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  It just changed and I don’t really know why except I know I want to be single like you guys. I’m so bored of constantly missing out on things with you girls because he and I have got some boring bloody couples thing to do.”

  “I still can’t believe he told the police to phone the school,” Liberty said with a disgusted sniff. “What a complete asshole.”

  “Liberty!” Jinx said sharply.

  “What?” asked Liberty. “I can’t!”

  “Yeah, but it’s not really appropriate to start slagging off her boyfriend when the relationship’s barely cold in its grave yet,” said Jinx, nudging Liberty meaningfully and raising her eyebrows in Chastity’s direction. “Is it?”

  “Oh God,” Chastity said airily, waving a hand dismissively in front of her, “don’t worry about it. I’m so over him. What I do need to bloody worry about is what the hell I’m going to say to get out of this mess. Have we got any ideas?”

  Jinx, with no help whatsoever from Liberty, who took this opportunity to have a small cat nap, explained the situation regarding the intricacies of the signing out system, parental responsibilities versus school control and the fortunate convergence of the facts as far as they pertained to herself and Liberty. As Jinx talked, relief flooded Chastity’s face, bringing a little bit of much-needed colour to her cheeks and a pleased sparkle back to her still fairly bloodshot eyes.

  “Well, I’m fine too then,” she said, exhaling with relief and practically crossing herself in thanks. “As far as the school is concerned I was with Mum and Ian. Since I was planning to stay the night with Paul I signed out yesterday before I left, saying I was off to see them. They won’t be up yet so I’ll text Ian and tell him to say as far as he was concerned I was meeting up with you two in town and we were going to go out for dinner before getting a taxi back to his flat. Your parents say the same thing and we’re all fine.”

  “Brilliant,” said Jinx enthusiastically. “Mine will so do that. I’ll call them in a minute and give them the briefing. And we’ll say that on our way to getting a taxi to go back to school you started being sick—food poisoning or something—and the police stopped to help us.”

  “We’ll say,” Liberty added, “we were so worried about you Chas, we thought it was safer to get you back to school in case you couldn’t stop being sick and needed urgent medical attention from Mister Sinton. But that you then miraculously recovered in the van on the way back—they can’t disprove a thing.”

  “What about the vodka, Jin?” Liberty asked, worried. “Do you think Mrs. B. will give you a worse punishment than us?”

  “Dunno,” muttered Jinx, feeling very deflated at the prospect.

  Daisy pushed open the door and stood in front of them wearing a ratty pink dressing gown, her infuriating Garfield slippers and massive dark circles under her strangely pale eyes. The three of them laughed delightedly at the sheer simple genius of this plan whilst Daisy stared at them aghast. She could hardly believe her ears—how could they be so flippant and casual about all of this? If it were her in this amount of trouble she couldn’t be sure that suicidal thoughts wouldn’t pass through her mind.

  “B-b-but,” she stammered, “won’t Mrs. B. ask you loads of questions?”

  “So what,” said Jinx, bored of the whole damn issue. All she wanted was five freaking minutes to herself to think about Jamie and the things he’d said to her before she’d been so rudely taken away from his amazing party. “We stick to our stories like glue and there’s nothing they can do. Our parents won’t make a fuss—they knew exactly what we were up to and they couldn’t be bothered with the trouble if nothing else. And we are seventeen, which is practically an adult, even if we do live in a boarding school.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Chastity, “and don’t worry Daisy—we’ll spill the truth for you too. Everything’s going to be fine.”

  “That’s really sweet of you,” said Daisy with a blush. She wasn’t at all used to this level of niceness from these girls and she was kind of wishing she hadn’t always set herself so dead against them. Maybe it still wasn’t too late to make friends, she thought wistfully, before deciding this was highly unlikely. But it would be equally as nice to put an end to the cold war she and Jinx had sustained for three and a half years.

  “I tell you what,” Daisy said. “I’ll help you investigate who banged on Mrs. Bennett’s door and got her to rush out and catch us all like that. If we all put our heads together I’m sure we’ll catch the culprit.”

  “Thanks, Daisy,” said Jinx, smiling at her genuinely for maybe the first time ever in her life. “That’s really nice of you.”

  “What about YOU though, Jinx?” Daisy blurted out. “You’re going to get in more trouble than the others because the vodka came out of your pocket.”

  “Nah,” Jinx said nonchalantly, not even wanting to think about that. “I’ll be cool, but thanks, Daisy.”

  “Yeah,” Liberty agreed, following her and Chastity out of Jinx’s room, “it is nice of you Daisy. Thanks.”

  Jinx straightened out her bedding without getting up—one of her special skills was making her bed without actually getting out of it-and lay back against her newly fluffed-up pillows. She was desperate to have a quick think about things in the ten minutes she had left before she simply must get in the shower in order not to be late for chapel. Jumbled thoughts of Jamie jostled for space in her mind with the ghastly end to the party, curiosity about what might have happened with George and the triplets alongside what the hell had caused Daisy Finnegan to suddenly become so nice and what had kept Liv and Charlie away for so long. Sadly, her alarm went off again before she’d made much headway at all. Jinx got out of bed reluctantly, shrugged into her dressing gown and flip-flops, grabbed her Anya Hindmarch wash bag and sauntered off to the showers to think about what she would say to Mrs. Bennett in her office later that morning. She sincerely hoped Mrs. B. wouldn’t place the whole blame for the vodka bottle on her.

  Liberty, Chastity, Daisy Finnegan, and Jinx stood shoulder to shoulder in the chapel singing “Onward Christian Soldiers” with all the might they could muster. Jinx had no idea just how terribly out of tune she was. A devilish headache was rumbling just of out reach of the three pain killers she’d swallowed with a quick cup of coffee before leaving Tanner House. She prayed it would stay away from her frontal lobes for at least as long as it took her to get back into bed, where she fully intended to spend the rest of the day listening to soothing music and recuperating from their now scarily imminent chat with Mrs. Bennett.

  Chastity, meanwhile, was feeling remarkably chipper about things as she sang along perfectly and smiled angelically up at Mrs. Bennett standing in the pulpit above them. The thought that she was now free to do exactly as she pleased like all the others made her very happy indeed. She so wasn’t the kind of girl who needed a boyfriend, and since her relationship with Paul had become little more than a major drag she was just relieved to have gotten rid of him and not regretful in the slightest. Chastity Max-Ward was one way-cool customer.

  Jinx, Liberty, Chastity, and Daisy paused outside Mrs. Bennett’s office door. None of them wanted to be the one to knock. Jinx, Liberty, and Chastity also needed just a couple of seconds to compose themselves and iron out any fits of potential nervous giggles. The handle on the door turned sharply in front of them. Shocked into standing to attention and practically saluting, the door flew open and Mrs. Bennett was in front of them, ushering them into her office amidst gentle enquiries as to why on Earth they hadn’t knocked sooner and gesturing for them to sit down and help themselves to coffee and biscuits. All of them—apart from Daisy, who was now shaking with pure nerves alone—were suddenly far too nervous to contemplate holding a cup of hot coffee during this ordeal.

  Mrs. B. leant forward delicately on her leather armchair. Legs crossed slightly to the side and at the ankle, she raised her dainty green-and-gold bone-china coffee cup to her lips and took a sip. As she did so, she observed the girls through the black-ri
mmed Prada spectacles that had slipped slightly down her patrician nose. The four of them were perched on the outer rim of the sofa cushions, keen to appear as eager, alert, sensible, and responsive to their headmistress as possible.

  “You are,” Mrs. Bennett continued, smiling slightly to soften the blow, “wallys, dingbats, and sillies of the first order.”

  The girls giggled slightly, not quite able to believe that anyone anywhere in the whole world still used these kinds of insults and storing them up to tell the others later.

  “However,” the head continued, a steelier tone to her previously warm, reassuring voice, “I was not at all amused to be confronted with the four of you and a police escort at my front door last night. And I intend,” she said, looking them in the eye one by one, “to get to the bottom of exactly what it was you were up to.”

  “Well, Mrs. Bennett,” said Jinx, deciding to jump straight in and get this ordeal the hell over with, “we certainly can explain everything to you, and I shall do so right away.”

  “I hope you can,” replied Mrs. B., fixing her with a gimlet eye. “For I can assure you that three members of my lower sixth being picked up in town and dropped off back at school in the back of a police vehicle is most definitely not the kind of image Stagmount either wants or needs.”

  “Yes,” muttered Jinx, momentarily thrown and flicking an aghast glance at Liberty next to her. “Of course, Mrs. Bennett. So…um…where was I? Oh yes,” she continued hastily, having recovered her composure, “the thing is, we had all arranged to meet for dinner in town, before heading back to Chastity’s parents’ place in London on one of the late trains and then come back to school—the regular way, ha ha—this evening.”

  “And?” Mrs. Bennett said as Jinx paused for a much-needed breath.

  “And we had a lovely meal at a pizza place, although Chastity had a seafood pizza, which, you know, is never really a good idea what with all the calamari rings on it.” Jinx paused again and quickly wondered if calamari was a dangerous enough foodstuff known for poisoning in its own right. She looked at Mrs. Bennett’s skeptical face and decided not. “With prawns…and mussels. Yes, mussels, lots of them. Oh, and even some cockles and whelks and…um…those orange seafood sticks you get in supermarkets, sort of shaved over the top of it under all the cheese, I think. It was very stringy anyway.”

  “And?” Mrs. Bennett snapped, baffled by all this talk of filthy pizza toppings and wondering darkly if Jinx was joking.

  “And, well,” Jinx said, with a downward glance intended to convey extreme dismay, “with all of that sloshing around inside her and maybe a bad mussel or prawn or something, when we were on our way to the station Chastity suddenly started being sick.”

  “Yes, Mrs. B.,” Chastity said. “It was awful. I just couldn’t stop. I vomited and I vomited and I vomited, and then I vomited some more.”

  Mrs. Bennett, remembering with a shudder the sick she’d spotted all over Chastity late last night, was beginning to look slightly alarmed for her Bokhora rug and tasteful soft furnishings.

  “It’s true, Mrs. Bennett,” agreed Liberty with relish. “It was—literally—the sickest thing I’ve ever seen. It was just pouring out of her as if it would never stop. And it was the most bright orange colour, like paint or something. Man, it was gross as hell.”

  “Yes, thank you, Liberty,” snapped Mrs. Bennett, slightly confused to be addressed as “man,” “but that doesn’t explain how the Sussex police force came to be involved. If one of you would be so kind, I would like to get this wrapped up sooner rather than later. Contrary to popular expectation, I do NOT delight in spending my Sundays dealing with school matters.”

  Jinx, Liberty, and Chastity exchanged a quick horrified glance; Daisy’s eyes were too swollen to notice, but she exhaled a great shaky breath that suggested she was on the brink of a severe mental meltdown. The fury etched on Mrs. Bennett’s normally calm face made the girls wonder if maybe they wouldn’t get away with it, despite all the fortuitous extenuating circumstances.

  “Well,” said Jinx, “Chastity was being so ill we had to stop walking and sort of stand with her at the side of the pavement on the busy seafront road. People were slowing down their cars as they drove past—it was that much of a spectacle. Anyway, then the police stopped to see what was going on and offered us a lift back to school. We tried to stop them,” Jinx said in her most sincere voice, staring intently into Mrs. Bennett’s eyes and holding her gaze without blinking, “but they simply insisted upon it. And anyway, with Chas so ill, we thought getting her back here and into bed must be our priority.”

  Daisy, who had been staring, mouth agape, was slack-jawed with wonder at the most virtuoso performance she’d ever witnessed being played out on the stage of this sofa she herself was also sitting on. She literally couldn’t believe it, so much so that she’d forgotten her own predicament totally. She only remembered it when she heard her own name in the conversation and snapped back to attention.

  “And Daisy,” Chastity was now saying earnestly to Mrs. Bennett, “was not involved at all. She just got caught up in the confusion alongside us, but Mrs. Bennett, we absolutely swear on our mothers’ lives that she wasn’t out in town with us and hasn’t done anything wrong. She was only trying to get her study notes back!”

  “I’m sure it’s not right to swear anything on your mother’s life, Chastity,” said a somewhat appalled Mrs. Bennett, who’d never heard the charming expression before. “What a horrid, nasty thing to say. Please never let me hear you say that again.”

  “Sorry,” mumbled a very humbled-looking Chastity, suddenly feeling absolutely horrified with herself, staring at the shiny black patent pair of Marc Jacobs Mary Jane shoes she’d rather incongruously matched with her school uniform and thinking about how much she loved her mum.

  “So, Daisy, you got up out of bed and walked over there in the middle of the night to retrieve some study notes?” continued the headmistress, thinking that Daisy Finnegan really must be a little touched in the head and looking correspondingly puzzled as she quizzed her.

  “Yes,” Daisy nodded, her face looking paler than ever against her ginger hair, her puffy eyes almost popping out of her head in terror by now.

  “I am,” Mrs. Bennett said, putting her coffee cup down on the low table in front of them and shaking her head, “very, very disappointed in all of you. And I am especially disappointed that you, Jinx, have such little regard for your school that you see fit to wander the streets with a bottle of vodka in your pocket.”

  Jinx shook her own head, albeit hardly noticeably. She hated it when adults did that “more in sorrow than in anger” thing. It made her feel bad every time and she folded her arms across her chest, trying to make herself as small as possible.

  “You have,” the headmistress continued, “not only let me and the school down, but also yourselves. I can only imagine what your parents will think about all of this.”

  She paused to stare out the window as Daisy emitted a series of stomach-clenchingly revolting snorting sounds at the mention of the word “parents.” It was all Jinx and Chastity could do to maintain a straight face—they knew their parents would be cool with it. Liberty studied her shoes, a pained expression on her face. She knew Mrs. B. would never say anything to her dad, but this almost made her feel worse. The last person on Earth she wanted to upset was her beloved headmistress, especially when she’d tried so hard to stand up for her in the face of Amir’s black rage at the end of last term.

  “You’re not silly schoolgirls anymore,” Mrs. Bennett went on. “You’re young adults, and I expect you to behave accordingly. You’re halfway through the lower sixth. I’m not only cross with you girls; I’m saddened by the fact that you still seem unable to distinguish between right and wrong.”

  “We are so sorry Mrs. Bennett, we really are,” Liberty said. “We promise and swear nothing like this will ever happen again. Truly, if Chastity hadn’t been so ill none of this would have happened.”

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nbsp; “Well,” said Mrs. Bennett, “as far as Daisy’s concerned, I’m sure you’ve learned your lesson and I won’t be taking this any further.”

  “Oh yes,” agreed Daisy, tear pricks of relief causing her eyes to shine suspiciously brightly. “I have.”

  “And as for the rest of you,” she continued, fixing the girls with yet another gimlet eye, “I have spoken to or left messages for your parents and—since you were all signed out for the weekend and technically not in the care of the school—I can’t punish you as heavily as I would like to. Although you, Jinx Slater, can expect further punishment when I have finally managed to get hold of your parents.”

  The girls winced collectively at the positively icy new edge to their headmistress’s voice and shuffled back slightly on their sofa.

  “In fact,” she went sternly on, recalling how Chastity Max-Ward’s stepfather or whoever he was had whistled appreciatively, as if actually impressed by what he obviously saw as her rock-and-roll antics, “I was rather surprised at the levels of nonchalance affected by all of your parents regarding this matter. Apart from your father, Liberty, who I simply did not call.”

  The girls smirked; they couldn’t help it—this was too good. Of course their parents wouldn’t make a scene about things; this was an excellent story to be told at the next dinner party, and anyway—where the hell’s the point in making a fuss about stuff? At least their kids weren’t teenage crack-whores, in gangs, on (many) drugs, and out robbing old ladies. Although if it was possible for Daisy’s mouth to fall open any further, they doubted it.

  “But what about my parents,” she wailed, hot tears spilling rapidly down her cheeks at the thought of how upset and disappointed they’d be with her. “They must have gone mad! What am I going to DO!”

  “Calm down, Daisy,” snapped Mrs. Bennett, who had a horror of hysteria, particularly, ironically, in schoolgirls. “Your parents were the only ones who didn’t answer the phone and since there appeared to be no messaging service I wasn’t able to leave one. They are none the wiser about any of this and I certainly won’t be phoning up to tell them about your lost revision aid. Although, Daisy,” she carried on in more gentle tones, “I think you need to try and relax a little bit. It really wouldn’t have killed you to wait until morning to retrieve it, would it? I don’t want any of my girls falling ill through overwork. The usual school day provides you with plenty of homework to do, and I really don’t think there’s a need to go looking for any extra.