Follow Me Down (25 page)

I WIN

I almost dropped it, the corners of the pages shivering in a sudden breeze as I made myself hold on to it a little tighter, my fingers leaving creases in the paper.

I WIN
.

I read the words over and over.
I WIN. I WIN. I WIN
. And there it was again – doubt – but it wasn’t slow,
uneasy
, like it was when DS Hanlon showed me the top-up card the police had found in Scarlett’s room. It wasn’t even like it was yesterday in the graveyard – that creepcreepcreep of dread that I’d tried to ignore and couldn’t – it was clear as a bell, ringing long and loud, in my ears, in my bones.

Then I was walking around the fountain and down the path, the note fluttering furiously as I began to walk faster and faster. We’re not supposed to go into each other’s houses, but we all do, of course. It’s for insurance reasons, I think, but it’s not something the housemasters and -mistresses enforce with any real vigour, so I’ve been in her house so many times while she dropped off a text book that was too heavy to lug around or when she’d forgotten an essay, that I knew exactly where the lockers were and I knew which one was hers.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from her, it’s that if I want people to think I belong somewhere, I’ve got to believe that I belong there first. So I marched towards Rutland House as though I owned it. I only hesitated when I got to her locker. I knew the police had searched it, so I wasn’t sure it would still be there and I half expected to find a break in the neat row of lockers – like a bullet hole – but it looked the same, an S painted in the top right-hand corner in red nail polish that she’d half-heartedly tried to scrub off when Mr Crane told her off.

I told myself to leave it, that if there was anything in there, the police would have found it, but my hand was already on the lock. I realised that I didn’t know the combination and I was tempted to call Olivia, but then I remembered what she’d said about Scarlett –
She has a brain like a sieve
– and went with the first thing I could think of, hoping that it would be the first thing she would think of, as well: 2105, her birthday.

When I heard the lock
click
, my hands shook as I felt another stab of guilt. I think sometimes that I never knew her – not really – but I did, didn’t I? Not all of her, but I knew enough. I thought of him then, of all the lies I’ve told – to her, to my parents, to Orla – and I realised that I never let her know all of me, either.

As soon as I opened the locker, my hands flew out to catch the pile of books and paper that tumbled out. I managed to get it back in, checking over my shoulder before I began picking through it, the heady smell of decaying banana warning me to watch where I was sticking my fingers. I didn’t know what I was looking for, I just needed something else. Perhaps it was denial or maybe I was being careful for once, but if I hadn’t already messed things up beyond repair with what I’d said to him in the graveyard yesterday, then I needed to be sure before I threw something else at him. But whatever it was, I kept thinking about what Bones had said the morning we searched Savernake Forest, about everything counting, even the little things, and I began stuffing anything that looked vaguely useful – a couple of letters on Crofton-headed paper, another top-up card, a receipt – into my bag.

Then I saw her notebook and smiled at the battered cover, the sticker she bought in the bookshop in Marlborough in the middle.
She is too fond of books and it has addled her brain
. He said that to me when he saw it,
I’m too fond of you and it has addled my brain
.

I leafed through it to find nothing but her English lit notes and I was about to abandon it, when I heard someone coming and stuffed it into my bag before running back to my room. There was only fifteen minutes of lunch left so I took it all out of my bag and put it on my desk. I reached for the notebook first, examining each page, looking for something that didn’t look right – a note scribbled into a corner, something crossed out – but there was nothing, and when I got to the last page, I felt something in me droop, like a young branch under the weight of a plump pigeon.

I looked up and when I saw the time, I jumped, but as I went to close the notebook, my fingers brushed against the last clean page and I shivered as I felt tiny indentations in the paper. It could have been nothing – just the indentations from her notes on
District and Circle
on the previous page, but when I ran my fingers across them, the paper was smooth except for a few words written in the middle of the page. I checked the previous one, which was almost full. Whatever she’d written, she must have torn the page out, so I grabbed a pencil. I sketched it across the blank page – a trick I’d read in a Nancy Drew book, I think – until what she’d written began to appear. I dropped the pencil and covered my mouth with my hand:

You love her now, but you’re going to love me for ever.

62 DAYS BEFORE

MARCH

I can’t sleep. I’ve been awake for the last two hours looking at photos on my laptop, trying to work out how this happened. I just went to my old school’s website. I thought they would have taken me off by now, but there I am, my photograph next to words I barely recognise.
Valedictorian. Varsity Track. Features Editor
. I look at that girl and I don’t know who she is any more, with her smooth hair and neat polished nails. There’s a photo of Jumoke and me – drinking coffee on a bench outside the library – and I don’t recognise the purse at my feet. Maybe it isn’t mine, maybe it’s hers – we were always swapping – but I’m looking at the tan Mulberry messenger bag that my father bought me when I started at Crofton, the only bag I have now, and wondering what that girl – the one with the neat nails and the brightly coloured purse – would think of me. I’m sure she wouldn’t recognise me, either.

I thought things would be back to normal now. OK, not
normal
, but I thought I would have moved on, but she keeps tugging me back. I know I deserve it – I chose a guy over her – but what’s the statute of limitations on screwing your best friend over? It’s been three months. I’m trying. It’s not like I’m rubbing her face in it. I’m too scared to look at him now. So every time she says something nasty, I want to tell her that. ‘I don’t even have him.’

That’s what I told him last weekend. It was an exeat weekend and my parents were in Lagos, so I told them I’d stay at Crofton because I was working on something for the
Disraeli
and he and I spent the weekend in the Cotswolds. It was amazing until the Sunday, when he caught me trying to take a photo of him on my phone and got mad. The only photograph I have of that weekend is one of our ice creams and it isn’t enough. ‘I don’t know if this is worth it,’ I told him on the drive back to Crofton, and I believed it until he parked the car in a lay-by and pulled me into his lap.

I’m doing what he says and trying to ignore it, trying to be the bigger person and not rise to the remarks she makes in class, the looks she tosses at me when we pass in the corridor. I didn’t even say anything when she wrote an A on my locker in red lipstick, but today she went too far. My parents were here for the Lower Sixth Universities’ Meeting, my mother in a floor-length white and red Duro Olowu cotton dress that made Mr Crane trip and spill his coffee, and my father, impartial as always, in a Cambridge sweatshirt.

My mother saw her before I did, giving her a huge hug before I’d looked up from the Oxford prospectus that my father was trying to prise from my hands.

‘Scarlett,’ he said, stopping to kiss her on both cheeks.

I almost dropped the prospectus. My parents know that we aren’t as close as we used to be, but they don’t know why, other than my huffy comments about us ‘not having as much in common as I thought’. I’m sure they think it’s a fight that we’ll get over in a few weeks. They probably wouldn’t be so keen to stop and hug her if they knew that she was throwing my secrets around Crofton like handfuls of confetti. Like last week, in English lit when we were talking about
The Price of Salt
, and she told everyone that I’d kissed Jumoke. It was just a peck, when we were nine, but she made it sound like that scene from
Cruel Intentions
.

I eyed her warily, but she just smiled sweetly. ‘Mr and Mrs Okomma,’ she said, batting her eyelashes, ‘have you met Adamma’s boyfriend Dominic?’

I hadn’t seen him, standing behind her with his back to us, and I don’t think he saw us either, not until Scarlett grabbed his elbow. He had a bottle of water in his hand and the water curled out of it in a perfect arc as she spun him round to face us, splashing over our shoes – Mum, me, then Dad. Splash. Splash. Splash.

‘Shit,’ he muttered, looking down at our feet. ‘Shit,’ he said again, when he looked up to find me, flanked by my parents. ‘I’m so sorry.’ He gulped and held his hand out to my father. ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you, Sir. I’m Dominic Sim.’

Poor Dominic. He obviously didn’t hear the boyfriend thing because he looked completely bewildered, and I wanted to slap her. I know why she did it, because she knew how much the parents like to gossip about Dominic. They’d all heard the rumours – about the teacher at Eton, about his fight with Sam, about his car that he tore through Ostley in, music roaring. There isn’t a mother at Crofton who hasn’t warned her daughter off him, so Scarlett knew full well my mother would freak.

To anyone else’s eye, my father didn’t flinch, but I knew him well enough to notice the second of hesitation before he took Dominic’s hand and said, ‘Pleasure to meet you, too, Dominic,’ with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. And I noticed my mother’s gentle nod before she said, ‘I’ve heard so much about you, Dominic.’

‘Are you having a good day?’ he asked, equally flustered.

‘Oh yes,’ my mother said, taking me by the elbow. ‘Unfortunately, we can’t stay and chat. We have a meeting with Adamma’s housemistress.’

She didn’t let go of my elbow until we were out of the concert hall and heading down the path towards the Green. Then I saw the corners of her mouth drop as she turned to look at me. ‘Dominic Sim?’ she hissed. ‘Of all the boys, Adamma,
Dominic Sim
?’

My father looked confused. ‘You have a boyfriend, Ada? Since when?’

‘No, Papa. I—’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Listen, Papa.’

‘You know who that boy is, Uche?’ my mother interrupted, nodding back towards the concert hall. ‘The one who got that teacher at Eton pregnant.’

‘Pregnant?’ He stopped and stared at me, then at my mother.

‘Yes. One of the mothers told me.’

‘It’s just a stupid rumour,’ I said, a little desperately, but my father was livid.

‘A teacher!’

‘Listen, Papa—’

‘And he gets into fights,’ my mother added.

‘Fight.’ I scowled at her, then held a finger up at him. ‘One fight, Papa.’

‘No.’

That’s all he said as he started marching down the path toward Burnham again –
No
– then he shook his head and he looked so angry I thought that he was going to keel over and have a heart attack.

‘Calm down, Papa. I’m not even—’

‘No, Adamma.’

‘But, Papa—’

‘
But, Papa
nothing.’ He stopped and held up a finger. ‘You are not to see that boy. Do you understand?’

I didn’t realise we were at Burnham until Mrs Delaney came out to greet us. ‘Mr and Mrs Okomma,’ she shook their hands with a quick smile, then gestured at us to follow her inside, ‘thanks so much for coming to see me.’

My parents were suddenly all smiles again and I will never not be amazed by that. It’s not a gift I have inherited, so I trailed after them, my cheeks stinging. I thought the meeting was an excuse to get away from Dominic. It wasn’t until we were in Mrs Delaney’s office with the door shut that I realised it might be something more sinister than that.

‘I hope you found the Universities Meeting useful,’ she said, once we’d sat down. My parents nodded carefully. They’re usually great with small talk, they have to attend so many functions after all, but as soon as my school is involved, they have no time for it. Mercifully, Mrs Delaney noticed that and moved on. ‘I just wanted to have a chat with you about the letter I sent home with Adamma last weekend.’

I gulped down a gasp and pressed my lips together. The letter. The letter that was still at the bottom of my bag because I hadn’t been home. Oh God. I didn’t think it was important. I thought it was a flyer for the Easter concert, or something.

I saw it again; my father’s second of hesitation then a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. ‘The letter?’ he asked, crossing his legs.

Mrs Delaney must have had this conversation with parents before because she didn’t flinch. ‘I sent a letter home with Adamma last weekend.’

My mother licked her lips, then breathed in through her nose and forced it out again. ‘Adamma didn’t come home last weekend. She was here at Crofton.’

Don’t say it. Don’t say it
, a voice in my head roared. But of course she did.

‘No. She wasn’t.’

I waited, hoping that the sun would explode and kill us all, but it didn’t, so all I could say was: ‘I can explain, Papa.’

‘We can discuss that later, Adamma,’ he said smoothly, stopping to pick a hair from his pants, then gesturing at Mrs Delaney to go on. ‘As we haven’t read the letter, would you mind explaining what it says?’

‘Adamma has been issued with a written warning.’

Sun. Explode
, I prayed.
Now
.

My parents exchanged a look, then my mother muttered something inaudible in Igbo and sat back on the couch. ‘A written warning? For what, Mrs Delaney?’

‘I’ve had to give Adamma verbal warnings in the past for going out for a run in the morning without informing me.’ My stomach lurched. They were verbal warnings? I thought she was telling me off. ‘I realise that as deviant behaviour goes, it could be much worse,’ she conceded. ‘But we’re very strict, as I’m sure you can appreciate. I need to know where my girls are at all times.’

‘Of course.’ My mother nodded.

‘And she’s missed prep, too.’

‘Prep?’ my father asked with a frown.

‘After supper, between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m., Adamma should be in her room doing homework. But last week, when I checked, she wasn’t, and not for the first time.’ I closed my eyes. When she didn’t mention it, I thought I’d got away with it. ‘She’s missed swimming practice too.’

My mother sat a little straighter. ‘How many times?’

‘Twice.’

It was only once! I almost interrupted but then I remembered that it was twice and thought of us, giggling in the back seat of his car –
One more minute
, he’d breathed, eyes half-closed when I told him that I had to go, then he’d kissed me again.

‘And she missed Debating Society last year.’

I had an excuse for that one – it was when I went into the village to tell the police what happened to Orla – but I couldn’t tell them that, so I slouched in defeat.

My parents were very quiet for a moment, then they exchanged another look and my mother asked, ‘What happens now, Mrs Delaney?’

‘As I said, Adamma has been issued with a written warning. If she receives another, she’ll be expelled.’

‘Expelled?’ My father spat the word out of his mouth as though it tasted foul.

Mrs Delaney nodded. ‘In the meantime, now that I know you’re aware of what’s going on,’ she said with a smile that told me she knew full well that I hadn’t taken the letter home, ‘Adamma will be gated for a month.’

My mother flinched. ‘What does that mean?’

‘She won’t be allowed to leave school grounds and will have to sign in with me every hour.’

‘Every hour?’ my father said, and he seemed satisfied with that, until he sighed. ‘I can’t tell you how embarrassed we are, Mrs Delaney.’ He and my mother exchanged a glance. ‘But we can assure you that this won’t happen again.’

‘Don’t be.’ She shook her head. ‘Adamma isn’t a bad child. If you haven’t been to a school like Crofton before, it takes some getting used to.’

My mother smiled. ‘Thank you for being so understanding, Mrs Delaney.’

‘Absolutely.’ She stood up. ‘I’ll give you a moment alone with Adamma.’

As soon as she shut the door behind her, I burst into tears. My father didn’t say a word, just got off the couch and walked over to the window. He stood looking outside, his hands behind his back, and when I stopped crying, he walked back over and sat in Mrs Delaney’s chair opposite me. ‘All of this for a boy, Adamma?’

I couldn’t look at him. ‘I love him, Papa.’

He was quiet for a moment, then said. ‘You’re not to see him again.’

I started crying again. ‘But, Papa.’

‘We had an agreement, Adamma, you can date, but no serious relationships. I was relieved when your mother told me that you hadn’t kept in touch with Nathan, but now you’re seeing this one?’

‘Please, Papa.’

‘No, Adamma.’ He shook his head. ‘That’s it.
Enough
. You’re too young and relationships are distracting. You’re about to go to university and it’s a big decision. I don’t want you picking somewhere just so you can be with a boy.’

‘No. You want me to pick somewhere because
you
went there,’ I said before I could stop myself, and I wanted to paw at the air between us and take back the words.

‘Adamma!’ my mother gasped. ‘This is how you speak to your father?’ She glared at me until I looked at my hands. ‘You see? This boy is no good for you. Look at the way he has you behaving. Disrespecting your father. Skipping class. This isn’t you.’

I didn’t dare lift my head. ‘I’m sorry.’

My father spoke then, his voice harder than I have ever heard it. ‘Your trip with Jumoke to Europe this Easter is cancelled,’ he said, counting my punishments off on his fingers. ‘Your seventeenth birthday party next month is cancelled. The car you were going to get for your birthday will be staying at the Mercedes garage. You will give me your credit cards and your passport and you will spend every exeat weekend at school until you have caught up and when you have,’ he stopped and waited until I lifted my chin to look at him, ‘we can discuss you getting everything back.’

What about him?
I almost said, but I stopped myself this time.

I think that’s why I can’t sleep, because I keep thinking about that girl, the one with the neat nails and the brightly coloured purse who never missed a class and dated a guy who would bring her mother flowers and chat to her father about Boko Haram when he came to pick her up. Then I walked over to my closet, opened my tuck box and took out our cellphone.

Him and his paranoia, but he was right.

‘You’d better be worth it,’ I told him with a smile when he answered.

And he laughed.