“But—” I said. “You’ll still come back, won’t you? You’ll come swimming with us . . .”
“I don’t know, Beth.” He squinted at me. “Just ring me, okay? If anything happens. If you need me. For anything.”
I returned slowly to the top step and watched him cycle away until he was out of sight. Then, with a sense of wounded irony, I went back inside to find some painkillers—I really did have a headache now. I couldn’t see a way of keeping everyone happy. Leonora, Markus, Nina, Jonas. And as much as I liked Jonas, I had to keep Nina and Leonora happy if I didn’t want to jeopardize my position at Raven Hall.
So Nina and I swam without Jonas that summer, and whenever she grumbled about his absence, I tried to look innocent and changed the subject. And unsurprisingly, Nina invented new ways of entertaining us. She decided she would throw a party for me at the end of the holiday, to belatedly celebrate the anniversary of my arrival at Raven Hall.
To my surprise, Leonora agreed to the plan, and it kept Nina and me busy for a couple of weeks. We drew up a guest list of school friends for Leonora’s approval, and we baked a huge cake and ordered sparklers, and we arranged for an up-and-coming band from London to perform in the garden. On the evening of the party, Jonas joined us for a while, and he pecked me on the cheek in front of the other guests, which made me blush. But when I looked for him a while later, hoping to grab a few minutes alone with him, he’d already set off on his bike for home.
September, and the new school year, came around quickly, and my sadness about the situation with Jonas was replaced with worries about coursework and exams. In the middle of October, Markus went off to Malaysia on a six-week diving trip, and not long after this, Leonora called Nina and me into the drawing room one evening with a glint of excitement in her eyes.
“I was thinking,” she said, “now you’re both getting older, maybe I should take you on a shopping trip. We could go into London next Saturday, have a day of trying on clothes—what do you say?”
Nina and I were thrilled. Up until now, Leonora had ordered all our clothes for us from a catalog, but my jeans were becoming too short, and I fancied something a little more elegant anyway. In the end, not only did we go on a huge and successful shopping spree; I also got my hair cut at a posh salon, and Nina persuaded Leonora to let her have her ears pierced. I knew we were being spoiled, but there was no point resisting it, and both Nina and I were very pleased with the outcome: we felt much more grown up.
It was only days later that Jonas paid us a surprise visit at Raven Hall. He greeted both Nina and me with equal friendliness, and he asked us casually—out of earshot of Leonora—whether we fancied sneaking out that weekend, to go to a party in the village with him. I kept my expression neutral, and he didn’t stay long—he said he’d leave us to talk it over.
“Oh, go on,” I begged Nina, after we’d gone up to her turret bedroom to discuss it in private. “What harm can it do? Your mum’ll be none the wiser, and we’ll have a great time.” I was already imagining myself wrapped in Jonas’s arms, swaying to dreamy music, with Nina conveniently distracted by some other good-looking village boy.
But Nina gnawed at her fingernail. “I just don’t think we can, when my dad’s not here. If Mum did realize we were missing, and she was here all by herself . . .”
I flexed my fingers, frustrated. “How’s that different from both of them finding us missing? And she’d guess what we were doing, wouldn’t she? It’s hardly the crime of the century, is it? It’s just a party.”
But Nina shook her head. “If Dad was here, he’d come into the village to look for us, but Mum by herself . . . She’d be distraught. I can’t risk it.”
“Oh, for God’s sake.” I glared at her. “This is ridiculous. I’ll go by myself then.”
“You won’t.” Her eyes glittered. “You wouldn’t dare.”
I wanted to cry with frustration. But I couldn’t risk disobeying Nina. I could feel all my old insecurities returning, sliding along my skin, slipping into my pores, and creeping around my body. I stomped away down the spiral staircase and slammed my own bedroom door behind me. I loved Nina like a sister, but sometimes I hated her too. I couldn’t sneak out without her, in case she told Leonora. Despite my sometimes ambiguous feelings about Raven Hall, I still didn’t want to be sent away.
We didn’t go to the party.
* * *
* * *
I was still in a bad mood with Nina when Markus returned from his trip abroad. Nina and I stood side by side on the top step as Leonora hugged him on the gravel, and Markus laughed as he swung his suitcases from the car boot.
“These are twice as heavy as when I left; I’ve stuffed them with so many presents for you.”
But as Nina trotted down the steps and launched herself into his arms, his gaze slid over her head and landed on me, and his taken-aback expression made me feel acutely self-conscious. Had he forgotten I lived with them now? Or perhaps he hated my new look? I tucked my hair behind my ear and waited for Nina to let him go, and by the time he came up to greet me, his face was friendly again.
“How’re things, Beth?” he said. “You’ve both been growing up again, I see.”
I trailed after them—Leonora hanging on to one of his arms, and Nina on the other—and I knew they all noticed my quietness at the welcome-home dinner that Leonora had prepared for him. But I didn’t know how to hide this painful loneliness that gnawed at me in spite of the warm chatter around me, and as soon as I could, I slipped away and went to play my violin in my bedroom. I missed my parents and Ricky as if it were only three weeks they’d been gone instead of three years.
It was a sign of how much of an outsider I was feeling that I even began to look forward to Caroline’s dutiful Christmas visit. She might be cold and selfish, but at least she was my real family.
Sadie
January 2019
Where’s Genevieve?” Sadie says again, this time more loudly, as if she might somehow have missed a reply in the hush of the drawing room. But Zach merely shakes his head, one hand pressed against his abdomen, while a bleary-eyed Everett blinks at her from his armchair by the fire.
“What?” the old man mutters. “What’s the silly girl playing at?”
Joe joins Sadie at the window, and he, too, peers into the darkness.
“She was right there,” Sadie says. “She hasn’t come back in—we’d have heard her.”
“She might have her back to us,” Joe says. “Shielding her cigarette . . .” But he heads for the door, and Sadie hurries after him. “Let’s call her in.”