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“What do you mean?”
“Dunno. I’ve left her alone, like you asked. But she’s been sneaking off campus.”
“What?”
My heart sinks. In my worry for Theodora, it completely escaped my mind to worry about Zaro. Somehow, I thought things were better, that she was a little wiser. Then I remember her behaviour the night of the Christmas Eve party, the Duke of Bridehall’s invitation to his yacht.
But Zaro was only joking about that—right?
Or am I simply refusing to learn from my mistakes? Refusing to see the damage in the people I love, the hurt plaguing them? Whatever’s broken inside Zaro isn’t something that’s just going to fix itself, and I’ve been stupid to assume otherwise.
And Zaro knows how distracted I am at the moment.
“Do you know where she’s been going?” I ask, opening my bedroom door and letting Iakov precede me inside.
He shakes his head. “Want me to find out?”
“How would you do that?”
He lets out a grunt of laughter. “Easy. By following her.”
I hesitate. On one hand, it would be so easy to let Iakov do just that, follow Zaro and find out what she’s up to and deal with the problem in his own way. But Zaro’s nothislittle sister, and she’s made clear to me her distaste for being assigned a guard dog.
No. Zaro is my little sister. I’m the one who ought to be protecting her, not my best friend. I’m the one who should be looking after her and protecting her. I failed to do so for Theodora.
I won’t fail Zaro.
IakovandIstakeout the narrow country road every night of the week, waiting for Zaro to appear from the crack in the old fence everybody knows about.
Over the course of our stake-outs, we see an endless parade of runaways: Year 12 girls in tiny dresses sneaking out for a night of partying, boys holding girls by the hand—I even see Seraphina Rosenthal, the rose of Spearcrest, decked out in a vintage trench coat and Louboutin heels, sneak off, no doubt to meet her secret townie boyfriend everybody knows about.
My heart pits through my chest on Thursday night when a slim figure with an explosion of curly hair appears through the crack in the fence. A black cab is already awaiting her, and Zaro runs along the length of the fence and climbs into the taxi. Iakov starts his engine without a word, and we follow the taxi from as far as possible.
To my surprise, it doesn’t head into London, where everyone tends to go for parties and hook-ups. Instead, the taxi takes the narrow, windy road straight into Fernwell, the local town.
Nobody from Spearcrest ever goes there since it’s a small, sleepy hamlet with nothing more to it than a church, a supermarket, and a collection of small artisanal shops. But that’s right where Zaro’s taxi takes her, and Iakov and I exchange a bemused glance when it parks in front of a cosy-looking cottage standing all on its own a few minutes from the village.
Zaro gets out, hugs her coat around her, and enters the cottage. A sign above the bright green door reads Primrose Cottage B&B.
“What the fuck.” Iakov’s face, normally as expressive as stone, is crumpled into an expression of bewilderment that would be funny if the situation wasn’t so strange.
“Maybe it’s not what we think?” I ask, equally bewildered.
“What else could it be?” he asks.
We stare at each other.
Sudden realisation crystallises in my mind.
And then I’m yanking my seatbelt free and running out of the car, up the little pebbled path to the green door, which I wrench open. A woman in her forties, her brown hair in pigtails, is sitting at the counter, a big hardback book propped open in front of her.
“Can I help you?” she asks, looking up.
“The girl that came in here—where did she go?”
She frowns. “Who are you?”
The hallway is cosily furnished but small, and it’s easy to glance down the adjoining corridor. There, I spot the Chanel umbrella I gifted Zaro at Christmas, propped next to a door.
