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‘On me?’
Ava shrugs. ‘I don’t know.’
‘What do you mean?’
Jenna had something on Tristan? What did that mean?
‘After the fight with Rose today. We tried to follow but she told us to go away… and if we didn’t, she would tell everyone about you.’
‘Tell everyone what about me?’
‘I don’t know, but that’s what her fight with Rose was about. They were fighting about you.’
Tristan rocks back onto his heels then sits on the footstool again.
‘She’s a little bitch,’ says Ash with venom, and I want to run in and shake the boy. Does he think this about all girls his age?
‘Don’t talk about your cousin like that,’ says Tristan.
Ash looks away and I step back into the shadows.
‘What do you mean that’s what she was fighting about with Rose?’
Ash puts on a high voice and says, ‘It’s not yours! What I do with it isn’t your choice to make!’ I realise he’s doing an impression of Jenna. I’ve never heard him sound so cruel.
What wasn’t hers? What wasn’t her choice?
‘And that sounds like it’s about me, to you?’
‘It was Rose who mentioned you,’ says Ava. ‘She calls you The Prince.’
Tristan smiles. ‘It has a nice ring to it.’
Ava shakes her head. ‘Rose hates you.’
Now his smile turns to a frown. ‘What did she say in this argument?’
All he gets back is a shrug from Ava. ‘I don’t know. I didn’t hear properly.’
Tristan raises his eyebrows. ‘You didn’t hear?’
Ava shakes her head. ‘I’m sorry.’
He sighs. ‘But you didn’t tell the police any of this?’
‘We’re not idiots,’ says Ash.
Tristan steps forward again and gathers them both in a hug, and they cling to him. ‘My dear, darling children,’ he says, pulling them closer. But his eyes are wide open, staring straight between their dark heads.
And then I know. Jenna had something on Tristan. It wasn’t just information, but something you could hold – a real, physical object – or Rose wouldn’t have been able to take it.
And I know what it was.
44
AFTER
Deandra has discovered her calling. She’s going to be a translator. She already speaks English, French, Swahili, Urdu and a smattering of Japanese due to a rather eclectic upbringing, but her written English is, quite frankly, not great.
