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  ‘Going my way?’ a guy asked, suddenly at my side.

  He said it so smoothly – as though we were in an old black-and-white movie and he was offering me a cigarette – that I stared at him for a moment or two before I remembered that the sixth form was mixed.

  Perhaps my father wasn’t trying to torture me after all.

  ‘I’m Dominic Sim.’ He held out his hand. I looked at it, but that just made his smile more wicked as his hand dropped back down to his side. ‘I can escort you.’

  ‘You can? How do you know where I’m going?’

  ‘Heaven, I assume?’

  I stared at him, horrified. I thought English boys were charming. I quietly cursed my father for making me watch Downton Abbey and raising my expectations.

  I turned to walk away, but he changed tack. ‘OK. If the face isn’t working,’ he said, suddenly in front of me, ‘I’m a billionaire.’

  That didn’t work, either. ‘Your father’s a billionaire,’ I replied, looking back down at my map. ‘The only thing you’ve earned is Air Miles.’

  He laughed at that, loud and bright. ‘I like you already, Miss Okomma.’

  I shot a look at him again. ‘How did you know my name?’

  ‘I know things.’ He gestured at the door of the classroom we were standing outside of. ‘Like you’re doing the Baccalaureate, right?’ I arched an eyebrow at him and his smile widened. ‘Me too. So this is where you want to be: English lit with Mr Lucas.’ He put a hand to his chest. ‘I promise never to lead you astray, Miss Okomma.’

  He smiled and, as obnoxious as he was, I had to tell myself not to smile back. I kind of hate myself, but what can I say? What he lacked in humility he made up for in wit and if I have one weakness, it’s funny guys.

  ‘Come and sit next to me,’ he said, turning and walking into the classroom. ‘I’m new, too. We new kids need to stick together.’

  ‘I’m OK, thanks,’ I told him as I followed him in, sensing that I should probably keep as much distance between us as possible.

  I headed for the empty desk in the middle of the classroom, but the girl sitting at the one behind it shook her head so emphatically that I stepped back. That left just one, in the front row, but before I could get to it, I heard Dominic say, ‘Get up, then, you unchivalrous bastard. Can’t you see the lady needs a desk?’

  Realising what he was doing, I turned to tell him off, but was stunned to find the boy he’d barked at gathering up his books. By the time I’d recovered, he’d shuffled towards the desk in the front row, leaving just one free desk, the one next to Dominic’s.

  ‘Do people always do what you tell them?’ I asked, sighing as I realised that by sitting next to him, I was answering my own question.

  At least he had the decency not to comment on it; he just smiled and gave me a whatcha gonna do? shrug as I took my notebook out of my bag. I put it down with a petulant huff, determined not to give him any further encouragement, but after I had opened it and written the date neatly in the top right-hand corner of the first page, my gaze strayed back towards him. He was still looking at me and I looked away, my toe tapping. I glanced at the doorway as a girl with dark hair walked in. She came in with a slight swagger and for a second, I thought she was walking towards me, but she stopped at his desk.

  ‘Dominic Sim,’ she said, and I could tell that she was fighting a smile.

  He did smile. ‘Surprise!’

  ‘I thought you were on a slow boat to Korea after the Eton thing?’

  The Eton thing, I noted, pretending to write something in my notebook so that they wouldn’t think I was eavesdropping. I was the only one who took the trouble to be subtle, though; everyone else just turned to look at them as she stood in front of his desk, hands on her hips. Not that she seemed fazed that she had an audience, she had her chin up and her shoulders back. I got the feeling that she did this a lot.

  ‘You, more than anyone, should know not to listen to everything you hear, Scarlett,’ he said, his eyes suddenly black. ‘Good summer? How was rehab?’

  ‘I’m off the crack, at last. Three weeks clean.’ She crossed her fingers and held them up. ‘How was Eton? Do you still know what a vagina looks like?’

  ‘Feel free to remind me.’

  ‘Like you’d know what to do with it.’

  He laughed and she claimed the victory with a curtsey, then went and sat at the desk in the middle. I guess that’s why that girl had shaken her head when I’d gone to sit there: it was her desk, the one in the middle where everyone could see her. Not that she needed to sit there; wherever she sat, you would see her; she seemed to reflect off the panelled walls like a new penny.

  After her performance with Dominic, I wasn’t surprised that she was the first to raise her hand when class started. She didn’t do it with any eagerness, though – she looked rather bored, actually – but as soon as she did, four other hands shot up, and I watched Mr Lucas let go of a breath and smile, obviously grateful that his first lesson of the year wasn’t dying on its ass.

  ‘Yes, Miss Chiltern?’ He pointed the copy of Anna Karenina he was holding at her.

  He’d been clutching it a little too tightly, I’d noticed, his knuckles white. And when he asked us what our favourite opening line of a book was, he sounded out of breath. I didn’t envy him. He was clearly flustered and young – in his early twenties, I guessed – much younger than the rest of the faculty, which must make some of the parents uncomfortable. I don’t think my father would be impressed; he seemed to think that every teacher at Crofton was the best in England. I think he’d struggle to believe that a twenty-something-year-old man, with what looked like MAX BIRTHDAY scribbled on the heel of his palm in biro, was the best English lit teacher they could find. His favourite line was from Anna Karenina. Somewhat predictable, or perhaps convenient, given that we were about to study it, so I expected her to say something similar. But she said, ‘All this happened, more or less.’

  ‘Slaughterhouse-Five,’ he said, but there was no shake in his voice this time. If anything, he sounded pleased with himself, as though he was on a game show, announcing the million-dollar answer. ‘That’s a wonderful book, Miss Chiltern.’

  I must have rolled my eyes, because he smiled at me. ‘Not a fan, I take it?’

  He looked at me, his chin raised and his lips parted, and I stared at him dumbly for a moment until I realised that he was waiting for me to tell him my name as well. I sat a little straighter. ‘Adamma, Sir. Adamma Okomma.’

  He nodded. ‘I realise Vonnegut isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, so what’s your favourite opening line, Miss Okomma?’ He sat on the edge of his desk, arms folded.

  My gaze flitted around the classroom as everyone turned to look at me and it made my cheeks burn. I took a breath. ‘“It was inevitable:”’ I had to stop and take another breath as a sudden tremor in my voice made the words wobble, ‘“the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.”’

  Mr Lucas was quiet for a moment or two, then nodded. ‘Love in the Time of Cholera.’ I watched his Adam’s apple rise then fall. ‘Excellent choice, Miss Okomma. Gabriel Garcia Marquez is—’ He stopped, flustered again.

  ‘Magnificent?’ I suggested, and he blinked at me.

  When I glanced at Scarlett, she wasn’t smiling any more.

  THE DAY AFTER

  MAY

  As soon as Molly knew, we all did. I’d only just caught my breath, my heart still throbbing as I remembered my dream – Scarlett in those cheap red sunglasses, the sun in her hair – when a strip of light appeared under my door. A moment later I heard it, the slap slap slap of Molly’s bare feet on the floorboards as she ran from room to room, gleefully delivering the news as though she was announcing the birth of a baby.

  Orla got to me first. I smelled her before I saw her, smelled her sug
ary perfume that even smells pink, somehow, and attaches itself to everything she touches. I’d never noticed it, not until I was idly trying perfumes at JFK last year. I reached for one and when I smelled it – smelled her – I smiled. I hadn’t realised how much I liked her until then. I hadn’t realised how much I liked Crofton, either. I guess that was the first time I missed it, when, despite its ugly uniform and my strange, hard bed, it started to feel a little like home.

  Orla turned on the light. I sat up and raised a hand as it drenched me, my eyes stinging for a second or two before they came back into focus as she sat on my bed.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked, my voice still sticky with sleep, but then I saw the Paris guidebook on my nightstand and I was suddenly awake. I wanted to reach over and snatch it off, hide it under my duvet, but I didn’t want to draw attention to it.

  ‘Scarlett’s gone,’ she said, out of breath.

  My heart began to beat very, very slowly. ‘Gone?’

  ‘She’s run away again.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Molly heard it from Tara who heard it from Olivia.’

  ‘Olivia Fisher or Scarlett’s sister Olivia?’

  ‘Her sister.’

  ‘So it’s true?’ She nodded and my heart sped up again, back to normal speed then faster, faster. ‘Where’s she gone?’

  Before she could answer, Molly was in my doorway. ‘Ding dong the bitch is gone,’ she sang with a nasty smile, before she skipped off again.

  ‘She needs to pace herself.’ I sighed. ‘She’ll be dead of glee by lunch.’

  Orla frowned. ‘She says you crashed Scarlett and Olivia’s party on Saturday.’

  ‘Yeah.’ I tugged off my headscarf and smoothed my hair down with my hand.

  ‘Did Scarlett go mad?’

  ‘Not at all. She was fine. More than fine, it was the first party since –’ I thought about it, then shrugged – ‘I don’t know when, when she didn’t start anything.’

  ‘Really? But it was her birthday.’

  ‘I know. She was . . .’

  ‘Nice?’ Orla offered with a careful smile when I hesitated.

  I raised an eyebrow. ‘Not quite. But she wasn’t vicious, either.’

  ‘Is that why you went? Because things are getting better?’ she asked, but it was just that – a question – there was no undertone. And that’s what I love about Orla, there was no ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ or ‘But you’re my best friend’ like I used to get from Scarlett.

  ‘I don’t know.’ I laid my headscarf in my lap, unknotting it then folding it into a neat square. ‘I thought—’ Before I could finish, two girls hurried past my open door whispering. I shook my head and sighed. ‘But nothing’s changed, has it? She’s still Scarlett.’

  Orla looked confused. ‘Did you think she had changed?’

  I shrugged and thought of Scarlett on Saturday night. She looked so happy, dancing under the canopy of Chinese lanterns, arms in the air, the glitter from her blue eye shadow freckling across her cheeks and, for a moment, it was like old times. It wasn’t perfect – it will never be perfect again – but despite the wall of people between us, it kind of felt like it was just her and me again. But then I thought about Dominic, standing too close (always too close), the smell of blackcurrant on his breath – Do you think she’ll ever forgive you?

  I didn’t tell Orla that, though. I wanted to, but before I gave into the temptation, I lied and told her that I’d forgotten to file something for the school newspaper and when she left, I went to my closet, opened the doors and reached for my tuck box. The contents rattled as I took it out and put it on my bed then reached for my bag, fingers fluttering as I rooted through it for my keys. My hands were shaking so much that it took two attempts to unlock it, but when I did, I turned it upside down. Everything spilled out on to the bed: half a dozen jewellery boxes, my passport, credit cards, a memory stick, the cash my parents had given me in case of an emergency, a handful of carefully folded notes and, finally, my other cellphone. I switched it on, panic pinching at me as I paced back and forth over the rug in the middle of my room.

  As soon as the menu loaded, I called him. I didn’t even give him a chance to say hello before I breathed, ‘Did you hear about Scarlett?’

  245 DAYS BEFORE

  SEPTEMBER

  Crofton is confounding. I guess that’s what the breast pocket of my blazer is for, a compass and a piece of Kendal Mint Cake, because I will never find my way around here. Everything looks the same. Even the oil paintings are beginning to look the same; I’m sure they’re all of the same white guy in different positions.

  I’m not being melodramatic, but I will die here. They are going to find my desiccating body at the end of one the corridors, gnarled fingers still curled around my map. It’s my own fault; Tara was getting on my nerves, so I told her I’d be fine and, in an effort to avoid any further advances from Dominic, I’d refused his offer to show me around. I shouldn’t have because I’m hopeless with maps so I got lost three times on the way to lunch. I don’t even know how that’s possible (that has to be some sort of record, right?) but when I finally saw the doors to the courtyard, I had to stop myself running out into the midday sun and throwing my arms out like Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption.

  I’d only taken a few steps before someone marched over to me and snatched the map out of my hands. I looked up to see Scarlett and stepped back, as I remembered the time Darcy Young put a cigarette out on a girl’s Chanel purse for laughing at her when she said the wrong answer in Calculus. I hoped my disdain of Vonnegut wouldn’t provoke a similar reaction from Scarlett.

  ‘Where are you going?’ She sounded irritated, as though I had interrupted her.

  ‘I . . .’ I stopped as I watched her scrunch up the map and hand it back to me. I looked at it with a frown. ‘I was going back to my boarding house for lunch.’

  ‘No one eats lunch in the dining hall.’ She sighed heavily. ‘Come.’

  ‘Don’t I need to sign in?’

  She ignored me and continued walking across the courtyard. I watched her go, hips swaying, and when she realised that I hadn’t followed, she turned to smile at me over her shoulder. ‘Come on, Alice. Don’t you want to follow the white rabbit?’

  I trotted after her and when I caught up, I introduced myself.

  ‘I know,’ she said, without looking at me. ‘I’m Scarlett Chiltern.’

  ‘I know.’

  She turned to look at me, and when I held her gaze, she smiled. ‘I like your shoes.’

  I don’t know whether it was her red lipstick or the fact that she still hadn’t taken it off even though Madame Girard had scolded her for it during French, but I immediately felt drawn to her. She reminded me of the girls I went to school with in New York and the way she walked through the busy courtyard without hesitating – just kept going like a bowling ball, the crowd parting so that she could pass – reminded me of my best friend Jumoke. I was trying so hard to be OK with all this – with moving to the UK, starting at Crofton with its LEGO green lawns and stupid house badges – but I missed Jumoke so much then. We’ve been best friends for nine years and it was strange not having her there to complain with me in pidgin about having Latin at 8.30 a.m. on a Saturday morning or to question when the sheets were last washed.

  I think that’s why I followed Scarlett, because there was something so familiar – almost comforting – about her swagger, about the way she lifted her chin and pushed her shoulders back, like Jumoke always does. Jumoke would hate her, though, she would say she was stuck up, which is kind of funny, because that’s what everyone says about Jumoke. Mind you, people say the same thing about me. ‘You’re so aloof, Adamma,’ they say with a smile as though they’re telling me something I’d want to know about myself. If not hugging girls I don’t know outside of class
and telling them that I love them makes me aloof then, yeah, I guess I am.

  I hesitated when we reached the Green. During my tour with Tara this morning we’d walked on the path. ‘Are we allowed to walk on the grass?’

  ‘Only sixth formers can.’

  When Scarlett stepped on to it, I followed, walking with her as she headed towards the wall of oak trees at the end of the Green. As we passed through them, I realised that we were near the car park and wondered if she was going to drive me somewhere, but she led me to the left, towards another lawn, then turned to look at me with a smirk.

  ‘If you’re going to survive at Crofton, you need to know where to hide, Adamma.’

  I started to smile back, but then felt each of my nerves tighten as it occurred to me that it might be a boarding school initiation, that she was taking me somewhere she knew I’d never find my way back from. I looked around, hoping to recognise something from my tour. As we got closer, I realised with some relief that she was leading me to the hockey pitch. I’d gone a different way with Tara, but it was on my map, so I could find my way back.

  Then I began to wonder if it was another sort of initiation and slowed, half expecting to find a gang of girls waiting to steal my uniform or shave my head. But the pitch was empty except for a sprinkler sputtering water across it. We walked along the edge and headed up another small grass-covered hill towards a crooked tree. When we reached the top we stopped under it and I realised that we were by the canal. Tara and I had passed it that morning, but, as there are no buildings near it, she’d only waved her hand at it, and we hadn’t got close enough to see it. From there, we were only a few feet away and suddenly, everything slowed.