Page 73 of Dead to Me

He sounded awkward.Wretched.But he wasn’t making an excuse and leaving, which would have been the kind thing to do.

I decided to look anywhere but at him.I wasn’t going to be chased away when I was trying to learn things.It wasn’t fair.

But I also couldn’t focus on anything they were saying any more, and at one point Ryan moved towards me and I flinched backwards.

It was Philip Sedgewick who intervened and essentially rescued me.I don’t know if James had told him about what happened, or if he just saw that I was looking panicked.He stepped in and said, ‘Oh, I meant to ask you something about James.Could I borrow you for a minute?’

I let him draw me away, feeling a flood of huge relief as well as a bitter feeling of disappointment.It was pathetic, and it was getting in the way of my job.And worse still, itwas clear that other people could see something was wrong.James’s mother, Marcie, was looking after us in concern, too.

I caught her eye and gave her a slightly unsteady grin.

It’s OK,I tried to telegraph.

And Marcie nodded at me before moving to talk to Clarisse.James’s parents were genuinely sensitive, I realised.And I wondered how that had affected him: whether it made him more or less likely to be a killer.

Because everything still came down to that, in the end.

When I glanced back at Esther, I realised that she was looking after me, too, her expression questioning.Worried.Her guard finally down once again.And it made me feel a rush of guilt.

She gave a faint smile when I rolled my eyes at her, and that only made it all worse.

You can’t let yourself like these kids,I thought sternly to myself, after that.Esther might be a killer as easily as James or Ryan.

Once we were a distance away, Philip said, ‘I just wanted to know what present to get James for exam results day.He usually seems disappointed or morally offended by what I choose.I have a suspicion you might be better at finding out what he’d like than the rest of them, and I wondered if you might like a little mission.’

I narrowed my eyes at him.‘Are you calling me nosy?’I asked, as a slight challenge.

Philip laughed.‘Not in the least.I’m accusing you of actually listening to people.’

I glanced towards James himself, who I’d barely exchanged a word with all evening.‘Not as much as I should.But I’m on it.I won’t let you down.’

It was a while later, once the dinner had started– with Ryan mercifully seated a long way from me and the starterseaten– that I excused myself to the bathroom and spent a while breathing out some tension.I’d managed to hold it together and even to tell a few humorous rowing anecdotes, but I hadn’t made any actual progress and I needed to get my head back in the game.

It was after I’d finished pep-talking myself and was returning to the dinner that I stumbled on Kit and Ryan having a hushed conversation in the corridor outside.They were round the corner from the bathrooms, huddled in a doorway, and they clearly hadn’t heard me closing the door or walking across the thick carpet towards them, so I ducked back behind the corner and listened.

The part of it I caught was Ryan saying, unclearly, ‘… off, Kit.Stop fucking interfering.’

‘You need someone to interfere,’ Kit said, his voice low and intense.‘If you don’t stop it–’

‘Do you really think you can threaten me?’Ryan was so clearly drunk and, with it, belligerent.

But when Kit replied it was with a greater level of anger than I’d heard from him.‘It’s not even a threat,’ he said.‘I’m telling you what’s going to happen if you keep doing this.’

‘What’s that then?’

‘You’re going to ruin your life,’ Kit said.‘And there won’t be anything anyone can do to help you.’

Ryan gave a harsh laugh.‘I’m helping myself.’

There were padding steps, and one of them retreated.I thought, from the unsteady steps, that it must be Ryan.I waited a few moments and then made my way round the corner, feeling a rush of fear that it would be Ryan waiting there for me.But it was Kit who was still there, staring into space as he leaned against the door.He looked… I don’t know, Reid.Furious.Desolate.Done with it all.A mixture of all of this.

‘Hey,’ I said.‘You OK?’

Kit blinked and looked up at me.

‘I… yeah, I’m OK.’He sighed.‘Are you?I’m– Ryan shouldn’t be here.I’m so sorry.’

He held a hand out to me and I came to stand beside him, our arms intertwined.

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