Chapter 6

Jess came down in the morning very bleary-eyed. She had slept badly and had dreamed that she’d microwaved a friend’s pet gerbil in a moment of absent-mindedness. It wasn’t the ideal start to the day.

Mum was glowering at the breakfast table. Granny was smiling serenely over a newspaper account of a man who had run amok in a garden centre with a stainless steel spade.

Jess kissed the top of Granny’s head and put her arm round her mum.

‘Don’t try and soft-soap me,’ said Mum. ‘I’m still very cross about last night.’

‘Never let the sun set on your anger, Madeleine,’ said Granny. A bit rich, coming from a woman whose chief interest in life was murder.

‘I’m really sorry, Mum,’ said Jess, plugging her mobile into the charger. She had finally found it, under a pile of music magazines on her bedroom floor. ‘The only reason I didn’t ring you was my mobile had run out of charge.’

The first lie of the morning. Although it wasn’t such a terribly wicked lie – her mobile had run out of charge, after all. It was just that Jess hadn’t had it with her last night. So it was a lie containing a tasty little nugget of truth, like one of those chocolates with a nut in the middle. Jess felt that at least she’d got off to a flying lying start, and helped herself to a bowl of cornflakes.

‘You could have rung from Flora’s,’ said Mum with a glare.

Jess could not deny it. She just shrugged and tried hard to look contrite.

‘I’m really, really sorry,’ she said, crunching the cornflakes as innocently as possible. ‘I’ll never do it again.’

‘Huh!’ said her mum. She got up from the table, cleared away her plate and started to pack. She put a pile of guides and maps into a cardboard box marked BAKED BEANS.

My family is so trashy, thought Jess. I wish we had lovely old distinguished leather suitcases like Flora’s family has.

Jess was wondering how on earth she was ever going to broach the subject of Fred and Riverdene. Maybe she would just never find the necessary courage.

‘So how is Flora?’ asked Granny, perhaps hoping that, since they had last met, Flora might have been arrested for a homicide.

‘Oh, she’s more or less heartbroken,’ said Jess. ‘They’ve had to cancel that fabulous holiday in Costa Rica. Her mum’s broken her leg.’

‘What?’ Jess’s mum stopped packing. ‘Oh no! Oh dear! That lovely holiday! How terrible! How did it happen?’

‘She slipped in the bathroom,’ said Jess. She was relieved that at last they were talking about something other than her own crimes. ‘Getting out of the bath.’

‘How awful! And poor Flora! She was so much looking forward to that holiday!’ said Mum again, looking devastated.

Jess was beginning to get irritated. OK, it was fine to feel sympathy for Flora’s cancelled holiday, sure, but Jess wouldn’t have minded a little motherly sympathy for her own tragic dilemma. Although, come to think of it, her mum was her own tragic dilemma.

‘Yeah,’ she agreed. ‘Poor Flora.’ Then suddenly a brilliant, brilliant idea shot across her mind, like a jet-propelled banana. ‘But we’ve hatched a plot to cheer her up.’

‘What?’

‘Well, she’s invited me to go to Riverdene,’ announced Jess with a daring, reckless flash of genius. Mum wouldn’t object to her going with Flora, surely. She could secretly go with Fred, but pretend she was going with Flora. Flora would play ball. She must! After all, Jess had lied to Flora’s dad hundreds of times last term when Flora was going out with Mackenzie.

‘But surely Riverdene’s next week?’

‘Yes, but . . .’ Jess reached deep into her store of charming persuasion. ‘If we went on our trip a bit later, that would give Flora and me time to go to Riverdene, yeah? I mean, it would give you more time to do your research into ruined abbeys. And it would so cheer Flora up.’

Jess’s mum hesitated. You could see she was going to say no, but she was just gathering her arguments together.

‘It’s out of the question,’ she said. ‘For a start, those tickets cost a fortune.’

‘Flora’s already got the tickets,’ said Jess recklessly. ‘She says she’d be happy to pay for me – as a sort of early birthday present. It would be so nice for Flora to have something to cheer her up, Mum. You could see yesterday she’d been crying for ages. Her eyes were all red.’

Although Jess’s mum was ninety-five per cent against the whole idea, it was as if five per cent of her felt so sorry for Flora, she might just postpone her own holiday in Flora’s honour.

Jess waited, on tenterhooks. It had been a crazy impulse to disguise Fred’s offer as Flora’s offer, but it just might work. If her mum said yes, she’d obviously have to call Flora right away to make sure she was fully briefed, in case her mum rang Flora’s mum . . . In fact, come to think of it, Flora really might have to come along to Riverdene, too, as a sort of smoke screen.

Oh, for crying out loud! Things were getting more and more complicated. Jess loved Flora, and she loved Fred. But what if Flora started flirting with him? What if, as they sat round a campfire, Flora’s eyes met Fred’s through a hazy drift of smoke? What if the strings of his heart went ZING and he realised in a flash that it was Flora he loved, not Jess?

‘It’s out of the question,’ said Jess’s mum.

Jess was almost relieved. After the horrible hallucination she had just had about Flora and Fred round the campfire, she suddenly didn’t fancy the idea of Riverdene quite so much. And anyway, she was now in such hot water, having lied to her mum so recklessly, that she just wanted to change the subject to anything else, to anything in the whole wide world.

‘OK, OK,’ she said. ‘I didn’t expect you to say yes. Fine. OK. Forget I ever mentioned it. So, Granny – how many people did that guy kill with the spade?’

‘Still, I’d better just ring Flora’s mother,’ said Mum, with a sudden disastrous lurch into politeness. ‘I ought to apologise for the fact that you can’t go to Riverdene. And I must offer my sympathy about the accident.’

‘No!’ cried Jess in dismay. ‘Don’t ring!’

Her mum stopped and looked at her with deep suspicion.

‘Why not?’ she demanded.

Jess’s mind went blank, and she began to gibber. Nightmare! Why had she ever told that stupid lie?

‘Because she was saying . . . Flora’s mum was saying yesterday that she’s just fed up with people ringing up to express their sympathy. It makes her feel so much worse.’ Catastrophically, Jess blushed at the feebleness of her own excuse.

Knowing Jess very well, her mum saw the blush and smelt a rat. Very firmly, she pushed past Jess, picked up the phone and dialled Flora’s number.

‘What’s the time, dear?’ asked Granny irrelevantly, from somewhere on a different planet.

Jess sighed. It was time to run for cover. Because the poo was about to hit the air-conditioning unit.