15. What Might That Be Like? #2
When Briar knocks for him, he emerges in exactly the sort of honest-to-God sweater vest Briar always imagines him wearing, and then shuts the door behind him with a hard click.
‘Miller’s in there,’ he says glumly. ‘Crocheting. Crocheting a Pokémon. I’m not joking. Seventh bloody generation, I mean, really. By that point, they’re all bin lids with eyelashes.’ He drops his voice to a hush. ‘Besides, I think we’re being watched.’
Briar looks both ways down the empty corridor. ‘Yeah?’
‘Don’t be snide, Jones. I don’t trust Miller, or Watson’s perky roommate, she’s been on and off with a Mon for years, that’s how Hads gets her intel. Adams’s neighbour hates him. We’re just so eavesdroppable in our rooms.’
‘My room?’ Briar suggests.
‘No, I think we need to think outside the dorm. What about your attic? Have you uncovered a chaise or two?’
Briar has, actually, but lingering allegiance to Eugenia stays their key-bearing hand. ‘No,’ they say suddenly. ‘But actually, I do know a place.’
‘Oh, this will do very nicely.’
The office looks different to Briar now that it’s full of people. Embarrassingly dusty, for one thing. They sweep the broken pair of glasses aside with their foot as they enter, feeling like they’re letting the others intrude on something private.
‘Isn’t it a bit . . . creepy?’ Tate says, wrinkling his nose and then sneezing with a pronounced honk. Hadley laughs.
‘Do it again,’ she says, like a toddler, and Tate glares at her and wipes his nose delicately with the back of his hand. He goes to the desk and picks up a mug, the withered remains of a teabag still clinging to the side, and shows it to Westby.
‘Haunted,’ he says, putting it back down. He points at the remains of Robert’s last lunch, the open newsletter, the slippers under the chair. ‘Haunted, haunted, haunted.’
Briar is overwhelmed with a sudden urge to ask if ghosts are real. They suppress it.
Westby leans over the desk. ‘Whose office was this? Robert who?’
Hadley, who has already thrown herself down on the sofa and is watching the dust settle, says, ‘Robert Parker.’
‘How’d you know that?’
‘It’s on his jacket,’ she says, lifting a bundle of worn tweed from under the blanket next to her. ‘Next to this spider. Unless Robert Parker is the spider’s name.’
Tate cringes away. ‘Kill it!’
‘No.’ Hadley lets the spider run across her hand as Tate shudders theatrically; they all watch it traverse the bobbled arm of the sofa and then disappear from view. ‘I can’t kill a man in his own office. Rude.’
Tate is eyeing up the bookshelves warily. ‘Maybe we should just go outside somewhere to talk.’
‘It’s raining,’ Briar points out.
‘Not very hard.’
Westby is rolling up his sleeves. ‘Don’t be silly, Adams, it just needs sprucing.
Then think of the possibilities! I’ve always wanted my own study.
’ He produces a monogrammed handkerchief from his pocket - CCYW in champagne cursive - and starts wiping at the dust, which comes away in thick, woollen sheets.
‘Look at me, I’m dusting. D’you want to have a go, Watson? You can borrow my hanky.’
Hadley pulls the blanket fully over her head.
Briar does help, ignoring the nagging feeling that they’re tampering with something that should be left untouched, like a grave or a crime scene.
The rubbish goes in the bin, books reshelved, miscellaneous desk items pushed aside or piled neatly on the windowsill.
Tate manages to crack one of the windows open, and the blinds are pulled up to reveal thickly overgrown foliage outside, leaves pressed against the glass.
‘Have you got a vacuum cleaner?’ Westby asks Briar.
Briar’s hands go to their pockets. ‘What, like, on me?’
‘No, I mean in general. In the world. Is there one in your charge?’ Briar nods. ‘Bring it next time. Although, is it very loud?’
‘We’re miles from anything here,’ Hadley says. She’s unearthed a cricket ball from somewhere, and is throwing and catching it over her head as she reclines. ‘No one to hear us scream. Or scheme. Speaking of, are we done playing house? I’ve got shit to say.’
‘All right,’ Westby says magnanimously, settling himself into the desk chair. ‘Say your shit.’
‘Derbyshire’s done helping me, but I got enough out of her before she zipped. It will be no man’s land on Friday night. Probably the old pool.’
‘Hmmm,’ says Westby. ‘Only one way in, if memory serves.’
‘Yep. Had a look yesterday and somebody’s removed the boarding over the main entrance and then nailed it back in, so that solves that.
They’ll be guarding it like Alsatians on meth, but I found a maintenance door round the side, if you can get through the nettles.
I bet it leads to the . . . engine room, or the pump house, or .
. . whatever the fuck it is that makes pools go.
And I bet it leads through to the rest of the building, if you’ve got the right keys. ’
Everybody looks at Briar.
‘I’ve got keys.’
Hadley grins triumphantly back at them. Briar can picture her with blood on her teeth.
‘Yes, you most certainly do.’
‘But I can’t give them to anyone else.’
‘We’ll be careful,’ Tate says, from where he’s leaning against the wall, scanning the ceiling for spiders. ‘Scout’s honour.’
Hadley scoffs. ‘You were never a scout.’
‘No, but I do promise to do my best to uphold the Scout values, to do my duty to the King and to help other people, and I do it without the promise of badges. Upholding the Scout values is its own reward.’
‘Sorry,’ Briar says. ‘Convincing, but . . . no.’
‘That’s fine,’ says Hadley, ‘because I think it should be you, anyway. You two.’
Briar’s head wound burns again, like a warning beacon. What if Buck corners them, and this time there’s no exploding window to save the day? What if there’s a rat, and somebody makes them eat it?
But they’d said that they were in. No turning back now.
‘Good,’ Hadley says, when nobody objects. ‘Tate, how’s your phone camera in low light?’
An hour of deliberating and bickering later, they all get up to leave, and Hadley stops Briar with a flick to their elbow.
‘Wait a sec,’ she says. ‘Need to ask you something.’
Briar expects the others to comment on this, but they just file out of the room, Westby peering through a gap in the door first to check the coast is clear.
Once they’re alone, Hadley sits down in the vacated office chair and spins a full 360 degrees a few times before speaking, the chair complaining loudly.
‘So you won’t like this,’ she says, grabbing the desk to bring herself to a stop. ‘But it’s a good idea, so I don’t care. Ugh. Spin me the other way.’
‘What?’
‘To reset me or whatever,’ she says, closing her eyes and swaying slightly. ‘All I’ve had to eat today is a bag of Maltesers and a cigarette, I’m going to puke if you don’t spin me the other way. Fucking - do it, quick.’
Briar rolls their eyes, but gives the chair a shove in the other direction.
‘Okay,’ she says, as the motion slows. ‘Better. You need to make up with Bastian Wolfe.’
Briar stares at her. The stitches in their forehead stare at her. ‘Ha ha.’
‘I’m serious. You guys were like, bosom, right? We can’t pass this up, it’s too valuable. You don’t actually have to like him,’ she adds, seeing the expression on Briar’s face. ‘Obviously. Just pretend.’
Hadley doesn’t know what she’s asking. The damage left behind by the quick and brutal end of a friendship so close you’d probably shared the same gut bacteria doesn’t allow for any reasonable imitation of liking them. Love and loathing, and nothing in between. And Briar really does loathe him.
‘I can’t.’
‘Don’t be a baby. It won’t be real. We can try our best to nail them from a distance, but having someone up close when they’re not on guard, and under Wolfe’s protection .
. .’ She spreads her hands, an estate agent trying to sell a dream.
‘We can ruin them. All of them. Finally give them a taste of some fucking consequences.’ Briar is going to say no again, but then they brush the stitches on their forehead with their fingers to feel the sting.
Consequences. It’s the least he - all of them - deserve.
‘It won’t work,’ they say aloud. ‘He’s not stupid enough to believe I’d just forgive him.’
‘I think he will,’ Hadley says, mouth quirking into a malevolent smile.
‘I bet it’ll be easier than you think. You just need to sell it a bit.
Obviously don’t just start fluttering your eyelashes at him and inviting him round for crumpets.
Imagine that you’re . . . the version of yourself that could forgive him.
Still love him, or whatever. What might that be like? ’
When Briar just looks at her, she laughs. ‘I’ve had so much therapy, Jones. But it didn’t take. Later on we can do some EMDR and I’ll tap on your knees until you forget all your major traumas, all right?’
‘No thanks.’
‘Smart,’ she says. ‘None of it fucking works, anyway. Just give it a go, yeah? And don’t tell the other two, because they won’t understand. You and me, we’re going to dispense some justice.’
Briar hates that she already knows the exact right thing to say to get them hooked.