“At least you can stay here if you want to,” Kersti tells Cressida, as a gentle breeze brings a layer of goose bumps to her bare shoulders. “You could live anywhere in the world. I’m the one who has to go back to Toronto.”
Cressida turns, about to say something, but her gaze is hijacked, settling somewhere off in the direction of the ballroom. “That’s her,” she breathes, grabbing Kersti’s arm. Her nails press into Kersti’s skin and Kersti lets out a yelp. “In the pink Chanel suit. Oh my God. It’s her.”
“Who?”
“Amoryn Lashwood.”
“Who?”
“Remember the old yearbook? She was in the picture with the two girls who got expelled. The one who bequeathed the ledger?”
As Kersti spots the woman in the pink suit talking to M. Bueche, she suddenly remembers. “Are you sure?” she says. “How can you tell?”
“She looks the same, only with shorter hair. I can’t believe she’s here. Let’s go.”
“Let’s go?”
“Talk to her.”
“About what?”
“About what happened,” Cressida says impatiently. “Don’t you want to know why her friends were expelled? And what was in that ledger?”
“You’re going to accost a perfect stranger at the Charity Ball and ask her about a ledger from almost twenty years ago?”
“Why not?”
“Well, the better question is why.”
“Something went down that year,” Cressida says, her eyes shining with excitement. “I want to know what happened.”
Kersti can tell that Cressida is drunk. She has that crazed look, which usually precedes some reckless, outrageous, and/or dangerous act, such as driving drunk or stealing a yearbook from the new library. She has another swig from her flask and pulls Kersti by the arm toward the ballroom, where Amoryn Lashwood is caught in Bueche’s snare. They wait until he finally drifts away, schmoozing and hustling other helpless alumni for more donations.
Up close, Amoryn Lashwood is still very pretty. Kersti does a quick calculation and figures she must be in her early forties. Her skin is still relatively unlined, except for two deep vertical lines between her eyebrows, which make her look concerned or displeased. The pink suit is Chanel, Kersti can tell by the large gold buttons, which are the iconic C’s, and she’s extremely thin. Her hair is bobbed and so well sculpted even the lake winds don’t move a strand.
They approach her and Cressida lightly touches her arm to get her attention. “Ms. Lashwood?”
The woman looks startled. “It’s El-Bahz,” she says, trying to place Cressida. “Mrs. El-Bahz. I haven’t been Lashwood in years.”
“I’m Cressida Strauss. This is Kersti. Class of ’98.”
Amoryn holds out her hand. A diamond ring the size of a cupcake gleams on her wedding finger. “Amoryn El-Bahz,” she says. “As you already know.”
“Class of ’74,” Cressida fills in.
“Yes. Correct.” She seems even more confused by how much Cressida knows about her.
“Lashwood House is named after your grandfather, isn’t it?” Cressida asks her, snatching a glass of champagne from one of the floating trays.
“He was a student in the late twenties, when they first started admitting boys,” Amoryn says. “My father and his brothers also went. My uncle was a good friend of Monsieur Bueche. We have a very long history with the Lycée.”
“Your year was the last year of the Helvetia Society,” Cressida says. “And you were the president, right?”
The glowing petal pink of Amoryn’s cheeks fades and she looks momentarily flustered. “That’s true,” she says, recovering her poise. “The last president, in fact. Tell me how you know so much about me. Certainly, there are more famous Lycée graduates than myself.”
Kersti looks over at Cressida, wondering how she’s going to proceed.
“Harzenmoser told us about your friends getting expelled for vandalizing the statue—”
“Harzenmoser?” she murmurs, her voice a thin leaf, floating in the air. “I’ve never known her to talk to the students.”
“She doesn’t usually,” Kersti says, her eyes bouncing back and forth between Cressida and Amoryn.
“And did she tell you what they wrote?”
“Of course not,” Cressida says, with an exaggerated eye roll. “But you must know.”
“Why are you so interested in all this?” Amoryn asks her, resting a pink tweed arm on one of her jutting hip bones.
Kersti shrinks back, embarrassed, as the conversation takes a turn for the awkward. Even she has no idea why Cressida is so obsessed with whatever it was those girls wrote on the statue and their resulting expulsions.
“I just can’t imagine what could get two students expelled from the Lycée,” Cressida says. “No one else has ever been expelled that I know of. Bueche would never willingly give up two tuitions, not over some spray paint on a statue. And Madame Hamidou was against it—”
“Madame Hamidou,” Amoryn repeats, her tone ambiguous. “How is she? I don’t see her here tonight.”
“She hates these things,” Cressida tells her. “She calls it the ‘groveling for money’ ball.”
Amoryn laughs and then her smile quickly goes away. “I don’t know what they wrote,” she says. “It was gone by morning.”
“It must have been pretty offensive,” Cressida perseveres. “Or incriminating?”
Their eyes lock then and Kersti is sure something passes between them. Some understanding, some transmuted secret that requires no spoken acknowledgment. Kersti is baffled, lost.
“You bequeathed a ledger in the yearbook,” Cressida goes on, holding Amoryn’s gaze. “All your friends did. One of them mentioned the secrets in the ledger—”
“Usually students bequeath funny memories and inside jokes,” Kersti interjects.
“Usually, yes,” Amoryn agrees. “But we didn’t.” She no longer seems upset or offended by the ambush. If anything, she seems roused, perhaps a little intrigued by Cressida’s curiosity and brazenness. “Our memories weren’t very funny,” she says, and then she holds up her champagne flute to signal the conversation is over. “Have a nice time at the ball, girls.”
As soon as she’s out of earshot, Cressida says, “Something happened that year.”
“Maybe one of them was sleeping with a teacher,” Kersti mutters, as Magnus appears before them, glassy-eyed and beautiful.
“Hello, my love,” he says to Cressida, pulling her into his arms.
She lets him sway her side to side in a silent slow dance, but her back is stiff and her face turns away from him, no doubt searching for Mr. Fithern.
Chapter 27
HERTFORDSHIRE—June 2016
The train glides swiftly through Edgware, North London, where the suburban landscape suddenly turns to woodlands at the border of Hertfordshire.