Kiss in the Dark (9 page)

We stand up and DS Landon shakes my grandmother’s hand.

“Thank you for your help, Lady Wakefield,” she says deferentially.

“Please tell poor Mrs. Barnes that I will visit her later today,” my grandmother says, and instead of telling her that the police aren’t a message delivery service, DS Landon nods politely and turns to leave the room.

Wow. My grandmother could probably shoot someone in the face with a shotgun in the middle of Wakefield village and all the police would do is make her a cup of tea, tell her they’re sure she had a very good reason for doing it, and send her back to Wakefield Hall again.

I can’t help admiring Lady Wakefield’s perfect composure. But sometimes it’s so cold that it’s positively glacial. I know that’s what she wants me to aspire to, that same level of supreme poise, where the most you allow yourself is a raise of the eyebrow or a tut of the lips on hearing the worst news imaginable.

The thing is, I don’t think that’s me. No, I know that’s not me. And I don’t want her to try to turn me into a clone of her. I don’t want to end up the kind of person who doesn’t even give her granddaughter a hug and ask how she is after she’s seen a second corpse in under a year.

As we walk down the corridor, still in the old part of the Hall, the polished boards smelling lightly of wax, I have a flash of memory: being carried down here by my mother. She held me close to her chest, looking over her shoulder at the receding door to my grandmother’s rooms. Winter sunlight on the glass of the oil paintings hanging on the paneled walls, faded Turkish carpet runners on the floor, my mother’s scent all around me, her arms holding me tight.

I so wish my parents were still alive.

We cross over into the new wing, concrete and white-painted walls, the contrast stark and immediate. The school corridors are empty and echoing. Everyone else is back in afternoon classes, and I doubt any of the girls have the faintest idea what’s just happened.

We clatter downstairs to the changing rooms and locker area, which always reeks of smelly trainers and gym clothes, a lingering odor of underarms and feet so ingrained into the walls and floor that even in the school holidays, it never completely fades. I fish my phone out of my locker and pull up Jase’s number for DS Landon to copy onto hers.

“Anything else you can think of, here’s my card,” she says, handing it to me as she dials Jase’s number.

I take ages slipping it into my pocket, my heart pounding. His phone must have gone to voice mail, because DS Landon is leaving a message telling him to ring her as a matter of urgency. My fingers are already dancing across my phone keys as I turn away, texting him to ring me ASAP.

“If you see Jase, tell him to ring me soonest, okay, Scarlett?” DS Landon calls over her shoulder as she walks away, and I nod virtuously and probably unconvincingly.

“Are you all right?” Taylor asks.

“I don’t know,” I say. I’ve just rung Jase’s number, but he isn’t answering. I hang up as it goes to voice mail, unsure about what to say to him in a message. All I want is to be able to break the news to Jase, and to make sure he’s okay before he goes to the police.

“Hey,” Taylor says, trying to lighten the mood, “at least we get to watch crappy afternoon TV, right?”

But when we get to Aunt Gwen’s, turning on the TV is the last thing on Taylor’s mind. She wanders round the living room, eyes wide, picking up every single china object one by one in awe and wonder.

“Wow,” she says eventually. “I didn’t know there were this many penguins in the world.”

“You haven’t even looked at the ones on the sofa yet,” I say, sinking down among them.

I’m not officially banned from using Aunt Gwen’s living room, it’s just that she’s usually in it, not having much of a life, and the last thing either of us wants is to spend any social time together. So apart from when I’m showering or grabbing a soft drink from the fridge, I’m pretty much always in my bedroom. I have a TV in there and I watch a lot of stuff on the computer, but I must admit that actually sitting on a proper sofa is very nice.

I too am gobsmacked by the sheer extent of the penguin collection; I haven’t been in here for quite a while and it’s as if they’ve been breeding since then. The china ones are now covering every available surface, and the sofa is so clustered with stuffed penguins that I’m sitting on at least four of them, with a further penguin head sticking over my shoulder as if it’s trying to watch TV with me.

Taylor turns to look at me and executes such a perfect double-take that I crack up laughing, and keep on much longer than her expression warrants. But I’m so grateful for something to laugh at that I actually can’t stop for quite a while.

“I feel like we’re on Antarctica,” she says, plopping down next to me, dislodging several more penguins as she does so. “We just need a polar bear for the finishing touch.”

“Her tea set’s all penguins too,” I confess. “And there are lots of coffee mugs.”

“I just bet there are,” Taylor says, reaching for the remote. “Remind me not to go into the kitchen cupboards. I might actually have a meltdown.”

I look at her. Neither of us has had a chance to shower since our run; we’re both a bit sticky, sweat stains drying on our T-shirts. But I don’t want to take my clothes off yet. It would feel too vulnerable to be naked right now, with the water pouring down on me. I just want to curl up into a ball on the sofa, with Taylor. And about a hundred stuffed penguins of varying sizes.

“Hey, let’s find the people with the biggest problems on TV. That’s always the best thing for cheering you up.” Taylor clicks on the television. “Some juicy lie-detector tests and people cheating with dwarves and stuff. Cool. I never get to watch this at the dorm.”

I don’t think anything will successfully distract me from the fact that my phone feels like it’s burning a hole in my pocket.

But Taylor’s right, as she usually is. The sight of a lot of larger-than-life people bouncing up and down on their chairs, screaming at each other and sobbing hysterically as they watch their partners making out with sexy decoys in the greenroom of the TV studio, is hypnotically compelling. I manage so successfully to lose myself in their over-the-top stories that when my phone finally rings, I jump in shock.

It’s Jase.

“Scarlett?” he says in a low voice. “What’s going on? I’ve got these texts from you, and some voice mails from the police—”

“Where are you?” I interrupt. I can’t tell him over the phone. I just can’t.

“At the main gates. The messages from the coppers freaked me out, so I rode up the main road and pulled the bike into the bushes, so they won’t see it. I was hoping you could get out of school or something, and meet me.”

“Taylor and I are here at Aunt Gwen’s,” I say, jumping up. “Come here, I’ll tell you everything when I see you.”

“I can’t come there,” Jase’s voice rises. “Your aunt—”

“It’s okay, she won’t be back for at least an hour,” I say swiftly.

There’s silence at the other end of the line.

“Jase?” I say, looking at the phone, thinking that maybe we got cut off for some reason. But no, the line’s still active.

“Jase?” I say again.

No reply. I start to panic. Did the police just find him at the gates? I run over to the window. We’re practically next to them; the gatekeeper’s cottage was built so that he, or one of his family, could nip out and swing open the imposing iron gates, curlicued with the Wakefield crest, whenever a carriage needed to pass through. I press my face to the glass, but mostly I see the oak trees that surround the cottage, and beyond them, in glimpses, the iron fence that runs round the perimeter of the Wakefield Hall grounds.

The doorbell rings. I scream, jump, and dash across the room.

“Honestly, you’re worse than the people on Jerry Springer,” Taylor drawls, watching a woman the size of a house beating a man the size of the house, naked but for a tie and his boxer shorts, over the head with a wedding bouquet.

“Jase!” I pull the door open and fall into his arms.

His leather jacket creaks as he wraps his arms around me, his chin coming down on the top of my head. I know it’s irrational to think that nothing bad can happen to me when Jase is around. I know Jase can’t protect me from all the hurt and pain in the world outside.

But right now, for a few moments, that’s exactly what it feels like.

Sometimes an illusion can be really comforting.

I pull my head back from his chest, looking up into his handsome face. His lips are drawn together and his eyes are more dark bronze than gold. Even the color seems to have drained from his skin, which has an ashy tinge instead of being its usually healthy pale cappuccino.

“Oh my God,” I whisper. “You already know.”

“I WISHED THAT HE WAS DEAD”

I scan Jase, trying to pick up any clues I can.

“How did you find out?” I ask him.

He sighs, hugging me closer to him again. “My gran rang me.”

“But she told the police she didn’t have your number,” I say.

He laughs dryly. “My gran doesn’t tell the coppers anything they don’t know already. Nor did my dad, as a matter of principle.”

Suddenly, he pulls back, looking down into my face, his expression concerned.

“How did you find out?”

I swallow hard. “Taylor and I found him near the lake.”

“Hey, Jase,” Taylor says from the sofa.

“Hey,” he says distractedly to her, still looking down at me. “So what happened?”

“We were jogging past the lake and saw the gate wasn’t locked, which seemed weird, so we went inside to see if anything was wrong. Taylor spotted your dad, lying down under a weeping willow.”

Jase smooths the hair from my face, not seeming to mind that it’s frizzed-up from my run earlier. “I’m so sorry, Scarlett.”

I take his hand and pull him inside, meaning to take him up to my room.

“Nuh-uh,” says Taylor from the sofa. “Bad idea. What if your aunt comes back? You’ll really be in trouble then.”

I glance over at the wall clock, whose little swinging wooden pendulum is—you guessed it—carved in the shape of a penguin.

“It’s an hour before last-lesson bell,” I say. “She can’t get back here till then.”

“Oh yeah?” Taylor says grimly. “What if she hasn’t got a class scheduled, and your grandma tells her what happened to her niece, and she decides to come back here and check that we’re not drinking her booze and photographing the penguins doing freaky stuff to each other?”

“Penguins?” Jase mutters in disbelief. He looks into the living room. “Blimey,” he says, taking in the scene. “Hardcore.”

My heart sinks; I was so looking forward to being alone with Jase in my room, curling up on the bed with him. But I know Taylor’s right.

I tighten my hand around Jase’s. “This is so rubbish. We can’t even sit down and comfort each other.”

“It sucks,” Taylor agrees sympathetically. “Look, I’ll hold down the fort here, okay? You two go off and if your aunt does show, Scarlett, I’ll say you headed back to the library to get a book you need for your homework. Take your phone, so I can text you if she turns up here. Just try not to get caught, because it’ll be both of our asses.”

“Thanks, Taylor,” Jase and I say, almost in synch.

“Just be back here by end-of-school bell,” Taylor warns, settling deeper into the sofa. “Oh, and Scarlett? Come back with a library book.”

“Shall we go to the maze?” Jase suggests. “We’re the only people who know how to get through to the middle.”

“No,” I disagree. “People might see us going in. And even if they couldn’t get to the center, they could still easily hear us through the hedges.”

Jase nods.

“You’re almost as good as Taylor.”

“Almost?”

“That detail about the library book was thorough,” he marvels.

Despite the crisis hanging over us like a huge black thunder cloud, I can’t help cracking a small smile. It means a lot to me that Jase appreciates Taylor.

“Yeah, it’s great having her on my side,” I say.

“So what bright ideas d’you have, then, since you’ve shot mine down?”

“The old temple,” I say immediately. “It’s got lots of places to hide, and we can see anyone coming.”

To do him credit, Jase never gets grumpy when I have a plan that’s better than his.

“Sold,” he says.

At school we call it a temple, because it has that shape. But that’s a nickname. Officially it’s a folly. Built by a Wakefield ancestor in the early nineteeth century on a knoll that overlooks the lake and the Great Lawn, it does have the indented marble pillars and curving semicircular back wall that make you think of a Greek temple. I suspect it of being an original one, illegally bought and smuggled out of Greece. There was a lot of that going on in the early eighteen hundreds—we studied it in art history at St. Tabby’s—and my grandmother, who’s usually a mine of information on anything relating to the Hall, is always suspiciously quiet on the subject of the so-called folly.

Not to mention that she gets very cross whenever anyone refers to it as a temple.

If there was ever an altar here, it’s long gone. Instead, there are three marble benches, placed along the curve of the back wall, so you can sit down and appreciate the vista: the lake, the green sward of lawn beyond, and the side elevation of the Hall, with its stacked terraces leading down to the lawn. I realize, as soon as we sit, that we can actually see the place where Taylor and I found Mr. Barnes.

I flinch, looking at Jase, who’s staring out over the expanse of water, his expression unreadable, his arm thrown over my shoulders.

“Cold night to be out,” he says finally. “Cold night to lie out there all alone.”

“Do you think he went out after you left?” I ask him.

He shrugs slowly.

“Why would he? But Dad did what Dad wanted. You couldn’t tell him anything.”

I rest my hand on his thigh. The sky is still gray, and seems to hang very low above us oppressively, not a hint of sunlight filtering through.

“I’m sorry about not coming last night,” he says. “To the barn. But you got my texts, right?”

I nod. “Eventually. But I didn’t have my phone with me. So I sneaked over to your cottage to see if you were there.”

“Oh, Jesus. You heard the barney? Me and Dad?”

“I saw it,” I say. “I climbed the cherry tree.”

Jase looks away. “Dad said a lot of stuff when he was drunk. I don’t think he meant the half of it.”

“Your dad isn’t you, Jase. Wasn’t you,” I correct myself, sounding so heartfelt that he squeezes me even closer.

“We fought so much, Scarlett. All the time,” he says, still staring ahead of him at the lake enclosure. “He was never easy. Never. When I was little I used to yell at him that I wished he was dead, and I’d get the back of his hand across my face for it. So I learned not to say it, but there are times I thought it, I’ll tell you. Plenty of times. Last night, for one.” His fists clench again. “What he was saying about you, and your mum—I’ve heard him go on about the Wakefields before, but never like that.”

“Why did he hate the Wakefields so much?” I ask in a sad little voice. “Did my grandmother and he not get along?”

Jase shakes his head.

“It’s as much a mystery to me as it is to you,” he murmurs. “I never understood any of it.” Then he lets go of me, both his hands coming forward to cup his face. “But he was still my dad, you know?” he says into his palms. “I wished he was dead, but I never meant it…. Scarlett, I never meant it….”

His voice trails off into ragged sobs. His shoulders start to heave.

Jase is crying in front of me.

It’s almost frightening, Jase breaking down like this. He’s so strong: strong enough to stand up to his dad for me, to ride a powerful motorbike, to dig ditches, to prune trees with a chain saw. I didn’t realize how much I relied on that strength until I see him hunched over, vulnerable, crying his heart out.

Physical strength is different from emotional strength, I tell myself firmly. Just because Jase is strong, that doesn’t mean he can’t cry when he needs to.

And it also means he really trusts you. Because he wouldn’t let himself go like this around anyone but you.

Tentatively, I slip an arm round him, cuddling up to him as close as I can, and he doesn’t push me away. In fact, he turns to me, his face damp, reaching out for me, and I scooch up even closer, picking up my legs and swinging them over his so I’m sitting partly in his lap and he’s burying his face in my chest, still crying. I stroke his short dark curly hair.

“I love you,” I whisper into his hair, so faintly I’m sure he can’t hear me. But it’s a huge release just to have said the words to him, and I feel a sense of calm flood through me as I sit there, holding him, hearing him quiet down, too.

His breath becomes more even. Eventually, he raises his head, wiping his eyes on the ribbed wristband of his jacket, swallowing hard. He looks at me, such sadness in his eyes that it breaks my heart.

And then our lips meet, his very soft and full and tasting delicately of salt from his tears. I close my eyes and melt into him completely.

“What a lovely, touching scene,” comes an all-too-familiar mocking voice. “Careful, Scarlett! You’ll make your girlfriend jealous.”