Let's Get Lost (31 page)

He pulled a face. “You’d love it if I just left you here, wouldn’t you? Then you could work your martyred routine a little bit more, instead of asking for help.”

“I don’t need you to help me,” I sniped. “I don’t need anyone.”

“Yeah, well, you’d still be standing by the side of the road with a compound fracture if that was the case,” Smith pointed out, before giving a resigned sigh. “Come on, I’ll give you a lift.”

A lift to where, though? That was the question. Maybe I could . . .

“Before you even say it, you’re not coming back to mine.”

Smith could read minds now, which was just beyond irritating, if I could have mustered up the energy to actually be irritated. The drugs were starting to wear off, the adrenaline had exited stage right, and I’d reached rock bottom.

In fact, if there was someplace that was lower than rock bottom, then there’s where I was. I ached in places where I didn’t know I had places. My head was throbbing, my eyes were dry and itchy, and I had this awful metallic taste in my mouth that all the Freshmint gum in the world wouldn’t cure.

I was starting to cobble a plan together. It wasn’t great as plans went, but it didn’t involve going home or having to spend any more time with Smith and his insightful observations into my psyche.

“Where to, princess?” he asked, jangling his car keys impatiently as I hoisted myself upright and began to hobble toward the exit.

I stuck my chin out defiantly. “I’m going to find a hotel in town, and before you get pissy about that, even though it’s, like, none of your business, I’m going to call my grandparents in London tomorrow, or later today, whatever, and ask them to come and pick me up. Happy?”

“Not remotely,” he hissed, shouldering the door open for me. “But, hey, that makes two of us.”

It was a relief to collapse onto his majorly uncomfortable passenger seat. I closed my eyes as he started the car and let the rhythmic putter of the engine lull me into a doze.

“C’mon, Is, wake up, we’re here,” Smith said, nudging me gently with his elbow. “And promise you won’t get too homicidal with me.”

“Too tired for long words,” I mumbled, snuggling a little further into the seat. “You’d better have picked me a nice hotel.”

I opened my eyes and started struggling with the seat belt, until Smith pushed my hand away. I couldn’t see anything but his face and the worried way he was gnawing his bottom lip.

“Look, hey, I’m fine,” I insisted, almost keeping the tremor out of my voice. “I said some stuff, you said some stuff, it’s been the longest night of my life, let’s just agree to disagree.”

“I’m sorry but I think this is for the best,” he said, and he didn’t just look worried, he
was
worried, and as I looked over at my house, all the windows ablaze with light, the front door open, and—oh, look—a police car parked right in front of us, I knew why.

“How could you?” My breath hitched in my throat, because there was someone standing in the doorway, hand shielding his face from the porch light so he could see out into the street.

Smith was already opening my door, hand under my elbow so he could help me out. My body was being way too obliging and stepping onto the pavement so it could walk the necessary distance toward the shadowy figure still standing in front of the house.

“He’s going to kill me,” I said under my breath. “He’s going to chop me into little pieces, sauté me, and
then
send me away.”

“I’ll come in with you, it will be all right,” Smith said soothingly, but it wasn’t all right, because he was coming down the steps onto the path, and I was trying to use Smith as a human shield.

“Isabel!” he thundered, and my insides turned to liquid and whooshed down to my feet. He reached us in three long strides, face blazing with fury, and only Smith grabbing my hand and tucking it into his stopped me from turning tail and fleeing.

I had time for one heartfelt “Oh, God” before the Brighton Inquisition started. Except it didn’t. He just stood there, staring at me, wearing his disgust like cheap aftershave. If it had been humanly possible to shrivel away from the force of someone’s loathing, I’d have fitted inside a Dustbuster.

“What the
hell
have you been doing?” he asked quietly. Shouting would have been better, not that gossamer growl that made my blood go cold. “Give me one good reason why I should even let you through the front door.”

He grabbed hold of my arm, my broken arm, as a prelude to probably putting me in the back of the

police car himself, and I squealed in pain as he let go and Smith stepped between us.

“Sir, I’m Atticus Smith,” he said politely, holding out his hand. “I’m a friend of Isabel’s.”

And it might have been the dumbfounded expression on my father’s face as he shook Smith’s hand or the whole Atticus thing, but he let go of my arm and I started to giggle. And then I wasn’t giggling but almost bent double with laughter.

“I think she’s still in shock,” Smith said loyally, and I straightened up, still tittering feebly, and decided I’d be okay if I didn’t make eye contact with my father.

And I didn’t have to because there was a policewoman hurrying down the steps, holding something, while a pajama-clad Felix peered out of the front window.

“I take it this is Isabel?” she asked my father, who turned at the sound of her voice.

“Yes, yes,” he said heavily, like he wished it wasn’t true. “She’s back.”

She held something up—something red and bedraggled in a see-through plastic bag. “So, Isabel, is this your coat, and could you tell me exactly what it was doing in a car that was reported stolen earlier tonight?”

Spending the night locked up in a police cell seemed to be the lesser of two evils, compared with the way my father was still staring at me like he was already sizing me up for a coffin.

But when she started haranguing me before my arse even connected with the sofa, he turned and gave her the full effect of his most glacial expression. Think frozen tundra and you’d be halfway there.

“My daughter’s been through quite enough for one night,” he said in his most “Don’t mess with me, I’m a professor of English” voice.

“I need Isabel to answer a few questions about what she’s been—”

He cut her right off with an impatient flick of his hand as Smith collapsed next to me on the couch. “Bet you’re regretting your misplaced chivalry now,” I hissed out of the corner of my mouth, and his eyebrows pulled together in a ferocious scowl.

“I think what Isabel needs is some food and some sleep. If you leave me your number, then I’ll arrange a mutually convenient time for you to come around and . . .”

“We’ll need you to bring Isabel down to the station, sir.” She shot me a look to let me know that I was a thoroughly bad little girl.

“As I was saying,” he drawled slowly, and Smith shuddered like he was starting to believe everything I’d told him, “you can come around when Isabel’s feeling better. I’m sure she just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

It was really nice of him to stick up for me like that. But he was sly and tricky. It was probably just a cunning ruse to ship me off to reform school before sunup.

She was still spluttering away about procedures as he walked her to the door.

“He doesn’t seem that bad,” Smith offered uncertainly, fidgeting against the cushions.

“Whatever,” I whispered. “You haven’t seen his game face yet.”

There was a muffled squeak as Felix came in, holding a brimming mug in front of him. “I made you tea,”

he announced importantly.

Smith jumped up and took it before he could slop any more over the carpet, and once he’d been relinquished from his burden, Felix was hurling himself at me in one of his infamous “tackle hugs.”

“Hey . . .” I protested. “Watch the arm!”

“We thought you’d run away,” he exclaimed, eyes wide and bottom lip already quivering. “And then he called the police and she came around with your coat and I thought you were dead!”

“As if!” I scoffed, tugging on his cowlick. “Just a little battered. Look, you can draw something on my cast.”

Felix gave it a good rap with his knuckles. “Does that hurt?”

“Yes,” I snapped in unison with Smith who’d been gazing at Felix with amusement.

“Who are you? Are you Is’s boyfriend? Dad said he was going to horsewhip you,” Felix recalled gleefully as the man himself came back into the room.

“I’m sure I said no such thing.” He ran his fingers through his hair and looked thoughtfully at Smith, who squirmed deliciously. “I trust you weren’t involved in tonight’s debacle?” he asked pleasantly.

“He wasn’t . . .” I started again. “I called him after the accident and . . .”

“I took Is… I mean, Isabel to the hospital and oh, yeah . . .” Smith rummaged in his jacket pocket.

“There’s a prescription for some antibiotics and some painkillers and instructions on how to take care of the cast. It’s not meant to get wet, so she needs to wrap it up in a plastic bag when she has a . . .”

“Thank you,” Dad said calmly, taking the papers from him and giving them a cursory look. “Felix, will you please go to bed?”

“But Dad . . . !”

“It wasn’t a suggestion, go!”

Felix went, grumbling with every step, sure that he was going to miss all the action. Lucky Felix.

Dad walked over to me, brushing past Smith, who looked like he was planning an intervention, then crouched at my feet. “Let me look at this arm of yours,” he ordered softly, and I stuck out my plaster cast for his perusal. “Can you move your fingers?”

I wiggled them feebly, staring at the spot on the rug where Felix had spilled the tea. He turned my head toward the lamp so he could see the damage for himself and I could see myself reflected in his pupils.

“Well, you’ve certainly managed to wreak havoc everywhere you went tonight,” he remarked. “A-plus for effort, Isabel.”

“I’m sorry about your books,” I said in a tiny voice. “I just went, like, crazy when I found those brochures and . . .”

For someone who was practically on his knees in front of me, he could still do the dour papa like no one else. “Do you have any idea quite how angry I am with you?”

This was familiar ground for us. I knew my lines perfectly.

“So what else is new? Even if I hadn’t got medieval on your stupid books or got myself half killed, you’d still be angry with me. You’re always angry with me!” My lips settled into that tight line where they felt most comfortable. “I bet you wish I had been killed, that would have sorted out the Isabel problem in one fell swoop, wouldn’t it?”

“Shut up!” he shouted at me, standing and snatching up one of the cushions and throwing it across the room because he couldn’t do that to me. “Shut the hell up!”

I was trying to get to my feet, but it was proving impossible; my hand kept sinking into the sofa and I was putting too much weight on my bruised leg. Smith looked warily at my father, who was clenching his fists at his side and doing the stary thing again.

“You wanted to know the truth?” I said to Smith, because no one had asked him to come in here and watch Act Four, Scene Five of my miserable existence. “All my terrible secrets, yeah?”

“Is . . . don’t,” he begged me, finally holding out his hand so I could yank myself up. “You’re really tired and freaked out and you don’t know what you’re saying.”

“No! You were the one who was obsessed with the truth,” I insisted, jabbing him in the chest with my finger. “I thought it was so terribly important to you.”

“You’re incapable of telling the truth,” said my father from somewhere behind me, poison dripping from each word. “You’ve destroyed this family with all your lies and your dirty little secrets.”

I wobbled precariously in Smith’s hold. There was this strange prickling at the back of my eyes and I couldn’t see too well. I held up a hand to my face and it came away wet because the tears were coursing down my face, getting into all those cuts and scrapes and making them sting. Guess I could cry, after all.

“He wishes it had been me, not her,” I choked, slapping Smith’s hands away from me. “That’s why he really hates me.”

“I’m sure it’s not like that,” he said helplessly. “It’s not your fault that your mum died.”

“That remains to be seen,” my father bit out, running his finger over the picture of her on the mantelpiece.

“Isabel has been remarkably unforthcoming about what happened or didn’t.”

Smith shook his head. “I’m sorry about your wife, but it’s not fair to blame Is when she wasn’t . . . you didn’t have to sign the form but . . .”

“You don’t get it!” I shouted, and it was like a dam bursting in my chest because these sobs were coming up from the bottom, and I suddenly slid to the floor because my legs decided that they didn’t want to hold me up anymore. “You don’t get it. I didn’t tell you because I don’t want to remember . . .”

“What the . . . ?” Smith exclaimed, and I had to say it because none of it would make sense until I did.

“I was with her, you idiot! I was in the car with her when she crashed!” And I was crumpling in on myself, curling into a little ball, and someone was picking me up, cradling me against crumpled cotton as he sat down and rocked me back and forth, rubbing circles on my back, like he used to when I was little.

“Ssshhh, Belle, don’t cry,” he said, brushing my wet cheeks with the pads of his fingers. “It doesn’t matter.”

I buried my face into the crook of his neck and wept harder. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry it wasn’t me. I wish it had been.”

“It wasn’t your fault, Belle,” he murmured soothingly, kissing the top of my head. “She was going too fast and she didn’t have her seat belt on, and I told her a million times, didn’t I? And you always put your belt on because I drummed it into you and that’s why you only had a few scratches. Not like now.”

I rested my aching head against his shoulder and let him settle me more comfortably on his lap. “We had a fight, a horrible fight, and she wasn’t looking and I told her to . . . And, like, if I’d got out of bed earlier or if I’d packed my bag the night before, it would have been different and that lorry wouldn’t have come out when it did and . . .”