Follow Me Down

by Tanya Byrne

Genres: Friendship

Synopsis

When 16-year-old Adamma Okomma, a Nigerian diplomat's daughter, arrives at exclusive Crofton College in Wiltshire, she is immediately drawn to beautiful, tempestuous, unpredictable Scarlett Chiltern. Adamma and Scarlett become inseparable - until a boy comes between them. Soon the battle lines are drawn and Adamma is shunned by Scarlett and her privileged peers. But then Scarlett goes missing and everything takes a darker turn.

Release date: October 10, 2013

Publisher: Headline Book Publishing

Print pages: 259

Sample

THE DAY AFTER

MAY

When I was a kid and I couldn’t sleep, my father would tell me it was because someone was dreaming about me. I know now that this isn’t true – it’s just one of those things he used to tell me to make me feel better – but for a long time, I believed him.

I’m sure she doesn’t want me dreaming about her, either, but I do – a lot – which is kind of cruel because I spend most of the day trying to avoid her, yet as soon as I close my eyes, there she is, as though my brain won’t forget. I hate that, how it holds on to things and won’t let go. I can’t remember a thing about my fifth birthday party. I’ve seen photographs of it – me in that frothy pink dress, my aunts and uncles laughing so much you can see their teeth – but all I remember about that day is how my father ran over a dog that ran out in front of our car when we went to pick up the cake. Who does that? I don’t know. So when I say that I dream about her, they’re not always good dreams – and even the not-so-bad dreams still make me wake up gasping her name like someone running down the street shouting, ‘Fire!’

I was dreaming about him last night, the two of us lying on our backs on his scratchy tartan blanket in Savernake Forest, the sun weighing over us, all fat and yellow and ready to burst. We were watching the clouds bob past, pretending each one was a country – ‘India! Let’s go there . . . Australia! Let’s go there’ – like we did yesterday afternoon. I saw a cloud that looked like Africa, but when I turned to tell him, it was her next to me. She was grinning and wearing those heart-shaped sunglasses – the cheap red ones that she loves so much – and for a few moments it was like it used to be, the two of us giggling and comparing nail polish, until she asked me if I thought death was going to be beautiful. Only she could ask a question like that, and I told her not to be so morbid. She just laughed and blamed Oscar Wilde, then told me to imagine it, lying in the earth with flowers growing from my fingernails and grass from my eyelashes. It does sound kind of beautiful, doesn’t it?

I woke up with a gasp and for a moment I wasn’t sure where I was. It wasn’t until the shadows began to take shape – my closet, my desk, my noticeboard with its patchwork of photographs, the gaps where the ones of her used to be now covered with other ones – that I remembered I was at school and my nerves lurched back into place.

I used to enjoy it, moving around. It didn’t bother me that I might be here in Wiltshire one day then back in Lagos the next, watching my grandmother in the kitchen in her faded boubou, singing to herself as she chopped bitterleaf. I used to be able to sleep anywhere, but I can’t sleep here. At first it was the strange bed, then it was the murmurs through the walls – the girls who have to sleep with the radio on, the ones who call their boyfriends at midnight, when they think everyone is asleep – and now it’s the dreams about her.

It’s got to the point where I dread going to bed. My stomach clenches like a fist just thinking about it because I know that I’m going to lie there – thinking about her, about him, about what we’ve done – until the muffled giggles stop and the DJs shut up and all I can hear is the heavy tick tick tick of the grandfather clock at the bottom of the stairs.

Then I wonder who else is awake, if there’s another girl in another bed in another room listening to the tick tick tick as well. If there’s a guy on the other side of the village, or a woman fussing over a loose thread on her duvet. It’s like I’m part of a club – the misfits, the liars, the lonely – who meet every night in the empty, black silence to wait for it to go grey with the promise of morning, with its cups of tea and conversations about the weather that fill the hours before we have to go to bed and do it again. And every night I tell myself the same thing, that tonight it will pass, that tonight I’ll sleep – and I never do.

But I guess that’s guilt, what it does to you.



245 DAYS BEFORE

SEPTEMBER

As first days of school go, today wasn’t so bad. No one flushed my head down the toilet or stole my lunch money, so I shouldn’t complain, but I still don’t want to be here. I’m trying to be mature about it, though; it’s hardly my father’s fault that the Nigerian High Commissioner in London died and he was posted here, plus my mother just found out that she’s going to be teaching a class at UCL, which she’s thrilled about. It doesn’t make being here any easier, though.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if I could stay in London with them, but being shipped off to boarding school feels too much like I’ve done something wrong. I haven’t, I know. I know that they just want me to go to the best school in England – which is Crofton College – but if I had known that they were going to send me away, I would have asked to stay in New York where I had friends, a boyfriend, a favourite coffee shop, a favourite bench in Central Park. Secret places that I found, that were mine, but here I am at this dusty old school that’s about ten miles south of No One Gives a Damn, where no one can pronounce my surname.

I can’t tell my parents this, though, because they’d just tell me that it’s only been a day and I should give it a chance, and I should, but my God, if New York is the city that never sleeps, then Ostley is the village that’s about to nod off. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it. It’s almost too much – too much green, too much space, too much sky. And it’s so quiet. There are no sirens, no buses panting in traffic, not the constant rumble of life you feel under your feet in New York. The rattle of the subway somewhere below the sidewalk or the far-off hum of a pneumatic drill splitting a road in two, as though the city is always shifting because there’s not enough room for everyone. But in Ostley, all there is is room. The fields go on until you get bored of looking at them and you can always hear stuff – birds chattering and brooks babbling – like a cartoon.

I’d refused to look at the Crofton brochure my father tried to show me before we left New York, but it didn’t matter because it’s just as I imagined. It’s the sort of school my father has always wanted to send me to, the sort of school he’d read about in books – that his friends from Cambridge had gone to – somewhere with hockey pitches and house badges and dining halls with long wooden tables. His eyes lit up when our car pulled onto the tree-lined drive and we got our first glimpse of it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him like that – wide-eyed and blinking, like a little boy – which is why I’m giving it a chance.

Crofton is stunning, I’ll give it that – grand and gloriously Gothic, all spires and arches and leaded windows – but when the driver stopped to let a gaggle of girls cross the road, I realised that it has none of the glamour of my school in New York, none of the attitude. All the girls looked rather proper and seemed to be wearing their uniform with pride as though they’d chosen to wear it. No one tried to look different. There were no cute coats and matching headbands. No one had pinned a brooch to their blazer. They even seemed to be carrying the same folders. So when our car pulled up outside my boarding house and I was greeted by my housemistress, a middle-aged woman with a greying bob and sensible shoes called Mrs Delaney, I realised that I wouldn’t be wearing half the stuff I’d packed.

We’d got stuck in traffic leaving London so were half an hour late. In Nigerian time – where 7 a.m. means more like 11 a.m. – half an hour isn’t so bad, but in British time, it was a big deal, especially to Mrs Delaney, who made a point – three times – of telling us that she could only give us a fleeting tour before I had to get to Registration. So we left our housekeeper, Celina, in my room unpacking my luggage while Mrs Delaney showed us around.

‘Burnham houses all the girls in the Lower Six,’ she told us, marching back towards the stairs. ‘I’ve been the housemistress here for six years. Your house tutor is Madame Girard, whom you will see every morning for Registration, then for your one-on-one on a Monday.’

I nodded, wondering if I should be making a note of it, not that she slowed down for me to do so. She only stopped when we got to the end of the corridor. ‘I live in the cottage attached to the house and you can reach me out of hours by ringing this bell.’ She gestured at the door. ‘All the staff at Crofton live on campus, but we prefer if you call first, if you can.’

And that’s how it went on, Mrs Delaney barking stuff – about when to get up and when to sign out and when to clear my room so that it could be cleaned – as she showed us around. My father seemed impressed, nodding at each room: the bedrooms, the Common Room, the Laundry Room, the Dining Hall with its long tables. He didn’t say a word, just followed her, hands behind his back, his long wool coat swinging as he swept in and out of each room. When we returned to my room, all he said was, ‘The lock on the Common Room window needs replacing,’ and it was Mrs Delaney’s turn to look bewildered.

He told us that he’d wait in my room while we looked at the bathroom. Not that I was in any hurry to see it; my mother had to take me by the elbow and lead me down the corridor. I could see it at the end, steam billowing out of the door as a girl ran in with a pink towel. ‘You have four minutes, Miss Avery,’ Mrs Delaney barked after her and I shot a look at my mother, who smiled tightly and patted my arm.

There are fifty girls in Burnham, apparently, most of them doing A-Levels, but some are doing the Baccalaureate, like me. It felt like much more, though, and I didn’t expect it to be so chaotic. It was the first day of term, so I don’t know why I was surprised, to be honest. I thought it would be quiet – solemn – like a convent, I guess. But there were girls everywhere, darting from room to room clutching washbags and hairbrushes. I’ve never had to share a bathroom before and the thought of it, of having to queue to use the shower and brushing my teeth a sink away from a stranger, made my stomach knot. Where would I put my make-up on? In all the upheaval, it was such a silly thing to worry about, but it was all I could think about.

My mother must have known because when we got back to my room, she went to the window. ‘What a nice view, Adamma.’ She gestured at the magnolia tree. ‘Isn’t it lovely?’

I didn’t respond, just fussed over my skirt and blazer. At least the uniform was black and white, which was more flattering than the bottle-green and tartan I had worn at my school in New York, but I still sneered at my reflection in the mirror as Mrs Delaney ushered a girl in. Even though she seemed sweet, her hair wet from the shower, I still glared at her like a cornered cat.

She was struggling under the weight of a hockey bag. I waited for Mrs Delaney to tell her to put it down, but she didn’t. ‘This is Orla Roberts. Orla’s doing A-levels – so you won’t have any classes together – but she’s a house monitor, so if you need anything, she’s just across the hall.’ She gestured at me. ‘Orla, this is Adamma Okomma and her parents. They’ve just moved here from New York. Mr Okomma is the new Nigerian High Commissioner in London.’ She turned to my parents with a smile. ‘Orla is a scholarship student.’

She said it as though she was describing her eye colour. This is Orla Roberts. She has brown eyes and poor parents. I guess my mother noticed it too because she smiled tightly, then, with a more genuine one, turned to Orla and extended her hand. My father did too, and when it was my turn I did the same – a little sullenly, I admit, but I was too distracted as I saw Celina trying to shoehorn my clothes into the tiny closet. Mrs Delaney turned to watch her too. ‘There was no need to bring everything, dear. You must learn to pack for the term.’ When she laughed, I wanted to tell her that was my Fall wardrobe, but my father gave me a look, so I crossed my arms instead.

I guess I’ve seen too many movies about English boarding schools because when my parents left, I expected Orla to roll up her skirt and put on some red lipstick. Instead she told me that she’d see me later and left. As I watched her go, still struggling with her hockey bag, I won’t lie, I was a little disappointed. She hadn’t given me a cigarette and tried to take me under her wing, warn me who I should and shouldn’t speak to, offer to show me Crofton’s secret places. I suppose it served me right for being surly.

Mercifully, I didn’t have to find my way to my first class because every new pupil is assigned a hen, an older girl who has to show her around and help her settle in. My hen was an Upper Sixth girl called Tara Salter. She was more what I had expected, bright eyed and shiny haired. She’d definitely drunk the Kool-Aid and she gushed and gushed about the school, introducing me to each building as if it was her friend. But, as eager as she was, she had the grace to let me go to the bathroom by myself – not before she made sure I knew where my English lit class was. I still got lost, though, and wandered up and down the long corridor several times before I had to admit defeat and get the map she had given me out of my bag.

‘Going my way?’ a guy asked, suddenly at my side.

He said it so smoothly – as though we were in an old black-and-white movie and he was offering me a cigarette – that I stared at him for a moment or two before I remembered that the sixth form was mixed.

Perhaps my father wasn’t trying to torture me after all.

‘I’m Dominic Sim.’ He held out his hand. I looked at it, but that just made his smile more wicked as his hand dropped back down to his side. ‘I can escort you.’

‘You can? How do you know where I’m going?’

‘Heaven, I assume?’

I stared at him, horrified. I thought English boys were charming. I quietly cursed my father for making me watch Downton Abbey and raising my expectations.

I turned to walk away, but he changed tack. ‘OK. If the face isn’t working,’ he said, suddenly in front of me, ‘I’m a billionaire.’

That didn’t work, either. ‘Your father’s a billionaire,’ I replied, looking back down at my map. ‘The only thing you’ve earned is Air Miles.’

He laughed at that, loud and bright. ‘I like you already, Miss Okomma.’

I shot a look at him again. ‘How did you know my name?’

‘I know things.’ He gestured at the door of the classroom we were standing outside of. ‘Like you’re doing the Baccalaureate, right?’ I arched an eyebrow at him and his smile widened. ‘Me too. So this is where you want to be: English lit with Mr Lucas.’ He put a hand to his chest. ‘I promise never to lead you astray, Miss Okomma.’

He smiled and, as obnoxious as he was, I had to tell myself not to smile back. I kind of hate myself, but what can I say? What he lacked in humility he made up for in wit and if I have one weakness, it’s funny guys.

‘Come and sit next to me,’ he said, turning and walking into the classroom. ‘I’m new, too. We new kids need to stick together.’

‘I’m OK, thanks,’ I told him as I followed him in, sensing that I should probably keep as much distance between us as possible.

I headed for the empty desk in the middle of the classroom, but the girl sitting at the one behind it shook her head so emphatically that I stepped back. That left just one, in the front row, but before I could get to it, I heard Dominic say, ‘Get up, then, you unchivalrous bastard. Can’t you see the lady needs a desk?’

Realising what he was doing, I turned to tell him off, but was stunned to find the boy he’d barked at gathering up his books. By the time I’d recovered, he’d shuffled towards the desk in the front row, leaving just one free desk, the one next to Dominic’s.

‘Do people always do what you tell them?’ I asked, sighing as I realised that by sitting next to him, I was answering my own question.

At least he had the decency not to comment on it; he just smiled and gave me a whatcha gonna do? shrug as I took my notebook out of my bag. I put it down with a petulant huff, determined not to give him any further encouragement, but after I had opened it and written the date neatly in the top right-hand corner of the first page, my gaze strayed back towards him. He was still looking at me and I looked away, my toe tapping. I glanced at the doorway as a girl with dark hair walked in. She came in with a slight swagger and for a second, I thought she was walking towards me, but she stopped at his desk.

‘Dominic Sim,’ she said, and I could tell that she was fighting a smile.

He did smile. ‘Surprise!’

‘I thought you were on a slow boat to Korea after the Eton thing?’

The Eton thing, I noted, pretending to write something in my notebook so that they wouldn’t think I was eavesdropping. I was the only one who took the trouble to be subtle, though; everyone else just turned to look at them as she stood in front of his desk, hands on her hips. Not that she seemed fazed that she had an audience, she had her chin up and her shoulders back. I got the feeling that she did this a lot.

‘You, more than anyone, should know not to listen to everything you hear, Scarlett,’ he said, his eyes suddenly black. ‘Good summer? How was rehab?’

‘I’m off the crack, at last. Three weeks clean.’ She crossed her fingers and held them up. ‘How was Eton? Do you still know what a vagina looks like?’

‘Feel free to remind me.’

‘Like you’d know what to do with it.’

He laughed and she claimed the victory with a curtsey, then went and sat at the desk in the middle. I guess that’s why that girl had shaken her head when I’d gone to sit there: it was her desk, the one in the middle where everyone could see her. Not that she needed to sit there; wherever she sat, you would see her; she seemed to reflect off the panelled walls like a new penny.

After her performance with Dominic, I wasn’t surprised that she was the first to raise her hand when class started. She didn’t do it with any eagerness, though – she looked rather bored, actually – but as soon as she did, four other hands shot up, and I watched Mr Lucas let go of a breath and smile, obviously grateful that his first lesson of the year wasn’t dying on its ass.

‘Yes, Miss Chiltern?’ He pointed the copy of Anna Karenina he was holding at her.

He’d been clutching it a little too tightly, I’d noticed, his knuckles white. And when he asked us what our favourite opening line of a book was, he sounded out of breath. I didn’t envy him. He was clearly flustered and young – in his early twenties, I guessed – much younger than the rest of the faculty, which must make some of the parents uncomfortable. I don’t think my father would be impressed; he seemed to think that every teacher at Crofton was the best in England. I think he’d struggle to believe that a twenty-something-year-old man, with what looked like MAX BIRTHDAY scribbled on the heel of his palm in biro, was the best English lit teacher they could find. His favourite line was from Anna Karenina. Somewhat predictable, or perhaps convenient, given that we were about to study it, so I expected her to say something similar. But she said, ‘All this happened, more or less.’

‘Slaughterhouse-Five,’ he said, but there was no shake in his voice this time. If anything, he sounded pleased with himself, as though he was on a game show, announcing the million-dollar answer. ‘That’s a wonderful book, Miss Chiltern.’

I must have rolled my eyes, because he smiled at me. ‘Not a fan, I take it?’

He looked at me, his chin raised and his lips parted, and I stared at him dumbly for a moment until I realised that he was waiting for me to tell him my name as well. I sat a little straighter. ‘Adamma, Sir. Adamma Okomma.’

He nodded. ‘I realise Vonnegut isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, so what’s your favourite opening line, Miss Okomma?’ He sat on the edge of his desk, arms folded.

My gaze flitted around the classroom as everyone turned to look at me and it made my cheeks burn. I took a breath. ‘“It was inevitable:”’ I had to stop and take another breath as a sudden tremor in my voice made the words wobble, ‘“the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.”’

Mr Lucas was quiet for a moment or two, then nodded. ‘Love in the Time of Cholera.’ I watched his Adam’s apple rise then fall. ‘Excellent choice, Miss Okomma. Gabriel Garcia Marquez is—’ He stopped, flustered again.

‘Magnificent?’ I suggested, and he blinked at me.

When I glanced at Scarlett, she wasn’t smiling any more.



THE DAY AFTER

MAY

As soon as Molly knew, we all did. I’d only just caught my breath, my heart still throbbing as I remembered my dream – Scarlett in those cheap red sunglasses, the sun in her hair – when a strip of light appeared under my door. A moment later I heard it, the slap slap slap of Molly’s bare feet on the floorboards as she ran from room to room, gleefully delivering the news as though she was announcing the birth of a baby.

Orla got to me first. I smelled her before I saw her, smelled her sugary perfume that even smells pink, somehow, and attaches itself to everything she touches. I’d never noticed it, not until I was idly trying perfumes at JFK last year. I reached for one and when I smelled it – smelled her – I smiled. I hadn’t realised how much I liked her until then. I hadn’t realised how much I liked Crofton, either. I guess that was the first time I missed it, when, despite its ugly uniform and my strange, hard bed, it started to feel a little like home.

Orla turned on the light. I sat up and raised a hand as it drenched me, my eyes stinging for a second or two before they came back into focus as she sat on my bed.

‘What’s wrong?’ I asked, my voice still sticky with sleep, but then I saw the Paris guidebook on my nightstand and I was suddenly awake. I wanted to reach over and snatch it off, hide it under my duvet, but I didn’t want to draw attention to it.

‘Scarlett’s gone,’ she said, out of breath.

My heart began to beat very, very slowly. ‘Gone?’

‘She’s run away again.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Molly heard it from Tara who heard it from Olivia.’

‘Olivia Fisher or Scarlett’s sister Olivia?’

‘Her sister.’

‘So it’s true?’ She nodded and my heart sped up again, back to normal speed then faster, faster. ‘Where’s she gone?’

Before she could answer, Molly was in my doorway. ‘Ding dong the bitch is gone,’ she sang with a nasty smile, before she skipped off again.

‘She needs to pace herself.’ I sighed. ‘She’ll be dead of glee by lunch.’

Orla frowned. ‘She says you crashed Scarlett and Olivia’s party on Saturday.’

‘Yeah.’ I tugged off my headscarf and smoothed my hair down with my hand.

‘Did Scarlett go mad?’

‘Not at all. She was fine. More than fine, it was the first party since –’ I thought about it, then shrugged – ‘I don’t know when, when she didn’t start anything.’

‘Really? But it was her birthday.’

‘I know. She was . . .’

‘Nice?’ Orla offered with a careful smile when I hesitated.

I raised an eyebrow. ‘Not quite. But she wasn’t vicious, either.’

‘Is that why you went? Because things are getting better?’ she asked, but it was just that – a question – there was no undertone. And that’s what I love about Orla, there was no ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ or ‘But you’re my best friend’ like I used to get from Scarlett.

‘I don’t know.’ I laid my headscarf in my lap, unknotting it then folding it into a neat square. ‘I thought—’ Before I could finish, two girls hurried past my open door whispering. I shook my head and sighed. ‘But nothing’s changed, has it? She’s still Scarlett.’

Orla looked confused. ‘Did you think she had changed?’

I shrugged and thought of Scarlett on Saturday night. She looked so happy, dancing under the canopy of Chinese lanterns, arms in the air, the glitter from her blue eye shadow freckling across her cheeks and, for a moment, it was like old times. It wasn’t perfect – it will never be perfect again – but despite the wall of people between us, it kind of felt like it was just her and me again. But then I thought about Dominic, standing too close (always too close), the smell of blackcurrant on his breath – Do you think she’ll ever forgive you?

I didn’t tell Orla that, though. I wanted to, but before I gave into the temptation, I lied and told her that I’d forgotten to file something for the school newspaper and when she left, I went to my closet, opened the doors and reached for my tuck box. The contents rattled as I took it out and put it on my bed then reached for my bag, fingers fluttering as I rooted through it for my keys. My hands were shaking so much that it took two attempts to unlock it, but when I did, I turned it upside down. Everything spilled out on to the bed: half a dozen jewellery boxes, my passport, credit cards, a memory stick, the cash my parents had given me in case of an emergency, a handful of carefully folded notes and, finally, my other cellphone. I switched it on, panic pinching at me as I paced back and forth over the rug in the middle of my room.

As soon as the menu loaded, I called him. I didn’t even give him a chance to say hello before I breathed, ‘Did you hear about Scarlett?’



245 DAYS BEFORE

SEPTEMBER

Crofton is confounding. I guess that’s what the breast pocket of my blazer is for, a compass and a piece of Kendal Mint Cake, because I will never find my way around here. Everything looks the same. Even the oil paintings are beginning to look the same; I’m sure they’re all of the same white guy in different positions.

I’m not being melodramatic, but I will die here. They are going to find my desiccating body at the end of one the corridors, gnarled fingers still curled around my map. It’s my own fault; Tara was getting on my nerves, so I told her I’d be fine and, in an effort to avoid any further advances from Dominic, I’d refused his offer to show me around. I shouldn’t have because I’m hopeless with maps so I got lost three times on the way to lunch. I don’t even know how that’s possible (that has to be some sort of . . .