. How often do you have to tell your eyes to do something? Think how many times you tell your stomach to suck itself in. You never do that with your eyes, do you?

In an effort not to make a crazed face, I fix my stare on my grandmother till my eyes start watering. I’ve heard this speech from her hundreds of times before. Don’t dwell, pluck up, what-can’t-be-cured, etc., etc. Ever since my mother and father died—over a decade ago. And no matter how much she says it, it never helps.

“You’ve had the summer to let things settle,” my grandmother continues. “A few months.”

“Barely three,” I mumble.

“What, Scarlett?” my grandmother says impatiently. “Speak up. You know I can’t abide muttering.”

“Three months,” I say as I tug on the hem of my black sweater. “It’s barely been three months since  .  .  .”

I still can’t say the words out loud: “since Dan died.”

My grandmother waves her hand. “More than enough time,” she says imperiously, commanding me with both the tone of her voice and her gesture to agree with her. “No dwelling, Scarlett. It stops you from achieving your goals. And stop fidgeting. It’s a nasty habit.”

There’s a loud knock on the door.

“Come!” my grandmother calls with the authoritative tone of the Queen Mother.

I don’t know why she doesn’t add in, but I’ve heard her say that single word so often that I take it for granted. Grandmother doesn’t run a bath, she “draws” it. She doesn’t drink tea, she “takes” it. All very old-fashioned, aristocratic English, the kind of thing you can really only get away with if you’re—

“Lady Wakefield? Your tea,” says her perfectly groomed assistant, Penelope, entering the room with the afternoon tea tray. Silver teapot, white bone china Minton cups, matching plate with plain dry tea biscuits.

“Scarlett?” my grandmother, Lady Wakefield, says. “Will you pour?”

My eyes want to start rolling once again. Grandmother is always trying to “make a lady of me.” I feel like an idiot lifting that big silver teapot—it’s like something out of a period film. But then, that’s how my grandmother lives. I look around her study, with its paneled mahogany walls and polished antique furniture. On the walls are paintings of our ancestors, including a Victorian Lady Wakefield in the appropriate corset and crinoline. It’s like a time capsule in here.

I manage to direct the stream of pale tea into the cups without too much spillage. Behind me, Penelope coughs politely.

“Lady Wakefield?” she says. “I’m so sorry, Scarlett—it’s just, you know, the start of a new year—so much to get on with—time is pressing  .  .  .”

I don’t think I’ve ever heard Penelope finish a sentence. She always gives the impression of being much too busy to get one out.

“Absolutely!” my grandmother says. “Scarlett, my dear, drink up your tea. You know what things are like in September. Terribly busy. Complete insanity.”

I nod, and pour us each a drop of milk from the milk jug.

I prefer my tea very strong, with lots of milk and sugar, but according to Grandma that’s for the common folk. People as posh as us “take” their tea very weak, with barely any milk. Her task accomplished, Penelope slips discreetly from the room.

“You know the drill around here, of course,” my grandmother says, her lips pursing tightly.

I resort to wringing my hands behind my back. “Well, yes and no.”

“So I don’t need to go over it as I would for other girls,” she continues on as if she hasn’t heard me. “I must say, I wish it hadn’t come to this.”

“I don’t want to be here either,” I interject.

“I certainly didn’t think it was a good idea for you to come here. It would not have been my choice. That’s why I arranged for you to go to St. Tabitha’s, and boarded you with Lady Severs, who, I must say, was not as understanding as she could have been about this situation.” My grandmother sighs. “Still, neither she nor I are as young as we were, and I certainly wouldn’t like those vulgar photographers pestering me like horseflies whenever I tried to leave my own house. But needs must as the devil drives. And after the death of that young boy  .  .  .”

One thing about my grandmother: she always calls a spade a spade. No beating around the bush for her.

“I quite understand the headmistress of St. Tabitha’s deciding that it would be best for you to make a fresh start at a new school. No headmistress would appreciate the press camped outside the school gates for the rest of the summer term. And apparently there were a lot of anonymous letters and e-mails. Teenage girls!” She sighs. “They can be very cruel, can’t they?”

I don’t bother to agree. I just sip my tea and try not to think about the contents of my e-mail in-box. Or the fact that I’ve had to change my mobile phone number and cancel all my IM accounts. No one knows better than I do how cruel teenage girls can be.

“So here we are,” says my grandmother with a sigh. “A fresh start. Term begins tomorrow. We’ll just have to draw a line under the incident and make the best of the situation, won’t we?”

She gives me her famous smile, which basically means that you’re dismissed from the room. My grandmother is as smartly turned out as ever. Pearls round her neck and clipped to her ears—they’ll come to Aunt Gwen when she dies, but I don’t think Aunt Gwen’s expecting to clasp that pearl necklace at her throat any time soon. Hair as white as her pearls in a neatly trimmed bob. Blue eyes bright and clear as periwinkles, and as all-seeing as satellite radar. Not a trace of makeup on her face apart from a little powder and some pale pink lipstick.

I get up and bend over to kiss her goodbye. Her cheek is soft, tissue paper over velvet.

“I’m sure you’ll have a very happy time with us, Scarlett,” she says.

“Yes, Grandma,” I say, walking toward the door.

“Oh, that reminds me.” My grandmother turns in her chair. Its high tapestry back means she has to crane round it to see me, but she manages to make even this movement seem elegant. “It should be Lady Wakefield in term time, not Grandma,” she says. “Very awkward for everyone if protocol isn’t observed, I think. And the same for your aunt Gwen.”

“Yes, Lady Wakefield,” I say sarcastically, and shoot out the door before she can reprimand me for my tone of voice.

I stand there in the corridor for a few moments. My grandmother’s suite of rooms are kept up like the old days, with antique furnishings—the big gilt-framed mirror hanging over the occasional table, the leather chairs on either side, set up for parents and their daughters waiting for an interview in the Holy of Holies, Grandmother’s study. You’d think it was still a stately home. Only one little thing gives it away. The brass plaque on the door, which reads:

HEADMISTRESS’S STUDY. ENTER ONLY UPON INVITATION.

The girls aren’t allowed to use the central mahogany staircase, with its two wings flowing round the sides of the Great Hall. Grandma is too worried that hordes of running schoolgirl feet will wear the precious old wood down to nothing. Only teachers can use it. And me, when it’s not term time. After official interviews with Grandma, I used to take the steps two at a time, eager to get away as fast as possible. But today I just walk down them slowly. Why hurry? It’s not as if there’s anything left in my life I’m remotely excited about. No need to rush toward nothing.

More oil paintings line the paneled walls of the Great Hall. There’s a giant tapestry hanging in the gallery, where the two wings of the staircase begin their descent. It’s an odd combination of medieval and Victorian, built that way by nineteenth-century Wakefields who liked the romance of living in medieval times—Knights! Jousting! Um, eating without cutlery and throwing the bones to the dogs!—but didn’t have an ancestral home that dated back to the thirteenth century. They had to build their own, on a large estate which, at that time, was well away from the stinky metropolis of London.

And they did a ridiculously thorough job of it. Wakefield Hall sprawls on and on for miles, and that’s just the house. The landscaping is pretty extensive, too: there’s a hedge maze, a lime-tree walk, formal terraces on the southwest side, and weeping willows and even an ornamental lake (now fenced off for safety reasons). The house itself kept expanding, as the original Sir Henry Wakefield, pumped up with excitement about having been made a baronet and given a ton of land by Queen Victoria, simply couldn’t stop adding wings.

There are parts of it that are walled off and that we never enter—unsuitable for schoolrooms. Ironically, when my grandmother realized that nobody apart from a billionaire could afford to live in Wakefield Hall—the heating costs alone are enough to pay off the Third World debt—and decided to make it into a school, she had to build a whole new prefab wing round the back. Plus the gymnasium. And the swimming pool. And the tennis and netball courts. It’s a small country here, really. Or at least a county.

Grandmother’s been running Wakefield Hall Collegiate for nearly fifty years. Imagine spending half a century at school.

And right now it feels as if that’s what I’ve been condemned to. An eternity at Wakefield Hall.

I push open one of the huge main double doors, each of which weighs roughly as much as a small car. They’re wedged open in term time from seven-thirty to nine a.m., for the teachers and sixth-formers to use. Two good things about being in the sixth form: you get to wear your own clothes and use the main door. The first one, of course, being a lot more important. I think there was a rebellion ten years ago—girls in their last two years of school were humiliated by having to travel on the tube in those awful brown Wakefield Hall uniforms. I mean, it’s all right when you’re twelve, but being seventeen and eighteen and still wearing a school uniform—you’d be a total laughingstock. Not to mention an easy target for every mugger around.

Outside it’s warm and breezy, a lovely sunny September day, enough to cheer up anyone whose life hadn’t come to a screaming halt three months ago, when she was accused of killing someone and had no way to prove anyone wrong, including herself.

I kick the gravel as I wander down the drive. There’s a huge stone fountain in the middle of it, not working, however. Little girls used to dare each other to come out here (playing on the drive is obviously strictly forbidden) and splash the water over each other. Grandmother didn’t like that one little bit. So the leaping stone dolphins don’t dribble water out of their mouths into the stone bowls being held by the fat little stone angels (I know, it doesn’t make much sense—what are angels doing in a fountain?). There’s something very sad about a fountain with no water in it.

Mind you, everything seems sad to me at the moment.

It’s half a mile down the drive to the house where I’m staying. Technically, it’s my home, but I can’t bring myself to call it that. Though it must be home: I read a sentence once that said something like “home is the place where they have to take you in,” and that indeed is a good description of my aunt Gwen’s little nook.

Aunt Gwen had to take me in when I was four and my parents died in a motorbike crash. She didn’t want to do it then, and she doesn’t want to do it now. I was over the moon about getting out of here to go and live at Lady Severs’s charming abode, but Aunt Gwen was ecstatic. She couldn’t chuck me out the door fast enough. And now I’m back, like a bad penny. Having killed someone. Aunt Gwen must think she’s cursed.

Well, she wouldn’t be the only one.

We live in the gatehouse, which, as one can sort of tell from the name, is directly by the main entrance gates, which are enormous and imposing, designed to intimidate anyone visiting Wakefield Hall. The gatehouse is a stone cottage, and the gatekeeper and his family lived here in the old days, opening the gate for visitors in return for free accommodation.

If it seems a bit weird that my grandmother lives in full baronet-ial splendor up at the Hall and my aunt Gwen only gets the stone cottage that one of the lesser servants used to have, well, it seems odd to me, too. Aunt Gwen justifies it by saying that she “likes some space from Mother,” which would make sense if you didn’t know that there are a ton of other buildings on the Wakefield Hall estate that Aunt Gwen could have, most of them not on the road, and a lot bigger. Like the one my dad had, before he and my mum moved to London. My dad was the favored child. My aunt Gwen got the short straw. I feel sorry for her about that—or I would, if she didn’t take it out on me.

School starts in five days. I might as well go over my holiday work. I’m a bit behind: after Dan died, I missed a few weeks of school.

I couldn’t have gone back to St. Tabby’s as a student. I did briefly sneak in there once, to clear out my locker, and Plum and her entourage practically kicked me to death with their stilettos and wrote swear words all over my broken corpse. Even for that visit to St. Tabby’s, they had to sneak me in by the service entrance, because the press was waiting outside the school, hoping to take a photo of me. They had to take me out of Lady Severs’s house for the inquest with my head under a blanket, because that was under siege by photographers, too. Lady Severs was so furious I thought her head was going to spin round and round in fury, like that girl in The Exorcist. My life for that fortnight, trapped in that house with her, was like being in solitary confinement with one very angry warder with a big grudge against you.