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‘Are you still haunted by those atrocious meals they served at school?’ Clara wanted to know.
Alessia shuddered. ‘I still get nightmares. Don’t you?’
‘I still can’t eat cabbage.’
‘Did you enjoy your school days?’ Amadeo asked over the laughter.
Now it was Clara’s turn to shudder. ‘God, no.’
Julius turned slightly to her, eyes alive with curiosity. ‘Alessia tells us you were expelled. If you don’t mind me asking, what was the reason?’
‘Oh, I don’t mind at all, but I wasn’t technically expelled—I was asked to leave for setting off a fire alarm while there was an A-level maths exam on.’
‘That was you!’ Alessia exclaimed.
‘Yes, but I didn’t mean to do it. A bunch of us were mucking around outside the science block and I put my finger to the alarm as a joke and Kerry Buchanan pushed me and my finger went through it and set the alarm off. The whole school was evacuated and it mucked the exam up.’
‘That sounds an extreme punishment for an accident,’ Marcelo commented with a furrowed brow.
‘Ha! They just used it as an excuse to get rid of me, and the alarm was only a small part of it, really—I think me calling Miss Wilson a lying old hag played a part too.’
Alessia cackled with laughter. ‘You didn’t!’
‘Well, she was a liar. She saw the whole thing and then lied and said I did it deliberately, and Kerry lied too and so did the others. They all lied.’
Clara smothered the pointless swell of anger remembering this event evoked. It was history and everything had been so much better for her since. Here, in this room, was her future and sitting across from her was the one person she was starting to believe she could rely on. Someone she adored. Someone she would miss when their time together came to an end...
‘Why would a teacher lie?’ Amadeo asked. Clara could hear the doubt in his voice. She understood it. People always doubted her.
‘Teachers are as capable of lies and deceit as all other humans,’ Marcelo answered for her.
Beaming at him, delighted that he was sticking up for her, Clara explained, ‘She never liked me. I think it might have been from when I yawned in class and she asked if I was tired and I told her the truth that her voice was sending me to sleep. She had it in for me after that, was always marking me down and giving me detentions for any little thing.’ She shrugged. ‘She lied about the fire alarm incident, I called her a lying old hag, the head insisted I apologise, I refused so my brother was called in and advised to withdraw my enrolment from the school so I didn’t have a permanent exclusion on my record. And that was that. My education over.’
A long silence followed.
It was Alessia who broke it.
‘I can’t believe they treated you like that,’ she said, now sounding distressed. ‘And over a fire alarm when other girls did so much worse and got away with it. That’s not fair.’
Clara leaned across the King to pat Alessia’s arm. ‘Don’t upset yourself. I was glad to leave that place. I hated it there. I’ve been much happier since I left.’
Who wouldn’t be happy surrounded by dogs and cats and gerbils and all the other pets deemed too troublesome for their owners to care for them any longer? To Clara, those unwanted animals were her kindred spirits. No one had wanted her since her mother died, but that was okay. It really was. She was happy on her own.
She had also, she had to admit, found happiness with Marcelo. A different kind of happiness, one that was thrilling and joyous, a period of her life she would look back on with real fondness. But a period that had an end date to it. No doubt, by then, he would be happy to see her go.
‘I’m so sorry for not calling you after it happened,’ Alessia said, sounding close to tears. ‘I should have done. I was a terrible friend.’
Her distress was so obvious that Clara left her seat to embrace her. ‘Don’t be sorry. You were a vacuous, vain, self-centred teenager like the rest of the horrid girls who went to that school, but you were always kind to me. If they hadn’t forced you into having me as your roommate I would have run away long before I was expelled. You made that last year bearable for me.’
Alessia disentangled herself from the hug to fix tear-filled eyes on her. ‘Was that a compliment or an insult?’
‘Definitely a compliment. You couldn’t help being a product of your environment.’
‘You managed not to be.’
‘Yes, and that’s why I only had one friend. Now stop crying—you’re getting tears in your lovely food.’
