‘I went to your school. I thought the authorities might be reading your emails because of your father. When I got there they told me it was the weekend you all go home, but then a lady said there was a party you might be at and one of your friends was still there and I spoke to her and she gave me the address. I mean, she has cancer or something? Rachel? So awful.’

  ‘Wait. Rachel’s still at the school? She’s supposed to be here.’

  The water gushes more loudly beneath them, the sound you get in your ears before you pass out. Nico puts his head in his hands and sort of freezes, like an emoji.

  ‘Oh fuck. Shit. I’ve got to get back there,’ says Tash.

  She runs to the house and finds Tiffanie standing on her own by one of the ice buckets. She’s trying to move to the music, but she’s a surprisingly bad dancer. Will Tash ever see Tiffanie again after it all comes out about her father? Perhaps not. But she loves Tiffanie too, she realises. All this love, all of a sudden.

  ‘Rachel’s still at school,’ Tash says.

  ‘No,’ says Tiffanie. ‘It’s not possible. She must be coming here?’

  ‘No.’ Tash shakes her head. ‘We’ve got to go back and, I don’t know, do something. She’s been on her own with him for ages now. Fuckfuckfuck.’

  Teddy walks unsteadily in from the garden, the bottle of Cointreau in one hand, and his dinner jacket in the other. He’s using the DJ to cover his wet trousers. The Cointreau is half gone.

  ‘You’re back,’ he says to Tash. ‘Hello again.’

  ‘Look,’ she says to him. ‘We need your car and your driver. We have to go to our school, now. It’s less than an hour away. It’s really, really important.’

  ‘Sure,’ he says. ‘Let’s have a last-ditch road trip before the driver’s sacked. Why the fuck not?’

  Tash looks at Tiffanie and raises an eyebrow.

  ‘Yes, I am come-ange.’

  *

  Nico sits in the front with the driver, who is also Russian. They drop him off in Cambridge. There must be an Airbnb there, right? Then a plane back to heaven. Tash, Teddy and Tiffanie are silent in the back of the Merc as it rides the weak plumes of fluorescence that streak down the motorway.

  The school is half-lit, because of Exeat. Of the three hundred girls who usually inhabit the old buildings, maybe fifteen are left. Some of the final-year girls are revising in their study bedrooms. With A Levels so close they can’t afford to go home. There is the odd Middle Eastern crushlet who can’t get home and back in the time available. One of them is afraid of the ghost of Princess Augusta, whom she believes haunts her dorm at night, and so she has taken to sleeping on the spare mattress in Miss Annabel’s room while the other girls are away. Miss Annabel has no idea why on earth she is being kind to this scrawny brown-grey girl who isn’t even good at ballet, whose chin looks wrong, who already has fallen arches. But when someone is with her she is calmer too, and there are fewer bruises the next day.

  And there is the girl who now sees the world in black and white because something has gone wrong with her eyes, and her legs are unsteady perhaps because she is an animal now, a thin wolf moving through the dry grass, past the sheep, which stink of shit and wool and earth, and which she would not eat even if she was a wolf, even if she was about to die. And he’s waiting for her because it’s time to do her final measurements and then after that the prize, because—

  It’s light, because it’s nearly midsummer. But it’s also soso dark. Raindark.

  Later, in the distance, across the water, the sounds of cars crunching up the gravel driveway. But who would be coming at this time of night? The lake sparkling darkly with the car lights, and the promise of the treasure in its depths.

  *

  ‘You need to talk to someone,’ says Dominic. ‘Seriously.’

  ‘I’m all right,’ says Tash.

  She’s looking out at the lake for the last time. It’s almost a week since it all happened. In a few minutes Aunt Sonja will be here, and then it will all be over. Dominic and Tony are leaving too. In fact, everyone is leaving. The school is being condemned again, possibly for good. The girls who want to will do their exams at the local comprehensive, which has been so very kind. And then after the summer break almost everyone will be enrolled at alternative independent schools and life will go on. Tiffanie’s going to stay in Paris. She says she’ll write, and maybe she will.

  ‘You don’t want to end up with it all suppressed, girlie.’ Dominic approaches Tash, holding something out. ‘My card,’ he says. ‘You know. In case.’

  She doesn’t take it. He waves the card in the air for a few moments and then puts it away in a little silver tin. Tash breathes in slowly. Why is he here? But of course everyone’s been talking to her, these last two days. Mrs Cuckoo, explaining that she always knew the headmaster was up to something, but didn’t know who to tell. Miss White, saying that she should have recognised that Rachel had an eating disorder because, well, she struggled herself, back in her days at Cambridge. Even Miss Annabel, so ghost-like these days, took Tash’s hand in hers and squeezed it and said Thank you. Not that Tash will ever see any of them again.

  Tash had been the first one into the headmaster’s house, and she’d seen everything, before he started smashing it up, and before Amaryllis Archer came and told everyone to leave and sealed everything off. The stark front room downstairs, with the charts laid out on the table, and the metal callipers on top of them. A shelf of copies of Dr Moone’s self-published book The Black Diamond. All the way up the stairs, the walls hung with pictures of a painfully thin young woman in a white tutu. And then the bedroom walls with all the framed black and white photographs like an exhibition of victims of starvation or disease: young women with their ribs like something from a thrifty butcher’s shop, their cheekbones looming like pale rockets out of their shrunken skulls, their coating of soft fur; all these women, different but the same, each one arranged, naked or partially clothed, on the bed with white sheets. A tripod set up by the bed, its cold hard steel. A large black camera. Rolls of film. The smell of the darkroom in the en-suite. The lake and the horse sculpture visible through the window. The occultation of everything in the house, and its bare shame, but the girl free now. The girl in the lake, swimming. The man inside, weeping.

  ‘He never sold any of the pictures,’ Amaryllis Archer had told Tash, when her interview at the police station was over and they were talking about what happened. ‘Or shared them. Bianca Downlowe took pictures of some of the images herself – but of course you saw those on Instagram. Most men who take photographs like that, well, there’s a more obvious reason for it.’

  ‘I guess it was all to do with his wife?’ said Tash. ‘Most of the photos were of her.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Amaryllis Archer. ‘Yeah. I think you’re right. She died in the lake too. I wonder if he encouraged her, or if he only started doing it afterwards, in a fucked up kind of remembrance.’ She shrugged. ‘Well, he’s locked up now, so.’

  ‘He must truly have thought there was something beautiful about the images,’ said Tash. ‘I don’t understand it.’ Except she did, because they were almost beautiful in their own way, if you didn’t know what had happened to the women to get them like that, and what happened to them afterwards. And what it felt like. ‘And he wrote a book about the black diamond. He must have believed in that too.’

  ‘Do you think so? Really?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Tash looked at Amaryllis Archer, that evening wearing a maroon shirt with strange tassels coming off it, and a yellow neck-scarf. ‘Why now?’ Tash asked. ‘Why Bianca, and then Rachel, both in the same year? I mean, if it was all about his wife who died so long ago.’

  ‘Oh, there’s been one or two every year since his wife drowned,’ said Amaryllis Archer. ‘But no one really notices schoolgirls with eating disorders. No one puts them together. No one reports what happens to them to the police. And anyway, most of the girls just got sent home or to clinics and never returned to the school. There was one poor girl who died, in 1986. She was going to be a ballerina, like Dr Moone’s wife had been. And there was the one who was pulled from the lake in the 1990s. Jacqueline Driver, I think she was called.’

  ‘And also Dr Morgan,’ said Tash. ‘I mean, he died.’

  ‘Yes. And Dr Morgan,’ said Amaryllis Archer.

  Natasha stands by the lake now, under a clear blue sky. She is playing with her bracelet, opening and closing it around her wrist. The sunlight harks wontonly off the diamonds and shoots around the grounds of the school in little insignificant rays, millions and billions of them.

  ‘You’re not thinking of …?’ begins Dominic. ‘I mean, you’re not going to …?’

  ‘What, drown myself? What do you think? You’re the expert.’ Natasha sighs. ‘I’m not rich any more. Do you think that’s enough of a reason? My father’s an oligarch, or was. He was probably involved in dark money. Anyway, now he’s in jail in Russia and I might never see him again. I’m leaving school and, well, that’s kind of sad. But I’m going to work for my aunt. It’ll be fine. I’ve just got to decide what to do with this.’ Tash takes the diamond bracelet off her wrist. Holds it up. It glints more urgently now, with more force. ‘Do you want to know how much this cost? Not that much, actually. You’ll be surprised. £65,000. Not enough to buy a house, even around here. But I bet you’d like it, wouldn’t you? You’d accept it if I gave it to you.’ She holds the bracelet out to Dominic, and he takes a step forward and reaches for it. She looks at it once more, at its shiny snakelike head, before she hurls it in the lake. Her throw’s not bad; she’s always had strong arms. ‘You could swim for it,’ she says, as she walks away. ‘But you won’t.’

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  This book came out of nowhere and surprised me and everyone around me. I want to thank all those who helped me while I was writing it. In particular I’d like to thank my partner Rod Edmond for his continuing love and support. My family have always been my biggest fans and I am so grateful for all their encouragement and love. Thanks to Mum, Couze, Sam, Hari, Nia, Ivy, Gordian and Ruth. I’m very grateful for all my wonderful friends, colleagues and students, particularly those who read and commented on my manuscript. Particular thanks are due to Amy Sackville, Simon Trewin, Sarah Parfitt, Katie Szyszko, Jennie Batchelor, David Flusfeder, Christina Clover, Charlotte Hanson, Nikki Bullock, Sue Swift and Alice Bates. Big thanks also to Teri Johns, who keeps me organised and sane.

  I’d also like to thank my brilliant editor, Francis Bickmore, and everyone at Canongate, particularly Vicki Rutherford and Lucy Zhou, and Lorraine McCann for the wonderful copy-edit. Thank you also to my amazing agents, Cathryn Summerhayes and Luke Speed. I’m extremely excited to be working with Patrick Walters, Jamie Laurenson and Maria Nicholson at See-Saw Films to develop this book into a TV series. Thanks so much to all at See-Saw for having faith in my vision.

  I am very lucky to have some brilliant supporters on Patreon. I’d like to thank all my patrons, but in particular, Sherlock Bones, Katie Visser, Gareth Watts, Kelly Shorter, Katharine Rivett, Evelina Pecciarini, Kathy McLusky, Jim Cappio, Andrew Leader, Amanda Beasley, Charlie Phillips, Devon Dunlap, Joe Butler, Marguerite Croft, Rob Ellis (who also provided a splendid proof-read for which I am very grateful) and, of course, Sarah Barnett and Glen.

  patreon.com/scarthoma

  ‘Hugely enjoyable’

  The Times

  ‘Ambitious, thought-provoking fun’

  Sunday Times

  ‘Brims with compassion and warmth’

  Guardian

 

 

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