If you only knew
, thought April with a small smile.
If you only knew.
As it turned out, April needn’t have worried about the Ravenwood students’ reaction to her as, to her surprise, they pretty much ignored her. As she and Caro walked along the corridors towards the refectory it was noticeable that people were deliberately avoiding making eye contact with her.
‘What’s going on?’ said April as they sat down at an empty table. ‘I thought everyone would be staring, but instead they’re avoiding me. I suppose they don’t know what to say.’
Caro raised her eyebrows and cleared her throat. ‘It’s not that so much, babe,’ she said.
April frowned. ‘So what is it?’
Caro sighed. ‘You’ve been a bit out of the loop over the past week or so, so you won’t have heard, but there’s been a development.’
‘What? Come on, tell me.’
Caro raised her eyebrows. ‘Milo Asprey is in hospital and our dear old friend Layla is weeping at his bedside.’
‘But why? Why would she ... oh God.’
Suddenly the penny dropped and April was overcome by a rush of conflicting emotions - hope, relief and despair. That confrontation she’d had with Layla in the library, when she had ordered April to ‘stay away from my man’, Layla hadn’t been referring to Gabriel at all; she’d been talking about Milo. Which was good and bad. Good that Gabriel wasn’t a two-timing ratbag, but bad that Milo had basically used her behind Layla’s back. Thinking about it, April could hardly blame Layla for trying to warn her off if she had suspected what Milo was like, but even so it was still unfair - it was Milo who had hit on April when she was vulnerable, not the other way around! But none of that mattered now, what mattered was Gabriel and the very thought of his name made April feel as if her heart had dropped through a trapdoor. The way she had just spoken to Gabriel ... he hadn’t been two-timing her at all and she had driven him away. She put both hands over her mouth and moaned.
What have I done?
‘What’s the matter?’
‘I think I just finished with Gabriel,’ she said.
Caro’s mouth dropped open. ‘Because of the Layla thing?’
April nodded. Caro saw the look on April’s face.
‘And am I to take it that you gave it to him with both barrels?’
‘Point-blank,’ said April. ‘Pretty harsh considering he
isn’t
a two-timing back-stabber.’
They both looked at each other.
‘What’s wrong with him anyway?’ said April eventually. ‘Milo, I mean.’
‘That’s the strangest thing - no one knows,’ said Caro. ‘He’s got some horrible skin condition, like it’s blistering and falling off him. Apparently he’s strapped to the bed because he’s having fits too. Some people are saying he’s in danger of organ failure, but that could just be another rumour.’
‘That’s horrible.’
‘What’s horrible?’
April looked up and there was Layla, standing with her hands on her hips, her chin jutting out. Behind her were Chessy and Ling Po, who seemed to have been accepted into the Faces.
‘Milo being ill,’ said April. ‘I’ve just heard, Layla, I’m so sorry.’
‘Why are you sorry? You didn’t care about him before.’
April looked at Caro nervously. ‘No, well, he seemed nice, but it’s bad he’s in hospital.’
‘Bad?’ She laughed. ‘Is that all you can say about it? My boyfriend is in intensive care and you think it’s “bad”?’ she mocked. Her friends all laughed.
‘Listen, Layla,’ began Caro, ‘leave her alone, she hasn’t done anything.’
‘Stay out of it, Jackson,’ said Layla, a nasty edge to her voice. ‘We’re just talking, aren’t we, April? Just two friends talking about boys.’
April managed a weak smile.
‘Of course, you haven’t got much to talk about, have you, April?’ sneered Layla. ‘Not many boyfriends we can see, even though the guys are all over you. Maybe you prefer the company of girls.’
The Faces crowd cackled.
‘Is that why you’re so pally with each other?’
‘Hey!’ shouted Caro. ‘What’s she ever done to you?’
‘Nothing.’ Layla laughed. ‘We’re not all into that sort of thing, are we, girls?’
‘Listen, I know you’re feeling pretty bad about Milo, but—’ began April, trying to calm the situation.
‘Don’t you
dare
tell me how I feel,’ hissed Layla, jabbing her finger at April. ‘What would you know about it? Oh, I suppose you think that just because your daddy’s dead you feel my pain. Well, let me tell you - you have no idea.’
God, she’s actually going to hit me,
thought April, seconds before Layla made a lunge for her. April moved fast, but not quite fast enough. Layla clattered into her and they both tumbled onto the table, sending a pile of books flying.
‘Get off me!’ cried April, but Layla had grabbed a handful of her hair and was pulling her head down towards the tabletop.
‘Shut up, bitch,’ spat Layla. ‘I’m going to rip your throat out, just like your dad.’
‘What?’
Suddenly April was overcome with a white-hot fury. ‘Don’t you dare talk about him!’ she screamed, turning on Layla like a tiger. All April could think of was the injustice. It wasn’t her fault Milo had a girlfriend and still hit on her. It wasn’t her fault he was sick. And it certainly wasn’t fair that she was getting the blame. But most of all it wasn’t fair that her dad had been taken away. All the frustration and guilt that had been building up since her father’s death spewed out and she screamed, pulling herself free of Layla’s grip. She felt strangely strong as she did so, as if she had been shot through with electricity. Layla stumbled backwards, slipping on some spilled drink and tumbling onto her backside, and April was on her in a moment, pushing her down, grabbing her hair and banging her head against the floor.
‘Stay away from me!’ she yelled. ‘Come near me again and I’ll kill you!’
Strong hands grabbed her and pulled her away.
‘I don’t think that’s a very good idea, Miss Dunne,’ said a voice. She turned around and her heart dropped. It was Detective Inspector Reece.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The policeman didn’t arrest her. He didn’t even tell her off. Instead he took April to the headmaster’s office and made her sit outside while he spoke to Mr Sheldon. Whatever was said, Reece obviously managed to persuade him that the fight was simply youthful high spirits between two high-strung students and that he would take her home. There were some advantages to being in mourning, she supposed. Besides, all the fight had gone out of her. At this point she barely cared what happened now, so she simply shrugged when DI Reece explained and then led her down to his car. Why bother kicking and screaming? April knew full well that even as they buckled up, Layla was already spreading her version of events: that the awful new girl had attacked her and threatened to kill her and now the police were taking her away.
‘Good job I came in to speak to you today,’ said Reece as he started the engine. ‘If I’d left it until tomorrow, you might have strangled that girl.’ His tone was light, but April could tell he was worried.
What the hell came over me?
she wondered.
One minute we were talking, the next I was trying to kill her.
‘So what was it all about, April?’
April sighed. She was sick of keeping things to herself, trying to remember what she was or wasn’t supposed to know. It was too much of a tangle and she suddenly felt very tired.
‘Layla - that’s the girl you pulled me off- thinks I’m trying to steal her boyfriend.’
‘And are you?’
‘Not really. He hit on me, but he didn’t mention that he had a girlfriend.’
‘Ah.’ DI Reece nodded. ‘I see.’
He backed the car up and they slowly drove through the gates and up towards the village.
‘I heard the coroner released your dad’s body,’ said the policeman, glancing across at her, ‘so I guess you’ll be glad to get the funeral over, to start picking up the pieces?’
April just shrugged again and looked out of the window.
‘But I don’t suppose you actually want to go home right now, do you?’
April glanced at him. ‘I s’pose not.’
‘Well, how about I treat you to lunch?’
April lifted her hands in a gesture of complete indifference. ‘Whatever,’ she said. Then, after a pause. ‘No McDonald’s, though.’
Reece laughed. ‘Okay, no McDonald’s.’
He drove them out of Highgate, past the big houses on Hampstead Lane and then Kenwood House on the left. April had been wanting to see the big Georgian stately home on the hill ever since Hugh Grant had his heart broken there in
Notting Hill,
but somehow since arriving in Highgate she’d never had the chance to go. Now she thought about it, apart from the visits to her grandpa’s place, she had hardly strayed from the village at all since they’d left Edinburgh, as if Pond Square had a giant magnet hidden beneath it and she had a metal plate in her head.
That would explain a lot,
she thought ruefully. They were approaching a bottleneck in the road - a strange white cottage seemed to have been plonked in the middle of the street. To April’s surprise Reece didn’t drive past; instead he turned off the road and into a car park next to a large white building opposite the cottage.
‘A pub?’ she said, with a little too much eagerness in her voice.
Reece smiled. ‘I’m getting you a Diet Coke, young lady. But they do make an amazing goat’s cheese lasagne.’
The Spaniards Inn was ancient and rambling, with low beams, dark wood panelling and creaky floors. It even had a fire popping and crackling away beneath a polished copper chimney breast. It was the sort of pub American tourists believe lies at the end of every road in England. As Reece went to the bar to order their food, April wandered over to a chalkboard where someone had written up a few snippets of the pub’s history. Apparently Charles Dickens, Lord Byron and the highwayman Dick Turpin had all spent time drinking here. According to the board, John Keats had composed ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ in the garden.
She heard a laugh behind her. ‘It’s probably a lot of old tosh,’ said Reece, leading April to an alcove and putting the promised Diet Coke in front of her, ‘but it’s sort of nice to keep up the legends, isn’t it?’
He settled into a squashy leather chair next to a window which looked out towards the strange white cottage in the middle of the road.
‘It reminds me of that little white house by the cemetery gates,’ said April. ‘Is it true you couldn’t get inside?’
Reece looked at her, his eyebrows raised.
‘I went on a tour. The guide told me.’
‘She’s right, as it happens,’ said Reece, rubbing his chin. ‘It obviously hadn’t been opened in years - door and windows painted shut, nothing inside - so we figured we’d leave it as it was.’
April thought of the tall man who had come out of the house - she was sure he had - and the tour guide’s insistence that no one of that description worked there. She wished she knew what it all meant, but there was so much about this whole business that she couldn’t grasp. It was like trying to juggle with one hand tied behind her back.
‘So what is it?’ asked April, nodding at the white house in the road.
‘That’s the old gatehouse where travellers had to pay a toll to use the road, and it’s where Dick Turpin is supposed to have spotted his victims.’
‘I bet you’d like to have caught him, wouldn’t you?’
‘No need,’ said Reece. ‘Contrary to popular belief, Dick Turpin was caught and hanged by a member of his own gang. But no, I’m not sure I’d like to be involved with that sort of thing. I’m more a rehabilitation than a hanging kind of guy.’
April sucked her Coke through the straw and looked at Reece. She wasn’t so sure what kind of guy he was or what he was after, but she was glad to be out of school, and out of the house - and to be treated like an adult. Well, without the vodka, admittedly, but it was much better than the tea in the police station. Even so, she knew Reece hadn’t brought her here for her sparkling conversation - this was an interrogation with beer mats.