Kiss in the Dark (16 page)

My heart sinks into my stomach like a cannonball dropping with a thud. I don’t even know if I want to find out what’s behind her words.

Jase is walking toward the car. They aren’t handcuffing him, which is a huge relief; I don’t think I could bear to see Jase in handcuffs.

“He’ll need a lawyer, won’t he?” I ask in a small frightened voice, and DS Landon nods.

“I’ll go straight to my grandmother,” I call after Jase as he climbs into the backseat. “Don’t worry.”

Don’t worry. Of all the ridiculous things to say.

The police slam the door on him, then get into the car themselves and start the engine. As I watch, still unable to believe what’s happening, the police car pulls away, with my boyfriend inside it.

Under arrest for the murder of his father.

“YOU SHOULD WALK AWAY”

I tear into my grandmother’s office like a maniac. Penny, her secretary, chases me in, apologies pouring from her lips.

“She just ran right in and past me, Lady Wakefield. I couldn’t stop her.”

My grandmother, sitting behind her desk, raises a hand heavy with rings.

“It’s all right, Penny,” she says calmly. “No doubt Scarlett has a good reason for this unprecedented interruption. You may leave us.”

My grandmother is so unflustered by dramatic situations that she could give lessons on composure to the Queen. As Penny closes the door, I meet my grandmother’s clear blue eyes. Her white eyebrows are raised, her hands folded in front of her on the leather blotter resting on her desk.

“Would you care to tell me what crisis is so pressing that you can’t even wait to let Penny inform me of your presence?” my grandmother inquires.

“It’s Jase Barnes,” I say, catching my breath, trying not to appear too out of control. There’s nothing Lady Wakefield hates more than a girl who seems out of control. “He’s just been arrested for murdering his father. They had the inquest on Mr. Barnes this morning and the jury brought in a guilty verdict against Jase.”

My grandmother’s eyebrows rise even higher.

“Dear me,” she says.

Coming from my grandmother, this is very strong language indeed. With not a word more said to me, she presses a button on her desk phone, which buzzes Penny on the intercom.

“Penny, can you call Jennings immediately?” she requests. “Tell him young Jason Barnes has been arrested and we’ll need a good criminal solicitor. I have absolutely no idea how these things work, but hopefully Jennings will.”

Jennings is the family solicitor. My heart jumps in relief. I was so hoping my grandmother would help, but I didn’t think it would be this easy. When her brief conversation with Penny is finished, she folds her hands again, looking at me, and dips her head in a short nod that indicates I should sit down.

I obey. It’s dawning on me that I may have got a lawyer for Jase, but I’m going to pay for it now. If I’m not mistaken, my grandmother is wearing that look that says a lecture is on its way.

I get ready to take my medicine.

“Scarlett,” she says eventually, lifting one hand to touch the pearl necklace she always wears. “I want to make one thing clear: I have no interest in asking you intrusive questions about your friendship with Jason Barnes.”

Thank God.

“Not, at any rate, at this particular moment,” she adds.

Oh, damn.

And I can actually swear that I hear a softening in her usually clipped tones, a gentleness that, coming from anyone else, I would identify as sympathy.

Sympathy from my grandmother? I brace myself against the straight back of my chair. Oh my God. This is not going to be good at all.

“I have been observing Jason Barnes as he has grown up, and I have nothing but respect for him,” she observes. “He is a good, hardworking boy who seems to be making the best of a difficult family situation. Unfortunately, I could not have said the same for his father, who was a very troubled man.”

She sighs.

“Like you, I am extremely reluctant to feel that Jason had any degree of involvement in the tragic death of his father,” she says. “But the guilty verdict at the inquest does not bode well, does it? Scarlett, I would advise you to prepare yourself for the worst. If it does turn out that we are both wrong, I’m sure there will be a considerable number of extenuating circumstances. And a good solicitor will know how to use those to best advantage.”

My eyes widen in horror. She’s saying that it’s actually possible that Jase might be guilty. But it’s as if a steel wall just slid down, separating me from her words. I realize, with a cold, slicing clarity, that the only thing that would make me believe he is guilty is if Jase told me so himself. I refuse to accept it from anyone else.

“However, Scarlett, extenuating circumstances or not,” my grandmother continues, “there is one thing I absolutely must make clear. Should he be convicted, there is simply no possibility of your continuing any kind of relationship with Jason Barnes. You are a Wakefield of Wakefield Hall. I will not tolerate my granddaughter’s being involved in any way with a felon.”

“But what if Jase didn’t do it,” I blurt out, “but it looks as if he did? What if he gets convicted even though he’s innocent? That happens sometimes. I know it does!”

Lady Wakefield purses her lips.

“Miscarriages of justice do happen, even in England,” she concedes, “though I am happy to say that they are extremely rare. But I am afraid that my edict would not alter in any way. If Jason Barnes were to be convicted of his father’s murder, I would forbid you to have any further contact with him.”

“But—”

“Scarlett,” she says very quietly, and all the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. “It would be utterly and completely out of the question. Please believe me when I say I would do everything in my considerable power to keep you and Jason Barnes apart, for your own good. I cannot imagine you would want to put me to the test.”

This makes my aunt Gwen’s threats to enforce some kind of house arrest for me pale by comparison. Aunt Gwen could scream and shout all day, and it wouldn’t be as terrifying as a few softly spoken sentences from Lady Wakefield. I know she means every word. If she has to ship me off to some reform school up a mountain peak in Switzerland run by psychotic nuns, she’ll do it. No question.

My mouth’s gone dry. I manage a nod of submission.

“I’m glad I have made myself clear,” she says, and again, the note of sympathy in her voice is the biggest warning of all.

Because it’s the tone you take when you’re breaking the worst news possible. When you tell a person that someone they love has just died.

I told Lady Wakefield that I would go straight back to class. And I lied through my teeth. As soon as I’m clear of her suite of rooms, I’m bounding along the corridors, the length of the building, down the far stairs and outside, around the art block to the Barneses’ cottage. My bicycle is parked in the bike sheds, but a bicycle won’t get me where I’m going nearly fast enough.

How hard can it be to ride a motorbike, anyway?

The keys and the helmet are still on the seat of Jase’s bike. There’s a spare pair of gloves for me under the seat, and I grabbed my jacket from the cloakroom on my mad dash through school. I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.

I just can’t think too much about what I’m doing, or I might lose my nerve completely.

If I weren’t used to riding on the bike with Jase, I think I’d probably fly straight off the back as the bike lunges into a tree when I fire it up. It’s that powerful. Like you see in the films where people shoot a big gun for the first time, and the recoil knocks them off their feet. I’m bracing myself with every muscle in my body, thighs clamped round it, biceps tensing with anticipation of the thrust.

And even then, even with all the strength I have from years of gymnastics plus daily workouts with Taylor, I can barely control it. The motorbike is built on a huge scale, which is a gigantic problem for me, as I’m much smaller than Jase. It’s a real stretch for me to reach the handlebars and stay on the seat. Still, I keep my legs down, feet pressing into the footpegs.

For a moment, I panic, thinking, I can’t do it! I can’t hold it!

And then, as I freak that the bike will get away from me, I find another inch of length in my back, enough to lean forward even farther, right over the handlebars. I push my legs down as hard as I can, lengthening out my back even more, and pretend my old gymnastics coach, Ricky, is pressing on the small of my back with everything he’s got. And suddenly, as I fly down the drive, the wind whipping at the front of my body, it all comes together.

It’s like riding a tiger. The bike surges beneath me, carrying me along, and I have to be brave enough to master it, because if I lose my nerve, I’ll be in the worst trouble I’ve ever known. I know how Jase turns the bike, because I’ve learned to lean with him. He says it’s called countersteering; you turn away from where you’re going, not toward it.

I’m at the bottom of the drive. I need to go left, for Wakefield village, and there’s no traffic at all. Even with my torso stretched almost flat over the bike, which makes it much harder to turn my head, the visibility is really good for this turn. It’s winter, and the trees are leafless. If there were a car or a bike on the road, I’d see it immediately.

I’m slowing down but I don’t need to stop. Nothing to watch out for, and no ice on the road. I can make the turn, I can go for it—

Turn it to the right, I tell myself. Do what your head says, not your instincts. As I turn the handlebar to the right, the oddest thing is that it actually feels like I’m pushing the left grip rather than pulling on the right one.

Emboldened, I turn it more confidently, more and more, and the harder I push it, the more the bike turns to the left. My head is spinning with excitement and my whole body is throbbing with the revs of the bike as I turn onto the main road.

I forget to lean. Or I don’t lean enough. I don’t know what I do wrong, but the bike wobbles and tilts. It’s only by the grace of God that I manage to get it straight again. I scream in fear and the scream reverberates inside the helmet, freaking me out still more, the sound of my own voice shrieking because I thought I was going to crash to the ground with hundreds of pounds of motorbike on top of me.

Staycalmstaycalmstaycalm! I babble to myself. Stayalivestayalivestayalive!

I ease off on the throttle, having scared myself half to death. No point getting there in a body bag.

By the time I reach the village, my heartbeat has slowed down to something that’s certainly not normal, but at least allows me to breathe without thinking I’m going to choke every time I inhale. Right now my rib cage is contracting in panicky spasms. I manage to get it under some sort of control, even as my hands slip in my gloves, sweaty with fear. You’re doing fine, I tell myself firmly, tightening my grip. Not much farther now.

I’ve got to get to Jase. I’ve got to tell him I’ll stand by him.

I can’t believe I might have to choose between him and my grandmother.

I can’t believe Jase might go to prison.

I can’t believe what my life has turned into—just when I thought it was actually coming together….

Thank God Wakefield village can’t help but have a calming effect. Like Plum and her London set, it’s very concerned about appearances. The fact that it won Best Hanging Baskets in the Small Village category of the Best of Britain’s Gardens competition is announced on blue commemorative plaques everywhere you look, even though on this wet damp day in February the hanging baskets are just boasting some mildewed-looking pansies. Since my grandmother (who owns most of the village) is very keen on tradition and keeping up standards, every building over a hundred years old has been carefully restored. The High Street’s often used for filming scenes from period dramas. We’ve all got pretty used to having its cobbles strewn in hay so carriages can roll down them, carrying girls in bonnets.

What used to be the police station, a nineteenth-century brick building covered in ivy, is now a quaint hotel called (with great originality) the Old Police Station. Tourists love it. The new police station is tucked away behind a roundabout, beyond the petrol station and the supermarket. It’s a nasty single-story 1970s building with low ceilings and no architectural merit at all, but that doesn’t matter because the tourists never see it. There’s hardly any crime in Wakefield village, anyway.

Till now.

You wouldn’t even know it was a police station without the blue light hanging over its entrance, and a couple of police cars parked in front. Thank goodness, there are no officers hanging around beside them as I gingerly veer into the parking lot, remembering to lean properly to make the turn. I zoom past the cars, jam the brake on too heavily, and skid to a horrendously awkward halt that ends up with me and the bike mere inches from the back wall of the parking area.

My wrists are killing me. I was leaning forward so far that most of my body weight was on my hands, and of course I was gripping on like a madwoman for dear life. I sit there, the blood still roaring in my ears, and try to calm myself, flexing my hands and wincing at the pain as the blood rushes back into my fingers.

I can’t reach down and access the kickstand. I’m too short, or it’s too awkwardly placed for me. I have to clamber off, hold the bike in place, and wrench out the stand, amazed that my wobby legs are even holding me up. The shock of what I just did, the sheer craziness of it, is almost unbelievable. I had to get to Jase as soon as possible. I had to let him know that a lawyer is coming, that he isn’t alone.

I’m just really lucky I didn’t kill myself and wreck his bike in the process.

I’m boiling up. Unzipping my jacket, I pluck at my T-shirt and sweater as I enter the station, trying to cool off my overheated skin. I hope that my deodorant and body spray are still doing their job at two in the afternoon, hours and hours after I put them on. Inside it’s a lot less intimidating than I imagined it would be, probably because the police stations you see on TV are in crime-infested cities, not some quiet village where not much ever happens. It’s painted white, there are posters everywhere about community policing and Crime Stoppers, and the reception desk doesn’t even have glass in front of it. There’s less security than in a bank.