Chanel’s room had a name too.
It was etched in faded gilt on a wooden panel over her door. It said Cheviot. I know because I read it while I was waiting for her to answer my knock. Turns out I was waiting for a long time; she never did answer, so after a bit I just turned the handle and went in.
Chanel was sitting up in bed, still awake. The dinner tray was next to her on the bedspread. Without being invited, I closed the door and went to sit on the bed. I had to move the tray a bit to sit down, and I could see that it was totally untouched.
The fire was burning merrily, and the room was warm, but Chanel was wearing her thick white towelling robe in bed. Her face above it was the same colour as the towelling. She was ghost pale and wore a haunted look that was vaguely familiar. Suddenly, like a blow to the stomach, it struck me where I’d seen it before. It was on the face of Gemma Delaney, the girl from my old school who’d stopped me outside chapel at STAGS and warned me not, on any account, to go huntin’ shootin’ fishin’.
Chanel didn’t say anything when I sat down. She just shrank back onto her pillows. I wasn’t really expecting a warm greeting, or a thank you for hauling her out of that cave, and it was a good job I wasn’t. She pursed her lips in a line and said nothing.
‘Nice room,’ I said, trying to break the ice. And it was – her walls and bedcovers were duck-egg blue and faded gold. I looked instinctively above the fireplace, and noticed an empty space with a brighter patch of wallpaper in the spot where Jeffrey was in my room. I thought she’d been spared the head of a dead animal companion, until I saw, on the floor next to the wastepaper basket, a mangy fox’s head with bared teeth lying where Chanel had taken it down.
‘Cheviot,’ I said, nodding. ‘Mine’s called Lowther.’
Nothing.
‘Who names their rooms, really?’ I said. Still Chanel said nothing, so I started riffing nervously. ‘I mean, I’ve heard of people naming their houses – people even do it on our street, and it’s just a crappy terrace. They put up these dinky little oval china plaques, with “Dunroamin’” or something painted on there, to try to kid themselves that they aren’t living on a street with like five hundred identical houses. But a room in a house with a name? Never. I mean it’s like –’
She cut across my monologue. ‘They were hunting me, Greer.’
‘Who were? The hounds?’
‘No,’ she said, quite clearly. ‘The Medievals.’
I sat quietly for a moment, taking this in. I hadn’t realised until that moment what a psychological toll the afternoon had obviously taken on Chanel. Frankly, she was talking crazy. I said, gently, ‘Thing is, Chanel, there may be a simple explanation for it all. Are you …? Is it …? Is it your time of the month?’
Now, I hate this phrase and always have – I think it’s because it’s the phrase my dad used when he tried to tell me about periods. In the absence of my mum it all fell to him, and he was so squirmy and uncomfortable, bless him, that although I love him to bits, I came to hate that phrase.
Chanel didn’t seem to mind it though. ‘Esme said that to me too.’
‘And … is it,’ Jeez, I had to say it again, ‘your time of the month?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Well, there you go then. The hounds were confused, all hyped up by the scent of blood. That’s what they’re trained for after all,’ I finished clumsily.
‘No,’ she said. It was almost a shout. She started to shake her head just as she’d done in the cave. ‘No. They were hunting me. I was really cold coming down the hill, even though Henry gave me his jacket.’ Her voice warmed a little. ‘Those new Hunter wellies I’d bought were killing me, stupid things, and I fell behind. I was separated off from the pack, just like the stag was.’ She scraped her hand through her hair, trying subconsciously to flip it like the Medieval girls did. It didn’t work. ‘I lost sight of you all. So I thought I’d just go back to the cars, but I must’ve got lost. Then they came for me.’ She huddled further down into her dressing gown. ‘It was horrible, Greer. Like a nightmare. They came streaking out of the dark, twenty, thirty of them, barking crazily. I just ran.’ She shivered. ‘I keep thinking about Actaeon in Latin yesterday.’
Could it have been only the day before? That last morning of lessons at STAGS seemed years ago.
‘Remember? Actaeon saw the goddess Diana naked, and as a punishment fifty hounds tore him to pieces.’
‘I remember,’ I said softly.
‘I thought that was going to happen to me, Greer. I kept trying to get away, going places they couldn’t go, into woods, across streams, but they kept finding me. If I hadn’t found that cave …’ She stopped and looked down at her hands, and I saw that her beautiful nails, those white crescent moons, were all dirty and chipped. Weirdly it was the sight of the fingernails, more than anything else she’d told me, that made me want to cry. She’d probably ripped them desperately trying to crawl into the cave. But what she was saying couldn’t be true. Could it?
Chanel was talking again, low-voiced. ‘When Dad invented the Saros smartphone we got really rich really quickly. By the time the Saros 7S came along, I was too rich for my old school – my old friends didn’t want to know me. They all thought I was stuck up. Dad and Mum thought I’d fit in better at STAGS. Dad said they were our sort of people now. But it didn’t turn out that way. No one’s talked to me all term.’
Now it was my turn to look down at my hands. If I’d only known that Chanel was feeling just like me, I’d have tried harder to befriend her.
‘And then when I got The Invitation to come here, I was so happy. I thought that meant I’d made it, that I’d made the breakthrough. I got all the right clothes, everything. I practised how I would speak, studied manners and etiquette and which fork to use and all that crap. If I don’t fit here, and I don’t fit there, where do I fit? Did they bring me here as game, to hunt? Is that all I am to them, prey?’ When she wasn’t trying so hard to sound posh, she had a really nice soft Cheshire accent. But what she was saying was insane.
‘You’re nuts,’ I said gently. ‘Coconuts. You’re letting your imagination run away with you. Listen. If you’re honest, you were already frightened of the hounds, weren’t you?’ I remembered her wary expression in the drive before the hunt, her avoidance of their slapping tails.
‘Yes,’ she admitted. ‘I didn’t like them, even this morning.’
‘Well then. All that happened is that once the stag was down they got bored, picked up another scent and followed you. Of course it was scary for you, but it’s just a game for them.’
‘And for the Medievals,’ she said bitterly. ‘They planned it. I know they did. The stag hunt was just the warm-up. How did they seem, when they came to look for me?’
Truthfully, only Shafeen had seemed genuinely worried, but after Chanel’s speech, and her ridiculous paranoia about being hunted, I didn’t want to undermine her further by suggesting that the Medievals were not her true friends. So I told part of the truth. ‘They were very keen to find you. They all came along, every one of them. In fact, it was Henry who distracted the dogs.’
‘I’m not talking about Henry. Henry’s fine.’ There it was again – the warmth in her voice. ‘It’s the others.’
I patted the blue-and-gold bedspread under my hand. ‘You just need to sleep.’
She looked at me appealingly with her reddened eyes. ‘Will you stay with me? Just till I’m asleep?’
I was deathly tired, but I nodded. ‘Of course. Everything’ll be fine in the morning. You’ll see this afternoon for what it was, a horrible accident.’ I took one of her hands, with the raggedy nails. It was clenched into a tense little fist. Smiling, making a joke of it, I prised it open, finger by finger, trying to make her relax so I could hold it properly.
There was something in her clammy palm.
Several somethings.
I unfolded her hand fully and looked. They were long, pale seeds. ‘What are those?’
She shrugged her bath-robed shoulders. ‘I dunno. They were in the pocket of Henry’s jacket. When I was in the cave I was looking in the pockets for something to throw at the hounds, anything foody to distract them. But there was nothing but these seeds.’
I looked at them closely – they were a bit bigger than rice grains, with little ridges running the full length. For all I knew they were the sort of thing countrymen always carried in their pockets; grass seeds or something. ‘Well, you don’t need them now.’
I picked them off her palm one by one and put them in this tiny little enamelled Chinese-style jar on the bedside table. ‘They’re quite safe there. Lie back.’
I took one pillow away and helped her snuggle down in the bed. Then I took her hand again as she closed her eyes, only letting go of it when I was sure she was breathing easily and steadily. I suddenly felt a real affection for her – she looked like a little girl. If Cookson called her my friend now, I wouldn’t correct him. ‘Goodnight, Chanel,’ I whispered. I was already at the door when I heard her answer.
‘Greer.’
I turned, my hand on the doorknob. Her eyes were still closed, her voice really sleepy.
‘It’s Nel,’ she said. ‘I tried to tell everyone all term, but it just didn’t stick.’
I smiled. ‘Sleep well, Nel,’ I said.