Dead Popular Page 7

  He nodded. “Well done. And?”

  I told him, waiting for his reaction about the venue. There was a flicker of something, but all he said was, “I’ll keep that date free.”

  It nearly fell out of my mouth that I already knew he was free because it was the evening of the compulsory-to-attend Autumn Party, but I said, “Great.”

  “I’ll help you with the guest list,” he said. He came closer and I loved how he could look so attractive in simple trackies and a hoodie.

  “It’s OK,” I said. “I can always ask Veronica if I need to.”

  Hugo nodded. “I love Vee to bits, but she doesn’t always understand how things should be done.” He looked apologetic. “That’s just between the two of us. I reckon you and I are on the same wavelength. Don’t you think?”

  I nodded. I wanted very much to be on the same wavelength as him.

  CHAPTER 10

  I forgot to put my phone on silent and woke abruptly to a WhatsApp from Elsie Gran telling me she was off to water the allotment. It was 5.25 a.m. I flicked through my parents’ social media accounts. They were at some kind of trade fair for their plastic surgery business. Their stand was impressive. It had all the promise of a smart reception desk at a spa: clean, white and expensive, with a stunning floral arrangement. To one side was a board of photos, showing before and afters. There were several photos of beautiful people standing next to my father. Often clients didn’t like to be seen with their plastic surgeon, so he’d have been happy about that.

  A notification came through on my phone: Elsie Gran had sent me an image. It was a blurred selfie of her in her charity shop sweatshirt and leggings perched on the raised wall of one of her allotment beds, looking intently at the wrong bit of the phone. I saw she had a cigarette tucked behind her hand. She didn’t think I’d enlarge the photo and see it. She looked surprisingly sweet. It made me want to wrap my arms around her.

  A party to-do list, that’s what I needed to do. I typed as much as I could think of into a Notes page before feeling overwhelmed, then I got out of bed to take a photo of the sky for Elsie Gran. It was pale pink, and the sea was flat like shiny glass. I stepped out on to the fire escape in my T-shirt nightie, the smooth metal under my bare feet comfortingly warm. I took a photo and sent it, then put my phone down on the window sill. It felt as if nobody else was up. I couldn’t even hear Squirrel crashing about in the kitchens. There was no traffic, just the swish of trees outside Churchill moving in the sea breeze, the bird calls, and the gentle flap of my curtains against the window frame. I stood on one leg, closed my eyes, and breathed in and out, imagining I was at a yoga class.

  On opening my eyes, I lost balance and fell against the railing, and as I looked across to Churchill I locked eyes with Monro. He was sitting with his legs up on the bench drinking a mug of tea or coffee, dressed in shorts and a T-shirt. He looked as startled as me but recovered first to give a small wave. He said something which I couldn’t hear so I leaned forward, cupping my hand to my ear.

  He swivelled his legs off the bench, and came closer to the fence, and I leaned over the railing so it dug into my stomach. “Come over,” he said. It was half a question. He held his mug up. “Tea?”

  Company is exactly what I needed. I nodded and glanced down at my long T-shirt. I’d put on some underwear and some other clothes first, obviously.

  Monro placed the mug on the arm of the bench, and held up his hands four times to tell me the code for Churchill’s back gate.

  After changing, I sent a quick message to Lo and Bel in case they came into my room and found me gone. It was unlikely they’d worry and alert Calding, but better to be safe than sorry.

  It was strange to be sneaking out at this time of day – at least in the daylight I could see exactly where I was going. I’d been in Churchill a few times to play tennis – entering via the main entrance. I’d never used the back gate.

  Lo once told me Clemmie said Lo and the other Pankhurst scholarship students had to do a challenge when they were all in the first form to prove they had what it took to be “full members of the school”. Lo, Zeta and Sasha were told to run round the perimeter of the Churchill grounds on their own at night. They did it because they thought it would be a laugh. Clemmie had let them in through the back gate herself, after presumably buying the code. What Lo, Zeta and Sasha didn’t know was that running there would set off a series of security lights and a furious, barking housemaster’s dog. When they ran back to the gate, Clemmie had gone and they didn’t know the code to get out. They were returned to Wibbz by the livid housemaster.

  Monro had managed to make tea in the time it had taken me to pull on more clothing and come over.

  “What are you doing up so early?” I asked, as he handed me the mug that was waiting for me on the arm of the bench. “Thanks.”

  “Same as you,” he said, settling back down where he’d been sitting earlier.

  “But it might not be the same reason as me,” I said. I sat next to him; it felt as if we were at an allotment social. “I just woke up early.”

  “Me too,” he said. I saw the scar on his arm from when he put it through a window in Churchill and resisted a bizarre compulsion to touch it. It had been pretty dramatic, according to various accounts. Masses of blood and lots of shouting. I hadn’t been at Mount Norton at the time.

  There were things I wanted to ask him – what people thought of Clemmie back in Sussex, what was going on between him and Veronica, and about his anger issues – but I didn’t dare, and remarked instead, “It’s nice without everyone up.”

  He nodded, and I sipped my tea.

  “It doesn’t feel quite so much like a prison at this time of the day,” he said.

  “You hate school that much?” I asked.

  He made a face. “It’s complicated.” He shifted on the bench and winced. “My leg hurts a bit after that run,” he said. “Pathetic, isn’t it?”

  “You have to build it up,” I said. “Meribel and Lo hate running, but I quite like it, and it gets better the more you do it. Sometimes it feels like I’m bounding along like a dog and nothing hurts.” I put my mug down beside me and mimed ears flapping in the breeze with my hands either side of my head, before I imagined how foolish I looked, and picked up my mug again.

  He smiled politely. “I wanted to ask you something,” he said, and I felt it: the shift in conversation to something of weight.

  “I heard a rumour,” he said, “that Sasha Mires’s expulsion was something to do with Clemmie.”

  That was definitely not what I was expecting. “Really? Who’s been spreading that?” Sweat prickled at the back of my neck.

  Monro hesitated. “Veronica told me.”

  I pulled myself together. What he’d told me was a way in to ask about Clemmie or Veronica, and I chose Veronica first. “Are you two in a thing?”

  “You think me and Veronica…” He pulled a surprised face. “Really? No, we’re close, but we’re just mates.”

  “Right.” I thought about this. “You’re on her artwork though. Why’s it called The Things We Keep Hidden? What’s the hidden thing?”

  He looked away. “That’s just her being cryptic. It’s because we know so much about each other. We’ve known each other all our lives.”

  “So why did Veronica say that about Sasha’s explusion?” I asked.

  “Clemmie’s mum told Vee’s mum they’d been sent a letter from Sasha’s dad.”

  “What?” There was a trickle of sweat like a raindrop down a windowpane travelling down my neck. I’d seen Sasha’s parents at school events. They were quiet and ordinary-looking. I remembered her father was much taller than her mother. He’d had a beard.

  “How did he get her address?” I asked. “What did it say?” I moved a little closer.

  Monro lifted a shoulder. “I don’t know how he got the address. The letter said he and his wife wanted to establish the facts around their daughter’s expulsion, and they had reason to believe Clemmie was involved
.”

  “What did Clemmie’s parents do?” I asked softly.

  “Got a lawyer to fire off a letter saying they’d sue for false accusations and harassment.”

  I waited for him to add more detail, but he didn’t. “You know you’re spreading the rumour by telling me,” I said.

  The corners of Monro’s mouth twitched downwards in acknowledgement. “True, but I thought you might know something.”

  “Why would I know anything?”

  “You were with Clemmie that night, weren’t you? That’s what I heard.”

  I really wanted to rub the back of my neck to stop the prickling sensation, but I forced myself not to. “We were working on our geography project,” I said. “She came to our room, mine and Lo’s. I wasn’t really aware of the time, but she was there from soon after dinner to just before Lo came back from dance club.”

  It was my go-to statement. Each time I said it, it came out more wooden than the time before.

  “I didn’t think you two were friends,” said Monro.

  “We’re not,” I said. “We’d been paired up for geography.” I paused. “I know she’s part of your crowd, but I can’t stand her.”

  Monro chucked the last dregs of tea out of his mug and on to the grass. “She’s not too fond of you either.”

  CHAPTER 11

  At breakfast I filled Meribel and Lo in on my early morning encounter with Monro, although I left out the conversation about Clemmie. They weren’t as interested as I thought they’d be; they couldn’t get past the idea that I’d got up so early.

  Before we’d finished eating, Calding stood up and clapped her hands for silence. She announced there’d been a spot check in our rooms for contraband items while we’d been in the dining hall. There was a collective intake of breath at this – in the past, searches had never happened in the first week of term. We hadn’t even noticed Calding and the Ghost had left the dining hall. They’d worked unbelievably fast.

  As Calding read out a shortlist of girls she wanted to see after she’d finished speaking, I accidentally caught Lo’s eye. This is what had happened the day Sasha had left and never come back. Hers had been one of the names read out by Wibbz at breakfast.

  We had assumed Sasha’s vodka had been found in the room she shared with Clemmie. She hadn’t had much at all, just a little which she’d kept in a perfume bottle. We thought Wibbz had conducted the best search of her life, going round sniffing perfume bottles. Nobody was worried about major repercussions.

  Later, we learned a scholarship paper due to be set in the coming weeks had been found under Sasha’s mattress. It was a maths and science exam. She was suspended, and her parents came to pick her up the same day. The suspension turned into an expulsion. They worked out that a deputy head had left his laptop in Wibbz’s unlocked office while he dropped by for a board game evening in the junior common room a week earlier, and that was the only time the paper could have been printed off.

  Sasha had been at the board game evening but left early because she said she had revision to do.

  I provided an alibi for Clemmie, and everybody else in Pankhurst was either at the board game evening or somewhere else where another person could vouch for them.

  This morning four girls had their names read out. Two of them were first-formers and they were already in tears. Clemmie carried on eating her cereal, tipping her bowl to scoop up the last few spoonfuls.

  In art I told Bernard about the beach house party, and sat back as he made the right responses: a mini whoop of admiration followed by curiosity as to how I managed to secure the venue.

  “Cool godfather,” he breathed.

  He stayed at my desk, as I copied a pudgy toddler hand from a photo, telling Mr Hayes, the art teacher, that he was sketching my eyes. “You’ve got to stare into my eyes now,” he told me when Mr Hayes had gone past.

  “Sorry, I don’t have time,” I said.

  “All right. Let’s talk guests,” Bernard said, undaunted, as he drew some generic eyes on a piece of watercolour paper that he’d taken from my art folder. “I wouldn’t bother inviting Monro. He’ll only injure himself, or spread bad vibes.”

  I stopped shading in a fingernail on my sketch. “What is it with you two?” I asked.

  Bernard made a face as if to say Isn’t it obvious? “He’s unpredictable. There’s something not right about him. He picked a fight with me in the first form and was nearly expelled for it.” He leaned forward and said, “Keep away from him.” He pulled back and said, “He’ll be one of those guys who goes berserk, and I’ll be the only one who saw it coming.”

  “Monro? You’re joking.”

  Bernard shook his head. “Nope. Mount Norton is full of nutters. Dunno why it attracts them.” He touched me lightly on the arm. “You and me, though. We’re sound.”

  I moved on to the next fingernail and began shading again.

  “Of course, you probably feel you have to invite him, with Veronica being part of his crowd, and her being at Pankhurst. I get that.” Bernard quickly added a few eyelashes to the one lone eye he’d drawn, and folded his arms on top of it. “So how can I help with the party? You want me to find bouncers? I’ll get a couple of guys from the rugby club for you. What about a playlist?”

  Meribel’s new phone was waiting for her in her pigeonhole when we returned from school. Calding came out of her office when she heard us.

  “You three. I’d like to discuss your roles as House Prefect and deputies. Please would you give me a few moments of your time?” She ushered us in.

  We trooped into her office, rolling our eyes at each other. There was no trace of the comfortable, padded chairs Wibbz used to have in her office. Instead, we had to take a hard plastic one from the stack by the wall.

  We let Calding do the talking. She started off saying, “I’m concerned your roles aren’t balanced enough.” We nodded attentively as she spoke, knowing we’d fight her all the way if she did what she was threatening to, which was give us responsibility for lower school prep, and take on some night-time chores, such as ensuring lights were switched off. I could see the appeal of having more power over the younger girls, but for what? Frankly I had better things to do with my time.

  As Calding spoke I looked round the office. She had managed to de-personalise it in quite a spectacular way. When Wibbz occupied it, there’d been piles of papers everywhere, and loads of photographs on her desk of her two round-faced, smiley nephews as children. They had turned into flabby-cheeked jovial men by the time they appeared in a family wedding shot which used to hang above the filing cabinet.

  The filing cabinet was rumoured to be full to the top with Wibbz’s snacks. There’d been a boarding house challenge set soon after I arrived, by the then House Prefect, to get a photo of the inside of it, but it had always been locked. It remained an open challenge, like taking a selfie wearing the peculiar hairnet that Squirrel wore when she served food.

  Wibbz had had a “Pankhurst wall” where she taped photos of Pankhurst alumni – in graduation gowns, hard hats on building sites, several with musical instruments, in fabulous outfits at gallery openings, girls in costume on stage, and in pride of place the girl who’d got a role in Emmerdale, Wibbz’s favourite soap.

  All that had gone. Calding had nothing on the walls except a noticeboard. On it was a single sheet of emergency numbers, a drawing pin in each corner. It was more like a resources room now, with a paper shredder, laminator, paper trimmer and new printer on the shelves where Wibbz’s celebrity magazines had been stacked.

  Calding had come to the end of her thoughts.

  “I can’t speak for the others,” I said. I was Kate Lynette Jordan-Ferreira. I had made myself a somebody in this school. “Personally, I’d like to think over what you’ve said. I don’t want to rush into anything.”

  She wasn’t expecting me to treat her as a colleague. She blinked. Frustration. Disdain for my arrogance, maybe. It was so obvious she wasn’t used to a school like Mount Norton. Meri
bel and Lo murmured they felt exactly the same.

  “Is that all?” I asked.

  “Yes,” said Calding stiffly.

  We kept our bubbling-up laughter inside until we were in the dining hall, spluttering over tea and flapjacks. We wrapped up extra flapjacks in a napkin to take to Davison.

  Walking into the common room, we found a commotion inside. People were crowded round Veronica’s artwork. Veronica herself was taking a photo of it. Attached was an article. Lo read the headline as we grew closer. “Teenager’s unusual hobby.” It was about Flo. She was dressed in armour of some description. A few people stepped away as I leaned in to read the article. Flo was a fan of historical re-enactments.

  Flo said angrily, “OK, folks. Show’s over. Anyone want to confess to stalking me on the internet and going to the trouble of printing this out and ruining Vee’s artwork?” She turned to Veronica. “Got enough evidence?”

  Veronica stopped photographing. “Yes, you can take it down now.”

  Bernard said, “Who thinks armour is a sexy look?”

  “Not me,” said Hugo.

  “Shut up,” said Veronica. “I don’t know why Flo’s kept it a secret because it’s pretty cool.”

  “It’s creepy that someone would do this,” said Flo.

  “Historical role-play is creepy,” said Paige.

  Monro was sitting at a table with a laptop, away from everyone, taking no interest in the discussion. I thought he’d at least look up to acknowledge my presence but he must have been too engrossed in what he was doing.

  “The artwork looks strangely empty now,” said another of Veronica’s friends. I knew what she meant. The photo of Veronica and Monro in the corner looked even smaller.

  Hugo said, “Put your artwork in a massive box frame. That will stop it being used as a noticeboard.”

  “Someone thinks they’re being clever – if you hadn’t given it that title, this might not have happened,” said Clemmie.