Gifted and Talented (30 page)

Isabel had already started to plan the Christmas holidays. She was eager to move things on and meeting each other’s parents was the next step. Would Jasper come and stay with her or would she go to him?

She longed to show him off. The thought of him in Lochalan made her thrill with pride. His exotic blond beauty would have an electric effect on the village. She could imagine the buzz of gossip in the teashop, in the supermarket – how well Isabel Murray had done for herself! What was less easy to imagine was how Mum would view it all.

Her mother now, finally, knew about the existence of Jasper. Isabel had taken a deep breath and dropped him into the conversation as casually as one might – if one took it – drop a sugar lump into tea. She had told Mum how handsome he was, how well dressed, but Mum had seemed unimpressed. ‘Fine feathers make fine birds,’ she had sniffed.

After that, Isabel had been careful to keep mentions of Jasper to a minimum. If Mum was jealous, the most likely explanation, it would be unwise to fan the flames. Once Mum had met Jasper herself and seen how wonderful he was, everything would be fine.

There was but one shadow on her happiness: the feeling that something, somewhere, was a tiny bit not quite right. Or might even be wrong.

Resist the thought as she might, she could not entirely shake off the impression that Jasper had been evasive these past few days. Her calls and texts had gone unreturned and twice when she had gone to his room he had not been there. She had hurtled happily up his staircase to find the door shut, not ajar as generally it was. She knocked on the brittle oak, the impact painful on her chilly knuckles. No answer. She knocked again and stood there for a few moments, her heart beating fast in a silence that smelled of furniture polish. He was not there, however. She could sense it. Beyond the door, the room was empty.

Both times she had gone back through the slippery streets to Branston. The ringing bells had seemed to taunt her, the ice beneath her feet trying to bring her down. The last time, she had watched as a couple of cyclists wobbled and then slid over, shouting curses as they hit the road surface.

Yes, somehow, for some reason, some of the earlier magic had gone.

Nothing had changed, yet everything had. Alastair, Olly felt, had saved him. In giving him a job, the editor had enabled him to take up once more the cudgels of life. He felt enormously relieved, and newly determined.

He felt he could see things more clearly. Even Isabel. Especially Isabel. It seemed to Olly that his thwarted passion and burning resentment now had the perfect outlet in the story Alastair wanted him to do. And Alastair, it turned out, had more than mere editorial glory in mind when dreaming the stunt up.

He too had an axe to grind. He too had suffered at the hands of the De Borchys. The paper he had previously worked on had been owned by the family and summarily shut down. Many of Alastair’s former colleagues were still attempting – with diminishing hope – to get some compensation. To expose the Bullinger, Alastair felt, was to hit back to some extent.

But there was even more than that in it for Olly. Try as he might, he could not extinguish the hope – there was always hope – of Isabel’s passion for Jasper being mere infatuation: a moment of madness that would burn itself out. Perhaps, after her boyfriend’s idea of fun had been splashed all over the
Post
, it finally would. And, as Isabel stood in the smoking ruins, he, Olly, would be there.

The
Post
office was all preparation for the great denouement. He would, Olly discovered, be expected to dress up.

‘Not as one of the actual club,’ he said to Alastair in horror. ‘Pink’s not my colour really.’

The editor laughed. ‘Hardly. Those panto get-ups cost a good five grand a shot. No, you’re going to dress up as a waiter. Oldest trick in the book. My friend Charlie runs a staff agency and he’s happy to help in return for a credit.’

Olly stared. ‘Well, how’s that going to work, then? “By our undercover reporter, Oliver Summers, undercover courtesy of Jeeves Staff Agency, supplier of high-class-events personnel to the carriage trade”?’

Alastair snorted. ‘Course not. We’ll just do an advertorial or something about them, next issue. Come on.’ He stood up behind his desk. ‘Dress rehearsal. Charlie’s sent a couple of penguin suits.’ He opened the cupboard behind his chair and pulled out a coat hanger with a long plastic bag attached.

‘I get a choice?’ Olly noted the plural. He took the suit and pulled off the plastic. An odour of dry cleaning fluid arose from the jacket within. It was too long in the sleeves but otherwise it fitted reasonably well.

‘Nah. Anna-Lou’s coming with you.’

Olly, pulling off his jeans to try on the trousers, noted the new name. He had not met an Anna-Lou so far. He had been to the office just twice since the interview and the only other staff member he had met was Annabel, Alastair’s wife, who doubled up as part-time secretary in the hours the couple’s two daughters were at school. There were other employees, designers and sub-editors, but they worked remotely, from home and online. Such was the nature of the modern, family-friendly newspaper, Alastair had explained.

Who’s Anna-Lou?
Olly was about to ask, when the door of the office opened and a woman came in. A very good-looking woman, Olly noted, scrabbling desperately to cover his boxer shorts. She stood a good six feet in heels, with high cheekbones and blond hair that swished about her waist.

‘Hi,’ said the blonde vision, striding towards Olly with a hand outstretched. ‘I’m Anna-Lou.’

‘The staff photographer,’ Alastair put in, sounding amused. ‘To take the incriminating snaps.’ Shaking hands while pulling up his trousers, Olly found, required more dexterity than he had at his command. He nodded at the tall blonde, red-faced and feeling utterly disadvantaged. And not only in one way; Alastair was explaining that Anna-Lou was actually a wildlife photographer but was taking a year’s sabbatical on a newspaper to extend her skills. She was, Olly realised, quite a woman.

‘So where is it, this ball?’ she asked Alastair, swinging her hair. She seemed very relaxed about it all, Olly thought enviously.

Alastair was frowning into his Blackberry. ‘That’s the only thing I can’t quite find out.’

Olly blinked. ‘You don’t know where the ball is?’

The editor looked up. ‘You needn’t take that tone,’ he objected. ‘Bullinger Balls are always secret.’

Olly nodded. Alastair was right, of course. While officially non-existent, the Bullinger Balls were the most notorious of all the notorious society’s events. At the balls that hadn’t happened during Olly’s years at St Alwine’s, someone hadn’t got so drunk they’d drowned and someone else under the influence hadn’t jumped out of a top-floor window; this alongside the usual, run-of-the-mill mayhem that hadn’t happened either – surprisingly little of which ever got reported. Until now, of course, Olly thought, examining his putative boss’s determined face.

‘I’ve got feelers out,’ Alastair said, ‘but nothing so far.’ He looked hard at Olly. ‘Perhaps you could stir up some of your old Wino’s contacts and find out.’

‘I don’t have any contacts at St Alwine’s,’ Olly said quickly, desperate to dodge this particularly onerous responsibility. ‘I didn’t form especially close friendships while I was there. Misogyny, racism and rampant snobbery not being my thing, and all that,’ he added with an expectant, inclusive smile.

But Alastair was leaning back in his chair, arms folded. ‘No contacts?’ His lip gave a contemptuous twitch upwards. ‘And you want to be a journalist? You’d better get some, then. Or else, make a better job of lying about not having any.’

Olly felt his knees start to tremble. His entire future seemed to hang in the balance. Then he felt a hand on his arm: Anna-Lou’s long, white one.

‘Don’t take any notice of him,’ she said. ‘His bark is worse than his bite. He wouldn’t have taken you on if he didn’t think you could do it. We’re going to do a great job, don’t worry. It’s going to be fun.’

‘Yes,’ Olly said, looking gratefully back at her and shyly at Alastair, who was smiling himself now. He felt a sudden great burst of excitement and determination. ‘Yes. I think that it is.’

Later, Olly stood before Hero’s door. He had been at the
Post
all day, but as his new job had yet to pay him anything, it seemed impolite to abandon his cleaning duties. The Hoover was in his hand.

A picture of a poodle had joined the gallery stuck on the door’s outside, he noticed. Did this mean Hero was joining the human race or moving further away from it?

There was no noise at all coming from behind the door. Perhaps Hero was out. Dog walking, possibly. Particularly after a long day at work, he felt relieved not to have to face her.

Olly pushed open the door and felt a burst of shock to see Hero’s long, lean, black-legged form stretched out on the bed. She was breathing gently, evidently asleep. Grasping the Hoover, Olly was preparing to back out of the room when he heard a sudden exclamation. He turned to find himself staring into a pair of heavily ringed, very angry black eyes. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ Hero demanded.‘Can’t you see I’m resting?’

Olly looked stonily back at her. ‘Do you ever do anything else?’

She glowered at him from beneath a hanging, purple-tinged black fringe. ‘So what?’ she said defiantly.

‘My business. No one else’s.’

Olly had not intended to shout. He was not, as a rule, the shouting sort. But what Hero had just said seemed to light a blue touchpaper within him. He drew himself up. He let fly.

‘No one else’s?’ he roared. ‘What about your parents, Hero? They
love
you. Both of them are worried
sick
about you. They’d do
anything
for you. But you won’t do anything at all!’

‘How dare you say that to me!’ Hero shouted back. ‘Who the hell do
you
think you are? You’re just the lodger.’

Olly had a head of steam up now. While his new job had depleted his energy slightly, it had also given him confidence. ‘Yes, I am just the lodger,’ he roared. ‘And that’s exactly why I can say things that your parents are too afraid to say themselves. Your mum and dad are good, caring, talented people, Hero. They deserve better than you. You’re selfish beyond belief. You’re cruel, arrogant, lazy—’

‘And you’re just a loser!’ Hero broke in, thumping her skull-beringed hands against her black duvet.

‘Not so much a loser as you are,’ Olly bawled back. ‘I’ve got a job now, actually. I’m not buried alive in my bedroom! I’m out there!’

Hero’s gaze was mocking. ‘I wish you’d get out of
here
,’ she said. While her tone remained coolly insolent, he noticed that her fingers in their skull rings were shaking.

He took another huge lungful of breath and steamrollered on. He felt, for all his fury, oddly in control and absolutely justified. What was being said now should have been said long ago. ‘How can you,’ he shouted, ‘waste your life, your youth, your looks – yes,
looks
, Hero – your intelligence and all your opportunities up here in your bedroom? It’s interesting that you spend all that time on that graveyard Gothic look, because, frankly, you may as well be dead.’

He stopped. Perhaps the last sentence was going a bit far. The word ‘dead’ was still ringing in the air.

Hero looked shocked. She was biting her lips now, he saw, and her eyes looked shiny, but he could not stop what he had started. It would have been easier to stop an avalanche. ‘
Someone’s
got to tell you, Hero. Get up, get out and
do something with what remains of your life
.’

He picked up the Hoover and wrenched open Hero’s door. Leaping back before him on to the landing were two crouched figures who had evidently been watching through the keyhole. There would have been no need to listen through it, obviously.

The figures straightened into Dotty and David. Olly looked back at them in horror, expecting them to launch themselves at him with all the fury that over-protective parents could summon.

For a second, both just stared at him. Then Olly felt something clinging round his neck. Looking down, he saw Dotty’s familiar raspberry beret. David, to the side, was clearing his throat repeatedly and knitting his brows.

‘Thank you,’ Dotty bawled into Olly’s chest. He could feel her hot tears through his T-shirt.

‘Yes,’ David said, socking him with grateful and painful violence on the shoulder. ‘And, um, no need to carry on with the housework, OK? We’ll manage somehow.’

Richard had made a decision. He would leave. Quit. Go. He’d wait until the wretched alumni dinner was over and then tender his resignation. He had lasted only one term, but so what? He wasn’t College Master material. Nothing had gone well for him since he got here. Best to quit while he was ahead – or, at least, not too far behind.

All the same, he felt guilty. The college had been a port in a storm and he had enjoyed his research work. So he would, Richard decided, do his very best for Branston at the dinner. He would bang the drum, talk the talk, walk the walk, raise the money and, in general, try to leave the place in a better state than when he found it.

And now, this Saturday night, the hour had come. And so must the man. Feeling oddly jittery, Richard walked into the Turd for the pre-alumni-dinner reception.

He reminded himself of the reasons to be cheerful. The academic world would be his oyster once he had left Branston. Better still, Sara did not seem to be joining him for the dinner, as she had threatened.

When, earlier, he had passed briefly through the Master’s Lodge to pick up his black tie, his unwelcome house guest had been absent. For a few moments Richard’s heart had soared in the hope that she had left altogether. But then he had discovered Milo conducting virtual germ warfare in one of the bedrooms. And the bathroom was still a bombsite of Sara’s emollients and potions. She was still here, all right. But there was always the possibility she had had a better offer for this evening. This town was full of influential people, after all.

Now he had made his mind up to leave the place, Richard was surprised to find he felt almost fond of Branston. The Turd looked surprisingly respectable, almost festive. Someone – Flora, presumably – had strung fairy lights along the bar front and decorated the concrete stairs from the ground floor with tea lights in small glass holders, pressed right against the wall to be out of the way.

Flora appeared in an unusually becoming red dress. The guests started to arrive. A stately trout with a withering expression and a carefully arranged pile of spun-sugar hair was talking to a bishop wearing a bristly grey tweed jacket over his dark shirt and dog collar. Hanging round his neck was a large, thick silver cross, which seemed to Richard to be dangling dangerously near the dish of hummus being passed round.

Remembering his vow to be solicitous, Richard looked about to make sure everyone was talking to someone. An unsmiling couple stood silently near one of the walls. A pink fascinator was plunged in her rug-like dark hair, clashing with a big pair of pink-framed glasses. Her companion held his wineglass in both hands and was looking about with an unimpressed air. Richard was uncertain he could rescue things for them, but recognised he was bound to try. It was his last duty to his college. Taking a deep breath, he stepped towards them.

He was interrupted by the Bursar, who bore down on him, looking anxious. ‘The Snodgrasses!’ he hissed.

Richard’s heart sank. ‘Where?’ he asked, resignedly.

‘Nowhere! That’s the point. They’re not here!’ the Bursar wailed, looking as if he might burst into tears. ‘They haven’t checked into their hotel or anything!’

Richard’s reply was drowned in a series of loud crashes. A harassed-looking man hurtled into the bar. He had evidently just fallen down the stairs. Two small and very untidy children shot in after him, both cackling with delight and bearing tea lights like Olympic torches.

‘Buster! Django! Get back here!’ screamed the harassed man. He then drew a hand over his mouth and looked apologetically round. ‘Sorry, folks.’

Tenebris Hasp of South London, Richard guessed, remembering the cross-purposes phone call about the bank loan. Matters had obviously not improved since. Tenebris Hasp had gone straight to the bar and was tipping one glass of wine down his throat while his fist clutched another. The children continued to run around, screeching.

Richard stared hard at Flora. She was busy calming down the Bursar; eventually, however, he caught her eye. ‘Get – them – out – of – here,’ he mouthed silently.

Flora got the picture. She bore down on the gulping Hasp at speed. ‘Welcome,’ she said smoothly. ‘I see you’ve brought your family with you.’ She looked down at the boys, her tone commanding. ‘Shall we go to your room?’

‘That’s amazing,’ Hasp spluttered as his sons stared up, evidently stunned. ‘I can tell already that they really respect you. I don’t think you’re going to have any trouble with them.’

Flora paused a few treads up the concrete stairs. ‘Let there be no misunderstanding here,’ she said in firm tones. ‘I am not babysitting your children.’

Tenebris Hasp looked aghast. ‘Well, if you’re not,’ he asked, ‘who is? Because it’s not me, let me tell you.’ His voice rose to a tearful bleat. ‘I’ve had a bloody awful week looking after these two –’ he shot a resentful glance at Buster and Django – ‘and I’ve come to this dinner to get completely wrecked and forget how bloody awful my whole bloody life is.’

As Flora hustled him away, Richard felt an unexpected sympathy for Hasp. His own life was pretty bloody awful at the moment too. But at least he could make a new start elsewhere. On Monday he would make the first move, tell the college, begin looking about.

An angry cry broke into his thoughts. His fears for the bishop’s cross and the savoury dips had, it seemed, been justified. The cross had just swung like a censer through the yellow slurry, carrying on its exiting trajectory a considerable amount of garlicky slop which it had deposited smartly over the trout with the spun-sugar hair. The bishop was currently scrubbing her left breast hard with a paper napkin.

Richard felt a sharp finger painfully prodding the soft tissue between his neck and his shoulder.

‘Dick!’

He turned in horror. He had never been called Dick in his life.

Standing before him was a skinny woman in a skin-tight white dress exposing a great deal of tanned flesh. Her glittering blond hair was piled loosely up on her head and hung in tendrils around her skull-like face. Her red-lipsticked smile hit him like a hail of bullets. Sara Oopvard. Just when he had thought it was safe.

He could have looked more pleased to see her, Sara thought. But if she had learnt one thing from her banker ex-husband, it was that aggressive and upfront tactics succeeded. She gave a roguish toss of her chignon; making it look as if she had twisted it up in seconds had taken over three hours and entire cans of Elnett and was the main reason she was late. Although Milo’s being difficult hadn’t helped; in the end she’d had to go to extreme lengths to entertain him. He’d expressed a great interest in seeing Richard’s laboratory and she’d dropped him off there on the way. Something warned her not to mention this to Richard, though; not at this point in the evening, anyway.

As she chucked him playfully under the chin, Richard felt his spine freeze.

‘You must have really wondered if I was coming or not!’ exclaimed Sara, grasping his shoulders and planting on his lips a prolonged and possessive kiss.

Of course, Isabel told herself, nothing was wrong. Of course Jasper still loved her. He had told her so.

So why did she feel so nervous? Why the sense of impending doom? Jasper was just a bit busy, that was all – with what, he did not say. And tonight he had a dinner to which Isabel was not invited.

He had been charming but evasive about it and she guessed it had something to do with the Bullinger Club. She did not ask directly, however, and indeed had been careful to avoid any reference to his membership since bringing it up so unexpectedly on their first night together. Especially now that he had become so distant all of a sudden; she feared appearing censorious.

Of
course
there was nothing wrong. She tried to look at the situation sensibly. Jasper was entitled to have an evening without her if he wanted to and she didn’t in any case want to have dinner with his friends. She had met a few of them in passing, on the staircase, in the quad; they had been boomingly self-confident, not to mention offensive, to a man. They had either ignored her or swept her up and down with amused stares that were clearly not assessing her intellectual abilities.

No, it would be pleasant to have a night in alone. She could relax. Catch up on some of the reading she had been neglecting of late. Think about some of the essays she had missed. Have a long bath. A bath never failed to calm her down.

Isabel drew the curtains of her room before picking up her sponge bag and towel. The evening sky outside struck her as extraordinary: a burnished lemon that looked somehow tremendous – a background for some huge celestial drama. She was being fanciful, she told herself. She was only having a bath and staying in with a book. No drama there.

But here was Kate outside the bathroom door, pacing the corridor, wrapped in a bath towel. It was like the past repeating itself, like the scene at the very beginning of her Branston career. The thing that was different was that Amber was not there, nor the dog.

Isabel had not seen Coco since the day she disappeared and had, some time ago, convinced herself that the animal had found a good home. And Amber had not been around. She was being sent down, everyone knew that now. Perhaps she had simply left ahead of schedule.

‘Someone nicked the bathroom again?’ Isabel made an effort to grin. Christmas was coming; surely Kate could manage a bit of good cheer. Besides, being for once without Jasper was a reminder of how her social circle had shrunk since he had come into her life. She should, Isabel knew, make an effort to build bridges with people.

Kate, however, did not smile. ‘It’s Her Majesty the Lady Amber.’

‘Amber!’ Isabel was surprised. Still here, then.

Kate was looking at her ironically. ‘She told me she’d be out by six. I can’t quite imagine why I believed her, given the lies she tells everyone else.’ She paused and hoicked up the towel with a muscly arm. ‘She’s been in since five.’

Isabel looked at her watch. ‘Five!’ A long bath, even by Amber’s standards. ‘But it’s almost seven.’ She felt a faint bolt of alarm.

‘No shit, Sherlock,’ Kate snapped. She rattled the handle violently. ‘Come on!’ she shouted. ‘Out of there!’

It was now that Isabel realised that the orange corridor carpet beneath her was wet. She glanced at the base of the bathroom door; a growing pool of water was emerging. If she listened closely, through the thick door, the sound of a gushing tap could be heard.

‘Bloody typical!’ Kate groaned, now noticing it too. ‘Not only is she hogging the bathroom, she’s having one of those Japanese baths where you just keep the water running—’

‘Kate!’ yelled Isabel, gripped by a sudden, horrible conviction. ‘It’s not that. Something’s wrong. I just know it is.’

‘Don’t be stupid. She’s just hogging the bathroom as usual—’

‘No, she’s not!’ Isabel gasped in terror, throwing her shoulder against the door. ‘Come on. Please, Kate. You’ve got to help me get this door open.’

Kate’s red, angry face radiated amazement. ‘Smash it in? Are you joking?’

She had never, in fact, felt less like joking. Isabel was throwing herself wildly at the door. ‘Kate! Please! Help me!’

The gushing water within seemed to be pumping around her own head. ‘Help me! I’m not strong enough on my own. It’s life or death, I’m sure it is.’

Kate gave her one last doubtful look before throwing her powerfully muscled rower’s shoulder against the solid door. Again and again they slammed themselves at the unyielding wood. Eventually there was a splintering sound, a crack, and the door gave way. Kate staggered forward into the bathroom with a swoosh of water. Water covered the entire floor, like a shallow swimming pool in which soggy towels lay here and there like islands. And in the bath . . .

The air now filled with a loud, continuous sound: Kate screaming, ‘Oh my God! Oh my God!’ over and over again.

Isabel had frozen with disbelief. She had been expecting something awful, but never this.

The bath was full to the top. Water ran smoothly over the tub’s rolled edges. It was the cold tap that was running, the twisted column of water sending a constant series of ripples over what lay below.

What lay below was Amber – slumped, unmoving, her face blue and her eyes closed.