'How do you mean she agrees with you?' Paige asked.

D'Arblay steered the car past the huddle of journalists and then through the carved stone pillars at the entrance to St Jude's. 'Alyssa's aunt wants Alyssa at home for the rest of the term. It's clear to everyone after the trauma of recent events that she needs complete rest and recuperation.'

'You can't decide that,' Paige argued. 'What if she doesn't want to go?'

'That's irrelevant,' D'Arblay said. The grounds of St Jude's had never looked more beautiful under their pure white covering of snow. The house itself looked like a painting by a Dutch master. 'Tomorrow afternoon at the latest Alyssa leaves for Richmond.'

chapter eight.

Aunt Olivia doesn't do afternoon tea. At that time of day she's usually on a train or a plane looking at spreadsheets, sending emails. But this Tuesday she sat with me in the Art Deco surrounding of Bentley's, an up-market tea shop in Ainslee light oak panelling, faux-medieval tapestries on the walls, antique Clarice Cliff teapots set on a high shelf.

She was wearing Jaeger from head to toe lilac silk scarf, grey cashmere sweater, tailored black trousers, plus her usual businesslike expression as she poured her Earl Grey into a bone china cup. 'OK, Alyssa, I need to know what's really going on. Why do they want to send you home?'

'Don't worry, I'm not being suspended.' It wouldn't have been the first time it had happened so I felt I had to reassure her.

'And you like the school?' She gave me a sharp, inquisitive look.

'I do.' My answer didn't have to be thought out. I do. I like St Jude's. I like Bryony Phillips and the French teacher, Justine Renoir. I like the library and the science labs and the freedom the staff give you to follow your own interests. I especially like Paige, Zara and Jack.

'You want to stay?'

'For sure.' For the first time ever I was starting to feel that this was where I might one day be comfortable with who I was.

'So what's this all about? I know it's to do with the poor girl who drowned, but tell me more.' I saw Aunt Olivia glance at her watch as she sipped her tea no surprise there.

'I was Lily's roommate so they think I must be suffering from stress.'

'Understandable under the circumstances.'

'Yes, but what they don't realize is that I'll be under even more stress if they send me home. I need to be here, Aunt Olivia.'

'Why? What good can you do?'

'I can keep an eye on Paige for a start. She's Lily's other roommate. It's hit her hard.'

'And?'

'I want to be on the spot while the police investigate. They might want to ask me some questions about the last time I saw Lily.'

My aunt's expression changed from detached curiosity to something approaching concern. 'The police are investigating Lily's death?'

'Yes. Didn't you know? You saw the reporters at the gate. It's been in the news.'

'I don't pay any attention to news reports. I assumed that the poor girl had committed suicide.'

'So did everyone at first.' Fiddling with my teaspoon, I hesitated over how much to tell her before deciding to leave out the bit about the request for a second pathologist's report because that was unusual and anything out of the ordinary would freak her out more than she probably already was. 'If you were me and you'd found out that something suspicious could be going on, wouldn't you want to know more?'

'I don't like mysteries, certainly.'

I'd relied on the family sniffer-dog gene, inherited from my Bletchley Park great-aunt and I had Aunt Olivia hooked. 'So that's why I want to be here.'

My aunt nodded her elegantly coiffed head. 'That's all very well as far as it goes, Alyssa. But this D'Arblay man he seemed insistent.'

'I know they want me off the scene, especially since yesterday.'

'Ah yes, yesterday. Tell me.'

'It was snowing. The roads were bad.'

'You had a near miss with a motorcycle.'

'It skidded on to the pavement.' Which was the truth, but probably not the whole truth because I needed Aunt Olivia to skim over this incident too. 'Honestly, the school's got this wrong. I'm perfectly OK see!'

She studied me then told me with a sigh that I was exactly like my mother. 'Helena was always convinced she was right too.'

I was sitting calmly across the table and my aunt has almost zero imagination so she takes things at face value if I look OK, as far as she's concerned I am OK.

'So I shouldn't worry too much about you?' she double-checked.

'It's the school they're overreacting.'

'And I don't suppose I'm obliged to take their advice,' she said cautiously. 'After all, they can't force you to leave early.'

I may have looked calm and composed, but my heart was setting up a new world record for most beats per minute. I had to stick around to find out why Tom had Lily's overnight bag at his house for a start, and for a hundred other reasons.

'Alyssa dear, I don't mind admitting that I don't know what to do for the best.' My decisive aunt was suddenly dithering. 'I came here with the firm intention to follow Dr Webb's advice and take you home. Even though I'd explained to him I frequently worked in Geneva and that you might have to spend a considerable amount of time alone in the Richmond house, he was still of the opinion that it would be best to remove you from the school.'

I shook my head. 'No, Aunt Olivia. I have to stay here it's important.'

She nodded and thought some more. 'Then I have to trust your instinct,' she decided.

The words fell from her lips like shiny gemstones. I'd got the reprieve I'd been working for. Be still, my beating heart.

'I'll drive you back to St Jude's and insist on an interview with the principal. I'll tell him in person that I wish you to continue until the end of term.'

'So that's that.' I sat with Paige in our room, enjoying one small victory. 'They can't get rid of me, even if they want to.'

'But why would they want to?' Paige wondered. 'Why not me as well? I was as close to Lily as you were.'

'Closer.'

'But they're not putting the same pressure on me.'

'Maybe it's something to do with not trusting me. I'm still an outsider.'

'And brainy with it.'

'Not compared with some others around here.'

'Alyssa, you're bloody clever. And you've got this memory thing going on, which none of the rest of us have. It's like they're scared of you remembering some little detail that might get the school into trouble.'

'With who?'

'With the Earle family, or the journos I don't know.'

We heard footsteps stop outside our door so the guessing game had to stop.

Knock, knock, followed by a hissed request. 'Alyssa Paige can I come in?'

It was Jack's voice so I was the one who shot to the door. 'What are you doing? You're not supposed to be here!'

At St Jude's we have one long corridor for the girls, one for the boys visits only allowed between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. It was now 8.30 p.m. Punishment for breaking the rule immediate suspension.

'I know. Paige, you have to stand guard.'

She huffed and puffed and effed but eventually she went to sit on the top step at the end of the corridor.

'So can I come in?' he asked. He stepped into the room without waiting for a reply and before I knew it, his arms were round my waist and he was pulling me towards him and kissing me.

I went weak at the knees, my heart raced you know the usual cliches. Again, before I knew it, I was kissing him back until more footsteps dragged us back to earth.

'Jack, is this a purely social visit, or is it important?' Paige burst through the door and caught us eating each other's faces. 'I'm out here freezing my tits off.'

'Sorry.' Blushing, he stepped away from me. 'Get back out there, Paige. Call me if anyone comes.'

She closed the door and stomped off.

'What if someone does come?' I asked. 'Will we have a St Trinian's moment of you climbing out of the window and down the drainpipe?'

Jack grinned. (You know what I'm going to say Oh, that grin! I had to kiss him again and again.) 'So, anyway, I dropped in on Tom at the Old Vicarage.'

'When?' I gasped.

'While you were busy with your aunt. How did that go, by the way?'

'Excellent. She's cool with me staying.'

'Great.' Another pause for more kissing before we got back to business. 'So Tom and I arranged a date for the next five-a-side match.'

'No, really? Did you sneak another look at that bag?'

'Maybe.' Jack looped his arms round my waist.

I leaned my weight back against them and looked straight at him. 'And?'

'I found this.' Suddenly unclasping his hands and letting me stagger back against the window ledge, he put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a red smart phone.

'Lily's?' Yes Lily's secret phone that she was rummaging for after her September meeting with Adam and Saint Sam, when she was crying and chucking stuff across the room, wailing that 'they' wouldn't let her speak to 'him', before she took a knife to her latest masterpiece. 'Did you ask Tom how come he had the bag?'

'No. I decided I didn't want him to know that we knew.'

'You stole it?' It was a rerun of Paige with Lily's diary. With Paige it didn't surprise me, but with Jack it did. He must have planned the whole thing, invented the five-a-side excuse to get inside the vicarage then somehow distracted Tom's attention while he went through the contents of the bag, found the phone and slipped it into his pocket. And he'd kept his nerve and walked away with what could be a vital piece of new evidence.

'Yeah, if you like. But right now it doesn't tell us anything.'

'Didn't you look at her voicemail and messages?'

'I couldn't. It's out of battery.'

'Right of course. We need the charger, but Adam and Anna probably cleared it out with the rest of Lily's stuff.' Still, there was a small chance that they'd left it behind so I started to search in the top drawer of Lily's old bedside cabinet.

'Anything?' Jack asked.

A single silver stud earring shaped like a star, a handful of fluff, three pink paperclips. I shut the drawer and looked in the cupboard where I found a hair drier without a plug.

Then I peered underneath and fished out the very thing we were looking for. Standing up straight, I dangled the charger from my forefinger.

Jack's phone started to vibrate. He checked it. 'Warning call from Paige. Someone's coming.'

'Jack, quick you've got to get out of here!' I dashed to the window and opened it.

'Who do you think I am Spiderman?'

Footsteps headed down the corridor. 'Get out!'

'It's bloody freezing.' It turned out he was a reluctant superhero. Still, he did throw Lily's phone for me to catch, then made a risky exit into the cold night.

I still had the phone and its charger in my hand when the door flew open and Paige made her second entrance, crouching low with an imaginary gun in her hand. 'Everyone, freeze!' she said in an American gangster accent.

Jack had gone to a lot of trouble over Lily's secret phone. Paige and I charged it up then checked her messages, which were all from Jayden and dated early September: Lily, I need to see you.

Lily meet me Smith's Arms, back room.

Lily, answer your phone And so on. Then we checked her missed calls all from Jayden again. And her voicemail: I need to talk to you. Why won't you answer?

Call me. Let me help you.

We need to talk. This is driving me crazy.

Lily hadn't answered any of them neither messages nor calls. They came to an abrupt stop in the third week in September.

'All those heroics for nothing,' Paige told Jack when we saw him at breakfast next morning. 'There wasn't a single message from Lily to Jayden. She totally cut him dead.'