'Do you realize you're in view of the security camera?' I reminded him, thinking that we might want to keep this conversation off the record.

'So? We're not doing anything wrong we're helping Paige.'

'Better fetch me his saddle and bridle from the tack room, then,' she told him briskly, and Jack went off to find them.

'You're going for a ride?' I asked lamely.

'Duh yeah! I'm hacking out with Guy, actually. That's his horse, Franklin, the chestnut gelding next door to Mistral. He'll be here in five minutes.'

'Is this what you need?' Jack asked, standing at the tack room door with a saddle in his arms.

'No. Mine's the one with the green numnah on a high rack at the far end.'

He disappeared back inside.

'So?' I asked. 'So, what?'

'So why are you brushing Lily under the carpet and refusing to talk to us all of a sudden?'

I admit it I wasn't expecting Paige's next reaction, like Vesuvius erupting. 'Bloody hell, Alyssa, don't you know this was shitty enough for me without you introducing me to your latest lame theory?'

'I'm sorry, I thought we agreed. I didn't '

'Didn't think?' she yelled. 'Look, I've known Lily ever since she started in Year Nine in main school. And yeah she could be bloody annoying and crazy and sometimes she was hard to live with, but even so she was my best, my very best mate, and she was my favourite person of all time and now you're trying to tell me she didn't actually drown herself in the lake, that there was a psycho who wanted her dead, and also that same crazy person or somebody completely different got her pregnant!'

Her explosion brought Jack running out of the tack room, gesturing behind him as if trying to warn us about something. 'What happened? What did I miss?'

'I-it's me. It's my fault,' I stammered.

Paige subsided as suddenly as she'd erupted. 'No, it's not. I was the one who started you off. And it's not a lame idea that wasn't fair. We'll talk about it again later OK?'

I nodded, noticing that Guy Simons had followed Jack out of the tack room and there was a chance that he'd heard everything that had just been said.

If he had, he didn't comment just nodded at me and Jack as he carried a saddle into Franklin's stable and bolted the door behind him.

'Guy rode Franklin in the trials for the Beijing Olympics,' Paige told us, as if she'd never lost it with me. 'He just missed out on a place in the UK team.'

'I didn't know that,' I said. I ought to have been more impressed, but Paige's outburst had shaken me, and, anyway, I didn't like Guy.

He spoke over the stable door. 'Why should you?' he grinned. 'Beijing is ancient history.'

'But you're still a great rider.' Paige insisted on being nice. Maybe it was a cliquey, horsey-person bond that I just didn't get.

Still steering well clear of Mistral, Jack said he hoped Paige and Guy would enjoy their hack. 'Fancy a walk to the Bottoms, Alyssa?' he asked pointedly enough for even Guy Simons to pick up.

'Ah, young love!' he mocked as he led Franklin out of the stable.

Ignore him! 'Yes, but let me go change my shoes,' I replied. I had a list of things I wanted to talk about and every reason you can think of for wanting to be alone with Jack Cavendish.

Looking back at St Jude's from the edge of the oak wood, across lake and frosty lawn, you'd still never have thought that anything bad had happened there.

The low, two-storey building stood as it had for four hundred years, ornate chimney stacks rising into a leaden sky, stone steps leading to a grand entrance, oak doors securely closed.

'You're shivering,' Jack said, putting his arm round my shoulders.

'It's cold. Let's walk.' We turned away from the dark lake and entered the wood.

A blanket of autumn leaves covered the ground, frosty and crisp underfoot. Gnarled trunks twisted and divided into stout, bare branches that formed a tunnel over our heads.

'You want to talk about something else?' he asked. 'I mean, other than Lily.'

'Nothing else seems that important.'

'And you can't stop thinking about her anyway. Me neither.'

'I'm glad we're doing this, though.'

'Me too.'

I genuinely was. It took me right back to the feelings I'd had at Tom's party. The lyrics to 'You're the One for Me' rang out inside my head. 'Love is a window . . .'

We walked on, through to the other side of the wood where Jack broke away.

'The stream's frozen over. Come and look.'

He was right there was a thin sheet of ice and two ducks slipping and sliding miserably across the surface. On the opposite bank someone had thrown away two crushed Coca-Cola cans and a crisp packet, half hidden under a thatch of weather-beaten grass. I crouched beside him and touched the ice with my fingertips.

Jack stood up first and glanced back the way we'd come. 'Which way now?'

'I like walking in the wood,' I decided. It felt secret and sheltered, safer somehow.

'It feels good,' he agreed.

'Totally.' I smiled, and kissed him long and slow a major move for me.

'So we're definitely more than mates?' He picked up on our earlier conversation in the sports centre as we walked on.

'You already know the answer.' I clicked back into being shy again for no reason other than I was suddenly scared of showing my feelings a lifetime's habit, you could say.

'I want to be sure.'

'Be sure,' I whispered, looking straight into his eyes.

Jack pulled me up and kissed me back another long kiss. I closed my eyes and breathed him in, put my arms round his neck and held him close. I might not be able to say the right words, but at least my actions would show him how I felt.

Then we retraced our steps, following the tracks our feet had made on the frosty ground.

'Why did we let all that time go by?' he wondered.

'You left the country, remember.'

'But when I came back, you didn't . . .' He hesitated and scuffed the ground with the toe of his boot.

'It felt complicated,' I sighed, thinking of the time we'd wasted almost a whole term.

'I think we were both scared,' was his response.

'I definitely was. The truth is I didn't believe you would . . . choose me.'

He kissed me again. 'And then Lily happened,' he said.

I nodded. 'Jack, can I ask you something?'

'About Lily?'

'No, about Jayden.'

'OK.' He dragged his feet, ready to go on the defensive.

'It's a question I asked you before. At Tom's party, what did you two talk about? Why did Jayden grab you and drag you off to the other side of the room?'

'He did?'

'Yeah, you know he did. You need me to remind you of the details?' The colour of the carpet, the pattern on the curtains, the angry, feral look on Jayden's face.

'No.'

'So what did he want?'

'Nothing. He was being an idiot.'

I waited at the edge of the wood, looking up into the branches, feeling snow flakes begin to land on my face.

Jack walked on a little way then waited for me. 'OK he asked me if Lily and I had got back together, like he was accusing me. I told him no.'

'What else?'

'I don't know if he believed me. I said so what if we had? He'd been the one who'd dumped her, hadn't he? What right did he have to be asking me questions?'

The carpet in the Old Vicarage was tasteful beige throughout, the curtains were bottle green, suspended from a brass pole.

'Tom, there you are!' Lily cried as I tried to work out what was going on between Jayden and Jack. She slid her arm round Tom's waist and kissed him on the lips.

I watched Jayden's face as Lily came on to Tom. He looked savage.

'Hey, Jayden!' She'd had too much to drink; Tom was annoyed; she began to totter towards her ex, totally out of her head. She didn't even make it across the room.

'Why was Jayden accusing you of getting back together with Lily?' I asked Jack at the edge of the wood.

'You'd have to ask him,' he replied. Definitely end of conversation.

And, anyway, we could see Paige and Guy riding along the edge of a ploughed field, hurrying home before the snow got too bad. They trotted towards us, their horses breathing clouds of steam into the cold grey air, cutting across our path.

'OK,' I told Jack. 'Maybe I will.'

I had to wait until the next afternoon before I could follow this through.

'Are you mad?' Paige demanded when I told her my plan.

'No. Jayden knows something we don't know,' I insisted. Lessons had finished for the day and I was heading back to our room to get changed out of my uniform when she appeared at the top of the stairs and I explained my next move. 'I'm sure of it.'

'Jeez, Alyssa. Does Jack know what you're planning?'

'I mentioned it, but he doesn't think I'll go through with it.'

'Well, hell, quelle surprise!' She came down the steps towards me. 'Seriously, Alyssa, you know by now that Jayden is not the kind of guy you drop in on for afternoon tea.'

'So tell me what else we can do,' I challenged. I'd sat through Bryony's class on the ending of Lear (yes, it had taken us a whole term to reach this point. The thankless daughters were dead but so was Cordelia. 'Howl, howl, howl, howl! O, you are men of stones!'), all the time obsessing about what to do next about Lily.

'Here are the options,' Paige began.

I haven't said so before, but one of her non-horsey talents is logical argument. That's when she's not being scornful or stubborn or displaying other similar character flaws. In fact, I can see her as a barrister in Crown Court, wig and all.

'One, we track down Adam Earle.'

'Why would we do that?' Personally I didn't see any good reason for more contact with Lily's automaton sibling.

Paige quickly explained. 'You remember in Saint Sam's office why was Adam so interested in what Lily had said to us the day she packed her bag and left? Why so cagey? Why no grief?'

'Good point,' I decided.

Paige and I sat down on the cold steps, ticking off items on our fingers. 'Following on from that,' I said, 'why did Lily tell us she'd been summonsed home to see her dad? I know from what Anna said that Robert Earle was still in Chicago.'

'Deliberate decoy,' Paige observed. 'Part of her plan to drop out of sight and never be seen again.'

'And there are questions about Mamma Earle. I know that she's bound to be shattered by her daughter's death, but, still, why is she so passive? No, that's not the right word. Why is she so scared?'

'Really?' Paige frowned and considered the question. 'Scared of the tyrant, I guess. Anyway, let's think of stuff right under our noses. Is there someone here at St Jude's who secretly hated Lily enough to harm her?'

'No way!' was my immediate response.

Paige, though, wouldn't let it drop. 'Keep it on the list,' she insisted. 'Stick with the school. Saint Sam and D'Arblay what's with the control freakery?'

'"Be dignified. Don't speak to the press,"' they'd insisted. I saw what she meant but I had no answer.

'They're getting worse. Soon we'll be wearing straightjackets and be locked in our rooms.'

'Or they'll get us sent home.' Which only made me think that sitting here itemizing our options might appear sensible but it was wasting time. 'I have to go now,' I told Paige.