‘Point taken,’ I said submissively. ‘I’ll go to bed.’
I woke up late in the afternoon to hear the boys talking in soft voices. Wrapping Frank’s dressing gown around me, I padded barefooted out to the study to hear the news.
‘What did Mr Sharp say?’ I asked eagerly. ‘Is there anything to be done for Pedro?’
Frank had a piece of bread on the end of a toasting fork and was holding it over the flames.
‘Honey or jam?’ he asked. That meant it was bad news.
‘Spit it out, Frank. What did he say?’
Charlie got out of the armchair and handed me into it. Very bad news then.
‘He said that we can’t do anything even if we know where Pedro is and who has him,’ said Frank heavily.
‘Why not? Can’t he use this habeas thingy?’
‘Habeas corpus. No, because he would have to apply to the magistrate for it.’
‘So?’
‘The magistrate will say, “What proof do you have, sir, that Mr Hawkins, that respected businessman and donor to many worthy causes, is hiding this boy from us when he swears he doesn’t know where he is?”’
‘But we’ve seen him there. We know he’s got him,’ I protested.
‘You’ve seen him there. You know he’s got him.’
I realized what Frank meant. Mr Sharp could produce no witness because I was in hiding from the very same magistrate. Even if I did come forward, it would be my word against Hawkins and we all knew which side the law would come down on. Shepherd knew I could do nothing with the information he had given me.
‘I hate Billy Shepherd,’ I said fiercely, clenching my fists on the arms of the chair.
Frank looked at me strangely. ‘He takes an uncommon amount of interest in you, doesn’t he? It’s not healthy, Cat. I wouldn’t encourage him.’
‘Encourage him? You think I encourage him?’ I asked, not believing I was hearing this.
‘You answer him back, you make fun of him, you show you’re not scared of him – need I say more?’
I was angry with Frank now. ‘And you think this adds up to me encouraging him?’ I rounded on Charlie. ‘Do you think I encourage his . . . his attentions, Charlie?’
Charlie looked embarrassed and shrugged. ‘It did strike me that you and Shepherd seemed to understand each other rather better than the rest of us did,’ he offered.
‘But I was just being me! I don’t want a dog-breathed bully like Billy Boil to walk all over me!’
‘Exactly,’ said Frank, passing me the toast. ‘That’s why he likes you.’
‘Likes me!’ I was now incandescent with rage. ‘He wants to kill me, you idiot – very slowly and painfully, he told me. It was only because Syd had his blessed knives that I’m still alive now!’ I got up and threw the toast on the hearth. ‘I’m not hungry.’
Slamming the door to my room, I sat with my back to it, head in my hands. Not meaning to eavesdrop, I heard Charlie say, ‘She can’t help it, Frank. She’s not going to become a simpering female just to put Shepherd off.’
‘But he loves manipulating her – it’s like a game to him. He knows he can rely on her temper to make the sparks fly.’
‘Are you saying you want Cat to change? To become like all those awful drawing-room misses we have inflicted on us when we go visiting?’
‘Perish the thought, no! I wouldn’t have her any other way. But she’s making life very difficult for herself as she is. She said it: she’s a magnet for trouble and unless she turns off the magnetism, she’s going to keep on attracting Shepherd to her and one day . . .’
He didn’t complete the sentence but I did it for him in my head. And one day, as he promised, Billy would simplify whatever it was he felt for me by killing the cat.
There was a buzz of excitement in the air as we filed into the Lower Form classroom on Monday morning. I’d missed so many lessons the previous week, I appeared to be the only one not in the know.
‘How are you feeling, Hengrave?’ asked Richmond with mock concern. ‘Got over your fall yet?’
My mind filled with the humiliating memory of him rubbing my face in the dirt but I reined in my temper. I could take revenge another way.
‘My meeting with the stones merely impressed on me how impoverished in wit and honour you and your friends are,’ I said with a sweet smile in my best drawing room manner, though my words were laden with insult. If Frank wanted me to act like an insipid miss, then that’s what he’d get and we’d see if he liked it. Richmond was disconcerted – as well he might be, for I knew I looked my most girlish with this expression on my face. ‘And I thank you for enlightening me.’ I tipped my head to one side, finger pressed lightly to my cheek coquettishly. ‘I also hadn’t realized such small-brained thugs could walk and talk at the same time – that too was a revelation. Tell me, do you get the ape in you from your mother’s or your father’s side of the family?’
The boys on my bench laughed.
‘Why, you little . . .’ snarled Richmond.
Mr Castleton walked into the room, positively bursting with his news.
‘Settle down, boys,’ he said, giving us all an indulgent smile. ‘Here it is: the cast of this year’s Latin play!’ He waved a piece of parchment in the air.