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Me too. My lower lip began trembling again, and I dug my teeth into it to keep the stupid thing still.
“You can go home now. I’ll escort Gwyneth to the car,” said Gideon, holding out his hand to me as if I was sure to take it.
I looked as haughty as you can with your front teeth digging into your lower lip—probably I just looked like a beaver, if a haughty beaver—and ignored his hand.
“You can’t,” said Mr. Marley. “It’s my job to escort Miss Gwyneth to the—aargh!” He was staring at me in horror. “Oh, Miss Gwyneth, why did you take the scarf off? That’s against the rules.”
“I thought it was a rat you’d seen,” I said, casting a dark glance at Gideon. “And I wasn’t all that wrong, either.”
“Now look what you’ve done!” said Mr. Marley accusingly to Gideon. “I don’t know what I can … the rules say that … and if we—”
“Don’t be so uptight, Marley. Come on, Gwen, let’s go.”
“But you can’t.… I must insist that…,” stammered Mr. Marley. “And … and … and you have no right to tell me what to do—”
“Then go tell tales of me.” Gideon took my arm and simply hauled me on. I thought of resisting, but then I realized that would only lose me even more time. We’d probably still be standing here arguing tomorrow morning. So I let him lead me away, glancing back apologetically at Mr. Marley. “See you, Leo.”
“Yes, exactly. See you, Leo,” said Gideon.
“You … you haven’t heard the last of this,” stammered Mr. Marley, behind us. His face was shining like a beacon in the dark corridor.
“No, sure, we’re trembling with fright already.” Gideon didn’t seem to mind that Mr. Marley could still hear him as he added, “Stupid show-off.”
I waited until we had turned the next corner and then shook myself free of his hand and quickened my pace until I was almost running.
“Ambitious to compete in the Olympic Games?” inquired Gideon.
I spun around to face him. “What do you want?” Lesley would have been proud of the way I spat that at him. “I’m in a hurry.”
“I only wanted to make sure you understood my apology this afternoon.” All the mockery had gone out of his voice now.
But not out of mine. “Yup, I did,” I snorted. “Which doesn’t mean I accepted it.”
“Gwen—”
“Okay, you don’t have to say you really like me again. Guess what, I liked you too. In fact, I liked you a lot. But that’s all over now.” I was running up the spiral staircase as fast as I could go, with the result that by the time I reached the top, I was right out of breath. I felt like hanging over the banisters gasping for air. But I wasn’t going to expose my weakness like that. Particularly as Gideon didn’t seem to have been exerting himself at all to keep up. So I hurried on, until he grabbed my wrist and made me stand still. I winced as his fingers pressed on my cut. It started bleeding again.
“It’s okay for you to hate me, really, I don’t have any problem with that,” said Gideon, looking seriously into my eyes. “But I’ve discovered things that make it necessary for you and me to work together. So that you … so that we’ll get out of all this alive.”
I tried to free myself, but he only held my wrist more firmly. “What sort of things?” I asked, although I would rather have shrieked, “Ouch!”
“I don’t know exactly, not yet. But it could turn out that I was wrong about Lucy and Paul and their intentions. So it’s important for you to—” He stopped, let go of me, and looked at the palm of his hand. “Is that blood?”
Damn. I mustn’t look guilty. “Nothing to speak of. I cut myself on the edge of a piece of paper at school this morning. So to stick to the subject. Until you can be more specific”—I felt really proud of coming out with that phrase!—“I’m definitely not working with you on anything.”
Gideon tried to take my arm again. “Here, that cut looks nasty. Let me look.… We’d better go to see Dr. White. He may still be in the building.”
“You probably mean you don’t want to say anything more precise about what you claim to have discovered.” I had my arm stretched right out, to keep him away and so that he couldn’t examine my wound.
“Because I’m not quite sure myself what to make of it yet,” said Gideon. And like Lucas just now, he added in a rather desperate tone of voice, “I need more time!”
“Who doesn’t?” I started off again. We had already reached Madame Rossini’s studio, and it wasn’t far from there to the front door. “Good-bye, Gideon. See you tomorrow—unfortunately.”
I was secretly waiting for him to grab me and hold me back again, but he didn’t. He didn’t follow me, either. I’d have loved to see the expression on his face, but I didn’t turn back to look at him. Anyway, that would have been a silly thing to do, because then he’d have seen the tears pouring down my cheeks once more.
* * *
NICK WAS WAITING at the front door of our house for me. “At last!” he said. “I wanted us to start without you, but Mr. Bernard said we ought to wait. He’s made sure the flush of the toilet in the blue bathroom is out of order, so no one can use it, and he says he’ll have to take out the tiles there to dismantle the cistern. We’ve bolted the secret door on the inside. Clever, eh?”
