Page 46 of Save Me

Mrs. Beaufort looks me over, then lays her hand on her son’s arm. “I’ll see you downstairs.”

James nods curtly.

She turns to me. “It was nice to meet you, Miss Bell.”

James’s father doesn’t say a word. The pair of them turn and walk out of the workshop. I can’t breathe until the door has shut behind them.

“You could have warned me, you know,” I say quietly.

Stiffly, James turns toward me. I wish I could read the look in his eyes, but all I can see is an icy turquoise. “Percy is waiting for you downstairs.”

“Well, I’m ready. You’re the one still stuck in the nineteenth century.” I give him a cautious smile.

He doesn’t smile back. “Our day trip is over,” he begins, his voice sounding just the way he looks. Cool and distant. “You’d better get going.”

I frown. “What?”

“You have to go now, Ruby.” He says it slowly, emphasizing every syllable, as if I’m stupid. “See you at school.”

He turns and walks behind the screen to change. For a moment, all I can do is stare. The next second, I realize what he’s just done. The way he spoke to me.

Rage floods through me, and I step forward to give him a pieceof my mind. But I don’t get far. Tristan catches me by the arm and holds me back. The look in his eyes is regretful but stern. “Come on, Ruby, I’ll take you back down.”

He tugs gently on my arm. Reluctantly, I let him lead me away. As we cross the workshop, I can feel the sympathetic eyes of all the staff resting on me.

14

Ruby

My cloak of invisibility has slipped.

Everyone’s heard that I was in London with James at the weekend. Apparently, there are even photos of us going into the shop together. Suddenly, people at Maxton Hall whose faces I’ve never even seen before know my name. Some are friendly and say hi in the hallways, others—the majority—whisper behind my back. It’s at its worst in lessons, where I can’t concentrate at all because of my classmates staring at me the whole time. Like they’re expecting me to stand up any second and blurt out a loud explanation of what Beaufort and I got up to on Saturday.

But it was a day I’d rather forget as soon as possible. I still feel so humiliated, and my anger with James grows every time I think about the horrible way he acted.

When the bell rings, I seriously consider skipping lunch, but I’m too hungry for that to be a realistic option. Besides, Lin promises to act as a human shield for me and to tell me the latest about her dad.

“He’s got a new girlfriend already,” she announces, once we’ve eaten in silence for a while.

I look up from my udon noodles. “But not another con artist or anything?” I ask through a mouthful.

“No.” She pulls a face. “Or at least I hope not.”

“And?” I inquire cautiously.

Lin gives a shrug. She pushes away her half-eaten sandwich and wipes her fingers on a napkin. “I don’t know. I just think he could give dating a break for a bit, seeing that it went so wrong the last time.”

Lin meets up with her dad once a month so that they don’t totally lose contact, and I admire her for the pragmatic way she deals with the whole situation. I don’t know if I could even look Dad in the eye if he treated me and Mum that badly.

“Was she nice?” I ask after a while.

She shrugs again. “Yeah. A bit too nice, maybe.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, I don’t know. We just didn’t click somehow.” She starts to shred the napkin. “But that’s OK. You can’t get along with everyone.”

I think a moment. “Sometimes, surprisingly, you do click with a person after a while.” I find my eyes wandering over to James and his pals. They’ve got one of the good tables by the high windows, and their conversation seems pretty lively. Whatever James just said makes Wren laugh so much he chokes, and Kesh has to whack him on the back.

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