Kiss in the Dark (7 page)

I can hear the yelling from the Barnes cottage as I approach, and my feelings are incredibly mixed. I’d recognize Jase’s voice anywhere, so I know that’s him, shouting at his dad, and although I hate that they’re fighting, I’m also hugely, stupidly relieved that it was this that kept Jase from coming out to meet me. Not that he doesn’t care about me, or that he met someone else.

I know it’s probably ridiculous to have these insecurities, and that they’re much more to do with me than they are with Jase. I don’t bang on about them to him. But every so often I look at a girl like Susan, or Plum, if I’m honest, and I do think: God, there are so many girls out there prettier than me. And Jase is so gorgeous. What if he wakes up one day and realizes that he could have any girl he wants?

The curtains at the downstairs windows are all drawn. I can’t see anything.

“For the last time, you’re not going anywhere, boy!” Mr. Barnes’s unmistakable bellow rattles the windowpanes.

“Dad, I just want to get some fresh air—”

“You’re a liar!”

This is bad. I can’t bear the frustration of not being able to see inside. Desperately, I look around for an elevated area, because the curtains are those old-fashioned ones, like they have in the coffee shop, that only cover the lower part of the window; the upper panes are clear, light pouring through them.

There’s a cherry tree behind me. Not ideal, because it has whippy, thin branches, which bend and buckle under me and aren’t wide enough to sit on in any comfort. But I swarm up it in record time, and wedge myself into a really awkward, narrow V by the trunk, my bottom braced between two branches, each only a few inches wide. They cut into me, but I wrap my arms around a higher branch, pulling myself up to take a little strain off the ones I’m sitting on, and twist so I get a good view down into the cottage.

The Barnes cottage is as old-fashioned as its gingham curtains. It still has the original layout, with a central staircase and a kitchen on one side, probably with the bathroom beyond it to keep all the plumbing together, and a living room on the other. I can see the living room, the foot of the stairs, and a good chunk of the kitchen. And I can see Jase, standing by the door, his motorbike jacket on, yelling:

“I can go out for a walk if I want to! I’ll be up for college in the morning!”

“Don’t give me that!” shouts his father. I spot Mr. Barnes, his bulky body propped up in a recliner, his face red and swollen, his fist raised. “You’re going out to moon round after that Wakefield girl! I know you, Jase Barnes!”

“So what!” Jase sounds really angry. “Even if I am, what’s it got to do with you?”

He swings around, reaching for the door. This provokes Mr. Barnes, who levers himself up to his feet, his face distended with rage, and yells:

“Don’t you turn your back on me when I’m talking to you!”

Jase cranes back, and I see anger in his face, his eyes blazing gold with fury. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen him like this, and it shocks me, even scares me a little, because I can tell he’s itching for a fight.

“Or what, Dad?” Jase says, taking a step toward his father.

“D’you want me to take a belt to you, like I did when you were little? Do you?” his father shouts, swaying on his feet. “You’re not too old to feel the back of my hand!”

“Oh yes I am! Want me to prove it to you?” Jase yells back.

My breath catches as I see that Jase’s hands are clenched into fists.

And at that moment, someone pushes past Jase and interposes her small body between him and his father.

It’s Jase’s grandmother. I’ve rarely been so grateful to see anyone in my life.

“That’s enough!” she pipes in a high, eldritch voice. “I won’t have this shouting, you hear me? I’m sick of it! Kevin, the boy’s grown now. He’s too old for this kind of nonsense, can’t you see that?”

“Nonsense?” Jase says bitterly.

“And you, keep a civil tongue in your head,” his grandmother says, turning on him.

White hair piled messily on top of her head, little wire-framed glasses shoved high up her nose, her dowager’s hump bowing her spine, she looks tiny and frail between the bulk of Jase’s father and Jase himself, with his height and his square shoulders. She’s wearing a floral winceyette dressing gown, a white nightie showing at the neck, and she’s resting heavily on her stick, both hands pressed down on it; clearly she’d topple over if it were taken away from her.

But she’s managing to keep the peace between these two warring men, so she’s obviously not as fragile as she looks.

“No more fighting!” she shrills at them.

“He’s going against me!” her son yells back. “I’ve told him to stay away from that little Wakefield tart, but he was out with her just last night. I caught them outside, the dirty little—”

“I’ve told you not to call her that,” Jase says dangerously, taking another step toward his father.

Part of me, furious that Mr. Barnes is being so rude about me, is elated that Jase is so quick to defend my honor. But the older, sensible, saner part of me is incredibly grateful that Jase’s grandmother is blocking his way to his dad. Because from the look in Jase’s eyes, it’d be murder if he reached him.

“Kevin, stop it. You’ll just set him off!” she screams.

“Oh, will I now?” Over his mother’s head, Mr. Barnes scowls at Jase. “She’s a little tart, I tell you. Just like her mum was. Knew it as soon as I laid eyes on her. She was no better than she should be and her daughter’s just the same. She might look like a Wakefield, but she acts like the cheap little tart who thought she had it all because she’d got herself Sir Patrick Wakefield!” He snorts.

I’m shocked beyond speech. My fingers are clamped onto the branch so tightly that I’m losing sensation, numb with cold, but my blood is pounding and the core of my body is burning up with anger.

How dare he talk about my mother and me like that? How dare he? I want to burst in there right now and tear his head off with my bare hands.

But a fight is just what Mr. Barnes wants. I can see it in the bullish thrust of his head, the nasty glint in his piggish little eyes. His hands are clenched into fists too, and now he raises one, making a beckoning gesture to Jase.

“Got you angry now, haven’t I?” he taunts. “Well, come on then, boy! Let’s see what you’re made of.”

“I’m going to call the police,” his mother threatens. “Kevin, I’m going to call the police if you don’t stop this right now! Jase, go upstairs and stay there. And Kevin, sit down! You’ve gone too far!”

But Jase doesn’t go upstairs. He ducks his head, shaking it from side to side, rolling out his shoulders. I can tell he’s getting control of himself, coming back from the brink. And then he turns on his heel, strides across to the door, and wrenches it open.

I try to scramble down from the tree to intercept him, tell him I’m here. But the narrow branches, hard to see in the dark, make my maneuvers fatally slow, and I can’t call to him, as I’ve already seen how voices carry out here. The last thing I want is his dad storming out again and catching us together.

So my ankle gets stuck and I have to drag it free, and by the time I’ve hopped clumsily to the ground, the roar of Jase’s motorbike is burning through the night, his taillight flaring red as he takes off at full blast.

I stand there, staring after him, a huge pain spreading across my chest. He didn’t come to find me. He had a huge fight with his dad, about me, and he didn’t come to find me for comfort afterward.

That’s really hard to bear.

Jase slammed the door of the cottage so hard when he walked out that it bounced against the jamb and right back open again. Through the gap, I see his grandmother hobble across the living room to a shelving unit on the staircase wall.

“There!” she says, grabbing a bottle of cheap blended whisky from the unit and shoving it at her son. “Drink that till you pass out. The only way your mouth shut’s when it’s wrapped round a bottle.”

She throws a look of complete disdain at her son as he slumps sullenly back into his armchair, grabbing the bottle of whisky. He turns the TV on with the remote control. The reflected light flickers on his face, blue and red and green flashes livid on his sagging jowls. There’s a plastic cup next to him, and he’s tipping some whisky into it, bringing the cup to his mouth. His mother turns to look toward the open door, the lenses of her glasses gleaming as she stares out into the night.

I catch my breath, because it looks as if she’s gazing straight at me. And then she stumps toward the door.

I think she’s going to close it, but she doesn’t. Instead, she walks outside, onto the wooden step, and pulls the door shut behind her, dragging her dressing gown tighter around her shoulders against the night air.

“Scarlett Wakefield! I know you’re there,” she hisses. “Get over here right now, young woman! I’ve got a few words to say to you.”

SOMETHING’S VERY WRONG HERE

I stand in front of the cottage, frozen in shock, unable to believe she’s actually spotted me under the tree. And then she raises one hand and points at me, her eyes narrowed behind the lenses of her glasses, then crooks her finger. It’s pretty scary, almost as if she’s cursing me or something. I’m panicked that she’s going to start yelling for her son, and he’ll come pounding out the front door with a pitchfork aimed at my head. But also, I really want to hear what she has to say. Maybe she can shed some light on this mad situation.

So I walk forward, slowly, on the balls of my feet, poised for flight if I need to take off suddenly. It’s hard to read her expression. Still, her posture—both hands propped on her cane now, shoulders hunched forward—isn’t exactly welcoming. I swallow hard and can’t help shifting nervously from one foot to the other.

“I was just looking for Jase,” I begin feebly. “I’m sorry, I know it’s late, but I was worried about him.”

“As you should be,” she retorts instantly. “You’ve brought a world of trouble down on his shoulders.”

I remember when I saw this woman earlier today at the cottage window, I thought she was the picture of what you imagine a sweet old grandmother to be. But close up, Jase’s grandmother is definitely not sweet. She’s positively glaring at me, her mouth dragged down at the corner. Her expression is downright malevolent, in fact.

I gather up my courage and ask the crucial question. I’ve got nothing to lose here and a great deal to gain.

“Why is Jase’s dad so against me and Jase being together?” I ask her.

She bridles, her hands tightening on the wooden top of her cane.

“Wakefields,” she spits, as if my very surname were an insult in itself. “Think you can have everything, don’t you? Just reach out a hand and take a Barnes man if you want one, never mind what everyone else has to say about it! You’re all the same—think the entire world revolves around you.”

“No, I don’t,” I protest defensively.

“Look at you,” she continues, pointing at me again. “Just the same airs and graces as your dad, not to mention that old witch up at the Hall.”

I gape, unable to believe she’s talking about my grandmother like this.

“Wakefield’s been nothing but trouble for this family,” she says resentfully. “I wanted to leave years ago, when his dad died. I’d worked my fingers to the bone for the Wakefields, and so did my mother before me. I’d had enough of it. But Kevin wouldn’t hear of going. ‘Don’t you worry, Mum, I’ve got big plans for us here at the Hall,’ he’d say. ‘You’ll be amazed, you will.’” She laughs bitterly. “The only thing that amazes me about Kevin is how much bloody booze he can put away.”

She looks straight at me.

“And now it’s all happening again, isn’t it? Jase, running after a Wakefield girl. Well, not if I can help it.”

All happening again? I open my mouth to ask what she means, but she’s riding roughshod over me.

“Leave Jase alone and find yourself one of your own kind. A rich white boy,” his grandmother snaps.

I gawp at her.

“Are you serious? No one thinks like that anymore.”

“Your grandmother does, I’m willing to bet,” she retorts. “She won’t want any black babies inheriting the Hall. Have you seen Jason’s mum? She’s dark. Black as the ace of spades. You think Lady Wakefield wants that in the family? I certainly didn’t.”

God, she really is an awful old woman. The racism leaves me speechless with shock and revulsion.

“You won’t be warned again,” she says. “Stay away from Jason. If you don’t it’ll be the worst mistake of your life—just like when Kevin got mixed up with the likes of your wretched family!”

She pulls the door open, hobbles through it, and slams it in my face.

I stand there, staring at the door, unable to process what just happened.

My wretched family, I think. She said it’s all happening again. Maybe Jase’s dad went after a Wakefield girl, just like his son.

I discount Aunt Gwen immediately. If Jase is right in saying that Mr. Barnes looked like a hot film actor when he was younger—well, I’ve seen all the family photo albums, and believe me, no way would a tall, dark, and handsome Mr. Barnes ever have been attracted to Aunt Gwen.

Which leaves my mother. Who, technically, was a Wakefield only by marriage. But she was gorgeous. Everyone says so. I can see it in the photos, too. Some people can be stunning but not photogenic, but my mother was both. She had a smile that could light up a room. I love to look at pictures of her.

And now I think about it, she was a distant relative of my dad’s. A third cousin or something. They met at a huge family reunion. Her surname wasn’t Wakefield, but they were definitely related in some way, far back down the family tree….

A shiver runs down my spine like a spray of ice-cold water.

If I keep going down this path, there’s a very bad dark place just ahead of me. I can tell.

Every bone in my body is telling me to leave this one alone. So I do. I take a deep breath and turn away from the cottage, breaking into a run, heading back to Aunt Gwen’s and my bedroom, where my phone is sitting on my desk, hopefully loaded with messages from Jase.

“And is he okay?” Taylor asks as I get to this point in the story. We’re jogging, halfway through our circuit of the grounds, the air blissfully cool on our faces, the sky gray and overcast.

“Yes, he finally texted me,” I puff, “but not for ages. I stayed up, waiting.”

Taylor clicks her tongue against her teeth.

“That sucks,” she says frankly. “When you’d been waiting for him out by the barn and everything.”

“I know. But it was really bad, Taylor. I haven’t even told you everything his father said. He was awful about my mum, and he called me a tart.”

“You’re kidding!” Taylor actually stops dead in her tracks during a run, something I have never, ever seen her do before. She wipes her forehead with the sleeve of her Cornell sweatshirt, staring at me, her breath coming fast but evenly. “He talked about your mom? What does she have to do with this?”

“I’ve got no idea,” I say, having halted too.

“What does Jase have to say about it?”

I sigh. “I haven’t had the chance to talk to him. He just sent me this short text last night saying he needed to take off on his bike ’cause his dad was on his back, and I haven’t heard from him at all today.”

“Ugh, that’s tough.” Taylor looks at me sympathetically. “You know, he’s probably really messed up, with his dad acting like this.”

“Not just his dad,” I say gloomily. “I talked to his grandmother afterward and she not only told me to stay away, she said all these racist things as well.”

“What?”

“That my grandmother wouldn’t want any black grandchildren,” I mutter awkwardly.

“That is disgusting!” Taylor exclaims, her eyes widening. She shakes back her fringe from her forehead, where it’s sticking with sweat. “No wonder Jase is acting weird with you. I mean, if that were my family and my girlfriend was seeing them do and say all this stuff, I’d die of embarrassment.”

Sweat is cooling in the small of my back, cold and clammy under my T-shirt and running hoodie. Cold and clammy is exactly how I feel when I say, in a very small voice:

“I’m just scared he’ll think it isn’t worth it. All this aggro. What if he breaks up with me because of it?”

Taylor grimaces, but she doesn’t say anything reassuring, because, honestly, there isn’t anything she can say to make me feel better. Taylor’s a realist, not a romantic: she knows that what I’m saying is not at all unlikely. This situation with Jase’s family is beyond messed up, and it might be beyond my and Jase’s abilities to cope with it.

Awkwardly, she reaches out and pats me on the shoulder. I try to sketch a smile. This is the first chance we’ve had to talk all day, our lunchtime run, and I’ve been wanting to ask her if anything is going on with her and Plum. I’ve been trying all morning to frame the question in a tactful way, but nothing’s popped into my head yet that sounds remotely good enough.

Just as I’m racking my brain for the right words, my attention’s caught by something I see over Taylor’s arm.

We’ve come to a halt by the high iron fence that runs around the lake, put up as a safety precaution when my grandmother turned Wakefield Hall into a school. There’s a big wrought-iron gate set into it, but it’s always kept locked. Jase and I sneaked in once, last term, but that’s because he had a key, and he locked it behind us when we were inside: that’s the rule when any gardening or maintenance work is being done, to make sure none of the girls can wander inside and get locked in.

In all the time I’ve spent roaming the Wakefield Hall grounds, I’ve never seen that gate hanging open before. Not even out of term time, when no one but me is around.

There’s something funny going on here.

I lean past Taylor and push on the gate. It creaks open under my hand.

Perhaps the single best thing about having Taylor as a friend is that she can a hundred percent be relied on to never say: We shouldn’t, It’s not allowed, or We’ll get into trouble.

Of course, the downside about Taylor is that she’s infinitely more likely to say: Just let go and drop, you’ll be fine! or I’ll distract the doorman while you sneak in past him and climb into the service elevator! Or:

“Cool! I’ve always wanted to see the lake.”

The gate creaks even louder as we go through it. You’d think, if there were someone inside, they’d call out now, to see who was coming in.

But no one does. The only sound is from a pair of gray squirrels racing each other up the trunk of a silver birch, playing happily in the leafless branches, their tails waving like soft furry fans as they dart, light as birds, from one twig to another.

“Wow.” Taylor pauses to stare at the expanse of water, fringed by oak trees and weeping willows. “It’s beautiful.”

“You should see it in summer,” I say. “I hope my grandmother gets the fountain going again.”

The fountain, in the center of the lake, is a gigantic marble confection, dolphins leaping out toward the water, their smiling mouths open. When the pumps are turned on, water springs from them in high jets that curve through the sky like the arching bodies of the dolphins themselves. It’s really beautiful and exhilarating to see.

But I can’t help but feel a little sad when I look out around the water. The bare branches of the oak trees, the weeping willows trailing in the water, and the empty fountain at the center … sometimes I think there’s nothing more poignant than a fountain that’s been turned off so long you can’t remember the last time it had water tumbling through it.

“There are little boats in there,” I tell Taylor, pointing to the small boathouse on the far side of the lake, built of the same gray stone as the low balustrade that borders the water. “My dad used to take me out in one.”

“Nice,” Taylor says, starting to stroll toward it.

I step up onto the balustrade and stare down into the water, which is dark with leaves floating in it. It’s time for Jase or his dad to fish them out, rake them into mulch. And that makes me wonder again why the gate was open. I don’t see a single tool lying around, nothing that would indicate that there’s a Barnes here about to get to work. There are old wheelbarrow tracks in the muddy grass, but the boathouse, which contains gardening tools as well as the boats, is padlocked securely. I can see the lock from here, hanging in an unbroken loop, holding the double doors together. There isn’t so much as a rake leaning against the side, ready to be used on the leaves scattered beneath the trees.

Something’s very wrong here. My nerve endings are tingling. All my physical alarm systems are going off. I’m shivering, and not just from the cold air on my sweaty skin.

“Taylor,” I call, “we should probably get going.”

Taylor is over by the boathouse, staring at a weeping willow whose heavy branches are dipping into the water, thickly clustered. I realize why that tree has attracted Taylor’s attention. Looking at it, you can see that the branches have formed a weird shape where they brush against the ground. Almost as if there’s someone lying underneath them, with one hand out, trailing in the water …

“Scarlett,” Taylor says in a small, tight voice. “You should come over and have a look at this.”

Suddenly, I’m sprinting across the grass, my trainers slipping on wet leaves, jumping over dark patches that will send me flying, around the perimeter of the lake, past Taylor, who is still standing by the boathouse.

Pleasedon’tbeJase, I’m thinking frantically, pleasedon’t beJase….

But the hand is white. I see that as I get closer. Though not white in a literal sense; it’s actually bluish gray and blotchy. Old-looking, its knuckles big and swollen, sticking out of a tattered corduroy jacket cuff that’s so frayed some threads are coming loose and dangling down into the grass.

I’m on my knees now, by the person lying under the weeping willow, reaching for the hand. It’s ice-cold to the touch. I pull the branches away, exposing the rest of the body, which is lying on its side.

I don’t need to try to feel for a pulse. It’s obvious from the glassy eyes, the livid, blotchy skin, the darkness at the jawline, where blood has started to collect, that Mr. Barnes is dead.