Once

Forty

As she left the house twenty minutes later, Elle called Russell and told him what had happened.

"Ignore her," was his succinct piece of advice. "We all know Kaye's always been a clueless tryhard."

"That's the thing, though. I don't know if she has. Maybe that's just what I've always told you all."

There was a short pause down the line.

"Do you want me to come this morning? I can call the drama guys and let them know something came up -"

"No, no. You can't bail on them - not when you have your exam tomorrow. I'll be fine."

"Are you sure?"

"Course I am. I've got Jax and David, right?"

"And what more could a girl want?" Russell replied. She could hear the smile in his voice down the phone.

"We'll call if we think of anything. Goodbye, Russell," Elle said, in a slightly frosty tone that was only half-joking.

Russell gave a light tinkling laugh as he hung up. Elle shoved her phone in her pocket and marched into town.

The thing is, she'd let Russell's playful mocking tone affect her more than she'd care to admit. Why did it bother her if he teased her about David? There was nothing going on between them. She didn't even fancy him. Well - clearly he was attractive, there was no denying that. But that wasn't the same as fancying someone. Right?

But why couldn't she stop thinking about David's face in the hazy half-light of Rose's front steps, leaning just a half-inch nearer to hers?

She pushed these thoughts away with an effort. Another thing she could do without this morning: teasing about her love life. Or lack of one. She half-jogged the last minute of the journey, keen to meet up with the others and start talking. If she could get her mouth to start talking maybe she could get her brain to stop thinking.

Jax and David were already waiting at the top of Bank Street. They'd decided to travel in packs of three today; in case anything happened to one or another of them, there would be two others there who could help. Since Russell had already made plans to meet the drama lot to study at the library, Sellan and Maggie had gone to hang out at the school for the day. That left Jax and David as Elle's bodyguard tag-team.

They were chatting animatedly to each other when she first saw them, but they stopped and looked up with a smile when they saw her coming. Talking about me, Elle thought. She had to do something to get this paranoia under control.

"Morning," she said.

"Hey, Elle," Jax said. She said a lot with just those two words.

David just gave her a tight smile, and they set off up Bank Street.

They'd decided to go to the Ginger Cat Cafe. They'd assumed - rightly, it turned out - that it would be practically deserted at this time on a Wednesday morning. It would give them a good central location to debrief and try to plan the day ahead. After what happened to Bianca last night they needed a jump start on trying to work out today's story. They couldn't let themselves be blindsided like that again.

As soon as they were seated round a table with murky sludge-coloured coffees in front of them, Jax began to speak.

"I heard this morning that they've taken Bianca to Elkington General. She's in some sort of coma."

"She's not though, is she?" David said. There was a trace of bitterness in his voice. "She's been poisoned. And we should have stopped it."