Dead Popular Page 10

  Out of nowhere came a scream which reverberated through the floor. We looked at each other, flung the duvet back and ran to the stairs as the screams continued, on and on. I reached the stairs first and scrambled down faster than I ever had, looking to see what was happening as soon as the second floor landing came into view. Girls were running from every direction and I could see something was going on either inside or outside Clemmie’s bedroom.

  I pushed my way through, girls parting for me. I was House Prefect, and I was aware of Meribel and Lo, my deputies, right behind me.

  Paige was lying on the floor, inside Clemmie’s room, moving a slow, shaky hand to her head. Clemmie was kneeling next to her. She’d stopped screaming now but was crying hysterically.

  “What happened? Are you OK?” I asked Paige, crouching beside her, but she didn’t answer. “Has someone gone to get Calding?” I checked with the girls behind me. They nodded.

  “She was electrocuted,” said Zeta in a wobbly voice. She stood by door. “I thought she was dead.”

  “What the hell…?” muttered Meribel.

  I beckoned Zeta in. “Did you see it?” I asked her.

  She nodded and gulped away a sob. “I was walking past.”

  “Calding’s here,” someone said.

  “Out of the way, girls,” Calding called, her voice authoritative. “Move! Move! Don’t block the door. An ambulance is on its way.”

  Everyone moved back, including me, and Calding rushed over to Paige. “It’s going to be OK.”

  “My head hurts,” said Paige in a slurry voice. “Is it bleeding?”

  Calding took a look. “No, but you’ve been knocked out. Stay still.” She turned to Clemmie. “Stop that dreadful noise and tell me what happened.”

  Clemmie breathed in and out noisily a few times, and then said, “We’d been at Davison. We were going into my room. Paige turned on the light. Next thing she was flung across the room. She hit her head. She could have died. It was this one.” She indicated the one just inside her door.

  “Don’t touch it!” boomed Squirrel’s voice. I hadn’t noticed her come upstairs. She was wearing a cardigan over her kitchen uniform and smelled of the spaghetti bolognaise we’d had at dinner. She went into Clemmie’s room. “Metal light switch. Not good.”

  Calding stood up. “Girls, you’re not to touch any electrics.” She said to Squirrel, “Turn off the electricity immediately. Call the emergency electrician number in my office. I’m going to stay with Paige. The rest of you, please get ready for bed. There’s just enough natural light to see what you’re doing.” She made a shooing movement with her hands.

  “The girls need strong, sweet tea,” said Squirrel. “Especially you and you.” She pointed to Clemmie and Zeta. “Come downstairs. We’ll make tea in Davison if we need to.”

  All of us went downstairs into the dining hall, thrilled that Squirrel had overruled Calding and Calding had said nothing, buzzing with what had happened. There was no way we could have just gone to bed.

  Clemmie had to be helped downstairs by a couple of her group. “It could have been me,” she said. “It was my room. Oh my God. I could have hit my head worse than Paige. Or I could have a heart condition that I don’t know about and died.”

  The ambulance and the electrician came at the same time, as Squirrel and Davison staff ferried big teapots back and forth. We dunked Digestive biscuits into our mugs of tea and traded stories of disasters. We saw the paramedics lead Paige downstairs. Calding followed and went in the ambulance with her to hospital. If it had been me, I’d have asked for Squirrel instead.

  Squirrel asked me to take up a mug of tea for the electrician. “Milk and one sugar, as he requested,” she said.

  As I got closer to Clemmie’s room, walking slowly so I didn’t spill the tea, I heard him on the phone, explaining he would be late to something because he was on an emergency call-out.

  “Loose wire against the metal box,” he said. “A kid got hurt…” He paused to let the other person speak. “Yeah, metal switch. Old building.” Another pause. “Yeah, that’s also a possibility.” Pause. “Too extreme? Yeah, you’re right, mate. Won’t mention that. New housemistress is panicked enough as it is.”

  I waited outside, watching the steam from the tea rise, hoping there was more to hear. What was too extreme? Who was the electrician to decide what to mention and what to keep quiet about? He finished the call with a “Catch you later” rolled into one word, and I heard him whistle cheerily.

  “Here you go,” I said as I walked in. He’d replaced the metal light switch to a plastic one and was putting his tools away.

  “Oooh, lovely, thanks,” said the electrician, taking the mug and gulping a mouthful.

  I didn’t think there was any harm asking. “Could someone have done something to the old switch deliberately?” I asked.

  The man’s cheeriness faded. “Why d’you ask?” Was he worried that I’d overheard his conversation? “Do you know anything?”

  I shook my head. “Just wondering.”

  “Nah, I doubt it.” He found his grin again. “Thanks again for my tea.”

  Paige came back in a taxi with Calding before breakfast the following morning, showing everyone the tiny burn mark on her finger, and clutching her box of painkillers, happy to have everyone fussing round her, coming downstairs to see her in their dressing gowns. Calding looked shattered, and went straight to bed after a chat with the Ghost.

  I ate breakfast in a hurry, self-conscious in my school uniform on a Saturday, but ready to give Mr Lee his tour of Mount Norton. I hoped Hugo was going to call in at Pankhurst so we could walk together but he didn’t, and in the end I had to jog to reach the reception for the time I’d been given on the email. Hugo was perched on the edge of a desk in the side office with two female members of the reception staff, and they were laughing at some story he was telling them about a restaurant.

  “This is such a drag, isn’t it?” he said when he saw me.

  “Totally,” I said, and examined his face. Everything about it was naturally symmetrical. My father would be hard-pressed to suggest any improvements to it.

  I signed in and listened as Hugo finished up the story, which ended up with a waiter being sacked, and then the two of us left the office to sit and wait for Mr Lee in reception, sitting on the dark wooden bench with the red-velvet cushioned seat. I took a mental selfie of us, moving towards Hugo a fraction as I imagined the photo. We made a good couple.

  Hugo described the route we should take round the school. It wasn’t the most logical one, but it would do. One of the receptionists went out to greet Mr Lee as a long, black car drew up outside. She brought him in and introduced us. He bowed to each of us, and explained he’d heard such wonderful things about Mount Norton and wanted to see it for himself before he came with his son. Hugo led the way. He also led the talking, and left no gaps for me. When I chipped in, he frowned. When I tried another time, he said, “Kate, can you wait until I’ve finished what I was going to say?”

  As we waited in the science corridor for Mr Lee to read a display, I said in a low voice, “Why aren’t you letting me say anything?”

  Hugo looked surprised. “I am letting you, but I don’t like it when you interrupt. It’s rude.”

  I felt a tight bubble of anger expand in my head. “Then we should take turns.”

  He pulled an I’m-embarrassed-to-have-to-tell-you-this face. “I know, I know, but can’t you tell I’ve got a better rapport with Mr Lee than you have?”

  “No,” I said. “He listens to me when I get a word in.”

  “Of course, but—”

  “You’re saying there’s no point me being here, then?”

  Hugo glanced at Mr Lee, who was still reading, then said, “Kate, you add the wow factor. You’re essential.”

  Heat flared on my face. “What?”

  “You’re a great advert for the school.”

  He wasn’t going to say it outright, that if I looked different I
wouldn’t have been chosen, not now he’d seen the look in my eyes.

  Mr Lee walked up to us and said he was ready to move on. We went into the art wing and into my art room. I opened my mouth to describe the different art opportunities at the school, but Hugo beat me by a split second. He was very clever and extremely sporty but he didn’t take art as a subject.

  “I’m better qualified on this,” I said. “I’ll start off.”

  Hugo gave a fake little laugh, and made a comedy apologetic face at Mr Lee.

  I paused, like a teacher might for silence, and he shot me a look. It meant, don’t you dare cause a scene.

  I’d got Hugo wrong. I hadn’t really misinterpreted the last twenty minutes, had I? It made me dizzy, knowing something but not fully able to believe it.

  Mr Lee was smiling. He thought this was a well-rehearsed double act.

  I took a deep breath as I looked at my dragons in the cabinet, and then I spoke about the art room.

  CHAPTER 16

  I didn’t come straight back to Pankhurst. I went on to the cliff path and walked up to the beach house, stopping by a gap in the foliage where at sunset people liked to take selfies with the sea in the background. I needed to be on my own, away from Hugo, and not yet back at Pankhurst explaining to Lo and Meribel how disappointed I was, and how strangely ashamed I felt that I’d built him up so much. The steady in and out of the waves was calming.

  Meribel was in Ryemouth when I returned, but Lo listened to me, and said she understood how people could turn out not to be who you thought they were even when you’d known them for years. I knew she was thinking about Sasha, and that made me feel worse, so I said I needed to blast away my thoughts by dancing to a Monsta X track.

  “Dancing is usually the answer,” replied Lo, as she cleared space on her bedroom floor and we assumed positions for the start of “Alligator”.

  The talk in Davison over the next few days was mainly about Paige’s electric shock, and whether her parents would sue the school. Paige said they were taking legal advice. Clemmie said her parents were also speaking to their lawyer because it was her light switch.

  “I need financial compensation too,” she muttered.

  “Quite right,” said Hugo.

  Monro had looked up from his tatty Hidden Treasures book and said it wasn’t a proper short circuit so it wouldn’t have killed Clemmie, and Clemmie had stood up from the armchair she’d been curled up in, cheeks blazing, and said she couldn’t believe he could say that when there were all sorts of things she might have knocked her head on, or medical issues she wasn’t aware of.

  Monro had shrugged and gone back to his book, and Hugo said smoothly, “Don’t let him wind you up, Clem.”

  We’d only spoken once since the school tour. Hugo had found me in the main school dining hall the Monday after and said he was sorry if I felt he’d taken over the tour. He could see why I might have thought that, but he’d heard from Miss Sneller that Mr Lee had been very taken with the school, so it had worked out in the end.

  “So we’re cool?” he’d finished up with. He’d given me his full-attention, perfect smile.

  “I’ll think about it,” I said and he’d laughed that same ridiculous fake laugh.

  A receipt for a dress appeared on Veronica’s artwork. Other receipts joined it as the news drip-dripped out about my beach-house party, alongside more embarrassing items such as a delivery note for some stick-on underarm sweat patches and a Polaroid of some firm-control shaping knickers.

  The dress code didn’t need to be specified; it was always smart for boarding-house parties. I’d bought a dress in Italy over the summer, exclusive to a small label, which Meribel had given me the green-light on via video link. She herself was vacillating between four outfits she’d express-imported from the States. Lo was adapting an old dress of her mother’s. She’d slashed the neck and hemline in the textiles studio.

  I watched her sew beads on top of the ribbon she was going to cover the neck seams with. She and I were in her bedroom listening to a band her friends back home had told her about, and I was flicking through shoe websites on my phone. Meribel was FaceTiming her boyfriend in her room next door, and we could hear her giggling through the wall.

  “I’ve got something to confess,” said Lo. She rolled a bright blue bead between her thumb and forefinger. She kept her eyes on the bead, and said, “I texted Sasha an invitation to your party.” In the pause that followed she raised her eyes. “I know I should have asked you, but I want to see her, and the party’s a good excuse. I don’t care what she’s done any more. I know she was clever enough to do well in that exam without cheating.”

  “But she lied to your face.”

  “The more I think about it, the more I think she must have had a good reason that she couldn’t tell me about.”

  “Has she replied?” I asked. I sounded too urgent, but I needed to stop the thudding of my heart. I hadn’t told her about the letters Sasha’s dad had sent to Elsie Gran and Clemmie’s parents. I didn’t want Lo to know Sasha’s parents were convinced she hadn’t stolen the exam paper.

  “Not yet,” said Lo. “I said I was sorry about not being in contact. I told her she could stay over at the beach house if she wanted, or we’d smuggle her up the fire escape here.” She looked at me, willing me to be OK about it.

  “Sure,” I said. My heart still thumped. Sasha wouldn’t come. Why would she want to return here? Unless … she had something she wanted to say? I had to delve into Lo’s plastic container of beads to find a silver one, the next colour she needed in her bead sequence, because I couldn’t bear to see her hopeful smile.

  “I hope she turns up,” she said. “I really don’t care what anyone else thinks.” She pushed the needle through the tiny hole of the bead and stitched it on. “People have done worse things at this school, they just haven’t been caught.”

  “I know,” I said. I held out a silver bead, tiny like a crumb in my outstretched palm.

  The preparations for the party, and the stress, mounted. I fell asleep exhausted each night but woke early, stepping out on to the fire escape to see if Monro was there, but he didn’t seem to be waking early any more. I’d have liked to have seen him.

  Veronica told me Monro was happy to take a Churchill sixth-former who was already eighteen in his car to pick up alcohol for the party. She gave me Monro’s number and told me to sort it out with him directly.

  I called him one night to talk through the logistics of payment, quantities and delivery. “It’s a big thing, organizing a boarding-house party,” he said after I told him I was worried I might have forgotten something. “Sounds to me as if you’ve got everything covered though.”

  “I want people to think it was as good as Veronica’s rooftop one,” I said.

  “Yeah,” said Monro. “Didn’t you and Bernard end up together that time?”

  I closed my eyes in embarrassment, even though he wasn’t in the same room as me. “Er … sort of,” I said faintly.

  “I ended up needing an X-ray on my ankle,” said Monro. “Mixed feelings about the party, really.”

  After Bernard and I had kissed, we’d danced together for a bit, Meribel and Lo giving me amused glances and thumbs-up, and Bernard mouthing lyrics incorrectly. After a while, he wanted to walk down the beach where it was quiet and dark, but I shook my head and asked if he’d fetch me a drink.

  I was on my own on the edge of the dance area when Clemmie approached me. Meribel and Lo were concentrating on a complicated dance routine, and weren’t looking my way. What Clemmie had to say didn’t take long.

  “I need you to do something for me.” I saw her eyes hard and shining in the half-light, checking around us to see if we could be overhead. “If anyone happens to ask, we were doing our geography project on Friday after dinner, until just before Lo came back from whatever she does on a Friday evening.”

  “I have no clue what you’re talking about,” I said. “We still need to work on that project.”
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br />   “We’re doing it separately,” said Clemmie quickly. “But you’ll say I was with you on Friday after dinner.” I didn’t understand how she was so certain I’d agree until she said, “I know about you, Kate. I have a photo of you.”

  The surprise made my mouth open. I fought for words. “How?” I asked.

  “Hopefully no one will ask you about Friday, but if they do, you know what to say. Right?” Clemmie had been so smoothly confident.

  Monro’s voice cut into the replaying of the scene. “Kate? Are you still there?”

  “Yes, sorry. I was distracted by a wasp in my room.” It was the first excuse I could think of.

  “Oh. I’d better let you go,” said Monro.

  “Yes, OK. Bye then,” I said. I stared at my screen for a few moments after the call ended. I wished I’d concentrated more on what he’d been saying to me. That way, he might not have wanted to hang up so soon.

  He texted early the next morning to see if I was awake and wanted to walk to the beach.

  I am and yes, I texted back.

  He met me outside Pankhurst’s back gate. It was misty and colder than it had been so far this term, and I was pleased to see he had the red thermos with him. I had half a packet of Oreos.

  We walked on the coastal path to the beach house, and I was startled to see a man in a pink polo shirt looking out of one of the top-floor windows. He stared at us, and I was the one who looked away first.

  “He’s in my house,” I said indignantly, and Monro laughed.

  We carried on until the steps, and Monro told me how he’d almost fallen down them one winter when it was icy, and he’d experienced the life-flashing-before-your-eyes phenomenon. “All these memories came tumbling out. I really thought I was a goner.”

  “Good memories, though?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Mostly, but I need to stack up more of them. I want a longer showreel next time.” He put down his thermos, took hold of the rails either side of the steps, and lifted his legs off the ground, swinging them back and forth as if he were doing a gym exercise. If he let go, he’d definitely fall and would probably never get up again.