The Finishing School

“What does she mean by that?” Kersti asks her.

“I don’t know,” Cressida answers, but her voice has a strange tremor. “There must be something in here. . . .”

Lille is silent.

“What did they write on the statue?” Kersti says, holding the picture right up to her nose. “Can you see at all?”

“No. Can you?”

Neither Kersti nor Lille can make out the spray-painted words in the picture.

“Why would she send this to you?” Lille asks Cressida.

“I guess because I asked her about it.”

“Why would they expel those girls for spray-painting a couple of words on the stupid statue?”

No one responds. Cressida opens the ledger, handling the thin yellow pages carefully between her fingers.

September 18, 1973. 23:00. Frei House.

Minutes:

Present:

Amoryn Lashwood—President Brooke Middlewood—Vice President Tatiana Greenberg—Secretary Caris Yaren

Fernanda Manzanares

Karen Kim

Donna Murthy

Agenda:

Initiation/ Pledge Night. Sept 30

Dinner for new Taps. [Beside which various restaurant options were scribbled]

Autumn Charitable Events:

Lycée’s own Battle of the Sexes?

“Watergate” Ball ?





The dinner bell rings while the three of them still have their noses buried in the ledger, before they’ve even managed to get beyond the first page.

“Bring it to the dining hall,” Kersti says.

“Are you crazy?” Cressida snaps. “I don’t want everyone to see it.”

“Who cares?”

“I have to go through it page by page.”

“There’s a lot,” Lille says. “All the minutes from every meeting—”

“She wouldn’t have sent this to me if there wasn’t something worth finding in it,” Cressida says.

“Check the very last page,” Kersti says, growing excited at the possibility of discovering some potentially epochal secret.

Cressida quickly turns to the back page, searching for whatever shocking secret she believes lies within its hallowed pages. It’s dated April 4, 1974. It says only Easter Cuckoo Festival, Sunday Ap 14.

The rest of the page is blank.

“Mesdemoiselles!” Hamidou shouts from the hall. “Souper!”

Cressida slaps the ledger shut. “Meet me back in my room after study hall,” she tells them.

“I’ve got an AP tutorial,” Lille says. “I’ll come here straight after.”

“I’ve got a volleyball match at Aiglon,” Kersti says. “Playoffs.”

“Then we’ll meet after lights-out.”

“Aren’t you sneaking out to see Magnus?”

“I’ll wait for you,” she says impatiently. “Just come to my room as soon as you can. I’ll have found something by then.”

Something. That voluptuous secret, with its claws already in their flesh. What is it Amoryn Lashwood wants Cressida to know? And why Cressida? Simply because she was the one audacious enough to ask?

It’s all Kersti can think about as Cressida shoves the ledger under her duvet and they file out of the room silently, giddy, conspiratorial.

On the dinner chalkboard downstairs, Charcuterie.

“Cold cuts,” Lille mutters. They groan and split up, heading off with resignation to their assigned tables.

As Kersti rolls a cold ham slice around a cornichon, making a wet slimy cigar that she dips in hot mustard, her mind goes back to the ledger and the scandal they might uncover inside it. She wonders if Cressida is somehow connected to it. Why else would Amoryn write a note like that to her? Do with this ledger what you wish.

Kersti’s excitement begins to turn to unease, a languidly creeping fear with tendrils reaching into every part of her body. She doesn’t know why but she feels an ambiguous sense of dread. There’s a voice in her head telling her that Cressida is somehow mixed up in something bad. Why else would she be so inexplicably consumed with what happened to those girls unless she had a personal, vested stake in it?

Kersti looks across the dining room and finds Cressida. Her heart surges. In spite of everything that’s happened over the last four years, she knows they’re kindred spirits. They always have been. Their friendship isn’t something Kersti ever sought or had to work hard for; it simply was, from day one, when they shared chopes and secrets. Cressida is the one person who’s always understood Kersti, who never judged her or expected anything from her other than for her to simply be Kersti. Cressida’s done hurtful things, she’s made mistakes, but her love for Kersti has never been in question.

Their eyes lock. Kersti smiles but Cressida’s expression is remote. She doesn’t smile back.





Chapter 31





LAUSANNE—June 2016



Over braised lamb shanks at the Brasserie Lausanne-Moudon with Jay, Kersti rehashes her conversation with M. Bueche. “It doesn’t make sense,” she says, brooding. “Madame Hamidou told us she fought Bueche to keep those girls from getting expelled. Why would she lie?”

“I’m sure it’s meaningless,” Jay says, stabbing a potato with his fork.

“And why would she tell the police about Cressida’s car accident? It was ancient history at that point. The Hamidou I remember would have protected Cressida. Not thrown her under the bus.”

“Sounds like she wanted them to know Cressida had a history.”

“Why, though?”

“So the investigation would wrap up quicker? Maybe it was the best way she could think to protect Cressida and the school.”

“You’re probably right,” Kersti says. “She adored Cressida . . . more than anyone else in that school. She would have done anything for her, as any mother would.”

Kersti thinks about it for a moment and then realizes Bueche almost had her. “It’s Bueche who’s lying,” she says decisively. “His friend was the detective on the case. He’s the one who covered it up, not Hamidou. He’s trying to throw me off.”

“Why do you think?”

“I’m sure it has something to do with the two girls who were expelled,” Kersti says. “Cressida must have found something in the ledger. What if Bueche has it?”

“You’ll never get your hands on it, Kerst. And now’s not the time to be playing Scooby-Doo.”

“I’m not playing Scooby-Doo,” she mutters indignantly.

“We’re having twins soon,” he reminds her. “Prioritize.”

“Something happened to Cressida and it was covered up. I want to know what.”

“Then let Deirdre figure it out. Surely she can afford to hire a lawyer or a private investigator.”

“We’re here, though—”

“We’re here because you’ve been chosen one of the Hundred Women of the Lycée.”

After dinner, they go back to the hotel in silence. Jay heads up to the room while Kersti goes to the lobby lounge to wait for Noa and Rafaella. She orders a ginger ale and texts Deirdre.

Need to talk to you tomorrow. Convo with Bueche troubled me. FYI you forgot the note in his office. I’ve got it.

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