Page 55

The train ride back to Cambridge was an anxious one. With the Ensign credit card now handed back, I had only a whisker of a gap between me and my overdraft, and a host of things that needed to be paid for.

I knew I’d have to find the money for hair and make-up for tonight’s ball somehow. It was either that or arrive looking like someone who didn’t fit in. The rest of May Week is shaping up to be horrifically expensive, too. Unless I solve it tonight and can just go home, obviously.

Which I’m going to. I’m going to.

But cashflow is still important.

I realised I was going to have to ask Dad for help, however much the idea made me cringe. And I was going to have to do it at the same time as admitting to him that I’d been the cause of his friend’s son ending up in hospital.

I messaged asking if I could drop in on him at eleven fifteen, which would just give me time to get off the train from London and cycle over to see him, before making it home to shower. Hair and make-up was booked for 1 p.m. until 3. Honestly, this dressing-up stuff is pretty much a career.

Dad messaged a ‘Great idea’ back, and I spent the cycle over rehearsing how to both tell him about James and ask him for money without admitting that I’d been kicked off the story. I wasn’t willing to actually lie to him, so it was all going to have to be about obfuscation.

(And I can already hear you snorting to yourself about me using that word. I basically put it in on purpose for you because I know it’ll remind you of that ridiculous defence lawyer in the sex-trafficking case, not that you’ll be reading this, of course.)

I hadn’t really thought much about whether Dad had anything to tell me in return, but I realised he might as I parked my bike and saw him waiting for me on the porch with a troubled, closed-off look on his face.

Just then, something about him– the gleaming blue waistcoat, illuminated by the warm yellow sunshine– made him look like some kind of a lord, waiting to judge his subjects. Like he was a class above. Unassailable.

‘I had a phone call with Philip Sedgewick this morning,’ he said, immediately, before he’d even let me inside. ‘It was… well, it was a pretty uncomfortable experience.’

‘Oh.’ I felt like I was suddenly standing on something slippery. ‘You mean… because of what happened to James?’

‘Of course because of what happened to James,’ he said, slightly impatiently. At that point he stood back and let me in, but then walked ahead of me without turning round until he said, ‘We… everything we talked about early on… the care you were supposed to take over him…’

It was a horrible feeling, Reid. I’d come looking for support and now felt as though Dad was the personification of all my guilt over James. And on top of that, I was sticky from cycling and standing there with my helmet in my hands in his perfect kitchen feeling as though I didn’t belong.

‘I have been taking care, Dad,’ I said, not sure who I was convincing. ‘I told him to be super careful. You know what Holly said to Kit? The stuff I told you? Well, that was what tipped James into getting involved, and I didn’t– I didn’t think that it would.’

‘Well, it was bound to, wasn’t it?’ Dad said, his irritation stepping up.

He paced over to the cupboard and pulled out a couple of champagne flutes, and then went to the wine fridge.

Despite the stress of the situation, I couldn’t help admiring the fact that he was still offering me champagne.

‘How else was James going to react when you told him his girlfriend might have been murdered by one of his friends?’ He gave me an anguished look while he grabbed a bottle of Taittinger off the shelf and started pulling the foil off.

‘It was awful, Anna. I had to sympathise and pretend to know nothing, while I felt as though I’d been complicit in hurting my friend’s son.

And all because I’d helped you do this for your own reasons. ’

It felt like a slap across the face. Like he was standing in front of me and telling me that these old friends of his were his people and I was just the grubby little interloper who couldn’t be trusted.

‘My own reasons?’ I asked him. ‘Holly is dead , Dad! She deserves to still be alive! That’s my reason!’

‘But James deserves to live, too,’ he said, his voice full of emotion and the bottle of champagne only a mildly ridiculous addition as he held his hands out in appeal. ‘And I became a part of risking his life.’

‘You said you were happy to help,’ I told him, trying to remind him how much of this had been his idea while he battled with the cork. ‘I didn’t think there were limits on that. Do you want me to…?’

‘I’ve got this!’ he snapped back. ‘I’ve got this.

’ He managed to actually get the cork out, which at least meant I was safe from it being fired into my face.

‘And of course there were limits! There were always going to be limits. If you’d…

I don’t know, threatened someone with violence, you wouldn’t expect my unwavering support, would you? ’

‘Honestly?’ I asked. ‘Logical, but not exactly a fair comparison. I’m trying to bring a killer to justice, not threaten anyone, and James Sedgewick was almost a victim of whoever they were because they are still dangerous .’

‘Because you got him involved,’ Dad said heatedly, handing me a full glass of fizz. ‘And although I understand Philip’s willingness to believe otherwise, it seems very unclear whether James didn’t… well, do it to himself.’

‘Oh, come on, Dad,’ I said, loudly, and then– because it’s my rule not to waste good alcohol– had a mouthful of champagne.

That stuff is so good, honestly, I wish I had the money to drink it every day.

‘Holly was murdered, and someone tried to kill James for asking too much. It’s pretty straightforward.

And do you think his family really, truly, if they were asked, would want him hanging around with a killer? ’

‘But you didn’t ask ,’ he said, stiffly. He picked up his glass, and drank the bubbles like they were water. It only made me feel more like an outsider. ‘And Philip doesn’t believe that any of James’s friends is capable of it. He’s known them since they were knee-high.’

I laughed at that. ‘Do you have any idea how many people have been protected by that feeling? By the “but my child couldn’t have” defence?

Nobody ever thinks the people they know are capable of violence, until they’re confronted with it.

’ I tried to step back. To appeal to his sense of logic.

‘Look. Those three are the only ones who fit. When I started talking to them, someone tried to warn me off, for starters. We know that whoever killed Holly reacts badly to feeling threatened. We know it was her friends she was considering confronting. I think those three are the only people on this earth she’d have hesitated over naming, too.

She’d have given them a chance to hand themselves over to the police or explain themselves.

She would have cared about them and, to be honest, not wanted to rock the boat and destroy the life she’d managed to win for herself.

Plus, for what it’s worth, they all have issues a mile wide. ’

‘But there were better ways, Anna,’ he said, almost slamming his glass down onto the counter.

‘You didn’t need to push until James was in danger.

And to find out from Philip that you’ve been having a– a relationship with Kit Frankland,’ he said with something in his voice I’d struggle to describe as anything other than disgust. ‘For a grown woman to take advantage of a student like that, all to try to wheedle out a story. It’s– I’m going to be the one left mortified by all this, Anna.

I’m going to be the one trying to explain that I had no idea about any of it. ’

And there it was. Full proof that he thought as badly of me as you do, Reid.

I think it might have been all right if he hadn’t hit exactly– exactly– the same anxieties that you did when you left.

Though maybe it would have been less awful if he hadn’t also hit all the points about this that were making me feel confused and uncomfortable and like I wasn’t sure if I should just walk away.

I didn’t have anything to say to him in response. I felt so hurt and anxious. Even though all I was trying to do was the right thing.

So with a pang of regret about more than just the wasted fizz, I placed the glass carefully down, turned round and walked out of his beautiful granite and grey-paint kitchen.

As I headed back into the sunny morning I heard him calling, ‘Look, Anna,’ after me, but I didn’t go back.

There was no way I could bear to let him see me cry.

I just grabbed the bike I hadn’t locked up anyway and cycled away as quickly as I could.

I understood, at that point, that I was going to have to do this on my own. That even dragging Cordelia into it any further while I no longer had newspaper backing wasn’t fair.

And as I cycled back through sun and then clouds, I realised that all of it came down to doing the right thing and ignoring anyone who thought I was in the wrong.

Dad’s tried to call me twice since. He accompanied these calls with a text message apologising for losing his cool and asking if I was going to be all right for money in the short term.

I have no idea how he guessed money might be an issue, but I was obviously not going to tell him what I needed.

Or, in fact, reply to him at all. I’d decided I would just have to use the last of my overdraft on the hair and sell some things on eBay to make it to the end of the month.

The dress might make something second-hand, at least, if I could avoid wrecking it.