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  Jinx, Liberty, Chastity, and Daisy sat very close together on a white- and red-striped silk sofa in Mrs. B.’s dramatic drawing room. Huge earthenware pots containing Triffid-sized green plants were bunched variously around, lending the blood-red walls, massive gold-framed mirrors, and tiny exquisite paintings the air of having been hung in a jungle. A rug very similar to the Bokhara in the study covered most of the dark and highly shined wood floor, its navy blue, red, and dark purple pattern entirely visible through the big chunk of glass that served as the headmistress’s coffee table.

  The girls barely had a chance to sit down and glance round before the burly policeman took the initiative, apologized for waking Mrs. Bennett, assured her that the girls had been doing nothing wrong, and insisted that he and his fellow officers were merely, chivalrously dropping them home at the end of an obviously tiring and emotional night. Mrs. Bennett pursed her lips at this, but thanked the officers for their kind gesture, promised to see that everyone got to bed as soon as possible—she even managed an airy laugh or two, albeit through gritted teeth—before she ushered them out of her house.

  Mrs. Bennett swept back into her drawing room and positioned herself on a high-backed, ornately carved wooden chair directly opposite the girls’ sofa. She sat there for a few seconds, thoughtfully studying the four overwrought faces in front of her.

  Jinx and Liberty looked scared and tired, but basically seemed fine. Daisy, Mrs. Bennett couldn’t help noting, was dressed most oddly compared to the others. Maybe, she considered, Daisy Finnegan was not the model pupil they all thought she was, and actually one of those “new geek hardcore ravers” she’d read about in the Sunday Times style section last weekend. She simply must be making a statement with her school tracksuit, no bra, and Wellington boots teamed with no makeup to speak of and a flowery blanket over her shoulders. Quite what this statement was, however, the headmistress had no idea. Either way, right now it was obvious to everyone in the room that Daisy really did not want to be there.

  Daisy sobbed quietly into her hands. She was shaking like a leaf and occasionally moaning incoherently through her haze of snot and tears. Daisy was not at all used to being “in trouble.” She clearly had no idea it was crucial to maintain an outwardly cool and calm exterior during these difficult encounters if one stood even the slightest chance of getting away with it. Jinx edged away from Daisy, but Mrs. Bennett didn’t notice, since she was busy studying Chastity Max-Ward.

  Chastity looked, frankly, like she’d been run over and left for dead—and that she now wished they’d finished the job. She also, Mrs. Bennett belatedly realized with a horrified shudder, appeared to be covered in what looked like human vomit. Dear God, but this job was no way near as glamorous as people so often assumed it was.

  “Right then, girls,” said Mrs. B. “I think it’s high time we make for our beds.”

  Mrs. Bennett made the executive decision to deal with this matter in the morning. Even if they hadn’t been delivered to her doorstep in the back of a police riot van she knew just from looking at them that the girls were exhausted and way too upset to deal rationally and sensibly with anything reasonable. And Mrs. Bennett, above all, was a reasonable, rational, and sensible woman. This is why she was so excellent at her job and so popular with the girls, the staff, the parents, and the governors. This is also why she was continually phoned up by newspapers for quotes on everything from education to female adolescence issues and was even beginning to develop quite a following on the Internet. The girls hadn’t discovered it yet, but a middle-aged man from Hull had set up a fan site in fulsome praise of the occasional times she appeared on Newsnight as an “expert.”

  “Right then,” she said softly, looking at the girls remarkably kindly given the circs, “I think the best thing for all of us is to get to bed as soon as possible. We obviously have a lot to discuss, but I’m sure it will all keep for the morning.”

  Taking advantage of the head’s new, calm mood, Daisy decided to try and explain her non-involvement once again. “Mrs. Ben--”

  “Daisy Finnegan,” Mrs. Bennett snapped in the iciest voice any of them had ever heard, “if you do not want me to lose my temper I suggest you do not say another single word until I ask you a direct question.”

  Daisy nodded sadly, sniffing hugely and trying in vain to halt the fresh flood of tears this announcement had brought to her eyes. If nothing else, the others supposed, beginning to feel almost sorry for her for the first time in their lives, at least she had the bloody sense not to respond verbally.

  “So, girls,” Mrs. Bennett continued, standing up to indicate that this cozy little session was most definitely at an end, “I want you to go straight back to Tanner House and get into bed. You’re all absolutely exhausted and there’s no point keeping you up a minute longer than necessary. I shall telephone Mr. Morris now and tell him to be expecting you, and we will meet in the morning and get to the bottom of exactly what’s gone on here. I’ll see all of you in my office first thing after chapel. And girls,” she added, “I don’t want any of you doing anything silly like sitting up worrying all night.”

  The girls nodded meekly, stood up and prepared to file shamefacedly out of Mrs. Bennett’s drawing room. Jinx edged past the headmistress and caught the strap of her gold faux snakeskin shoulder bag on one of the high-backed chairs ranged along the dining table. Blithely oblivious for a second, she continued walking before she was jerked back a few steps. The half-bottle of Smirnoff vodka fell out the bag and rolled slowly, portentously along the hall before coming to a stop underneath a magazine stand in the hallway. Mrs. Bennett didn’t say a word, but her expression darkened as she darted after it, bent down and picked it up. She looked Jinx in the eye as she passed it from hand to hand.

  “Um,” Jinx said, aghast at the cruel hand fate had dealt her, “I…”

  “Not now, Jinx,” said Mrs. Bennett. “Not now.”

  “But--” Jinx spluttered, desperately trying to think of an explanation.

  “No buts,” snapped the head, turning on her slipper. “We’ll deal with this in the morning as well.”

  Jinx raced down the steps outside and turned right in the direction of Tanner House, desperate to catch up with the others, who had walked on, oblivious to the vodka-bottle debacle. They walked as fast as they could without running away from Mrs. Bennett’s house, maintaining a determined, grimfaced silence until they rounded the corner past the sports hall to Tanner House and gained cover of the line of rhododendron bushes. As soon as they knew they could no longer be observed, they slowed to a trudge and gaped at each other in horror. Jinx was the first to break the silence.

  “Bloody hell, Daisy,” she said, still not understanding what possible sequence of events had led to her old nemesis from Wollstonecraft House sitting next to her on Mrs. Bennett’s amazingly tasteful sofa. “What on Earth have you been up to? I couldn’t believe it when I saw you standing next to us out there. Where did you come from?”

  “I realized I left my chemistry homework in the cricket pavilion,” wailed Daisy, still hugely distressed by this extremely unfair case of mistaken identity or whatever it was she was currently embroiled in. “So I got up and went to get it in case I woke up early and felt like memorizing some equations.”

  “Serves you fucking right then,” mumbled Liberty meanly, before instantly regretting it when Daisy cast a truly anguished glance in her direction. “Sorry, Daisy…sorry. I really am.”

  “And then,” Daisy continued, much mollified by the unprecedented apology, “I was walking back to Tanner when out of nowhere a police van came past me up the drive, and when I came round the corner Mrs. Bennett opened her door and then you guys got out and then…well, you know the rest. What am I going to DO? What if I get expelled? My parents would kill me!”

  “Come on, Daisy,” Jinx said, torn between laughing at the ridiculousness of Daisy’s increasingly high-pitched explanation and crying at the thought of her own no-doubt imminent expulsion. “We’ll tell he
r the truth tomorrow and you’ll be fine. She’ll just probably say you were an idiot for not leaving it until morning and fucking apologise to you or something. I really wouldn’t sweat it if I were you.”

  “Do you really think?” Daisy asked, eyes shining hopefully at Jinx.

  “Yeah I do. It’s us,” she said, looking at Liberty and Chastity, “who need to be coming up with the best damn story in the world right about NOW.”

  “Do you promise you’ll tell her I didn’t have anything to do with the police and things?” asked Daisy, still not quite able to trust Jinx and the others wouldn’t stitch her up as part of some “hilarious” gag. “Really promise?”

  Jinx looked over at her and inexplicably felt truly sorry for her for the first time ever. She also felt bad about all the times she’d been mean to Daisy and made up her mind to be as nice as possible to her from now on and hopefully score some karmic points—let’s face it, she needed them.

  “Of course we will, Daisy,” Jinx said firmly. “Don’t worry about it. I can’t believe what shit luck you’ve had! But wait till you lot hear what happened to me just now.”

  “Fuck,” said Liberty, clutching Jinx’s hand in horror as the latter finished telling the others about the Smirnoff fiasco. “What do you think Mrs. Bennett will do?”

  “I don’t know.” Jinx spoke more nonchalantly than she felt. “But there’s no point sweating it until tomorrow.”

  “The only thing I don’t understand,” said Daisy suddenly, looking at Jinx, “is why Mrs. Bennett opened her door when she did.”

  The others looked at her blankly. They hadn’t thought about this at all.

  “What do you mean?” asked Chastity, speaking for the first time since they’d left the police van. Considering the river of tears she had cried this evening, it was no surprise she sounded like Dracula after a night on the lash.

  “Well, think about it logically,” said Daisy, sounding—for once comfortingly—exactly like one of the teachers. “She’d obviously dashed out of bed in a rush as if she’d heard something outside, but nothing was making a noise. It’s too windy for the police van driving past on the tarmac to make enough noise to wake anyone up, and I was walking silently past the buildings. I was so shocked to see the van drive past me that I didn’t think about it at the time, but I suppose I was vaguely aware of some kind of banging sound.”

  “I don’t get it,” Chastity said impatiently. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying,” said Daisy, looking over her shoulder to where they had come from and shivering dramatically, “that I think someone knew you lot were going to be driving past at that time and decided to drop you in it by knocking on her door and running away.”

  “What?” asked Liberty, horrified at the very thought. “Who would want to do something like that to us?”

  “Someone who’s got a grudge,” replied Daisy knowingly. “It could be anyone.”

  “Hold on a second,” Chastity cut in exasperatedly. “I don’t think it’s fair to imply that anyone in the whole of Stagmount might have a grudge against us. We’re actually, like, some of the most popular girls at this freaking school.”

  “Exactly,” said Daisy darkly.

  It didn’t occur to any of them—even Daisy herself—that the person who had brought Mrs. Bennett rushing to her front door might be somebody who had a problem with Daisy. The whole thing was just too leftfield, too goddamn unlikely.

  It was now nearly two o’clock in the morning, but Katie Green was far too agitated to feel it. She had watched as the four lower-sixths set off at a smart pace down the drive in the direction of Tanner House. She saw Mrs. Bennett watch after them until they rounded the corner, one hand on her chin, the other on her hip as if she was deeply worried. She noticed none of the girls looked back once, pointedly almost, in the embarrassed manner of people who know they are being watched but can’t stand the sensation for whatever reason. She was soaked through, covered in mud, filth, and slime from the drain above, hiding behind a Camelia bush on a cliff top just to the east of Brighton in the middle of the night in the freezing cold and she didn’t feel a thing because she was too focused on forcing her barely adequate, cretinous brain to work out what the hell had just happened.

  Whatever, one thing was clear: Katie knew she had to get herself back to Steinem House and the safety of her room as soon as possible. The junior crept off, making sure to keep herself in the shadows.

  Meanwhile, Liberty, Chastity, and Jinx invited a surprised but pleased Daisy Finnegan into Jinx’s room for an emergency crisis discussion meeting at half past eight, right before chapel the next morning. They wouldn’t normally bother to attend on a Sunday morning after such a late night, but wisely decided it would do no harm to their cause whatsoever to be observed singing lustily in the aisles. And after getting over the terrible initial shock of it all and Mr. Morris’s “disappointed” face when he met them at the door, they each went to bed reasonably confident they’d somehow manage to scam their way out of it in the morning. Thank God for Mrs. B. deciding to postpone things, they unanimously agreed—she really was the most amazingly civilized woman they were ever likely to meet and they were beyond freaking lucky to have her as their headmistress. Contrary to their expectations, within minutes each and every one of them, despite all the upset and histrionics on the grandest scale, was fast asleep as if they didn’t have a care in the world.

  Katie stood in the dark of her room and shed her seriously messed-up clothes. She stuffed them into a plastic bag and dumped them underneath a pile of clean towels at the back of her wardrobe, figuring she’d wash them later. Using most of her L’Oreal moisturizing face wipes, she cleared the rest of the grime from her face, hands and neck and got into bed. If she was a religious girl she might have prayed for guidance at this point, but Katie was completely lacking in spirituality of any kind. She lay in bed, mindlessly popping Maltesers into her mouth and sucking them until they went soggy whilst wondering what on Earth her heroines had been doing out in town and how come they ended up being brought back to school by the police.

  Shocked didn’t even come close to how Katie was feeling right now. Shock and awe was more like it—she couldn’t help but be deeply, deeply impressed by the radical antics she’d witnessed tonight. What exciting, glamorous lives those girls lived, she thought as she closed her eyes, still sucking at the Maltesers furiously.

  Jinx woke up the next morning a few minutes before her alarm clock and stretched happily before tensing rigid as the events of the previous night slowly filtered into her growing awareness of what was going to be a huge headache.

  “Fuck,” she muttered crossly to herself, reaching for the two-litre bottle of Evian she always kept on her bedside table and banging weakly on the wall, which adjoined Liberty’s. “We are in so much trouble.”

  She lay back against her pillow and held her hand horizontally in front of her face to see how much it was trembling. Oh dear, things really did not look good from this frankly depressing side of last night’s amazing party.

  She reached for her phone and punched out a quick text message to her second-oldest brother, as she always did in times of hangover crisis. No matter what Jinx might have done, she could be assured that George would have gone one better. The comforting thought that at least she hadn’t been the worst behaved always made her feel a lot better about things. George was also a master at getting himself out of trouble and would surely advise his little sister on the very best damage control methods she needed to put in place right now.

  Jinx’s door was silently pushed open. In the frame stood a wild-haired Liberty who, judging from the black lines etched deep into the huge bags beneath her eyes, had neglected to take her makeup off before she got into bed last night. Without a word, Liberty lifted the corner of Jinx’s duvet, got into bed and snuggled up against her best friend. They lay there not speaking, just staring at each other in appalled horror, until Jinx’s phone made its customary trilling sound to indicate
she’d received a text.

  “‘STOP PRESS! Woteva u do, REITERATE that u WEREN’T in the care of the school at the time and there is technically NOTHING they can do to punish u. Peace out bitches,’” she read aloud to Liberty, before adding excitedly, “and he’s right of course, Lib. We were signed out for the weekend.”

  “Yeah,” Liberty conceded quietly, “we were. But I still can’t see us getting away with anything. Did you see Mrs. B.’s face last night? And darling—I hate to bring it up—but you’re in a whole world more trouble than us given the bloody vodka bottle.”

  Jinx said nothing. After a couple of minutes’ appalled silence, Chastity walked into the room. And although she was very pale indeed, she was smiling and looked a zillion times happier than she had by the end of last night. Chastity sat down on the end of Jinx’s bed and grinned at the pair of them lying in it, who were looking at her rather warily, as if not sure quite what emotion to expect next.

  “Don’t worry,” said Chastity. “I’m fine. I was so drunk last night I think I might have overreacted. But,” she continued firmly, “Paul and I are definitely over. He’s been driving me mad for ages now, but I didn’t say anything because I kind of felt embarrassed about it after how much I went on about how I liked him.