Page 50

I was trying to find the right thing to say; the thing that Aria would have said on hearing this for the first time, instead of any of the questions I now desperately wanted to ask.

Aria wouldn’t have been thinking, Cordelia was right. One of them did something bad enough that they killed her for finding out.

‘What would that even have been about?’ I tried, in the end. ‘She didn’t say anything else?’

Kit frowned and then briefly kissed my hand. ‘I don’t know. I figured if it was that important, she wouldn’t have brought it up when we were all rushed to get ready…’

I paused for a second, and then said, ‘I guess it could have been nothing. It’s so… weird. That nobody might ever know what it was.’

I watched him so, so carefully for a reaction, Reid. I watched for a moment of satisfaction, or of fear. A desire to change the subject.

But instead, he just looked desolate. Like I’d made him realise all over again what had been lost.

James Sedgewick turned up then, so of course the conversation stopped right there. And James looked… well, unhappy to see us both. But he tried to give me a smile of some kind.

This is weighing on him, all of it , I thought, with the sense of satisfaction that comes from knowing things are unravelling. I just need to give him a push.

There was little room for private conversation that night, though.

Esther and then Ryan slid their way round the table, and the chat got very cheerful and annoyingly group orientated.

A bad situation for dark confessions. It was annoying, too, that there was no bar to go to.

Everything was ordered right there at the table.

But even so, I could read tension in all of them.

And the moment I packed away my own feelings about Ryan Jaffett– who was trying very hard to get me to acknowledge him while I breezily talked to everyone else– I started to see that there was something weird going on between him and the others, too.

It was after we’d started eating the main course, and Ryan had once again tried to get me to speak to him, that Esther said to him, quietly and urgently, ‘Give her some space, for god’s sake, Ryan.’

There was a beat, in which Ryan looked both hurt and guilty, and then something twisted in his expression.

‘How was your night yesterday, Esther? Nice little jaunt into London?’

And Esther’s face froze. She was suddenly white. Sick-looking.

‘I… yes, I went to see one of Mummy’s friends. Possible work, you know.’

‘Oh, right.’ Ryan gave her a strange smile. ‘Must have been before I saw you. Don’t think you were with anyone Mummy would have approved of…’

‘Ryan,’ Kit said sharply. ‘Whatever you’re doing, stop it.’

Ryan looked back at Kit and reached over to pick up his glass of water. He drank it very deliberately.

‘I’d forgotten you were the judges of good behaviour,’ he said once he’d swallowed. ‘The two of you…’

I found myself looking between Kit and Esther, trying to read their expressions. And for the first time I wondered whether I’d been wrong about this secret boyfriend of Esther’s.

Could it be Kit? Kit had declined to do anything post-exams, claiming exhaustion. He could easily have been in London. Had Esther been trying to tell me that her ex-boyfriend was actually… my new one?

I remembered the message asking for a picture of us both and I felt a roiling sense of nausea. There was so much lying going on, the lies I was telling included. I should understand them all by now, but I didn’t.

‘I’m happy to judge your behaviour when you won’t do it yourself,’ Kit said to Ryan.

‘Every time you get like this you start trying to drown it in drink, and then you regret it. I’m the one who ends up dealing with your self-loathing the next day, Ryan.

So go home now. Go home, and wake up tomorrow feeling all right about yourself. ’

Ryan stared back at him for a long time. I felt the threat of actual physical violence in the air and was bracing myself to back Kit up, even without being sure I should.

But something in Ryan cracked, and he rose quickly.

‘Fuck it, I don’t need this.’

He walked to the door and then left.

There was a silence in the wake of his exit, during which time I was thinking back over every interaction between Kit and Esther.

Is Kit playing the two of us? I thought.

But then why was Esther so happy to have me in the group? It didn’t quite make sense.

I felt Kit’s arm go round me after that, and he murmured, ‘In case you’re wondering, none of this bullshit is your fault.’

Which, I have to say, did a lot to dispel the idea of him as nothing but a player in my mind. But I still felt uncertain, somehow. Almost like I had to convince him all over again that I was worth something. Almost as though Esther and I were in competition for his affection.

It’s so messed up, when all I was there to do was work. I don’t know why people and situations like that have the power to get under my skin, but they do.

And, Reid, even if I’m not really writing this for you any more, I feel like I don’t want to tell you this, and that it hurts to say it. Things happened later with Kit that are… not right. I don’t even know why I let them happen. But I have to write it out anyway.

The truth, in all its horrible glory.