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  She didn’t manage to finish her sentence because Jamie tenderly cupped her face with one hand, licked the forefinger of the other and used it to wipe a smudge of dirt from her cheek.

  “There you go,” he said, standing back and appraising his handiwork with a wide smile. “Now you look like the million-dollar babe we all know and love.”

  Jinx felt like she’d been struck by lightning and also struck dumb in the process. She very much doubted she was capable of saying another word even if she wanted to.

  Jamie put an arm around her shoulder, pulled her in close and gestured at her feet. “Something tells me,” he said, before turning to wink at her, “that someone needs to find her shoes.”

  “Yes,” Jinx agreed, finally finding her nerve and twinkling up at him from where she was squidged deliciously into the crook of his armpit. “I do.”

  As the pair of them made their way outside they ran straight into George and Damian. At the same time Jamie relinquished his hold on Jinx’s shoulder, Damian grabbed her arm.

  “We’ve looked bloody everywhere for you,” he said, clearly very cross about it, “and we want to go home. NOW!”

  “Yeah,” George agreed. “Come on, Sis, Mum and Dad will take it out on us if we don’t get you home soon.”

  Jinx was furious inside, but knew from past experience there was no point in defying the Slater boys when they’d already made up their minds to go home after a party. She knew they couldn’t wait to get home and raid the fridge—there was literally nothing she could say to dissuade them at this point, however much she might have pleaded. Her stomach clenched as Jamie leant over, kissed her cheek and softly whispered a goodbye into her ear, but she had no time to think about anything as the boys clasped each other’s shoulders before she was practically frog-marched away from the crowd by the door.

  “Jinx!” hissed Damian suddenly. The trio had slipped past the crowd towards the winding drive that would take them on the road to home, but Damian had stopped to point in horror at a pair of beautiful shoes discarded by the fountain, and was now giving his sister a fright. “Please tell me those aren’t Mum’s Biba shoes perched precariously on the edge of that fountain!”

  “Thank God!” Jinx—who in all the excitement had totally forgotten her earlier mission—darted into the melee, emerging a few seconds later triumphantly swinging the purple platforms by their long suede ankle ties. “Thanks, Gaym, you’re a legend.”

  “Hmpf” was Damian’s only response. He shook his head in disgust at her casual way with vintage clothing, and the three of them started off down the drive.

  Jinx trailed a few metres behind her brothers all the way home and got into bed in an absolute daze.

  She daydreamed her way through the last few days of the Christmas holiday, constantly replaying the scene with Jamie in her head—and imagining a fair few more besides. She finally stepped off cloud nine and started throwing things haphazardly into her trunk for the beginning of term about an hour before her dad was due to drive her back to Stagmount. As she tied her curtains back and threw open her windows, however, Jinx caught sight of George pulling his boots on down by the stable block. It took about twenty seconds for her to decide she’d prefer to go for a ride in the forest than think about school anymore. It took another twenty for her to race down the stairs, out the doors and present herself, huffing and puffing with her riding hat in her hand, in front of him.

  2 Home on the Farm

  Jinx stood UP in her stirrups as she galloped along a very muddy track in one of the forest enclosures not far from home, folded herself forwards toward Pansy’s pricked ears, loosened her reins, and gave Damian’s game old hunter her head. They were soon going so fast her eyes were streaming and the trees and bushes they whizzed past melded together into one big streak of blurred green.

  Jinx sat back in the saddle and peered over her shoulder to look for her brother George as she felt the horse slow up underneath her. She laughed out loud as she spotted him about half a mile behind her.

  “Hey, retard!” she yelled, “I thought you said there was no way in HELL I’d beat you?”

  George’s stirrups were so short his knees were practically touching his ears, and he was bouncing up and down like a huge and demented jockey. He grimaced at Jinx but didn’t reply. He urged Dillon on towards his sister, who had pulled Pansy back into a gentle canter before slowing to a jerky, high-stepping trot and then an ambling walk.

  Jinx drew in great lungfuls of the fresh forest air and stretched her arms high above her head. Flexing her neck from side to side she realized she hadn’t felt this physically or mentally sharp since the day she’d arrived home from Stagmount at the end of last term. She’d managed to hold it together until the end of school, but winced as she acknowledged the fact that she’d spent most of the Christmas holidays in a haze of tears, stubbornly refusing to return any of her friends’ numerous phone calls and generally stomping about the place, complaining bitterly about every family activity she’d not been able to get out of.

  Since Tarquin’s party Jinx had divided her lying-on-her-bed-and-thinking time pretty evenly between the new object of her affections and her best friend. The only thing, she thought now, to make her Jamie story perfect was if Liberty were able to hear it too.

  Jinx laughed at her still-too-breathless-to-speak brother as he pulled up alongside her.

  “I can’t remember the last time I beat you in a race,” she said. She sat up and wiped her grimy sweat- and hair-covered hand thoughtlessly on her clean jeans and smiled with something approaching genuine happiness for the first time since Liberty had been flown away from Stagmount in the Harrods helicopter by her furious father near the end of last term. Jinx hadn’t heard a single word from her and had worried about her whereabouts and welfare constantly since.

  “I was going easy on you,” said George with a sideways smirk at his sister, delighted to see her looking and acting more like her usual easygoing self. “I thought letting you win would cheer you up. I wouldn’t have bloody done it if I’d known you’d be this smug, though.”

  “Shut up, G.” Jinx was laughing so hard she had to clutch the front of her saddle for support. “I won that fair and square and you KNOW it. But if you’re still not sure,” Jinx said as she gathered up her reins, narrowed her eyes and made as if to belt off across the huge green they were approaching, “why don’t we go again?”

  George grabbed her left arm and shook his head.

  “I thought so,” Jinx said, raising an eyebrow and smiling archly.

  “So,” George said casually after they’d meandered along in companionable silence the entire way across the open green and were now approaching the home straight, “still no word from Lib then? Christmas just wasn’t the same without you two goons shrieking, shoving, and laughing all over the place, and Mum and Dad are really worried about you. You mooching about the place so miserably all the time isn’t fair on them.”

  Jinx’s eyes filled with tears. She stared determinedly at Pansy’s pricked ears in front of her. She was torn between shouting at George to mind his own business before storming off in the most almighty huff or admitting that he was right and that she had been treating her family badly.

  “You’re right, G.,” she sniffed, having decided to do the right thing after a quick mental tussle. “I’m absolutely gutted about Lib. And I know I’ve been awful to you guys. Even at New Year’s.”

  George said nothing, but nodded encouragingly at her.

  “It’s that thing, you know.” Jinx squirmed in her seat, for she had a real aversion to “deep and meaningfuls.” “Where you KNOW you’re being a bitch even as you’re doing it. You don’t want to be behaving like that and you wish you could snap out of it but your bad mood has been going on for so long it’s become almost, like, a default setting. Do you know what I mean?”

  “I’m a guy, Jinx, remember?” George said this with a small, self-satisfied shrug of his shoulders. If he could have patted himself on the ba
ck at the same time he would have done so. “We don’t do that kind of shit.”

  “Shut UP, G.,” Jinx shouted, spinning round in her seat and giving him the finger. “That’s the biggest bunch of bollocks I’ve ever heard. Do you want me to continue baring my soul or what?”

  “Of course I do.” George looked at his watch, then winked slyly at his sister. “I’m just pleased that it’s only taken you—ooo—about three minutes of chat with your second-biggest brother to revert to the self-obsessed narcissist we all know and love.”

  He ducked as Jinx swung her riding crop at his head. The sudden movement surprised Dillon, who’d been moseying along in very relaxed fashion with his nose practically touching the ground in front of his face, and the horse jumped about four feet in the air without any warning whatsoever. Jinx winced and shut her eyes. When she opened them a second later a very disgruntled-looking George was sitting in a muddy puddle, completely soaked through with muddy streaks all over his face and neck. Dillon, meanwhile, had obviously decided he needed to get home as quick as was equinely possible. Since he was fast becoming a small ginger blur in the distance, he’d also evidently discovered a reserve turn of speed that he’d been hiding earlier.

  “Shit, George.” Jinx, trying desperately to hold back what she was sure would be an uncontrollable case of the giggles if she let them out, jumped off Pansy’s back and held a hand out to help George up. “I am so sorry. I seriously didn’t mean for that to happen.”

  George shook his head and grabbed hold of Jinx’s hand as if he was going to let himself be helped out of his puddle.

  “Argh, you bastard!” Jinx screamed when George yanked her hand towards him and she lost her footing. She toppled forward, then skidded on her knees in the deep mud until she was lying on her front adjacent to her brother. “I can’t fucking believe,” Jinx said, lifting her head and mumbling through a mouthful of dirt, “I fell for that!”

  “Yeah, literally!” George sprang to his feet and grabbed hold of Pansy, who was standing like a mule and staring halfheartedly after Dillon, before collapsing with laughter. “Well, Sis, it looks like one of us will be walking back. And since it was you who started this little incident,” George said as he swung himself athletically onto Pansy’s back, gathered the reins together, and flicked his sister the V, “it’s sure as hell not going to be me. Bye!”

  Jinx sat in her puddle and glared angrily after her brother, whose maniacal bursts of laughter were carried back to her on the wind as he galloped towards home. Torn between crying and laughing, she chewed her lip and used her sleeve to try and wipe the worst of the mud off her face as she decided which emotion was going to win.

  With a sigh she stood up and ran her hands through her hair, wincing as her fingers became stuck in a particularly filthy clump. She peeled off her sodden jumper, tied it round her waist and began the long trudge home, the occasional giggle escaping her mouth every time she thought of George’s extreme surprise at his impromptu fall to Earth.

  Jinx decided that when Liberty found a way to contact her she would, and that in the meantime she had to get a grip on herself and stop agonizing about it. She also realized she’d hardly given a thought to going back to Stagmount for the new term yet, but now that it was imminent she was looking forward to seeing the gang again.

  Jinx was washing the mud off the bottom of her filthy jeans and ancient trainers using the hose pipe just outside the tack room and feeling pretty pleased with her new mature outlook on life when Caroline Slater flew round the corner wearing her tan Ugg slippers.

  “Jinx,” her mum yelled breathlessly, skidding to a halt in front of her surprised daughter. Caroline never wore her Uggs outside, and regularly threatened pain of death to anyone—namely Jinx—who might borrow them and think of doing the same. “I thought I heard the gate slam, thank God you’re back!”

  “What’s wrong, Mum?” Jinx asked, quickly turning off the tap and shaking the water off her jeans. “Is everything ok? You’ve got your Uggs on! If Dad’s cross that I went out riding, then--”

  Caroline looked down at her feet in dazed surprise. She’d left the kitchen at such a stretch she hadn’t noticed what shoes she was wearing until Jinx pointed them out.

  “Never mind that,” she said, grabbing Jinx’s hand excitedly. “I’ve been pacing about for the last hour, just dying for you to get back. When George eventually appeared and told me you were walking home I nearly combusted!”

  “Why Mum?” Jinx was none the wiser and her feet were beginning to freeze. “What is it?”

  “Liberty phoned,” Jinx’s mum yelled, gripping both of Jinx’s hands. “She’s in Washington, D.C.!”

  “What?” An expression of sheer, unadulterated delight spread slowly across Jinx’s shocked face. “When did she phone? How is she? And what the hell is she doing there?! Did she leave a number? Oh God.” Jinx hugged her mum and started jumping up and down, taking her protesting mother with her. “I’m so PLEASED!”

  “Oh, Jinx.” Caroline drew back and put her hands on her daughter’s shoulders. Her eyes had filled with tears to match her daughter’s. “I can’t tell you how pleased I am, too. We’ve all been so worried about you—and her! For the first time ever I’ve not known what to say to make you feel better about things.

  “Come on, darling.” Caroline linked arms with a by-now very tearful Jinx as they headed towards the kitchen. “Let’s go inside and have a cup of tea and I’ll tell you everything I know.”

  They settled into the comfy sofa to the side of the back door, and Caroline told her the story. Jinx crossed her legs underneath her, gripped her oversized blue ceramic mug with both hands, blew on the scalding hot tea it contained, and stared at her mother in amazement.

  “So,” Jinx eventually said, “you’re telling me that Amir is so furious with Liberty he has disowned her and sent her to the States to live with her mum? In Washington? I almost can’t believe it.”

  Stella Fox, that vengeful bitch of the first order, had, after falling out with Jinx and the others, e-mailed photos of her and Liberty on a night out in London to Liberty’s rather conflicted Muslim father. Amir Latiffe had promptly chartered the Harrods helicopter to fly him to Stagmount near the end of last term and arrived in such a towering rage over his daughter’s perceived indiscretions that—amidst many screamed and shouted declarations of how Liberty had blackened the good name of Latiffe forever—he had flown her back to Saudi Arabia, resolutely insisting that she would never set foot on British soil, and Stagmount’s soil in particular, again.

  Jinx had been in bits about it ever since. Even though Stella definitely had very serious personality issues and had been asked to leave the school by Mrs. Bennett, Stagmount’s headmistress, Jinx couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that she herself was partly to blame for what had happened to Lib.

  She couldn’t help but think if she’d gone a bit easier on Stella, nothing might have happened to her best friend. And although she knew that as soon as Liberty found a way to contact Jinx she would do so, the seemingly endless silence had really been getting to her.

  “Yes,” sighed Caroline happily. “I think it’s the best thing that could have happened to Liberty. That man is far too unpredictable. He made life incredibly stressful for Liberty, never knowing what kind of mood he’d be in, or what threats he might make next. I think she lived on a knife’s edge with him.”

  “Yeah, but…” Jinx could hardly get a word in edgewise before she was interrupted again.

  “Come on, Jinx!” Caroline sat up and fixed her daughter with a narrow-eyed stare. “I hope you’re not going to start defending him, because I shan’t be able to listen to it. Your dad and I were absolutely appalled by what he did. I know you and Martin sometimes have rows, but really! That was something else and I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.”

  “I know, Mum.” Jinx found a window of opportunity as Caroline drew an indignant breath and decided to take it. “Christ, I was there, remember? Of course I wasn’t goi
ng to speak up for him. What I was going to say was that although Lib will be delighted to have been sent to live with her mother, I bet you she still feels sad about her dad. Even though he was often a complete and utter bastard to her, I think she did love him. Maybe that’s changed, I don’t know. God, I can’t wait to speak to her.”

  “Well,” Caroline said, standing up and brushing the dog hairs off the back of her skirt, “her mum whisked her off on some kind of holiday retreat in California for a week or so over New Year’s, and they’ve just gone home to Washington. Liberty will have left for the airport now, but she said as soon as she lands at Heathrow she’ll call you.”

  “Heathrow?” Jinx asked, grabbing Caroline’s hand.

  “Yes!” replied Caroline. “She’ll be back at Stagmount tomorrow.”

  “Mum,” Jinx said, suddenly leaning forward and hugging Caroline around the waist, “I love you so much. I’m sorry I’ve been so terrible to live with all over the holiday. I’ll make it up to you, I promise. What time is Dad back? I’d better jump in the shower.”

  “Luckily for you,” Caroline laughed, “Dad phoned just after Lib. Granny’s back is playing up again so he’s had to wait with her to see the osteopath and won’t be home for another couple of hours. Let’s go and get you all packed up and ready to go.”

  3 Back to Stagmount

  “Jesus ChriSt,” Said Martin Slater, swerving to avoid an inconveniently placed road sign and just managing to keep both his cool and his racing green E-class Mercedes on the road as he rounded the sharp corner of Stagmount’s long drive that led to Tanner House, where all the lower sixth lived. “Who the hell are they?”

  “God, Dad, not you too,” Jinx said, giggling as she looked up from the text message she’d just received from Chastity, who was also en route back to school, and spotted what had caused their near miss. “Men are so bloody predictable.”