Chapter Thirty-Nine Adrianna
Chapter Thirty-Nine
ADRIANNA
The other bridesmaids have peeled away to explore the house, leaving me alone with Silky.
‘Why do you always do this, Silks?’ I demand. ‘Why do you have to keep making things awkward?’
‘Why is Petra your bridesmaid?’ Silky plants two skinny arms on bony hips. Her black bangs are still plastered to her pale forehead with sweat, I notice, though it isn’t hot inside the house, and her red lipstick is slightly smudged.
I sigh. ‘I’m really sorry,’ I say. ‘I didn’t know my dad would appoint her, I swear.’
‘You’re such a coward.’ Silky looks straight ahead, through the floor-to-ceiling plantation-style doors at the end of the grand library. The sky and sea are framed by Ophelia’s choice of navy drapes and dark-gold tie-backs.
‘Silky,’ I say, attempting to pull some bridal authority into my tone. ‘I’m sorry your court case against the school didn’t go how you wanted. But …’
‘It’s fine,’ Silky says, sounding surprisingly genuine. ‘Petra won. I lost. I’m moving on.’ She sounds less sincere now. ‘And … your kidnap certainly sucked all the oxygen out of the case.’
I look away, not sure how to manage my emotions.
‘Sorry,’ she adds. ‘I didn’t mean that.’
‘You were right. What you said back then,’ I tell her. ‘I shouldn’t have arranged a big party in the middle of your court case.’ I’m staring straight ahead. ‘Karma. I got what I deserved.’ I try for a wry smile but it goes weird.
Silky puts a hand on mine. ‘No you didn’t. No one deserves what happened to you. But, no one deserves what happened to me either, at school.’
I feel the familiar emotions detonate. Sympathy. Confusion. But mostly I wish Silky could just forget about it, like the rest of us did.
Three years since she took Kensington Manor School to court. It feels like yesterday when Silky brought all that stuff up.
‘And,’ her voice softens, ‘I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I wish just one of my school friends had stood up for me in court. Told the truth about how they treated us at school.’
I can’t meet her eyes.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ she says. ‘What good would it have done? School is over. Just petty revenge, right? But … more girls will get sent there. The cycle continues.’
‘Just don’t send your kids there,’ I tell her, trying to lighten the mood.
It works. Kind of.
‘None of us will,’ she says. There’s a pause. ‘You wouldn’t, would you?’
I chew the edge of a nail, then lower my hands self-consciously. ‘I don’t know. Maybe. I mean. It wasn’t so bad. It taught us stuff. Survival.’
Silky is looking straight ahead again. ‘Guess you got treated better than I did. The Kensington heiress. I was just a nobody.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I tell her. ‘I know Petra was mean to you at school …’
Silky’s eyes widen in shock. ‘Dri! Petra was a lot more than mean. Didn’t you read the court documents?’
‘I … No, I didn’t.’ I catch her expression. ‘I couldn’t. It was hard for me too, Silks,’ I say quietly. ‘I didn’t want to go back to that place either.’
‘Can’t you see that Petra is still doing it? To all of us?’ says Silky. ‘All the sick power games she played at school. Saints and Sinners. She’s still playing them.’
I hesitate. Work on getting something bright into my tone. ‘Look, the wedding will be over in a few days. You’ll never have to see Petra again.’
‘You said that before,’ says Silky miserably. ‘At your twenty-first birthday. But look how good she is at worming her way in.’ She hesitates, cutting me a glance. ‘Did you see Petra’s face when Simone was revealed as your bridesmaid?’
I nod my head slowly.
‘They knew each other, didn’t they?’ says Silky. ‘From school.’
‘The timings fit,’ I shrug. ‘Simone is ten years older than you. Five years older than Petra. What does it matter?’
Silky turns the full lamp-like gaze of her dark eyes on me.
‘Because what Petra did to us,’ she says slowly, ‘someone did to her first.’ There’s a burning quality to her eyes that makes me want to step back, but I restrain myself with effort.
My last therapy session in New York leaps to mind. The psychologist. Red-lipsticked and power-dressed, she was firing questions about Silky.
‘You say boarding school wasn’t a trauma for you,’ she mused. ‘But I think you have a lot of guilt, for not doing more for Silky. You mentioned before that you thought the school deliberately kept pupils in a state of fear. In the weekly chapel visits.’
‘The headmistress would tell us all these stories,’ I agreed. ‘Like all the terrible things that were done to the saints. How they had their skin torn off, or were pulled apart by horses.’
‘That frightened you?’
I nodded. ‘I remember really clearly this thought process,’ I told her. ‘Like, if this can be done to adults, if all these awful things can be done to adults, then what chance do we little kids have? Little kids with no parents to defend them.’
She had nodded sympathetically. ‘It felt threatening?’
‘To a bunch of seven-year-old girls …? We took it as a warning.’
‘What was the warning?’ she asked quietly.
My eyes had filled with tears. ‘Never feel safe,’ I whispered. ‘Because really, really bad things can happen to you. Even if you’re really good.’
‘You’re safe now,’ she reminded me. ‘You are safe and loved.’
‘I know.’ I nodded rapidly. ‘I wish … Maybe I would have liked to have been outspoken like Silky. I had Mom and Dad to think of. The Kensington family founded that school.’
‘That was sixty years ago. They don’t run it now, right?’
‘No. But it’s called Kensington Manor School. The place is associated with the Kensington name. Speaking out against it would have been a complete betrayal. And in the end, what would I have said anyway? The older girls bullied us, and the school served bad food? That isn’t a crime.’
She leaned back, tapping a pencil to her scarlet lips.
‘I think it is a crime,’ she says, ‘to leave small children in the care of fourteen-year-old girls. Particularly if those girls abuse their power.’