The Liar

the truth?'

Cartwright looked up at him.

'Did Pigs, did Trotter say . . . did he tell you how long he'd had this, this thing for me?'

'Since you came to the school apparently.'

Cartwright dropped his head and stared at the floor. When he looked up again there were tears in his eyes. He looked angry. Angry and to Adrian more beautiful than ever.

'Why did he tell you?' he cried. 'Why couldn't he have told me? And what did he have to go and kill himself for?'

Adrian felt taken aback by the anger in Cartwright's voice.

'Well, I suppose he was scared in case . . . in case you rejected him or something. I don't know how these things work.'

'More scared of me rejecting him than he was of killing himself?'

Adrian nodded.

'So now I'm going to have to wake up every morning for the rest of my life knowing that I'm responsible for someone's suicide.'

The tears splashed down his face. Adrian leant forward and held his shoulder.

'You must never think of it like that, Hugo. You mustn't!' he said.

He had never called him Hugo before and he hadn't touched him since their brief how-do-you-do in the House lavs, which was before Adrian had known he was in love.

'I'm as responsible as you are, really,' Adrian said. 'More responsible, if anything.'

Cartwright stared in surprise.

'How do you mean?'

'Well,' said Adrian, 'I could have advised Trotter to tell you, couldn't I? I could have told him not to bottle it up.'

'But you weren't to know what was going to happen.'

'And nor were you, Hugo. Now come on, dry your eyes, or people will really know something is wrong. We'll go to the funeral and then in a couple of weeks we'll have forgotten all about it.'

'Thanks, Healey. I'm sorry to be so . . .'

'Adrian. And there's nothing to be sorry about.'

Between that day and the day they travelled up to Harrogate they hadn't exchanged a word. Adrian had seen him mobbing around with his friends as if nothing had happened. The House did its best to forget the whole embarrassment. Trotter was thought of with the kind of contempt and revulsion young Englishmen of the right type reserve for the sick, the mad, the poor and the old.

The funeral was set for ten in the morning, so Tickford had decided that they should travel up the evening before and spend the night in a hotel. For the whole duration of the journey Cartwright stared out of the window.

He's beginning to resent Trotter's posthumous power over him, Adrian thought.

The Tickfords didn't speak much either. This was a duty they did not relish. Adrian, never a tidy traveller, twice had to ask Ma Tickford, who was driving, to stop the car so that he could be sick.

He couldn't imagine why he had dropped Cartwright in it the way he had. A kind of revenge he supposed. But revenge for what? And on whom? A revenge on the ghost of Trotter or on the living, breathing Cartwright?

He wasn't Woody Nightshade, he was Deadly Nightshade. Everybody who had anything to do with him was lethally poisoned.

But they don't exist, he kept repeating to himself as they rattled up the AI. Other people don't exist. Trotter isn't really dead because he was never really alive. It's all just a clever way of testing me. There's no one in these cars and lorries driving south. There can't be that many individual souls. Not souls like mine. There isn't room. There can't be.

But suppose Trotter's ghost watched him? Trotter would know everything by now. Would he forgive him?

From now on, I conform.

He should have guessed that Tickford would give him and Cartwright a twin room at the hotel. The bill was being settled by the school, after all.

Their room was at the end of a creaking corridor. Adrian opened the door and bowed Cartwright in.

Manly, unconcerned and businesslike, he told himself. Two healthy English school chums sharing digs. Holmes and Watson, Bunny and Raffles. Nothing else.

'So, Cartwright old boy - which bed do you fancy?'

'I don't mind really. This one'll do fine.'

'Okay. Bags the bathroom first, then.'

Like all the English hotels Adrian had ever stayed in, this one was appallingly overheated. He undressed and slipped naked into bed while Cartwright brushed his teeth in the bathroom.

Now then, Healey, he warned himself. You're to behave. Understand?