He was looking at her with new caution, as if she might bite. ‘Is this some sort of a joke, Allie? Because if it is —’
‘It’s not a joke, Mark.’ Her voice was sharper than she intended and she tried to calm down. ‘It’s all real. I promise you.’
But he didn’t appear convinced. ‘So this man, he wants you… why, exactly?’
Allie’s mouth opened and closed again. He had her there. Because even today she wasn’t entirely certain what Nathaniel wanted from her. ‘It’s something to do with my family and his family. Some sort of a fight and I’m just a small part of it…’
It sounded unconvincing and she knew it. She could see the puzzlement in his eyes. But he had to believe her. She needed him to understand. Without his help she was lost.
She held his gaze. ‘I know it sounds crazy, Mark, but it’s real. He’s dangerous. Last Christmas he killed my best friend.’
He looked stunned. ‘Wait. Are you telling me a girl got axed at your school?’
Allie tried not to remember how Jo had looked as her life ebbed away but she couldn’t make that image fade.
‘I found her. It was bad, Mark. So much blood…’ Her voice trailed off.
For a long moment he sat staring at her as if looking for assurance that he could believe her; he didn’t seem convinced by what he found.
‘But, Al, why didn’t I read about it in the papers? Posh bird gets done at some boarding school – that’d make headlines.’
His tone was dubious and Allie’s heart sank. He didn’t believe her.
‘They covered it up,’ she explained, knowing even as she said the words how crazy they sounded. ‘They always cover things up.’
He didn’t appear convinced. Opening her new can, she took a long draught. If only she could drink enough to make everything better.
Mark was still trying to figure things out. ‘Come on. How do they do that?’ he asked. ‘I mean, how do you cover up a murdered rich girl?’
‘I don’t know,’ she admitted, helplessly. ‘They just… do it. Lots of really powerful people went to my school. They can do things like that.’
‘Is that how you got hurt?’ He gestured at the scar on her hairline. ‘Were you with her?’
‘Gabe – the guy who killed my friend – he’d tried to grab me once before and my friends protected me.’ Something about that bothered her – something important – but the cider was doing its job and almost as soon as the thought arrived it slipped from her drunken grasp. She frowned at the can in her hand.
‘Then what happened?’ Mark nudged her.
‘Gabe came back,’ Allie said quietly. ‘He and another guy stabbed Jo and then kidnapped me. Put a bag over my head and threw me in a car and drove me away.’
Mark had gone still.
‘But you see… I’ve had this training now in self-defence. So I knew how to hurt them. So I did.’ She nodded to herself. ‘I hurt them.’
Mark’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed nervously. ‘What did you do?’
She spoke without emotion. ‘I jumped over the seat and shoved my nails in the driver’s eyes so he couldn’t see, and he screamed but I didn’t let go, and Gabe hit me, but I didn’t let go, and then the car flipped over and I broke my arm and my knee and my head and stuff.’ She took a drink. ‘But I got away.’
‘Bloody hell, Allie.’ Mark looked stunned – maybe even a little afraid. ‘I mean… What the…?’
‘But it didn’t matter, don’t you see?’ She leaned towards him, her gaze intent. ‘I got hurt trying to help Jo but it didn’t matter because he killed her anyway. He killed her and I loved her and now she’s dead and it’s all my fault.’ She stopped suddenly. ‘My fault.’ She repeated it again and decided it was true. ‘My fault. All my fault.’
An icy tear rolled down her cheek and she swiped it away with an impatient gesture.
There was so much she wanted to tell him but couldn’t. She wanted to tell him how Night School made her take chances. That it made her risk her own life and other people’s lives. Being in Night School made her arrogant and stupid. It had created a wall between her life and Jo’s life so Jo didn’t tell her things. Like that Gabe was writing to her. That he wanted to see her. So Allie never had the chance to stop her from going to meet him that night. The night he killed her.
It was too hard to explain to an outsider. And besides, there was something else he needed to understand.
‘I had to get out of that school because they haven’t done anything about it – that’s why I called you. One of them helped Gabe. Someone opened the gates for him, you see? Someone on the inside. But whenever I bring it up they just go on and on about how I need help “dealing” with what happened.’ She made sarcastic air quotes around the word to show what she thought about that. ‘They said I should leave it to them. So I did. And they have done nothing.’
She took a long drink of cider then fixed him with a determined look. ‘So I have to do this on my own. For Jo. I have to find Gabe and whoever helped him. And I have to punish them.’
They talked on the bench until they ran out of cider. She was in the middle of explaining how she’d escaped from the school when Mark glanced at his watch and swore.
‘What?’ Allie peered at him drunkenly.