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  “Oh dear God,” muttered one of the policemen, a nice chap, a born and bred Brightonian who had a lovely daughter at home about Chastity’s age, crossing himself and turning to his colleagues. “I’ve never seen anything like it. This poor lassie—we’ve got to get her home, lads.”

  “Oh fuck,” said Jinx again, much quieter this time but with even more feeling than the first—she didn’t even like to think about Mr. Morris’s, or worse, Mrs. Bennett’s reaction to them being dropped back to school in the middle of the night with a full police escort.

  “Paul,” Liberty suddenly said, thinking admirably on her feet around the same dilemma and rushing to his side, “are you okay? Shouldn’t you go to hospital or something?” She looked pleadingly at the policemen, directing the full benefit of the dual beam of her soft brown eyes into their own, slightly bloodshot versions. “Can’t you lot take him? I’ve never seen anyone being sick like that.”

  “Yes,” Jinx added firmly, understanding exactly what Liberty was getting at and dashing over to help her. “I think she’s right. What would happen if he died on the street and you hadn’t dropped him off at A&E? I’m sure there’d be a terrible fuss. Well…the Argus would make something of it, definitely.”

  This cunning mention of the local paper finally got through to the policemen. They moved over to the side of the van, where they stood muttering amongst themselves for a couple of minutes before marching purposefully back over to the girls. The only sounds were the omnipresent squawk of the seagulls and the sea rolling the pebbles back and forth on the beach beyond the road. The partygoers leaning over the side of Jamie’s penthouse balcony had all been stunned into silence when the vomiting started, and were now avidly awaiting the verdict from the police. Chastity had finally cottoned on to the enormity of the problems they would face if the policemen insisted on taking them “home” as promised, and was now also staring silently at the policemen, willing them to take Paul and leave her alone.

  “Right, son,” the burliest cop said, looking with extreme distaste at Paul but offering him his arm nonetheless. “Come on. It’d be best if you got yourself checked over.”

  “I’m fine,” Paul said, shaking him off and shooting a seriously filthy look at Chastity. “I’m severely allergic to fish, that’s all. I haven’t had a reaction like this since I bit into a crispy fish ball thinking it was a chicken nugget three years ago. In fact,” he said, his green face quickly turning red with fury at the thought of what he might have been subjected to this time, “I think you should ask this girl here what she had for lunch. Go on!”

  “Okay, okay, keep your wig on,” said the cop, shaking his head and turning to Chastity.

  “What did you have for your lunch then, love? And don’t worry, I’m only asking to keep the peace between you two. I’m sure—ha ha—whatever it was won’t constitute a criminal offence of any kind.”

  “I wouldn’t be so confident of that if I were you,” muttered Jinx in an aside to Liberty, unable to stop herself from cracking the gag despite the severity of the situation.

  “I had a tuna mayo sub actually,” Chastity said dreamily whilst shooting a contrarily triumphant glance at an apoplectic Paul. “And I really, really enjoyed it. I guess I forgot to brush my teeth afterwards, too.”

  “If you really loved me like you said you did,” Paul said dramatically, looking at the lamppost as if it were a tree and he was in fact Heathcliffe, “you would never have eaten fish for lunch knowing you were seeing me later.”

  “I forgot,” Chastity replied nonchalantly before leaning in close to Paul and whispering her punch line so the policemen couldn’t hear. “I guess I was too stoned.”

  “Oh dear,” Liberty whispered to Jinx after seeing the look of pure, unadulterated fury this revelation caused to pass across Paul’s normally cheery face. “I know she’s cross, but I don’t think she should have said that. I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

  Liberty was proved exactly right for once as, only a second later, all hell did indeed break loose. Paul started screaming at Chastity with such a deranged look in his eye that all the onlookers were convinced he meant grievous bodily harm at best and drew in sharp intakes of breath. The burly policeman—who couldn’t stop thinking just how like Chastity was his own eldest daughter, the light of his life, his absolute pride and joy—moved in front of Paul and caught him mid-flight. He bundled him off to one side and treated him to a few very stern words about controlling himself, being a man, and accepting when things were over in a reasonable manner. Paul, already incensed by Chastity, became wildly furious at the sound of all this.

  “Why don’t you phone up STAGMOUNT,” he screamed, delivering his parting shot with the true venom of the recently dumped, “and ask them where their lower sixth is right now? I bet the teachers up there would just love to know what their young ladies are doing messing around in town at this time of night.”

  “You bastard,” Chastity hissed at him, her fury now easily matching his own, “I can’t believe you’d stoop that low. Well, Paul, if you want the honest truth, you can have it—I’ve been bored as hell by you for weeks now, months probably. I only kept seeing you because I couldn’t be bothered with the agro of finishing it, and now I wish I’d done it sooner. You’re pathetic and I NEVER want to see you again. Best leave it, yeah!”

  With that, Chastity turned on her heel and strode over to Jinx and Liberty, who tried their best to appear supportive and not to squirm away too much from the bits of sick still clinging all over their second-best friend. All three turned and stared at the policemen, wondering what they’d do with this particular bit of information. Sadly, they didn’t have to wait long to find out.

  “What are you all doing out here?” asked the leanest of the men, removing his hat and scratching his head as if puzzled by the whole affair—which indeed he was. “Have you been at that party up there?”

  “No,” Jinx said firmly, eyeing Paul and making it very obvious that if he dropped them in it again then Chastity would be the least of his worries. “We’ve just been mucking about on the seafront.”

  There was no way in hell Jinx wanted to link the four of them on the pavement with Jamie’s party in the penthouse. As if it wasn’t bad enough that her brother was inside with the triplets, the whole place was awash with drugs, and she didn’t fancy Jamie’s chances much as the host if these dudes started wanting to have a look around.

  Paul didn’t say another word, but looked guiltily down at his feet before stumbling off into the night after a final, despairing glance at his most definitely lost love. Chastity, it must be said, was practically gagging at the time as she flicked unidentifiable lumps of sick from her jeans, so she didn’t even notice him leaving.

  The policemen began ushering the three girls into the back of the van—having let Paul go they absolutely insisted on dropping the girls safely back to school, as a ‘friendly fucking gesture’ no less—and slammed the door shut behind them. The three inside the back held onto the security straps for dear life and stared at each other, speechless with horror as they were driven east along the seafront towards Stagmount and beyond. Although at least this time, the unhappy trio thought thankfully, grateful for any small mercies at this losing stage of the game, without any of the lights and sirens that heralded the police’s first appearance.

  19 In Deep Shit

  Katie Green looked at her pale pink plastic Swatch watch. It was just past midnight, and she’d been sitting on the inside of her window ledge staring out over the pitches, across the marina, past the lights of the funfair at the end of the pier and towards the town for a little over an hour and a half now. She wasn’t expecting to see anything of interest tonight, but she’d developed an attachment to this spot after she’d so fortuitously spotted the lower sixth dashing in and out of the garage that day. Since then, this had become the only place she felt able to try and unravel her muddled thoughts. She quite often now found herself slipping away from the noisy girls in her year to
come and sit here quietly on her own.

  Katie leaned forward, halfheartedly thinking she really must get to bed if there was to be any hope of her making it to Sunday Service in the morning, and drew in one last deep breath of the bitingly crisp sea air. She drew back when she spotted a shadowy figure making its way along the path from the main schoolhouse towards the old cricket pavilion. Whoever it was clearly didn’t want to be discovered—hugging the bushes, it was clear the person was up to no good. Katie drew her blanket around her shoulders and peered more intently out the window. She was just gagging to know who she was looking at.

  At that moment, a shaft of moonlight broke through the layers of cloud, illuminating a slender figure with unnaturally white skin and unusually bright orange hair. Fate, for once, had chosen to smile on Katie. She nearly passed out cold with excitement when she realized the furtive figure was none other than Daisy Finnegan, head girl of the lower sixth and completely unwitting recipient of huge amounts of mental vitriol from this particular second-year student.

  Daisy had woken in a cold sweat, thinking of next week’s chemistry exam, only to realize she’d left her homemade revision table of chemical equations in the cricket pavilion. She muttered crossly to herself under her breath, aggrieved to have forgotten the colour-coded, laminated spreadsheet it had taken her two full days of the Christmas holidays to construct. She liked to have it on hand to glance at whenever she felt panicky about the imminent exams, which was surprisingly often.

  It was freezing outside, and even though Daisy was an undeniable suck-up, swot, and a sneak, she was thinking longingly of her bed and wishing she wasn’t so conscientious. Jinx and the others were not the only ones feeling the pressure from the teachers. Daisy often wished she could be more effortlessly casual about things, like so many of the others in her year, but the requisite “chill out” gene just seemed to be missing in her.

  Whilst Daisy was staggering along the pitches in the freezing cold in search of her lost study notes, the three in the police van had recovered their voices and were subjecting the policemen in the front to a barrage of pleading, sob stories, and desperate last appeals to be released before they reached the main gates. At the same time, they were all so worried about the repercussions from the school they couldn’t help but throw barbed remarks at each other in between their plaintive and increasingly vociferous remarks to the coppers.

  “Wild horses couldn’t have dragged me away from that party,” Jinx muttered, glaring at Chastity’s puke-covered face opposite her and thinking for the first time that she bloody well deserved everything that happened earlier. “But you and three flying pigs managed it perfectly. Jamie will never speak to me again.” Jinx fixed Chastity with a steely glare and began ticking off the rest of her grievances on her fingers. “Liberty never got that guy’s phone number, we never got to have any more of those amazing drinks, God knows what’s happened to George and, for the grand finale, we’re probably all going to get expelled for sure. And Liberty and I were signed out for the whole weekend, so as far as the school’s concerned we’re not even anywhere near Brighton. So yes, Chastity, thanks for a whole bunch of nothing.”

  “You bitch,” hissed Chastity. “You absolute fucking bitch. I don’t suppose you give a shit that Paul and I have split up and I’m covered in fucking SICK from head to foot, do you?”

  “Shut up guys,” Liberty said. “We’ve got approximately two minutes and we’ve got to do something.”

  Katie Green was also fixated on doing something, and she too had no idea what that something was yet. There was no way she could let Daisy Finnegan get away with creeping about in the middle of the night like this. A unique potential spot of revenge was staring her in the face and she knew she mustn’t let this window of opportunity slip shut without making the most of it. There must, she thought, her brain ticking over slowly but determinedly, be something she could do to screw Daisy over. A teacher—that was it! That was the answer to all her problems! She had to somehow alert a member of the staff to Daisy’s nocturnal wanderings without drawing attention to herself. But how could she do this?

  Katie forced herself to think back to the day of the fire alarm, when Daisy had so uncaringly humiliated her in front of her heroines. This exercise was an attempt to drum up an even greater strength of feeling and hopefully find a solution. This didn’t take long to work, amazingly enough. After only three minutes of reliving the unfortunate scene—during which time Daisy finally reached the shelter of the Pavilion’s porch—and digging it even less in the re-imagining, Katie experienced her first ever Eureka moment. Somehow she had managed to coax a plan out of her addled mind. No, she thought recklessly, clutching her tummy in excitement, it wasn’t so much a plan as a bloody brainwave. Now all she had to do was put it into action. And this, of course, was the hard bit.

  Whilst Katie turned left out of Steinem’s inside back door and began creeping silently along the corridor towards the art room, the sanitorium, the old reference library, Pankhurst House, and ultimately Mrs. Bennett’s large house beyond, the police van was turning off the coast road and making its way towards Stagmount’s main gates and driveway.

  Katie paused for breath in front of Mrs. Bennett’s front steps and stared at the smart, navy-painted door with its big brass knocker smack bang in the middle. She knew that no one was around, but at this time of night the school seemed eerily quiet and was an undeniably frightening place to be. The darkness didn’t help her nerves much either. The most ordinary objects and buildings took on a spooky, paranormal glow under the dim, greenish glare of the streetlights randomly dotted about the place, and Katie took a few deep breaths to steady her nerves before she made her final assault.

  The police van that contained a now very subdued Jinx, Liberty, and Chastity, slumped together in a sorry, sickly lump at the back of the van, exhausted and pretty much resigned to whatever sick joke fate intended to throw at them next this evening, slowed to allow the electric gates to roll to the side.

  Daisy, meanwhile, traversed the quad in front of the main entrance.

  At the same time, the police van swung through the main gates and Katie banged fiercely on Mrs. Bennett’s door and then flung herself behind a handy Camelia bush in the flowerbed running alongside the outer wall of Pankhurst House.

  These three events, some admittedly more unfortunate than others, converged at exactly the wrong moment. A sleep-deprived Mrs. Bennett, wrapped in a fog of exhaustion and a floral Cath Kidston dressing gown, flung open her door at the same time the police van slowed to a halt in front of one of the speed bumps and Daisy rounded the corner from the main school.

  Katie had to shove one of her fat fists into her mouth to muffle her scream of appalled shock when she saw Jinx, Liberty, and Chastity clamber wearily out the sliding back door of the horribly distinctive blue and white van and arrange themselves silently in front of their headmistress.

  Mrs. Bennett was so horrified at the sight of them—not least their law enforcement entourage—it was all she could do to push the lingering thought that she must still be dreaming from her mind. When she saw Daisy Finnegan standing uncertainly to the left of the bedraggled but still a zillion times more glamorous three, their headmistress did an actual double take. For once, Mrs. Bennett found it difficult to believe her own eyes!

  The headmistress recovered her senses when the burly policeman—who, it must be said, was beginning to wish they’d left the girls, who were technically adults after all, to their own devices down on the seafront—removed his hat and coughed.

  “Evening, madam,” he said. “Sorry to get you out of bed, but we found these girls of yours down on the seafront and thought you might like them back.”

  Mrs. Bennett cast an experienced eye over the shady-as-hell girls in front of her, the embarrassed policemen beyond, and wisely decided to get to the bottom of this particular mess using the soft, gentle approach.

  “Right then,” she said in a tone that brooked no arguments from any of t
hem. “Everyone inside. Chop chop, come on, we can’t stand around in the cold like this.”

  Jinx, Liberty, and Chastity, eyes cast firmly to the ground, began to shuffle up the steps. They were too shocked even to register that—after four years’ often intense speculation as to how it would be inside—this was the first time any of them had ever knowingly set foot in Heads House, as Mrs. Bennett’s abode was called. After removing their hats, the policemen followed them. Only Daisy hung back. She was reluctant to associate herself with this motley crew and she was quite clear on her intention to calmly and fearlessly tell Mrs. Bennett about her innocent mission and be on her way.

  “Don’t even think about it, Daisy Finnegan,” snapped Mrs. Bennett, crooking an impatient finger and hurrying the malingerer inside. “I am especially surprised at you!”

  “But…” Daisy’s downright foolish attempt to answer Mrs. Bennett back was cut off with what appeared to be a relative of the karate chop, but with not such a straight arm and a hissing sound. Daisy recoiled, and as she did so her trusty sheet of chemical equations caught on the wind and whirled up, up, up in the night air before disappearing on a sudden strong gust round to the back of Mrs. B.’s house.

  “Inside, NOW!” the headmistress barked, and a truly terrified Daisy put all thoughts of both telling her side of the story and ever seeing her revision aid again immediately aside and hurried up the steps as quickly as she could.

  Behind the Camelia bush Katie was the sudden recipient of a load of wet leaves and dirty water dumping on her from where it had been pushed along the gutter by the rainwater and directed down the drain right above her head. She blinked furiously as she wiped some thick black grime from her woebegone face and raised her head in time to see the revision timetable fly up into the air and Mrs. Bennett’s front door slam behind Daisy. By happy accident, the timetable, which had danced for a while in the wind above the decked terrace at the back of Mrs. Bennett’s house, chose that moment to shoot across the side of Pankhurst House and float to the ground, where it landed right next to Katie’s bush. Katie reached for it, cast a curious eye over the meaningless symbols on the front before she instantly lost interest and scrunched it without another thought deep into the back pocket of her baggy, brown cords—possibly the most singularly unflattering item of clothing anyone at Stagmount had ever possessed, but anyway, they had big pockets. There was no way in hell she was going back to bed just yet, so she settled into the squelching mud ready to wait this one out for as long as it took.