Kiss in the Dark by Lauren Henderson

balustrade, staggering around, before he fell.
    I speculate about how long he’s been lying out here. I can’t see him leaving the cozy warm house last night, the comfort of his saggy armchair and TV, to unlock the gate to the lake and roam around in the dark with a bottle of whisky. It doesn’t make sense.
    So he must have come here—what, this morning? Still drinking? But why didn’t he lock the gate behind him? And has anyone missed him yet?
    An awful thought dawns on me. I’m amazed it didn’t hit me before. Shock is a really strange phenomenon. It can drive all the normal reactions you’d think you’d have straight out of your head for much longer than you’d expect.
    Jase. I’m going to have to tell Jase that his dad is dead.
    And that’s immediately followed by an even worse thought.
    Maybe he’ll actually be grateful.
    “Did you touch the body at all?” the police officer is asking me.
    “Just to see if he was alive,” I say.
    Great, Scarlett. The first thing you say to the police, and it’s a lie. Nice way to start.
    But I don’t think they’d be that keen on the fact that I checked to see where that blood came from on Mr. Barnes’s leg.
    “He was definitely dead,” Taylor chimes in.
    Detective Sergeant Landon’s eyebrows shoot up as she looks at Taylor.
    “You sound very sure,” she comments.
    “He was stone cold,” Taylor says simply.
    DS Landon glances over at my grandmother, who’s as poised as ever, sitting on a straight-backed armchair, her hands folded in her lap. She meets DS Landon’s eyes with not an iota of change in her calm expression, her blue eyes clear. I’ve never seen anything faze my grandmother, and I can’t imagine what would. Her white hair is drawn into a bob, the ends tucked neatly behind her ears. The cardigan of her pale peach twinset is neatly buttoned and turned back at the neck to display her pearl necklace; her tweed skirt is smoothed over her knees; her back is poker straight.
    Wherever my grandmother is, she’s always the still, calm focus. Her authority is so impressive that she never even needs to raise her voice to silence everyone else.
    “Taylor,” my grandmother pronounces, “is a singularly level-headed girl.”
    Taylor looks simultaneously flattered and amazed.
    “And you didn’t see anything unusual about the body?” DS Landon asks me.
    “He had a big mark on his face, like he’d fallen and hit it,” I reply. “And there was the whisky bottle under him. Taylor and I both saw it.”
    “Whisky bottle?” my grandmother says in a tone so icy that we all shiver.
    I nod.
    “Empty,” I add.
    I’m trying to keep calm. My leg wants to jiggle nervously, and in my heightened emotional state, I watch my kneecap bouncing up and down and actually reach out a hand as surreptitiously as I can, holding it so it can’t move.
    Only then, the other leg starts to jiggle. I can’t hold that one too. It would look crazy, and even if I tried, something else would probably start to jerk around next and then I really would look like I have a motor neuron disorder.
    I try to lock my legs into place, heels clamped on the ground, quads holding them down. Okay, everyone will expect me to be a bit worked up; I just found a dead body, after all. But Taylor is as calm and poised as ever, so if I look like a neurotic mess beside her that’ll be suspicious, and might direct the police’s attention to me. The last thing I want in my life is any more police attention, especially with Jase so closely involved in all of this.
    Besides, my grandmother is giving me a very cool, disapproving look. Wakefields remain composed and controlled under all circumstances. Wakefields do not show an excess of emotion. Wakefields behave better than anyone around them, to set the best example possible.
    I think of the “Wakefield Hall Etiquette Guide for Students” and have to stifle a laugh as it suddenly occurs to me that Lady Wakefield omitted to have me pose for a photograph