The high street was lined with expensive-looking boutiques. Mark shot the piles of silk and cashmere in the shop windows bilious glances and grumbled under his breath about ‘snobs’ until they found an off-licence in a side street.
‘I’ll go inside and see what’s on offer.’ His eyes swept over Allie’s decidedly underage features. ‘You better stay here. If we go in together they might get curious.’
She waited in the cold, stomping her feet to keep warm until he reappeared a few minutes later carrying a plastic bag. She could hear the cans rattling inside it.
‘Right,’ he said, looking around. ‘We need a venue.’
For nearly ten minutes they trudged up and down the quiet streets looking for a drinking spot until Allie spotted a narrow cobblestone lane leading to a quiet churchyard.
The ancient church building was surrounded by spotlights illuminating its crenellated bell tower but the graveyard around it was ghostly and dark. They found a damp wooden bench sheltered beneath the sprawling branches of an oak tree and settled down.
Pulling out two cans of cheap cider, Mark handed her one. He popped his own can open and took a deep draught then sighed with pleasure. ‘That’s better.’
Allie followed his lead. The fizzy, apple-flavoured alcohol went down easily, warming her insides. After a while she stopped shivering. Maybe sitting outside wouldn’t be so bad after all.
After they’d drunk a little, Mark turned to face her. ‘Now. What happened to your head?’
There was no way for him to know how huge that question was. How long the answer could be.
She took a long, deep gulp and let the fire of the alcohol burn through her veins.
‘There’s this group,’ she said, ‘at my school. I’m in it. It’s all secret. We train in lots of weird stuff…’
‘What weird stuff?’
Crumpling an empty can, Mark tossed it into the grass. Instinctively, Allie winced. But she told herself to get over it. Mark was the way he was.
She needed time to think. So she up-ended her own can, finishing it off in a few swallows, then gave a loud belch.
‘Nice one,’ Mark commented as he opened a fresh can.
‘Thank you,’ she said primly. ‘Weird stuff like self-defence. Martial arts. How to kill people with your hands.’
His can half open, he stopped and stared at her. ‘What? Seriously?’
‘Seriously.’ Shoving the empty can back on the bench next to her she held out her hand for a new one. With a puzzled frown he handed one to her. ‘All the kids in this group are from super-rich, powerful families. And there’s this man who wants to take over that group and the school and… me.’
He was looking at her with new caution, as if she might bite. ‘Is this some sort of a joke, Allie? Because if it is —’
‘It’s not a joke, Mark.’ Her voice was sharper than she intended and she tried to calm down. ‘It’s all real. I promise you.’
But he didn’t appear convinced. ‘So this man, he wants you… why, exactly?’
Allie’s mouth opened and closed again. He had her there. Because even today she wasn’t entirely certain what Nathaniel wanted from her. ‘It’s something to do with my family and his family. Some sort of a fight and I’m just a small part of it…’
It sounded unconvincing and she knew it. She could see the puzzlement in his eyes. But he had to believe her. She needed him to understand. Without his help she was lost.
She held his gaze. ‘I know it sounds crazy, Mark, but it’s real. He’s dangerous. Last Christmas he killed my best friend.’
He looked stunned. ‘Wait. Are you telling me a girl got axed at your
Allie tried not to remember how Jo had looked as her life ebbed away but she couldn’t make that image fade.
‘I found her. It was bad, Mark. So much blood…’ Her voice trailed off.
For a long moment he sat staring at her as if looking for assurance that he could believe her; he didn’t seem convinced by what he found.
‘But, Al, why didn’t I read about it in the papers? Posh bird gets done at some boarding school – that’d make headlines.’
His tone was dubious and Allie’s heart sank. He didn’t believe her.
‘They covered it up,’ she explained, knowing even as she said the words how crazy they sounded. ‘They always cover things up.’
He didn’t appear convinced. Opening her new can, she took a long draught. If only she could drink enough to make everything better.
Mark was still trying to figure things out. ‘Come on. How do they do that?’ he asked. ‘I mean, how do you cover up a murdered rich girl?’
‘I don’t know,’ she admitted, helplessly. ‘They just… do it. Lots of really powerful people went to my school. They can do things like that.’
‘Is that how you got hurt?’ He gestured at the scar on her hairline. ‘Were you with her?’
‘Gabe – the guy who killed my friend – he’d tried to grab me once before and my friends protected me.’ Something about that bothered her – something important – but the cider was doing its job and almost as soon as the thought arrived it slipped from her drunken grasp. She frowned at the can in her hand.
‘Then what happened?’ Mark nudged her.
‘Gabe came back,’ Allie said quietly. ‘He and another guy stabbed Jo and then kidnapped me. Put a bag over my head and threw me in a car and drove me away.’
Mark had gone still.
‘But you see… I’ve had this training now in self-defence. So I knew how to hurt them. So I did.’ She nodded to herself. ‘I hurt them.’
Mark’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed nervously. ‘What did you do?’
She spoke without emotion. ‘I jumped over the seat and shoved my nails in the driver’s eyes so he couldn’t see, and he screamed but I didn’t let go, and Gabe hit me, but I didn’t let go, and then the car flipped over and I broke my arm and my knee and my head and stuff.’ She took a drink. ‘But I got away.’
‘Bloody hell, Allie.’ Mark looked stunned – maybe even a little afraid. ‘I mean… What the…?’
‘But it didn’t matter, don’t you see?’ She leaned towards him, her gaze intent. ‘I got hurt trying to help Jo but it didn’t matter because he killed her anyway. He
An icy tear rolled down her cheek and she swiped it away with an impatient gesture.
There was so much she wanted to tell him but couldn’t. She wanted to tell him how Night School made her take chances. That it made her risk her own life and other people’s lives. Being in Night School made her arrogant and stupid. It had created a wall between her life and Jo’s life so Jo didn’t tell her things. Like that Gabe was writing to her. That he wanted to see her. So Allie never had the chance to stop her from going to meet him that night. The night he killed her.
It was too hard to explain to an outsider. And besides, there was something else he needed to understand.
‘I had to get out of that school because they haven’t done anything about it – that’s why I called you. One of them helped Gabe. Someone opened the gates for him, you see? Someone on the inside. But whenever I bring it up they just go on and on about how I need help “dealing” with what happened.’ She made sarcastic air quotes around the word to show what she thought about that. ‘They said I should leave it to them. So I did. And they have done
She took a long drink of cider then fixed him with a determined look. ‘So I have to do this on my own. For Jo. I have to find Gabe and whoever helped him. And I have to punish them.’
They talked on the bench until they ran out of cider. She was in the middle of explaining how she’d escaped from the school when Mark glanced at his watch and swore.
‘What?’ Allie peered at him drunkenly.
