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‘I want all the details,’ Beth instructed, her green eyes sparkling. ‘I mean everything. Right now. From the beginning.’
Olivia laughed. ‘All right, give me a chance!’
‘You’re seriously working there?’
‘As of Monday—but swear to God, I didn’t know about the Cato thing.’
‘Bollocks.’
‘I didn’t!’
‘Everyone in town’s going totally crazy. At first it was just a rumour, then Harriet Blease’s sister’s friend’s boyfriend said he saw them in this massive car going through the Usherwood gates and the window was down and apparently Susanna Denver’s had so many facelifts her chin’s up by her ears.’
‘She doesn’t look that bad.’
‘Well, go on then—spill!’
Olivia obliged, running through her first encounter with the Lomax family—she was still weirded out by the whole thing. Each time she recalled it she had to pinch herself, as if she had dreamed it, or it had happened to another person: the collision must have put her in a kind of stupor. She’d been led through the house by a movie star and his actress girlfriend, and it was only when she had returned to her own bed later that night that her brain had finally clicked into gear. Her mother’s caravan had never felt so small.
Beth listened intently, as she always had to Olivia’s adventures; a ten-year-old sitting cross-legged in the garden while she was showered with stories of monster quests and jungle riots, of pirate loot and buried treasure, and of how Addy had held Olivia’s hand one day when they were out in the forest and they thought Gun Tower HQ was being attacked but it had turned out only to be a badger. Since the girls were little, they had been like sisters. Beth was the more cautious, sensible one, a tempering agency on Olivia’s hot-headedness, where Olivia was reckless and fun, dragging her friend over walls and under fences, whispering secrets as they shared their first cigarette, pilfered from the locked tin box Flo kept under the sink. Seeing Beth at home was like no time at all had passed; they could have been those kids again, making potions with her mother’s hemp shampoo or dragging their sledge through the snow. They had shared so much at Lustell Cove.
‘Can I help, d’you think?’ Beth asked, awestruck when she reached the end. Her hair had gone coppery in the sun and her skin was tanned. ‘Since you’ve got the added bonus of visitors at the house? I could wash Cato’s pants?’
‘I’m not sure Cato wears any pants.’
‘Have you seen?’
‘No,’ Olivia lifted an eyebrow, ‘just an instinct. And anyway, I don’t know if Cato being there is a bonus. He and Charlie seem to really hate each other.’
‘Ooh; Beth teased, ‘it’s “Charlie”, is it?’
‘Shut up.’
‘Is he still all tortured and moody?’
Olivia regarded her quizzically. ‘Huh?’
‘You remember—at Towerfield?’
Something faint glimmered at the edges of her memory. Before the Lomax boys were bundled off to Harrow they had attended the local prep. Cato had been way older, she couldn’t recall him, but another boy in Addy’s year, yes, possibly: shirt untucked, messy hair, the big polished car that used to drop him off at the gates …
‘Silly question.’ Beth’s expression was wry. ‘You wouldn’t remember because you were so obsessed with Addy that you never even noticed anyone else.’
‘I was not.’
‘You were, too.’
‘He didn’t hang out with Addy. I’d have noticed if he had.’
‘That’s ‘cause he didn’t like Addy.’
‘How would you know?’
‘It might be an impossible concept for you to grasp,’ Beth sighed, ‘but not everyone does. It’s just you who’s got this massive blind spot.’
‘All right, all right!’ Olivia bristled. ‘Anyway you should have seen him with Cato. They were at each other’s throats, standing there yelling at each other. No,’ she frowned, ‘not yelling, it was more restrained than that—and kind of more intense for it. At one point I thought they were going to strangle each other!’
‘Sexy!’
‘Hmm.’
‘Is it any wonder, though?’ Beth resumed grooming her horse, taking the brush in long slow strokes across the animal’s flank. ‘Of course they can’t stand to be in the same room, what with Cato shooting off the second their parents disappeared. Poor Charlie,’ she grinned, ‘got left behind to look after everything.’
‘I suppose.’
‘What age was he back then, thirteen?’
Olivia shrugged, trying to work it out in her head. Charlie would have left Towerfield at twelve, when the boys had gone into senior school. He would have been at Harrow a year before his parents vanished, and she guessed that the housekeeper had taken care of him after that. He definitely hadn’t been at Towerfield when it happened because if he had then Addy would have talked about it; and she would remember Addy talking about it, if nothing else.
‘It would have been bad for Cato, too,’ Olivia argued. ‘I expect running away was easier, maybe he just couldn’t face things here.’ Cato had been far nicer to her in their brief acquaintance, and she felt the need to defend him.
‘Maybe.’
Olivia narrowed her eyes.
‘Between you and me,’ she confided, ‘I can’t help feeling the animosity’s about more than the parents dying. Something else, something deeper …’
Beth leaned against the stable door. ‘Here’s an idea, Oli,’ she suggested. ‘How about you take this job for what it’s worth—just like I and every other girl at Lustell Cove would—and not get in way over your head like you always do?’
‘I have my head perfectly above water, thank you very much.’
Beth giggled. ‘Only you could get run over by Cato Lomax in your first week back.’
‘It was an accident! Besides he was lovely to me, very apologetic.’
‘For fear you’d sue his arse—sorry, ass—all the way back to America?’
Olivia nudged her. ‘Cynic.’
‘Oh, great.’ Beth groaned. ‘Look who it is.’
With sinking hearts they spotted the Feeny twins making their way across the courtyard. Thomasina and Lavender had been in their form at Taverick Manor, and had stayed at the cove ever since, living off Daddy’s pocket money. They were snotty, spoiled little madams, with upturned noses like piglets. One was riding a black stallion; the other a white mare, like a pair of evil chess queens.
‘Hell-air!’ called Thomasina, easing her beast to a stop. Olivia could tell it was Thomasina because her nose was slightly more piggy than Lavender’s.
‘Hey.’ Olivia gave them the benefit of the doubt: perhaps they’d changed.
‘Good to see you settling back into your old life,’ commented Thomasina, peering snootily down at Olivia as if she were something growing mould in a petri dish. ‘There must be terrible competition in London to look thin.’
They hadn’t changed.
‘Though I’d imagine Cato Lomax being back in town would be diet incentive enough for anyone,’ she finished. Next to her, Lavender tittered.
‘What do you want, Thomasina?’
‘Ooh, well excuse us!’ Lavender had the annoying habit of emphasising the final word in every single sentence she said. ‘Is this conversation private?’
‘Not any more.’
‘What’s it about,’ she whined, ‘boys?’
‘You must be finished, then,’ put in Thomasina, thinking herself extremely clever. ‘There can’t be a great deal to talk about!’
The Feenys were insufferable—grade-? picture-perfect sorority bitches who nipped miserably at sticks of celery and slagged off anyone over a size 6. Ever since Olivia’s very first day at Taverick they had treated her no better than the offerings their rat-like pooches occasionally left in the bottoms of their Aspinal tote bags. According to the Feenys, Olivia was the scruffball who didn’t live in a proper house, who probably didn’t wash and who came with un-brushed hair into a school her mother couldn’t afford to send her to (she had got in on a scholarship).
Like most of the girls at Taverick Manor, Thomasina and Lavender took everything for granted: the Pacific island they jetted to on holiday, the yacht Daddy bought to moor off the Napoli coast, the wardrobe of designer labels they’d get bored with after a week. Olivia and Beth were always going to be outcasts. Beth’s family were working class and had only afforded her education because a distant Merrill cousin had died and left them a wad of cash—something Beth felt permanently guilty about: last year her father’s business had gone down the pan, and nowadays her parents had barely two pennies to rub together—while Olivia’s scholarship was, according to the Feeny brigade, a heinously unfair pass into a life of privilege which she had neither the faculties nor the finesse to appreciate.
‘Actually, Olivia’s working with the Lomaxes this summer,’ Beth chipped in, giving her a jab with her elbow. ‘Isn’t that right, Oli?’
The twins were stricken.
‘What do you mean?’ panicked Thomasina.
Olivia put her hands in her pockets. ‘Charlie Lomax hired me.’
Thomasina burst out laughing, a high-pitched, taunting sound she’d used to inflict on a blubbing Clarabel Maynard whenever she forgot her gym knickers, pushing her to the floor and triggering one of Clarabel’s nose bleeds. Once Olivia had hauled Thomasina off and slammed her into the changing-room lockers. She’d earned detention for a week and Clarabel still hadn’t spoken to her in the lunch queue.
‘You expect us to believe that?’ Thomasina carped. ‘With Cato back at the house? Come on. At least think up something semi-realistic, Chopped Liver.’
Chopped Liver had been her school nickname. Olivia had the sudden sensation of never having left Lustell Cove at all, the past year of city life, new friends and new horizons, evaporated in a single toxic gust of Feeny breath.
‘She’s gardening for them,’ elaborated Beth. ‘Charlie offered it on the spot. She’s already met Cato and Susanna.’
‘He hired you?’ quailed Lavender. Her horse performed a prissy circle, swishing its tail as if it too could scarcely grasp the outrageousness of this suggestion.
Thomasina was quiet. She was thinking more carefully about things.
‘By the way,’ she said mildly, ‘I saw Addy yesterday.’
Beth rolled her eyes. ‘Shut up, Thomasina.’
‘He was talking about you.’
‘Just go away, would you?’
‘He said how happy he was that you were back.’ Thomasina was all at once sweetness and light. ‘Addy finds it hard to express his emotions—but then he is a guy, what can we expect? I think he’s plucking up the courage to ask you out.’
‘Good for him,’ stepped in Beth, folding her arms. ‘But if you don’t mind, I’ve got a lesson to run and you’re in the way.’
‘I could put in a word,’ offered Thomasina innocently. ‘The trouble is, Olivia, I’m just not sure he’s confident you like him. You’ve been friends for so long, he probably reckons that’s all it is …’
Olivia had a recollection of her final term at Taverick, during which Addy had been discovered by Head Matron having frantic moonlight sex with one of the sixth formers in a broom cupboard. She remembered wanting nothing more than to wallow in a tepid bath of her own teardrops, and then possibly drown to death in them. To this day she was tortured by the idea that it could have been one of the Feenys.
‘Well?’ pressed Thomasina. ‘Do you like him?’
‘Bye, you two!’ called Beth.
‘Seeing as you ran off to London.’ Lavender caught up and joined the assault. ‘Men are so sensitive, aren’t they, Tommy?’
Thomasina nodded gravely. ‘Leave it with us,’ she said amiably. ‘Who knows, maybe we could organise a double date? You and Addy, me and Cato …’
Lavender was wounded.
‘You’ll have to have the other one,’ Thomasina explained snippily. ‘Cato already has a girlfriend. You’re not equipped to deal with that.’
‘With what?’ Beth spluttered. ‘Stealing other people’s boyfriends?’
Thomasina ignored her. ‘Just think about it,’ she finished, with a little quirk of the head. ‘Promise?’ She pulled the reins; Lavender followed suit. The girls turned on their steeds and sashayed off across the cobbles.
‘Can you believe them?’ Beth asked in wonder. ‘As if you’re dumb enough to fall for that.’ She peered sideways at Olivia. ‘And you’re definitely not dumb, right?’
‘Thanks for the vote of confidence.’
‘You won’t like me saying this but Addy’s just as bad as they are.’
‘He is not!’ she protested. ‘You just don’t get him like I do.’
‘I get that all he’s ever done is make you feel like shit. He’s aware how you feel about him and he loves stringing you along.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘You’re right, I don’t. But I do trust my instincts and I’ve known you both long enough. I don’t trust him, Oli, and neither should you.’
The first of Beth’s students arrived at the gate.
‘I’ve got to scram.’ She crossed the yard, calling back, ‘Catch up tonight? Come to mine. We’ll have pizza and you can talk to me more about Cato’s pants.’
Olivia smiled. ‘Sure.’
‘Don’t do anything stupid in the meantime. The Feenys are full of it, and so is Addy. Forget them. You will forget them, won’t you?’
‘Already have. Thanks, Mum.’
Beth smiled sweetly. ‘Always a pleasure.’
Olivia put her hand to Archie’s muzzle. She sighed.
Beth was right: the Feenys were poison.
