Kitabı oku: «Glittering Fortunes», sayfa 3

CHAPTER FIVE

‘DEAR GOD, WHAT in heaven’s name was that?’ There was a sickening crunch as the wheels bumped over something. Susanna’s hands flew to her face. ‘It’s a ghost! We’ve hit a ghost! Did you see her? A girl! We’ve killed her!’

‘Don’t be insane, woman.’ Cato stopped the vehicle and climbed out. ‘Put those ruddy lights on, will you?’ He’d said he didn’t need them, knowing the place so well. Perhaps it was a deer. They had deer here, didn’t they? Deer who rode bikes?

Susanna flicked on the headlamps to aid his investigation and patted her headscarf with fear. ‘Should I come?’ she called, praying they wouldn’t be confronted with a corpse. Imagine the headlines! LORD & LADY LANGUISH BEHIND BARS.

‘All right, all right, Mole,’ came the impatient response. ‘Are you with us, sweetheart? Ah, there you go. Bump on the head, that’s all. What’s your name?’

It sounded like it was in the land of the living, whatever it was. Susanna joined him on the track, the engine purring behind her. Her heels click-clacked on the stones.

‘Oh.’ She was surprised to find Cato bending rather too willingly over a girl, who was youngish, early twenties at a guess, and who was rubbing a wild nest of curls. The girl wore a flummoxed look and Cato was rubbing her shoulder.

‘Look what we’ve done, old thing,’ purred Cato. ‘Frightened the poor angel half to death! See if there’s a blanket in the boot, would you? She must keep warm.’

I’m sure she’ll manage fine with your arms clamped around her, Susanna thought uncharitably. And since when had he called her old thing?

The trunk offered up little more than a spare tyre and a leaking vat of windscreen wash. ‘No luck!’ she sang. ‘Shall we get her in the car?’

‘We’ll have to try,’ answered Cato. Goodness, how handsome he looked. Rugged and wild against the trees, his eyes glinting like a night-time beast’s, but at the same time irresistibly polished and carrying the scent of safety, of warm hotel rooms, of expensive restaurants and the interiors of chauffeur-driven Mercedes. Part of Susanna felt bilious at Cato’s attentions being lavished over another woman; part of her was madly turned on by it. Just wait until they were in their four-poster tonight.

‘Shall I take her legs?’ asked Susanna.

‘She’s not a blasted plank of wood!’ Cato scoffed, turning to address the casualty with a far gentler: ‘Are you able to walk?’

‘I—I think so.’ The girl had a very sweet English accent. How pretty was she? It was difficult to see.

‘We’ll take you up to the house,’ decided Cato, helping her to her feet.

‘I’ve just come from there.’

Cato’s voice changed. ‘Charles’ girl, are you?’

‘No! I—I came for a job. I’ve never been here before. But I have to get home; I told my mum I’d be back …’

‘Come now, one step at a time.’ Cato steered her towards the vehicle with gut-wrenching tenderness. When was the last time he had treated Susanna in such a way? She was overtaken by the desire to find the nearest main road and toss herself under a passing truck—see if that got him prioritising his attentions.

Once the girl was installed in front and the bike parked by a tree, Cato drove the rest of the way. Susanna was able to get a proper look at her before the interior bulbs faded. She was plain, which was a relief. Her hair was a mess and her skin could do with a California tan. She was wearing a blue dress, too short for those legs.

Relegated to the back seat, Susanna stared glumly out of the window, feeling miserably like a forgotten-about child. She tried to blot out her lover’s ministrations as he chatted kindly to the girl, no doubt aware that a report of this type would do little for his precious PR. Right now she wanted nothing more than to run a very deep, very hot bath and sink into it with a glass of chilled Sancerre. It had been a long drive from Heathrow. Cato’s mood—at least until now—had been frightful, and Susanna, usually adept in keeping her pecker up (as Cato would say) had in turn become tired and irritable. Couldn’t they have taken a helicopter? It was infinitely more civilised.

Yet as they skirted the final corner, the Usherwood approach she had pictured so many times, the magical house at last appeared. Its details were tricky to decipher in the creeping dusk, but, oh, it was so definitely there, solid and timeless and noble, and when Susanna let the window down she was met by a fragrance of floras and honeysuckle, heat-soaked after a day in the sun, the quiet rush of a stream and the first faint glimmer of stars high above them in the lilac sky.

A single flare glowed downstairs. She wondered if they still used candlelight! It would be most charming if so.

Cato halted the vehicle, emerged from the driver’s side and immediately bolted round the bonnet to assist their ward. Susanna tried to open her door but it wouldn’t budge. She battered the window and Cato was forced to return to release an absurd child lock they’d had fitted—the humiliation!

‘Good evening, my lord.’ A large, flustered-looking maid came rushing out. She had a scribble of grey hair and a rubicund complexion, and Susanna was assailed by the unsavoury suspicion that she could have hidden her entire body behind one of the woman’s haunches, like someone hiding behind a tree trunk.

Barbara. Unfortunately for the housekeeper, she was just as imagined.

‘It’s good to have you home,’ offered Barbara, with a half-bob. Seeing Susanna, she added warmly, ‘I’m Mrs Bewlis-Teet, welcome to Usherwood.’

‘Baps,’ barked Cato by way of greeting (a private amusement: Barbara heard it as ‘Babs’), ‘regretfully we’ve had an accident. Bloody pothole back on that drive, Charles really ought to get it looked at; the damn thing’s a liability. Threw me right off course—Olivia here almost went under the wheels!’

Susanna didn’t think they had gone over any potholes.

Baps went to help. ‘Oh, dear me, you must have had a terrible shock.’

‘I’m fine!’ said Olivia, who was pale as a sheet and clearly disorientated. Her arm was bleeding. ‘Really, I’d like to go home.’

‘Listen to Baps,’ proclaimed Cato, ‘she’s a wise old goose.’

‘But I’m OK.’

‘There is to be no argument.’

‘Please, if I could just—’

‘Absolutely not—you’re concussed: you haven’t the faintest clue what you’re saying.’ Cato draped his arm across her shoulders. ‘I won’t let you out of my sight, little one.’ His teeth flashed white. ‘That’s a promise.’

Susanna heaved her suitcase from the boot.

‘This is Mole,’ Cato tossed over his shoulder, before sliding through the door.

Susanna put her hand out. ‘Susanna,’ she said cordially.

Baps shook it, and curtseyed ever so slightly in a way that made Susanna’s heart tremble with pleasure, for it had to be due to her imminent Usherwood status rather than her celebrity: Baps didn’t look like the sort of woman who would have seen one of Susanna’s movies, which were typically about twenty-something city cliques on the lookout for Mr Right; she looked like the sort of woman who thrashed through undergrowth with a walking cane and made blackberry jams from scratch.

Through the entrance it was huge and echoey. The great black hood of a fireplace was crackling embers, deep with smoke, and a massive staircase climbed through the floors. A catalogue of Cato’s ancestors posed dourly: the men in breeches, boasting muskets and shotguns and earnest, humourless expressions; the women seated primly, their ringed fingers nestled in the fur of some lap-dwelling pet.

The light Susanna had seen on approach emanated from an adjoining room, from which she could detect the most delicious cooking aromas. The glow it provided cast sallow shadow across the largest oil portrait, a study of the former Lord and Lady Lomax. The couple eyed their guests on arrival, sombre faces flickering and jumping with every leap of the fire. The woman’s expression could only be described as sad. The man’s was blazing with latent savagery. Susanna shivered.

‘We’re saving electricity,’ explained Baps, as she led the way. ‘Heating too—despite the season it can get awfully draughty. I’ve made up the fire in your room, and there’s a supply of blankets in the wardrobe. You get used to it after a while.’

Susanna followed, gazing up as she went so that she almost tripped over the frayed burgundy rug that covered the flagstones. She tried to picture herself living here—if the rest of Usherwood were like this they would have to gut the whole thing! Beneath the supper smells lay the steeped, woody scent that old houses carried, not entirely unsavoury, and nothing one couldn’t undo with the help of a few plug-in air fresheners (Vintage Rose was her favourite). How much would Cato permit her to spend? She could hear the wind whistling through the vaults: replacement windows were a must, as were new carpets, plenty more lighting, and a spread of fabrics and furnishings to brighten up the space. They would work from the bottom up, beginning with wallpapering the downstairs and covering up those ugly mahogany panels. How ancient it looked! The house was crying out for a woman’s touch. It was easy to feel overwhelmed, but Susanna would attack it logically, as she did everything.

‘Rotten scrape you’ve got there,’ Cato was saying, his voice somehow louder in their new surroundings, ricocheting through the hollow caverns and reminding the house to whom it formally belonged. ‘Bandages, if you please, Baps!’

In the kitchen a table for three had been laid, silver cutlery and goblets for wine, through which Cato’s bungled efforts at winding the dressing blew like a storm. She wondered why they couldn’t eat in the dining room, before deciding it too might be in drastic need of her attentions. One of Susanna’s greatest incentives was the thought of hosting her infamous dinner parties here, sending out invitations, boasting the family glassware, the consummate queen of Usherwood.

Wait until her LA friends saw! They would be mad with jealousy.

‘Oh, let her go, Cato,’ Susanna said, wafting in. It was important she make her mark, show them all who was boss. ‘Someone can drive her, can’t they?’

‘Do pipe down, Mole,’ came Cato’s peeved response.

Susanna dropped on to a hard wooden bench and plucked an emery board from her purse. She was attending to her manicure when another woman, a fraction younger than Baps and decidedly more attractive, emerged from the scullery. She was slim, naturally pretty and her fair hair was wound in a knot.

‘I’m Caggie,’ she introduced herself, ‘house cook.’ She put out a flour-caked hand, which Susanna deemed rather disrespectful. Weren’t there rules about this sort of thing? When one met the Queen, for example, didn’t one wait to be presented, instead of sticking one’s grasping fingers out like a beggar clutching at coins?

‘Hello,’ said Susanna. She was accustomed to meeting new people and basking in the glow of her reflected celebrity—she was world-famous, after all—and was disturbed at how Caggie regarded her levelly, her green eyes spelling a challenge.

‘Caggie’s been here almost as long as me,’ supplied Baps. ‘She’s really wonderful; you’ll get to taste her best while you’re over. She’s been whipping up the most super treats ever since the boys were small.’

‘I’m sure it’ll be a far cry from the private chefs of Beverly Hills,’ said Caggie—a touch sarcastically, Susanna thought.

Was it her imagination, or did Cato’s gaze flicker just a moment too long over their new addition? She refused to entertain it: Caggie had to be flirting with fifty, and must spend her life elbow-deep in lard and gravy. She was tired, that was all. And anyway, once she and Cato were married they would be cutting both the women loose. Susanna would learn to cook herself, thank you very much, and if she needed extra help she would simply fly in Kaspar from her favoured bistro on Rodeo.

‘Back again so soon?’

Another voice joined them. It was serious as thunder.

Susanna turned.

Oh my. Oh my, oh my.

She ought to rise to greet him but found herself rooted to the seat. This was Charles Lomax? It couldn’t be. Where was the weedy boy Cato had conjured, trailing at his brother’s heels with a snivelling nose? The vision before her could only be described as a man: categorically and formidably a man. He was wildly dark, darker than Cato, even, with thick, muscular shoulders and hard black eyes. His face was brutally beautiful, a passionate structure beneath the shadow of a beard. His hair was a liquid, livid sable. He carried the scent of damp forest glades and burning wood.

Olivia stood. The mangled attempt at a bandage spooled to the floor.

‘Anyone would think you weren’t pleased to see me,’ Cato sneered.

‘I wasn’t talking to you,’ said Charles.

Cato pushed back the bench with an alarming scrape and sprang to his feet, his palms spread wide on the wood. ‘I hope you’re pleased with yourself,’ he spat. ‘Letting the place go to rack and ruin, risking a young girl’s life!’

The jet eyes landed on Olivia. ‘What happened?’

‘Nothing.’ The girl spoke up. The wound had started to prickle with crimson and she clutched it to keep it hidden.

‘I’ll call for a taxi, shall I?’ Baps retreated, pulling Caggie after her.

‘We almost had a death on our hands,’ Cato hissed, ‘thanks to you and your lackadaisical attitude. Even after all these years do I still need to tell you how to run your affairs, old boy? Olivia here nearly wound up as road kill—if I hadn’t been so deft at negotiating that canyon of potholes who knows what might have happened?’

Charles was unmoved. ‘She looks all right to me.’

Susanna was gratified that, despite his brother’s looks, the Lomax charm had all gone in Cato’s direction.

‘I’m Susanna,’ she said, giving him her most winning smile.

He didn’t take his glare from Cato’s. ‘Would it be too much to hope you might arrive, for once, without the usual dose of drama?’

‘Please,’ Cato swiped back. ‘You’ve been thriving on drama for the past fifteen years.’

‘There’s only one of us who’s thrived.’

‘Is that so?’

‘That’s so.’

‘Do get over it, Charles,’ he blasted. ‘The rest of us have.’

Baps appeared, fingers knotted nervously at her waist. ‘A car is on its way.’

‘Thank you.’

Charles’ voice was shiveringly intense, deep and soft as the most exquisite of fucks, and Susanna was overcome with the desire to fling herself between the two brothers and have them each ravish her ferociously over the kitchen table, at the centre of which was a lamb casserole that was rapidly getting cold.

And then, something extraordinary happened. On Olivia’s way past, he seized her wrist and brought it towards him. The speed and seamlessness of the movement was utterly spellbinding. Wordlessly he pressed a rag against her skin and wound the lint, quickly, once and then twice and then it was done. It was horrifically sexy.

Bewildered, mumbling her thanks, Olivia shot from the room.

Moments later the front door slammed.

‘I’m going to bed,’ said Cato.

‘What about supper?’ Baps objected. ‘Aren’t you hungry?’

Cato stopped at a level with Charles, the top of his head a fraction shorter than his brother’s. ‘I can’t think why, but I seem to have lost my appetite.’

A thread could have divided the men’s chests: Cato’s lifted and fell with the hot breath of combat; Charles’ was utterly still. The silent war raged on.

Cato broke it, lips curling round the bitter shape of a single word: ‘Goodnight.’

Susanna gazed longingly at the casserole as her lover slipped from the room. A bowl of crispy golden potatoes sat next to it, sprinkled with rock salt and rosemary.

‘Come along, Mole!’ came a distant, urgent summons.

With a brief, apologetic glance at Charles, she scurried after it.

CHAPTER SIX

ON SATURDAY MORNING Olivia wobbled up the muddy track to the Barley Nook stables, sandals slipping off the backs of her feet so that her ankle kept catching on the greasy chain. Her denim shorts were baking hot, and beyond the paddocks the green line of the sea was desperately tantalising. She stopped at the crooked gate and wheeled on to the verge, jamming the bike over a crusted fold of earth before resting it against the hedge. To the south lay the avocado expanse of the Montgomerys’ vineyard, where a pair of figures milled in floppy hats, their pastel edges blurred in the Cornish heat, fluid as a Monet watercolour. Up ahead a riding lesson was unfolding. Horses were circling the ring, the strident aroma of hide and manure vinegary and sweet.

Beth Merrill was in the stalls, grooming her beloved stallion Archie. Beth had been inseparable from her horse ever since she’d picked him up as a wild foal: crossing the grassland at the tip of Lustell Cove she had discovered him on the brink of death, tangled in barbed wire and severely dehydrated. Over time she had nursed him back to health, housing him at the stables and riding him every day.

Olivia waved excitedly, making her way over. The girls hugged.

‘I want all the details,’ Beth instructed, her green eyes sparkling. ‘I mean everything. Right now. From the beginning.’

Olivia laughed. ‘All right, give me a chance!’

‘You’re seriously working there?’

‘As of Monday—but swear to God, I didn’t know about the Cato thing.’

‘Bollocks.’

‘I didn’t!’

‘Everyone in town’s going totally crazy. At first it was just a rumour, then Harriet Blease’s sister’s friend’s boyfriend said he saw them in this massive car going through the Usherwood gates and the window was down and apparently Susanna Denver’s had so many facelifts her chin’s up by her ears.’

‘She doesn’t look that bad.’

‘Well, go on then—spill!’

Olivia obliged, running through her first encounter with the Lomax family—she was still weirded out by the whole thing. Each time she recalled it she had to pinch herself, as if she had dreamed it, or it had happened to another person: the collision must have put her in a kind of stupor. She’d been led through the house by a movie star and his actress girlfriend, and it was only when she had returned to her own bed later that night that her brain had finally clicked into gear. Her mother’s caravan had never felt so small.

Beth listened intently, as she always had to Olivia’s adventures; a ten-year-old sitting cross-legged in the garden while she was showered with stories of monster quests and jungle riots, of pirate loot and buried treasure, and of how Addy had held Olivia’s hand one day when they were out in the forest and they thought Gun Tower HQ was being attacked but it had turned out only to be a badger. Since the girls were little, they had been like sisters. Beth was the more cautious, sensible one, a tempering agency on Olivia’s hot-headedness, where Olivia was reckless and fun, dragging her friend over walls and under fences, whispering secrets as they shared their first cigarette, pilfered from the locked tin box Flo kept under the sink. Seeing Beth at home was like no time at all had passed; they could have been those kids again, making potions with her mother’s hemp shampoo or dragging their sledge through the snow. They had shared so much at Lustell Cove.

‘Can I help, d’you think?’ Beth asked, awestruck when she reached the end. Her hair had gone coppery in the sun and her skin was tanned. ‘Since you’ve got the added bonus of visitors at the house? I could wash Cato’s pants?’

‘I’m not sure Cato wears any pants.’

‘Have you seen?’

‘No,’ Olivia lifted an eyebrow, ‘just an instinct. And anyway, I don’t know if Cato being there is a bonus. He and Charlie seem to really hate each other.’

‘Ooh; Beth teased, ‘it’s “Charlie”, is it?’

‘Shut up.’

‘Is he still all tortured and moody?’

Olivia regarded her quizzically. ‘Huh?’

‘You remember—at Towerfield?’

Something faint glimmered at the edges of her memory. Before the Lomax boys were bundled off to Harrow they had attended the local prep. Cato had been way older, she couldn’t recall him, but another boy in Addy’s year, yes, possibly: shirt untucked, messy hair, the big polished car that used to drop him off at the gates …

‘Silly question.’ Beth’s expression was wry. ‘You wouldn’t remember because you were so obsessed with Addy that you never even noticed anyone else.’

‘I was not.’

‘You were, too.’

‘He didn’t hang out with Addy. I’d have noticed if he had.’

‘That’s ‘cause he didn’t like Addy.’

‘How would you know?’

‘It might be an impossible concept for you to grasp,’ Beth sighed, ‘but not everyone does. It’s just you who’s got this massive blind spot.’

‘All right, all right!’ Olivia bristled. ‘Anyway you should have seen him with Cato. They were at each other’s throats, standing there yelling at each other. No,’ she frowned, ‘not yelling, it was more restrained than that—and kind of more intense for it. At one point I thought they were going to strangle each other!’

‘Sexy!’

‘Hmm.’

‘Is it any wonder, though?’ Beth resumed grooming her horse, taking the brush in long slow strokes across the animal’s flank. ‘Of course they can’t stand to be in the same room, what with Cato shooting off the second their parents disappeared. Poor Charlie,’ she grinned, ‘got left behind to look after everything.’

‘I suppose.’

‘What age was he back then, thirteen?’

Olivia shrugged, trying to work it out in her head. Charlie would have left Towerfield at twelve, when the boys had gone into senior school. He would have been at Harrow a year before his parents vanished, and she guessed that the housekeeper had taken care of him after that. He definitely hadn’t been at Towerfield when it happened because if he had then Addy would have talked about it; and she would remember Addy talking about it, if nothing else.

‘It would have been bad for Cato, too,’ Olivia argued. ‘I expect running away was easier, maybe he just couldn’t face things here.’ Cato had been far nicer to her in their brief acquaintance, and she felt the need to defend him.

‘Maybe.’

Olivia narrowed her eyes.

‘Between you and me,’ she confided, ‘I can’t help feeling the animosity’s about more than the parents dying. Something else, something deeper …’

Beth leaned against the stable door. ‘Here’s an idea, Oli,’ she suggested. ‘How about you take this job for what it’s worth—just like I and every other girl at Lustell Cove would—and not get in way over your head like you always do?’

‘I have my head perfectly above water, thank you very much.’

Beth giggled. ‘Only you could get run over by Cato Lomax in your first week back.’

‘It was an accident! Besides he was lovely to me, very apologetic.’

‘For fear you’d sue his arse—sorry, ass—all the way back to America?’

Olivia nudged her. ‘Cynic.’

‘Oh, great.’ Beth groaned. ‘Look who it is.’

With sinking hearts they spotted the Feeny twins making their way across the courtyard. Thomasina and Lavender had been in their form at Taverick Manor, and had stayed at the cove ever since, living off Daddy’s pocket money. They were snotty, spoiled little madams, with upturned noses like piglets. One was riding a black stallion; the other a white mare, like a pair of evil chess queens.

‘Hell-air!’ called Thomasina, easing her beast to a stop. Olivia could tell it was Thomasina because her nose was slightly more piggy than Lavender’s.

‘Hey.’ Olivia gave them the benefit of the doubt: perhaps they’d changed.

‘Good to see you settling back into your old life,’ commented Thomasina, peering snootily down at Olivia as if she were something growing mould in a petri dish. ‘There must be terrible competition in London to look thin.’

They hadn’t changed.

‘Though I’d imagine Cato Lomax being back in town would be diet incentive enough for anyone,’ she finished. Next to her, Lavender tittered.

‘What do you want, Thomasina?’

‘Ooh, well excuse us!’ Lavender had the annoying habit of emphasising the final word in every single sentence she said. ‘Is this conversation private?’

‘Not any more.’

‘What’s it about,’ she whined, ‘boys?’

‘You must be finished, then,’ put in Thomasina, thinking herself extremely clever. ‘There can’t be a great deal to talk about!’

The Feenys were insufferable—grade-? picture-perfect sorority bitches who nipped miserably at sticks of celery and slagged off anyone over a size 6. Ever since Olivia’s very first day at Taverick they had treated her no better than the offerings their rat-like pooches occasionally left in the bottoms of their Aspinal tote bags. According to the Feenys, Olivia was the scruffball who didn’t live in a proper house, who probably didn’t wash and who came with un-brushed hair into a school her mother couldn’t afford to send her to (she had got in on a scholarship).

Like most of the girls at Taverick Manor, Thomasina and Lavender took everything for granted: the Pacific island they jetted to on holiday, the yacht Daddy bought to moor off the Napoli coast, the wardrobe of designer labels they’d get bored with after a week. Olivia and Beth were always going to be outcasts. Beth’s family were working class and had only afforded her education because a distant Merrill cousin had died and left them a wad of cash—something Beth felt permanently guilty about: last year her father’s business had gone down the pan, and nowadays her parents had barely two pennies to rub together—while Olivia’s scholarship was, according to the Feeny brigade, a heinously unfair pass into a life of privilege which she had neither the faculties nor the finesse to appreciate.

‘Actually, Olivia’s working with the Lomaxes this summer,’ Beth chipped in, giving her a jab with her elbow. ‘Isn’t that right, Oli?’

The twins were stricken.

‘What do you mean?’ panicked Thomasina.

Olivia put her hands in her pockets. ‘Charlie Lomax hired me.’

Thomasina burst out laughing, a high-pitched, taunting sound she’d used to inflict on a blubbing Clarabel Maynard whenever she forgot her gym knickers, pushing her to the floor and triggering one of Clarabel’s nose bleeds. Once Olivia had hauled Thomasina off and slammed her into the changing-room lockers. She’d earned detention for a week and Clarabel still hadn’t spoken to her in the lunch queue.

‘You expect us to believe that?’ Thomasina carped. ‘With Cato back at the house? Come on. At least think up something semi-realistic, Chopped Liver.’

Chopped Liver had been her school nickname. Olivia had the sudden sensation of never having left Lustell Cove at all, the past year of city life, new friends and new horizons, evaporated in a single toxic gust of Feeny breath.

‘She’s gardening for them,’ elaborated Beth. ‘Charlie offered it on the spot. She’s already met Cato and Susanna.’

‘He hired you?’ quailed Lavender. Her horse performed a prissy circle, swishing its tail as if it too could scarcely grasp the outrageousness of this suggestion.

Thomasina was quiet. She was thinking more carefully about things.

‘By the way,’ she said mildly, ‘I saw Addy yesterday.’

Beth rolled her eyes. ‘Shut up, Thomasina.’

‘He was talking about you.’

‘Just go away, would you?’

‘He said how happy he was that you were back.’ Thomasina was all at once sweetness and light. ‘Addy finds it hard to express his emotions—but then he is a guy, what can we expect? I think he’s plucking up the courage to ask you out.’

‘Good for him,’ stepped in Beth, folding her arms. ‘But if you don’t mind, I’ve got a lesson to run and you’re in the way.’

‘I could put in a word,’ offered Thomasina innocently. ‘The trouble is, Olivia, I’m just not sure he’s confident you like him. You’ve been friends for so long, he probably reckons that’s all it is …’

Olivia had a recollection of her final term at Taverick, during which Addy had been discovered by Head Matron having frantic moonlight sex with one of the sixth formers in a broom cupboard. She remembered wanting nothing more than to wallow in a tepid bath of her own teardrops, and then possibly drown to death in them. To this day she was tortured by the idea that it could have been one of the Feenys.

‘Well?’ pressed Thomasina. ‘Do you like him?’

‘Bye, you two!’ called Beth.

‘Seeing as you ran off to London.’ Lavender caught up and joined the assault. ‘Men are so sensitive, aren’t they, Tommy?’

Thomasina nodded gravely. ‘Leave it with us,’ she said amiably. ‘Who knows, maybe we could organise a double date? You and Addy, me and Cato …’

Lavender was wounded.

‘You’ll have to have the other one,’ Thomasina explained snippily. ‘Cato already has a girlfriend. You’re not equipped to deal with that.’

‘With what?’ Beth spluttered. ‘Stealing other people’s boyfriends?’

Thomasina ignored her. ‘Just think about it,’ she finished, with a little quirk of the head. ‘Promise?’ She pulled the reins; Lavender followed suit. The girls turned on their steeds and sashayed off across the cobbles.

‘Can you believe them?’ Beth asked in wonder. ‘As if you’re dumb enough to fall for that.’ She peered sideways at Olivia. ‘And you’re definitely not dumb, right?’

‘Thanks for the vote of confidence.’

‘You won’t like me saying this but Addy’s just as bad as they are.’

‘He is not!’ she protested. ‘You just don’t get him like I do.’

‘I get that all he’s ever done is make you feel like shit. He’s aware how you feel about him and he loves stringing you along.’

‘You don’t know that.’

‘You’re right, I don’t. But I do trust my instincts and I’ve known you both long enough. I don’t trust him, Oli, and neither should you.’

The first of Beth’s students arrived at the gate.

‘I’ve got to scram.’ She crossed the yard, calling back, ‘Catch up tonight? Come to mine. We’ll have pizza and you can talk to me more about Cato’s pants.’