Kiss in the Dark by Lauren Henderson Page A

in it demonstrating how to react when your boyfriend’s father is dead under mysterious circumstances and you find the body. The laugh keeps rising; oh God, I’m getting hysterical. I pinch myself so hard I nearly draw blood, but at least it kills any impulse I have to burst into a giggling fit.
    My grandmother tuts her tongue very loudly indeed, but whether it’s at the whisky bottle revelation or my inability to control my physical reflexes, I have no idea. Probably both.
    “Has anyone informed his poor son, Detective?” she asks DS Landon.
    “That’s Jason Barnes, correct?” DS Landon flicks through her notepad. “His grandmother’s informed us that he went out after breakfast and hasn’t come back yet, Lady Wakefield.”
    “Someone should ring him,” my grandmother says firmly.
    “We don’t seem to have a mobile number for him,” DS Landon says. “His grandmother says he has one, but she doesn’t know the number.”
    “Scarlett has it,” Taylor blurts out.
    Everyone looks at me. We’re sitting round an inlaid marquetry coffee table, on chairs upholstered in a pale green silk and caught with tiny covered buttons, which are incredibly uncomfortable to sit on; I shift as a button cuts into my leg, and my grandmother shoots me a swift icy glance of reproach for not sitting up straight.
    The chairs are arranged in a semicircle. It’s the meet-and-greet-the-parents area of my grandmother’s study, by the bow window that looks over the wide expanse of paved terraces below, where most girls gather to play games and hang out in school breaks. I’m sure my grandmother has carefully chosen this room as her headquarters because of the unrivaled surveillance opportunities it offers.
    I never know how far her surveillance skills extend, or whether it’s simply that she has so much self-control she never looks surprised, but she doesn’t seem remotely taken aback at the revelation that I am close enough to Jase to have his mobile phone number.
    “They’re friends,” Taylor adds, her voice bland, but she ducks her head and directs a hard stare at me. I think she’s telling me to say something, to look natural, but that’s so far beyond my capabilities at this precise moment that all I can do is nod in agreement.
    “They’ve known each other for years,” my grandmother adds in a deliberately careless tone to Sergeant Landon. “After all, they’re the only two children who live at Wakefield Hall all year round.”
    This isn’t true. I never met Jase till last year, and I suspect she knows that. I clear my throat and manage to say:
    “My phone’s in my locker. I could go and get it now, if you’d like.”
    I’m addressing Sergeant Landon, but I’m looking at my grandmother, into her bright blue eyes, trying to work out how much she knows. It’s always a mistake to underestimate her.
    “That’s a school rule,” my grandmother informs the sergeant. “The girls are not allowed to carry mobiles on their persons, even switched off.”
    “Very sensible,” Sergeant Langdon agrees, even as I think:
    And you’ve been with me the whole time since Taylor brought the police back to Mr. Barnes’s body. I haven’t had a chance to get to my locker and ring Jase. If I hadn’t been so much of an idiot, I would have told Taylor to bring my phone, but I wasn’t thinking straight.
    “Sergeant Landon, why don’t you take Scarlett to her locker and locate her telephone?” my grandmother suggests.
    Her expression is completely unreadable, her smile bland and polite, a facade behind which all her thoughts are concealed. If she’s cross with Taylor and me for trespassing by going into the lake enclosure, if she knows more than she’s saying about how close I am to Jase, I can’t read any of it on her face.
    “And then, Scarlett, take Taylor and go to your aunt’s,” my grandmother instructs. “You certainly won’t be fit for classes for the rest of the day, either of you. I think the police should be