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‘I shot a fucking hippo with that. Back in the days when white law-abiding people who worked hard had rights, before someone took them away from us and started handing them out to animals and blacks and poofters – and I don’t care how politically incorrect you think I am, you, my son, are not welcome here. Now –’ he gave a peremptory jerk of the head, indicating the door ‘– now, get that tart of a car off my gravel before I get my friend up there off its stand and shoot you in your fancy little pink-boy derrière.’

Jake kept his chin up, staring at the crossbow. There was a long silence. Sally could see his Adam’s apple going up and down, as if he wanted to speak. Then he seemed to change his mind. He dropped his chin and without another word, without meeting David’s eyes one more time, he turned and left the house. There was the sound of his feet crunching on the gravel, the high-pitched squeak of a remote locking device, and the slam of a car door. Then the sound of the car leaving, going slowly.

Shakily, Sally separated herself from the wall and dialled Millie’s number.

Chapter 26

The incident stayed with Sally all day. Even when Jake had gone, and she’d spoken to Millie and knew she was safe out in the garden, even when she’d spent three hours struggling with the database and things at Lightpil House had quietened down, with David wandering around, champagne in hand, muttering incessantly about class and the immorality of homosexuality, she was still uneasy. There wasn’t really any doubt in her mind now that Steve had been right, that what lay under the surface of David Goldrab’s life was wide and deep. She had the feeling it could all just crack open at a moment’s notice.

She gave Millie a long lecture about it in the car on the way back. ‘This is serious stuff. Jake is not good news. These are really unpleasant people you’re getting involved with.’

‘Well, you’re the one working for one of them,’ Millie replied sullenly, and, of course, Sally couldn’t argue with that. Now Julian wasn’t around to shelter them, she and Millie had crossed that line and she was beginning to see how different everything on this side was.

‘I’m thinking of a solution. I will come up with something.’

‘Will you?’ Millie stared out of the window, a bored, disbelieving expression on her face. ‘Will you really?’

Sally was exhausted by the time they turned into the driveway at Peppercorn, and the last thing she felt like was seeing people. But there were two camper-vans parked in the garden – Isabelle and the teenagers were standing there, waiting for her. She pulled on the handbrake. She’d completely forgotten that today was the day Peter and Nial would pick up the camper-vans they’d been saving for. Two rusting old heaps with mud and manure all the way up to the wheel arches. She had to force a smile on to her face as she got out. But as it turned out no one else was in the party mood either. They might have pretended they were celebrating the vans’ arrival, but there was an underlying tension. An unspoken ghost flitting between them. Lorne Wood. Dead at sixteen.

‘Their first lesson in mortality,’ Isabelle said, when she and Sally were on their own at last. They’d each poured a glass of the nice wine Steve was always bringing to Peppercorn, and had gone into the living room. ‘It’s a difficult one. They’re taking this badly.’

‘Millie didn’t want to go to school today. She said it was because the police might be there. Were they?’

‘No. But they were at Faulkener’s the second day in a row. Sophie got a text from one of the girls. Apparently the place came to a standstill – the police think one of the boys did it.’

One of the boys?’ Sally looked at Isabelle’s face, the salt-and-pepper strands of hair and the clear blue eyes. ‘Seriously?’

‘The police stopped the kids using their phones. They kept them shut in the school all day. It sounded like a frenzy – some of the parents have been complaining to the head.’

The two women stood at the french windows, gazing out reflectively at the kids and the vans. Sally had painted each of the kids several times. She’d loved doing it – it was like capturing their emerging personalities, tethering a tiny piece of their fleeting souls to something, even if it was just oil paint and canvas. Because, she thought now, if there was one thing she knew for sure, things were changing for them fast. Faster than anyone could have predicted.

‘Nial says the girls are scared.’ Isabelle gave a sad smile. Outside, Nial was bent over, using a Magic Marker to sketch on his van the patterns he was going to paint. ‘He half thinks he’s going to be the white knight – just the way you painted him in those cards. Protect them all. Like that’s going to happen with Pete around.’

It sounded about right, Sally thought. Sweet little Nial, secretly her favourite of the boys. Too small, too timid, he was totally overshadowed by Peter. He was good-looking, but in the way that wouldn’t show itself properly until he was in his thirties. When handsome boys like Peter would be getting heavy and losing their hair, the boys like Nial would be growing into their looks. Just now he was still too small and feminine for the girls to notice him. Her favourite tarot card depicted him as the Prince of Swords, on the one hand angry and sometimes vengeful, on the other reserved and hugely intelligent. The sort who could lead rebellions with his insightful ideas. She’d chosen to clothe him in a robe of velvet and brocade, blue, to bring out his eyes.

‘Do you think they’re right?’ she said. ‘To be scared, I mean. Do you think it was one of the other schoolkids?’

‘God, I don’t know. But there is one thing I can tell you.’ She nodded at the teenagers. ‘There’s something they’re not saying.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I don’t know, but I do know my son. And there’s something he’s not saying. Something he really wants to say but can’t. He and Peter are really secretive at the moment.’ She used her toe to push the glass door open a little more. The sound of birds singing came through it, with the bleat of lambs and the distant noise of traffic on the motorway. She was silent for a while. Then she said, ‘Peter was in love with Lorne – did you know that?’

‘Yes. I mean, I suppose everyone was in a way.’

‘I think she wasn’t interested in him, but he loved her. So did Nial, I imagine. But …’ she said, lowering her voice a little ‘… I think the thing with Peter was what really finished Millie’s friendship with her.’

Sally shot her a look. ‘Millie’s friendship?’

‘You mean you don’t know?’

‘Know what?’

‘Look at them out there, Sally. Really look at them.’

Sally did. Millie had separated from the group and was under a tree about ten yards away, sitting on the swing, one toe on the grass, twisting round and round, making her shadow twirl on the ground. Now, as she watched, Millie raised sullen eyes to the others. Sally followed the direction of her gaze and saw Peter, crouched next to the van, examining something in the tyre. She looked back at Millie and saw the expression on her face. It hit her like a train. That was what Isabelle meant. Millie was in love. In love with Peter. Good-looking, brazen, self-assured Peter, who was completely wrapped up in himself, and completely oblivious to Millie.

‘Is that …’ She paused, feeling stupid again. ‘Is that why Millie stopped seeing Lorne? Because he was in love with her?’

‘Did you really not know?’

‘Uh,’ she said dumbly. She rubbed her arms. ‘Yes. I mean, I suppose.’

The two women were silent for a while, watching the kids. Something sad and lonely and familiar was thumping in Sally’s stomach. The sick knockings of being the loser – the way Millie must feel about Peter. It had been the same for her at boarding-school, where she’d learned early to exist at the bottom of the winning pile. While Zoë, of course, at the other school, knew what it was like at the top.