Jessica took a step back, realizing her catastrophic mistake, but Allegra’s long, sharp talons had already encircled her wrist. She yanked her forward, trapping her in a tight neck lock. Jessica lost her balance and the car park lurched towards her. She opened her mouth but all that came out was a silent, inward scream. She was gripped by an overwhelming desire to see her dad one last time.
“It’s a long way down, isn’t it?” Allegra laughed in her ear. “I liked the vision about my stepmother, didn’t you? I thought that was a particularly nice touch, along with the voices in my head telling me to do bad things. Psychiatrists love all that stuff. They lapped it up in hospital, the same way you did in the lab. The morons thought they could cure me with a cocktail of drugs. Still, it was so much better than prison. That would have been far harder to break out of.”
“So you made everything up?
“Oh no, not everything. I did murder my stepmother. She deserved it. Now I’m going to murder you. I think I’ll enjoy it almost as much.”
“You’re insane!”
Jessica tried to regain her balance, but Allegra’s arm was tight around her neck. She couldn’t risk trying to disentangle herself. One wrong move and they’d both fly over the edge. She had to stall for time. It was her only hope.
“How did you escape from the hospital?” she gasped, struggling to breathe as Allegra’s arm crushed her windpipe.
“It was surprisingly easy,” Allegra admitted. “I stole a doctor’s key card and helped myself to a syringe and drugs from the pharmacy. I took some clothes and money and smuggled myself out among the dirty laundry. It wasn’t terribly pleasant, but one thing kept me going. Do you know what that was?”
Her grip tightened even further. Jessica clawed desperately at her arm but it remained locked in a death grip.
“It was revenge,” Allegra hissed. “You and your father destroyed everything I’d been working for. I had to watch my dream, my Teenosity, being snatched away from me by a freckle-faced muppet and a cripple. I had to find you both and I knew this was the only hospital your father could be brought to in his condition. Now it’s payback time. Do you have any last requests before you die?”
“Just… just… one… What did Starfish tell you about my mum?”
The question caught Allegra by surprise. She loosened her grip. Her feet rocked and they both almost tumbled over the edge.
“What do you mean?”
“Starfish told you to give me my mum’s necklace before I died and I know you were taunting me with the flowers in my room. Only Starfish could have told you my mum’s name was Lily and her favourite flowers were roses. It had to be someone close to Mum.”
“It always comes back to our mothers, doesn’t it?” Allegra let out a sigh. “We both miss them so much, it’s like a physical wound that never heals. I think about mine every day.”
She paused.
“I guess it doesn’t matter now. Starfish told me to kill you because you were sticking your nose into things that didn’t concern you. Like mother, like daughter. They’re both better off dead. Those were Starfish’s exact words.”
Rage gripped Jessica, sending adrenaline pumping through her body. She tried to tug Allegra’s arm away from her neck but it was rigid and immovable. She felt the emerald ring on her index finger swivel beneath the force of her grip and dig into Allegra’s arm.
“Don’t worry,” Allegra said, peering over the side of the building. “I’ll be sure to send a gorgeous wreath and commiserations card to your father from somewhere nice and sunny. He’s going to be devastated. Losing a wife is bad enough, but a daughter as well. Tut, tut, tut. Now that’s just careless.”
Jessica let go of Allegra’s arm as she was about to swing her over the edge. She snapped back the gemstone setting and a laser bored into Allegra’s cheek, filling the air with the smell of burning flesh.
“Aaaaargh!” Allegra’s shriek was high-pitched and animal-like.
Jessica ducked beneath her arm as Allegra staggered backwards and toppled over the edge. Jessica tried to grab her but she slipped, screaming, between her fingers. Jessica sank to the ground, shell-shocked. She couldn’t bear to watch the impact. It felt like minutes but could only have been a few seconds. Next, she heard shouts from the ground below, then cheers and people clapping.
Sick or what?
What kind of weirdoes applauded when someone fell to their death? She peered over the edge just in time to see Allegra scrambling to her feet.
What the—? It was impossible. She couldn’t possibly have survived a fall like that.
“Stop her!” Jessica yelled.
She leant over the edge and watched, flabbergasted, as Allegra limped over to a taxi rank. She looked back and waved at Jessica before climbing inside a cab. It pulled away, mingling with the traffic before turning the corner and disappearing.
No way!
Jessica pulled herself up and found her hand tangled in something. She looked closer. A thin, barely visible piece of thread was anchored to a hook at the edge of the roof. It billowed in the wind, stretching down the side of the building. It was the same nano thread that had saved her life in the warehouse.
Allegra must have smuggled some into the psychiatric hospital and attached herself to the side of this building. She’d wanted them both to fall, knowing that only she would survive.
Jessica closed her eyes and inhaled deeply as she touched her mum’s pendant. She could have sworn she just caught a whiff of roses from the air-conditioning unit nearby. Now she had a new childhood memory: a nursery rhyme her mum used to recite to her when she was tucked up in bed.
Run, run as fast as you can.
You can’t catch me, I’m the gingerbread man.
Allegra could run but Jessica would catch her eventually. She swore on her mum’s necklace, she would.
Two Weeks Later
Jessica whipped a dish of vegetarian lasagne out of the oven. She carried it into the dining room, careful not to drip melted cheese on to her latest find from Portobello Market: a peppermint chiffon vintage Chanel prom dress. Salads, quiches and cakes covered the table, but she managed to make room for the dish. Mattie had really gone to town on the catering.
Her dad’s welcome home from hospital party was in full swing. Guests milled about, chatting and eating. All this seemed worlds away from what had been going on. Jessica half-expected Allegra or Vectra to leap out at her; they were both still at large. Vectra had managed to evade capture in Paris despite being surrounded by police in a warehouse. He was suspected of murdering MI6 agent Lara Hopkins and many more people.
She was safe for now, and her dad said she had to concentrate on all the positives instead. They were together again, and she’d grown closer to Mattie, something she wouldn’t have thought possible a few months ago. She’d saved thousands of teenage girls from being maimed, and every bottle of Teenosity had been destroyed at a secure government facility.
Then there was her PFB. Potential Future Boyfriend. Fingers crossed. Everything crossed.
She and Jamie had been texting each other a lot recently and she’d invited him to the party. They hadn’t had a chance to talk yet. He was in the corner of the room, chatting to Becky and Sam Bishop – except that wasn’t his name any more. He was Tony Harper, retired chemist. She felt butterflies in her stomach as she watched Jamie. He was truly drop-dead gorgeous.
Becky and Jamie thought they were talking to a pensioner. They had no idea who Sam really was; MI6 had forced him to sign the Official Secrets Act and take on a new identity. There was a risk that Vectra could come after him again. His condition was stable, but no antidote existed to reverse the damage. He’d vowed to continue with his research to find his own cure. She was sure he’d find it one day, but nobody knew whether it would come soon enough to help Tyler and the other maimed supermodels. They’d all had plastic surgery to try and repair their aged faces, with little success.
Tyler was the only one to go public about her ordeal so far and had sold her story to OK! for a million pounds. She released a photo of herself before she’d undergone plastic surgery. She looked like a fifty-year-old, not eighteen. She had crow’s feet around her eyes and deep furrows on her forehead and cheeks. Her chest was wrinkly too. She blamed her dramatic ageing on a fashion shoot at a nuclear plant last year. She was suing the plant, the clothing company and Emerald as well, campaigning for safer disposal of nuclear waste. MI6 had gone into damage limitation mode and never told her or the other supermodels that they’d actually been mutilated by Allegra at the Emerald ball.
Jessica looked around the room. Government spooks, pretending to be from the Foreign Office, mingled with models and her school friends. If Becky realized who some of these people were she’d probably hyperventilate. Margaret waved at her. She was wearing a shocking pink Liberty scarf today. She looked happy and relaxed as her two grandchildren scampered about, playing peekaboo.
Jessica couldn’t see Dad anywhere. He never felt comfortable at parties. Where was he hiding? She ducked out of the room and went to the study.
“There you are,” she said, peeking around the door. “Your guests will start to wonder where you are.”
Her dad rolled his wheelchair around the desk. He hadn’t been able to walk unaided since Allegra’s injection. His face was pale and he looked as though he’d been crying.
“That was Mrs T on the phone.” He picked up the picture of her mum from his desk. “Nathan’s been transferred to a London hospital that specializes in coma patients.”
Jessica closed the door behind her. “You’re upset. I get that. We may never get to hear Nathan’s explanation. I want to hear why he did it too.”
Her dad shook his head. “It’s not that. I never got to say sorry.”
“What?” Jessica stared at him, stunned. It was the last thing she expected him to say.
“I’m sorry for accusing him of being involved in Mum’s death. It’s something I’ve always regretted.”
She paused as the news sunk in. “You don’t believe he was involved any more?”
“I never believed it at the time. I said it in the heat of the moment because I wanted to hurt him, to hurt someone for what happened to Lily. I was too proud to apologize. It’s too late now.”
Seriously? This was unbelievable after everything that had happened. Allegra had clearly implicated Starfish in her mum’s death in their showdown on the hospital rooftop. Why were her dad and Mattie still defending Nathan? They seemed blinded by memories from the past. It was a good job she could still think rationally.
“I think your instincts were right,” Jessica insisted. “MI6 has a stack of evidence that proves he’s Starfish. I’ve read Margaret’s witness account of what happened outside the AKSC building. She definitely thinks Nathan attempted to murder me. I believe that too.”
Her dad stared into space. “I guess I remember how he used to dote on you when you were little. He was very protective. We fell out but I still trusted him enough to be your Code Red contact. Obviously, I believe you if you think he was trying to kill you. I must have been wrong all this time. I’ve been wrong about a lot of things. Things I’ve kept from you, which I shouldn’t have.”
His eyes watered again as he stared down at her mum’s photo.
“Dad?”
“She was about your age when she started, you know. Mattie too.”
“Modelling? I know. That’s something you did tell me.”
“No, I mean spying.”
Jessica gaped at him. “What? You’re kidding.”
“Mattie and your mum both started modelling and spying when they were teenagers. They were very much like you – inquisitive and determined.”
“No way!” Mattie was the last person she’d suspect of being a spy. She liked Chanel suits, crossword puzzles, fine wine and arguing with her. Then again, it wasn’t just her tongue that was super sharp. Her brain was too. Plus she’d managed to fight off Allegra in the hospital. She’d thrown pretty good moves for someone whose hobbies involved yoga and ballroom dancing.
“Is that why Mattie never wanted me to get involved in your work? She didn’t want me to become a spy like her and Mum?”
“She was worried you’d join Westwood too.”
“Er. What’s that?”
“A division of MI6 that recruits models. It also has photographers, designers, stylists – people who travel and have unlimited access to VIP areas in many countries around the world.”
Jessica flopped down behind his desk. “You’re having a laugh, right?”
“It sounds strange, I know, but models are ideally placed to assist MI6,” her dad continued. “They travel the world and mix with rich, powerful people. Sometimes MI6 only finds out that an arms dealer’s in town when his girlfriend appears on the front row of a catwalk show. Other times, it’s discovered a foreign diplomat is money laundering after his wife splashes out hundreds of thousands of pounds on couture – far more than she could possibly have in her bank account. The information fed back is invaluable.”
“Why are you telling me all this? Why now?”
“You said you didn’t want any more secrets; that we all needed to be more honest with each other. I don’t want to keep things from you any more. I also wanted you to know all the facts before you make a decision.”
“About joining Westwood? Are you serious?”
“Mrs T extended the invitation on the phone just now. She was very impressed with the way you handled yourself in Paris. So was I.”
Jessica was too shocked to think straight. Her brain was still digesting everything. “Should I do it? What do you think?”
“I think that spying’s a risky business, but you know that already. Like Mattie, I want to protect you. But I also know that I can’t stand in the way of who you are. What you have the potential to become.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
There was a knock at the door.
Her dad smiled. “You don’t have to say anything yet. Think it over.”
Margaret peeped around the door. “There you both are. It’s time for the dreaded speeches.” She winked at Jessica. “I’ll try not to embarrass you both too much.”
She vanished again, whistling softly.
“Let’s talk it over some more later,” her dad said quietly. “In the meantime, don’t discuss it with your friends. It has to be kept confidential, for obvious reasons.”
“OK.”
She felt slightly dazed as she followed him into the living room. She immediately spotted Mattie, locked in conversation with Sara and Camille, her Paris chaperone, in the corner. Now she knew for sure that Sara was a spy, but was Camille one too? They could both be members of Westwood. Were they exchanging spy stories with Mattie? She could never think of Mattie in the same way again. She looked about. The models were MI6 agents, and the young men in the corner who claimed they worked in IT at the Foreign Office were spooks too. Was anyone in the room who they seemed?
Margaret picked up a champagne flute and tapped it with a knife.
“Can I have everyone’s attention for a minute, please?”
The hum of voices quietened.
A hand touched her back. She shivered slightly. It was Jamie.
“Are you OK?” he asked.
“I am now,” she said, smiling.
Jamie was one of the few people in the room who didn’t have a double identity, apart from classmate/gorgeous god of love, of course. That was Becky’s nickname for him, anyway. He’d die if he knew.
“I wanted to thank everyone for coming here today to welcome Jack home from hospital,” Margaret said. “No doubt some of you know Jack and I have had a chequered past. We haven’t always seen eye to eye, but that’s behind us now. I speak for everyone from the Foreign Office here today when I say we’re incredibly grateful for the work he’s done. I can reveal that thanks to him, a terrorist attack has been successfully averted.”
Her dad grinned as the guests toasted him with champagne. Someone called out: “Well done, Jack.”
“Of course, I also have to mention his daughter, Jessica, at this point,” she said. “Please refill your glasses and toast Jessica, for her bravery and loyalty, not only to her family but also to her country.”
A lump came to Jessica’s throat as the guests lifted their glasses.
“Cheers!”
“Speech, speech,” voices chimed.
Jessica shook her head, blushing furiously.
“No, honestly, I couldn’t,” she said.
“Oh yes you could!” Jamie laughed and pushed her forward.
“Go, girl!” Becky shouted. She wolf-whistled loudly.
“We won’t take no for an answer,” Mattie insisted.
“Come on, Jessica!” Sara shouted. “Don’t be shy.”
“No, really.”
“You’re too modest,” her dad said, smiling.
“Like mother, like daughter,” Margaret said. She raised her glass of champagne.
Jessica froze. It felt as if she’d been punched in the stomach.
“Are you all right, Jess?” Jamie asked.
She looked around the room. All eyes were fixed on her. Mattie, Becky and her dad looked puzzled while Margaret gave a hard, unflinching stare. Jessica felt the blood rush to her ears, making a buzzing sound.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” she said.
She dived out of the room, Allegra’s voice ringing in her head.
Like mother, like daughter.
They’re both better off dead.
Those were Starfish’s exact words.
She didn’t believe in coincidences. She suddenly remembered what Margaret had said at the top the Eiffel Tower that day.
She’s still got the canister of Teenosity. She’s going to release it.
Nobody had told Margaret about the canister. The only way she could have known was if she’d been expecting Allegra to deliver it to her. Allegra was running late and hadn’t made it to the rendezvous point with Starfish. She’d gone straight to the Eiffel Tower in time for the launch of Teenosity instead, but Margaret didn’t know that.
She gripped the table as another wave of nausea hit her.
Margaret was Starfish, not Nathan.
Margaret had set up Dad and attacked Jessica with chloroform when she disturbed her uploading the file on to his computer. She’d contacted Allegra using a voice disguiser, which made her sound male. She’d cleverly planted the seed of doubt in her head at dinner that night in Paris, that Nathan was working against her dad and that he had something to hide. Margaret had framed him and Jessica had believed every word she’d said. In the meantime, she’d tried to kill Jessica: instructing Allegra and Lyndon to poison the dress, cut the wire on the modelling shoot and finally to test the aerosolized Teenosity on her and Dad.
Unfortunately, Nathan had been right about her too. She was headstrong and she’d jumped to conclusions too quickly. She replayed Nathan’s telephone conversation in The Ritz in her head again.
So Lily and Jack were expendable and now Jessica is? Right?
If only she’d paid closer attention. It was a question, not a statement. He was challenging Mrs T about sending her into AKSC. He’d pushed her out of the way of the debris, rather than into its path, because he was her godfather. He was trying to protect her. It’s what he’d been doing all along when he tried to stop her from going to Paris and getting inside AKSC.
Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod. What had she done?
She’d made it so easy for Margaret. She’d helped her get away with it. Now she had no proof. It was the word of a respected MI6 agent against hers. By now, Margaret would have destroyed any evidence that could possibly lead back to her and planted it all on Nathan. She’d already made sure the ghost bank account was traced to his computer. Then she’d given her witness statement, saying he’d tried to kill her outside the AKSC building. No one knew if Nathan would come out of his coma. It was possible he’d never get the chance to clear his name, thanks to her.
She jumped as someone touched her arm.
“Whoa, steady on. Is everything all right? You looked like you’d seen a ghost back there.” Her dad wheeled in front of her.
“Yeah, something like that.”
“What is it?”
She raised her chin. “I want you to accept Mrs T’s offer. I want to join Westwood.”
“You’re sure that’s what you really want?”
“I’ve never been more certain of anything in my life. I have to do this. For me. For Mum.”
Margaret had better watch out. She was coming for her and Allegra. This time she’d have MI6’s resources behind her.
“I can ring Mrs T now if you want,” her dad said.
“First I need to go back in there and propose a toast.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Really? What to?”
“To unfinished business,” Jessica said, reaching for his hand.