CHAPTER 6

Sunday, 11am

Ellie is burrowed deep in the bed, her limbs tangling in the covers as she flips the pillow, seeking the cooler side to press against her too-hot face. There’s a drum beating in her head and her tongue lolls like the stinking inner sole of one of her school trainers. Traces of the night before ooze from every pore.

Opening one eye, she sees her clothes – denim cut-offs, ripped black tights and her favourite grey hoodie – lying in a crumpled heap on the floorboards of Jasmine’s shared dorm room. A rust-brown stain arcs across the front of the hoodie, a mess she’s pretty sure isn’t going to wash out. She swallows. She doesn’t want to think about that right now. She doesn’t want to think about anything to do with last night.

Across the room, Jasmine lies in an identical single bed snoring beneath a duvet covered in small yellow daisies; one slender, brown arm flung above her head, her mouth gaping wide. An old iron radiator clanks and groans in the corner.

Rolling onto her back, Ellie can just make out the posters tacked to the wall beside her, the smiling, sparkly-eyed faces of pop stars grinning back at her. They’re not Jasmine’s posters. Jasmine wouldn’t be seen dead with Harry Styles or Ed Sheeran over her bed. These belong to Zara, Jasmine’s roommate, helpfully away on a weekend home visit. On Jasmine’s side it’s all Greenpeace, Extinction Rebellion and Bob Marley. Much better.

Squeezing her eyes shut to block out the white-veneered smiles beaming down at her, Ellie burrows back beneath the covers. She wants sleep, craves the blessed absence of being, but sleep won’t come. Not now. Not now she is remembering. There’s the drink, the sweet-sour taste of it lingering at the back of her throat. The flames leaping against the dark night. The scratch of branches. The taunts and the jibes, words stinging like hot metal sparks. White fabric twisting and tearing in her hands, warm blood gushing over her fingers.

Sweat prickles on her skin as the awful fragments wheel through her mind.

What has she done?

She could burn her clothes. Drop them into an oil drum, soak them with petrol and set fire to them in a flaming roar. Just walk away without a backwards glance like you see actors do in the movies. But where do you find an oil drum and a spare jerry can of petrol? They aren’t exactly the sort of thing you find lying around at a school like Folly View.

Outside the window, two girls walk by, their voices bouncing cheerfully off the stone walls. There’s a high giggle, followed moments later by the sound of running footsteps. The scent of fried eggs carries on the air. Soon the chapel bell will ring, beckoning the boarders to Sunday worship. Ellie’s stomach flips. There’s going to be no sleeping this off. She’ll be stuck with her hangover and the sour taste of self-loathing all day. And the consequences of what she did last night? They could last a lifetime. A surge of bile floods up her throat.

Ellie should learn to control her impulses.

Ellie needs to practise self-restraint.

Ellie should think before she acts.

Words from past school reports float through her mind. Act first, think later – it’s always been her problem. ‘You get your red hair from your mother, but you get your fiery spirit from me,’ her dad had told her once, ruffling her hair, Ellie leaning into his hand like a cat. ‘Passionate. Impetuous. It’s a good trait… sometimes,’ he’d added, with a grin.

He hadn’t been quite so enthusiastic when her passionate spirit had seen her bunk off school to join the oil protest sit-in on the motorway into Bristol, or when she’d been caught scrawling graffiti on a fast-food chain’s posters in town. She’d been given a three-day exclusion from school, an official warning from Mrs Crowe and a stern talking-to by her parents, both of them all sad, soft eyes and cloying disappointment.

But all of that was nothing compared to last night. Last night, she’d gone too far.

You’re fucked, Ellie Chase.

Ellie’s heart thumps painfully in her chest, her throat closing. She’d lost complete control. Frightened herself. What she’d done was unforgivable – and this time it could cost her everything.

Surrendering to full consciousness, she reaches for her phone. There’s a message from her mum, a text full of obvious false cheer about the weekend with her dad. A pang of guilt rises but she shoves it away. She wouldn’t have had to lie if her parents hadn’t stuffed everything up. She could handle the fact they didn’t want to be married anymore. What she couldn’t handle was having every aspect of her life micro-managed, being shuttled between them like a six-year-old. It was bad enough that she had her mother hovering over her at school all week. She didn’t want them squabbling over her at weekends, too. She was seventeen. It wasn’t right that they dictated how she spent her free time.

Ellie ignores the message from her mum and switches instead to Snapchat, scrolling through stories of Halloween selfies, impressive carved pumpkins with leering, toothy smiles, a three-second video of Jasmine with her tongue rammed down a boy’s throat, arms snaked around his neck, Danny and Saul posing in front of a bonfire, grinning as they flash the hang-loose gesture, a bottle of vodka passing between hands. Another shaky video follows, the screen mostly black, the thump of electronic music playing from a speaker, before the camera swerves to a crackle of flames. A sour taste fills Ellie’s mouth. She wants to drop her phone, but she can’t tear her eyes from the screen. ‘Sally,’ she hears, the name like a taunt. ‘Saaaally!’ There’s a flash of trees and white fabric, a glimpse of blonde hair and a close-up of a wide, straight-toothed smile. A scuffling noise ensues and the camera veers chaotically before it cuts.

She could carry on, torment herself with her doom scrolling and see what else has made it onto the feed, but the fragments she’s replayed are enough to tell her she doesn’t want to see anymore. At least this time tomorrow the stories will have disappeared, automatically deleted by Snapchat’s servers. She jumps instead to her private texts.

Hey, where’d you go? You ok?

Last night was MESSED UP.

Damn girl. You were on a mission.

She swipes the app closed. There’s dirt on her hands and something reddish-brown lodged beneath her nails. The sight of it brings another violent wave of nausea. She pushes the covers away and staggers to the window, wrestling with the catch on the old sash before wrenching it up, cold air rushing over her skin. She breathes deeply. Behind the identical residential block on the opposite side of the quad, she sees the wooded hills rising in the distance. Somewhere, right at the top, stands the folly. Ellie closes her eyes and takes another deep breath. Fuck.

Bedsprings creak on the other side of the room. ‘Hey,’ Jasmine groans. ‘What time is it?’

Ellie swallows bile. ‘Gone eleven.’

‘Shit. I’ll be late for worship. What are you doing at the window? It’s freezing.’ She throws a dramatic hand to her forehead. ‘My head’s banging.’

‘Mine, too.’

‘What even happened to you last night? Do you remember getting back here?’

‘Not really.’

‘You were lucky I heard you. If Matron had caught you outside… she’d probably been at the gin again.’ Jasmine wrestles herself up onto an elbow with another laboured groan. Her head scarf has slipped, releasing a rogue braid. ‘So, where’d you go last night?’

Ellie closes her eyes, but it’s as if the bone-white trees and the stone tower are painted on the inside of her eyelids. ‘I just walked it off. Went round and round in circles, I think. What time did I turn up here?’

Jasmine shrugs. ‘No idea. I was wasted.’

‘I owe you one.’

‘Yeah.’ Jasmine grins. ‘You do.’

Ellie turns back to Jasmine. ‘I do remember one thing.’

‘What’s that?’

‘You and Saul.’

Jasmine’s brown eyes go wide. She makes a gagging sound then hides her face behind her pillow. ‘Saul. Gross.’

‘That’s not what you said last night.’

‘Beer goggles.’

‘Did you two…’ Ellie throws her a meaningful look.

Jasmine nods, a sheepish smile creeping over her face.

Ellie thinks for a moment. ‘Do you reckon Danny’s OK?’

Jasmine raises an eyebrow and Ellie blushes but doesn’t look away, tries to style it out.

‘He’ll be fine,’ says Jas. ‘It was time he woke up to that girl. Do you think she’s all right? I mean… Connor. Really? Even Olivia looked pissed about that. No wonder she left early.’

Ellie doesn’t want to think about that. She doesn’t want to think about any of it. ‘No one can let on I was there,’ she says. ‘I’ll get in so much shit.’

Jasmine nods. ‘Don’t worry. We’ve got you. Everyone knows to keep quiet.’

‘I hope so.’ Ellie angles her face back to the cool air drifting through the open window. The sun is climbing over the wooded slopes, the hills looming over the campus, a hard shoulder butting up against the school. She can’t help shivering. ‘I’ve got a really bad feeling.’

‘That’s your hangover.’

‘Is it OK if I lie low here a bit longer? Clear my head. I can’t face Mum yet.’

‘Where does she think you are?’

‘Still with Dad.’

‘Well, that’s something. You’re lucky,’ sighs Jasmine. ‘Divorced parents are so much easier to play. Not like in this prison.’

‘Hmm,’ says Ellie, but as she reaches for her clothes and wrestles one leg into her ripped tights, she knows she isn’t lucky. In fact, staring at her grimy hands and her ruined clothes, she feels certain that any luck she might’ve had has just run out.