At school the next day, I am shocked to hear from Beth that she saw Edie at Cafe Belladonna last night.
‘Are you sure it was her?’
‘I swear on Binkie’s grave,’ Beth says, spooning the chunky bits of a Cup-a-Soup into her mouth. ‘No-one else I’ve ever seen wears her ponytail that high. Plus, she was in tennis gear. Plus, the girl she was with was in tennis gear. According to Millie, it was that new girl from St Mag’s, Bianca Rind.’
My heart goes cold. ‘You mean Bianca Stein?’
‘That’s her.’
‘You and Millie went to Belladonna without me?’
She shrugs. ‘We thought Tuesday was your date night with Edie.’
I suppose she is right. I try very hard not to take their oversight personally.
My next class is History, and during the lesson I do something entirely in breach of school rules: I use my iPad to get online for a non-History-related purpose. An image search for St Margaret’s star player brings up a disturbing number of pictures of a girl in a tennis skirt wearing medals, holding silver plates and wielding heavy-looking trophies.
I ring my girlfriend at lunch.
‘Beth says she saw you at Belladonna last night.’
‘Keep your voice down, Bubble. There’s no need to shout.’
‘And that you were with Bianca Stein. At the very time I was texting you to wish you luck with your essay.’
‘Sheesh, Harriet. I’m not deaf. You can say these things at an ordinary decibel level and I will hear them just as clearly.’
‘Well, were you?’
‘Of course I was, what do you think?’ she says harshly.
‘I – I don’t know what to think! Which is why I’m calling!’
‘I was getting the lowdown,’ she murmurs. ‘On whether she’s playing the Doubles at Tawney.’
‘Oh,’ I say, giddy with relief. ‘And is she?’
There is a pause. ‘She’s considering it. She wanted to know if I could recommend any players who weren’t partnered up yet. So I gave her a couple of bum steers. Nell Kee from Riverston, for example.’
‘Oh Edie, you didn’t.’ Nell Kee is a previous Tawney Shield winner whose game dropped considerably after an ankle injury two years ago. ‘But why didn’t you tell me what you were doing?’
Edie lowers her voice. ‘Because it’s a dirty game I’m playing, Bubble,’ she says darkly. ‘And I knew you wouldn’t approve. Besides, I don’t want you implicated. Ignorance is the best defence in these situations, okay?’
I am touched by her concern, though still not entirely happy. She is right: I don’t approve. But if she is so keen to play this so-called dirty game, she shouldn’t be taking on all the risk herself.
‘Bubble? Are you still there?’
‘Promise me, Edie, that if you decide to do this again, you’ll tell me first.’
‘Of course.’
‘I don’t like it when you lie to me.’
‘You know you’re my lucky charm, don’t you?’ she says, soft and sweet, and I think about lying in her arms in the tall grass beside the tennis courts at Tawney last year: my head in her lap, her hand stroking my hair, our fingers entwined.
‘Don’t you forget it,’ I say, smiling. ‘I’ll call you after school.’
We have resolved things, we love each other, Edie and I are rock solid. But after I get off the phone I feel strangely hollow. Then I remember: I haven’t had lunch yet! Dear me – what a crazy cat I am.
I am on my way to the canteen when I decide, on a whim, to take a left turn towards the newsroom. I promised Will I would steer clear, but I have a sudden urge to tell her about the emails I have sent. I am feeling guilty about not clearing them with her first. When I reach the newsroom door, though, I notice something bizarre going on behind the mottled glass. There is a lot of thumping, like someone is playing dodgeball, only the balls are heads, and there are two of them, and they seem to be doing the opposite of dodging each other.
The door opens and out bursts Will. Her face is flushed. She adjusts her tunic and, just before she pulls the door shut, I see a glimpse of Natasha Nguyen behind her, adjusting hers too.
Surely not.
Will looks up. ‘Holy shit! What are you doing here?’
I put a hand on the wall to steady myself.
Her eyes widen. ‘Hey, are you all right? You’re as pale as a ghost.’
‘Perfectly fine,’ I say, inhaling deeply. ‘Just a bit of a head throb, that’s all. It happens when I haven’t eaten for a while.’ ‘I need to talk to you, actually,’ Will murmurs. ‘Buy some food and I’ll meet you in the storeroom in five.’
I nod.
Will casts her gaze up and down the corridor. ‘You are such a weirdo, Harriet Price,’ she says in a loud voice, before abruptly walking away.
I walk to the storeroom via the canteen deliberately slowly, processing what I have just witnessed. Will and Natasha? It doesn’t make sense. I wonder if Will’s boyfriend knows what is going on between them.
When I finally reach the storeroom, Will is lounging in her padded chair with her feet on the armrest reading American Portraiture in the Twenty-First Century. ‘Feeling better?’ she asks. Closing the book, she places it on a metre-high stack of art books beside her chair.
‘Whose are those?’
Will threads her fingers together. ‘They’re art books and I’m reading them and they don’t belong to you, so …’
‘Don’t you have room for them at home?’
‘I brought them from home. So I could read them here. What’s got up your nose?’
I squeeze some of my
