Follow Me Down (2 page)

‘
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 sugary 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.

It wasn’t like the canal I’d walked along when I was in London last summer, the one in Camden with the brick bridges bruised with graffiti. Like the rest of Crofton, it was edged with green. The other side was as well, but it was more overgrown, and, as I listened to the whisper of the willow trees, their branches leaning over the edge as though they were trying to drink the water, I realised that it was the first moment of quiet I’d had since I’d left New York. Even the light was different here, green and white all at once, like a peeled pear.

‘It’s so pretty,’ I said, a little breathless.

‘It leads to my house.’ She nodded up the canal. ‘When my sisters and I were little, we’d joke about swimming to school.’

‘You don’t board?’

She shook her head then shrugged off her blazer, laying it on the grass and sitting cross-legged on it. ‘We don’t have to; we only live a few minutes away, in the house on the hill.’ She said it like I should know which one. ‘Your first time?’

‘How did you guess?’ I said with a small sigh, copying her and taking off my blazer. I laid it on the grass in front of her. ‘I thought my last school was strict.’

She watched me sit down, then smiled. ‘You’ll get used to it.’ I gave her a look that told her I didn’t believe her and she laughed. ‘It’s not that bad.’

‘Didn’t you just get told off for wearing lipstick?’

‘
Red
lipstick.’

‘Still.’

‘I’m sure your school in New York was much cooler,’ she conceded with a shrug and I don’t know how she knew that I went to school in New York, but then how did Dominic know my name? So I let her go on. ‘But we know how to have fun.’

‘Oh yeah? Watch all the
Harry Potter
films at Saturday Film Club kind of fun?’

‘Hey.’ She pointed at me. ‘Don’t hate on Harry.’

I held my hands up. ‘I would never.’

‘Yes. Well, as fun as that is,’ she went on with sly smile, ‘a school like Crofton is nothing without its rules, but rules are meant to be broken, right?’

I perked up at that. ‘So they say.’

She glanced over her shoulder, then leaned in. She was loving it, I could tell – the drama of it, teasing me a little – and her eyes were bright. ‘The first Alphabet Party is on Saturday.’

‘What’s that?’

‘It’s a stupid name, but they’ve been having them here since the forties. Not everyone is invited,’ she told me, and I could tell she loved that, too, ‘but the first Saturday of the year, Abbott hosts a party in Savernake Forest, then the month after that Bedwyn does it, then Burnham and every house takes it in turns until the end of the year.’

‘Yeah, but next Saturday isn’t an exeat weekend.’

‘That doesn’t matter.’

‘Yeah, because you don’t board. I’m not allowed out.’

‘What was it I said about rules?’ She heaved her bag into her lap with a smug smile. She rooted through it for a moment or two, then took out a key and held it out to me.

I stared at it, my lips parted. ‘What’s that?’

‘It’s a master key. It will open pretty much any door in Crofton.’

‘How did you get it?’

‘Don’t worry about that.’ She rolled her eyes, then handed it to me. ‘There’s a window in the broom cupboard on the first floor of Burnham that opens on to a flat roof. If you walk across it then climb down the trellis, you can get out without anyone seeing you.’ I must have looked horrified, because she shrugged. ‘It sounds so Katniss Everdeen, I know, but if you don’t want to spend your Saturday nights watching
Clueless
and going to bed early, Adamma, you’d better learn to climb down trellis with your shoes in your hands.’

I tried to picture it and couldn’t. Jumoke won’t even use the Subway because there are too many stairs. She’ll choke with laughter when I tell her.

‘Thanks.’

I guess I didn’t look grateful enough, because she tilted her head and looked at me. ‘Do you know how much that key is worth, Adamma? Molly Avery could pay her fees with the amount she charges girls for master keys.’

‘Thank you, Scarlett,’ I breathed, closing my fist around it.

‘You’re welcome,’ she said, taking off her jumper. I heard a crackle of static as she pulled it over her head, her dark hair rising then spilling over her shoulders and down her back. I could see her red bra beneath her cotton shirt and when I looked away, I wondered if that was something she did on purpose, if she always wore something red.

‘You don’t sound African,’ she said and I looked at her again.

‘What do Africans sound like?’

‘You sound American.’

‘Do I?’ I’d never thought about it.

‘I’m so jealous that you got to live in New York!’ She swooned. ‘I love New York. I go there all the time. I always stay at the Bowery Hotel,’ she said, hands everywhere. ‘I’m obsessed with the theatre. I was there last month; I went to see John Malkovich in
Waiting for Godot
. Were you born there?’ she asked before I had a chance to tell her that I’d seen it as well.

I shook my head. ‘No, Nigeria. My father’s a diplomat. We lived in Lagos until I was five, then he was posted to Madrid, then to New York when I was seven.’

‘You speak Spanish?’ She didn’t wait for me to answer. ‘I love Barcelona.’

‘Me too. I much prefer it to Paris.’

‘I know, but I have such a soft spot for Paris. That’s where my parents met. My older sister Edith was born there. I’m thinking of going to uni there.’

‘Is that why you’re doing the Baccalaureate not A-levels?’

‘That and I’m applying to a few American universities. It makes life easier.’

She opened her bag and took out a series of Tupperware tubs, piling them on to the grass between us. She peeled off each lid, revealing bright green salads and shiny cherry tomatoes. When she pulled out a roll and split it in half with her fingers, I watched the flour puff up in the air like dust and thought of the girls at my school in New York who were absurdly proud of the fact that they hadn’t eaten bread since they were twelve.

‘So which American colleges are you applying to?’

‘Juilliard, Duke, Carnegie Mellon, DePaul and Yale.’

‘Ah. An actor.’

Her eyes lit up. ‘Wannabe Judi Dench.’

I didn’t expect that. Most girls our age would have said Angelina Jolie.

‘The funny thing is,’ she said, unwrapping a slab of cheese, ‘my parents aren’t like the other parents here. They’re total hippies so they just want me to be happy. They aren’t putting pressure on me to even
go
to university if I don’t want to. I’m too scared to tell them that I want to go to Yale. They’ll be so disappointed.’

I giggled, then pretended to nod solemnly. ‘My father just wants me to be happy, too. Happy at Cambridge.’

‘Is that where he went?’

I nodded.

She rolled her eyes and handed me a piece of cheese, then opened a jar. ‘Butternut squash chutney.’ She dipped her cheese into it and held the jar out to me. When I copied her, she asked what I thought. ‘Dad’s trying a new recipe,’ she explained and I finally made the connection: Scarlett Chiltern of Chiltern Organics.

‘So good,’ I told her, holding up the piece of cheese. ‘My mother would love it. She’s obsessed with your Scarlett Tomato Chutney. She has a nervous breakdown if she goes to the Fairway Market and they don’t have it.’

‘Scarlett Tomato!’ She pointed at herself. ‘That’s my recipe! I invented that. I say
invented
, I accidentally put apple in the wrong saucepan, but still. It would never have happened if it wasn’t for me.’ She giggled and handed me a celery stick. ‘It’s so funny that you can buy it in New York. I remember the first batch Dad made. He did it in this massive saucepan. I was so little I had to stand on a chair to stir it.’

I smiled. My father can’t even make coffee. Neither can my mother; she writes the most beautiful poetry which makes you feel like you can touch the sky, but is confounded by the microwave. But imagining Scarlett on that chair, adding chopped apples to the wrong pan, made me think of our house in Lagos and our cook, Comfort. When I was little, I loved watching her in the kitchen as she hummed to herself while she plucked the bones from stockfish or pounded cocoyams in the mortar. It was so hot in there, though – there was always a huddle of pots boiling gleefully on the stove, steam puffing out of them like smoke – that I couldn’t stand to be in there for more than a few minutes.

‘Now I’m jealous,’ I admitted, biting into the celery and thinking about the dining hall. I was yet to eat there, but didn’t have high expectations. I doubt I’d be having moi moi any time soon. ‘Do you just get to eat delicious things all day?’

‘Pretty much. Dad’s trying potato and rosemary bread today. I’ll tell him to make extra so we can have it for lunch tomorrow.’

I smiled. ‘The French make the best bread.’