Betrayed By Sophie

I ran down the stairs two at a time. The bitch! The fucking interfering bitch! How dared she split on me? I ignored the liftman hovering on the floor below, smiling in that horrible way, as he held the little door open for me – he was such an old lech – always asking us if we wanted to go down to his basement with him. You’d have thought he would have stopped asking after the millionth no wouldn’t you? You only went alone in that lift if you were mad or stupid and I was neither thank you very much. Anyway, there was no time to think about that now. It was five floors down to the ground and the stairs were quite tricky Victorian ones so I had to concentrate or I might trip. I paused for one second on the landing of the third floor and looked at my watch – shit, it was half past four! I’d been stuck in there for a whole hour.

I tried to imagine a horrible kind of death for Sophie – something to get my own back on her for what she’d done. What was the reason Miss Wolfe had given again, as justification for her telling on me like that? Oh yes, she’d said Sophie had been worried – well bollocks to her. I didn’t know what she had to be worried about – no one had offered her any drugs. No one ever would – she was boring and ugly and I hoped she’d stay that way for the rest of her life. Why was it such a big deal anyway – god! Everyone took drugs – well, most of us did – where was the harm in it? Honestly – if you knew what you were doing it was just part of having a good time. It wasn’t as if any of us were addicts or anything – no one my age was anyway – some of the older boys were, near where Max lived, but there wasn’t any need to go that far if you had a bit of common sense. What was so wrong about a few downers every once in a while, or speed, or the odd tab of acid? It was what the weekends were for!

Thinking of Max made me worried all over again I hoped he’d still be there – surely my friends would have told him to wait? Oh if he’d gone I would actually find out where Sophie lived and go and shoot her or something. As it was she’d nearly got me arrested. One more floor to go now; I stopped to get my breath.

I had taken me nearly three quarters of an hour to convince Miss Wolfe not to call the police, and then I’d had to listen to a lecture from her for another fifteen minutes after that. It wasn’t as if I’d had a brilliant plan or anything for talking my way out of it – I’d just said the first thing that had come in to my head, and then stuck to it, because I’d realised there wasn’t anything else to do – and after that it had just been a matter of withstanding her shouting and her cold, cold eyes and rude comments about my hair and not giving in to any of it. It hadn’t occurred to me until I’d finally been allowed to go, that she couldn’t actually prove anything, since it had all taken place a few days before and I didn’t (luckily) have any of them on me anymore.

In the office, keeping my eyes fixed on the photograph of the Queen on the wall just behind her, I’d simply repeated “they were paracetamol. I was pretending” whenever she’d asked me to tell the truth. None of my friends had let me down either – Miranda. Clare, Arabella, - they’d all held their nerve as they’d been called in one by one. Clare had even managed to cry at the thought that she was being accused of something so horrible.. I could laugh about it now I was out of there, but it had been a little frightening while it was actually going on.

Finally – last floor. I clattered down into the entrance hall, flung myself against the heavy door and out onto Victoria Street. Shit! No-one there! Hopefully they’d have taken him for coffee. I ran as fast as I could into Strutton Ground, dodging the Westminster boys in their stupid suits – they were everywhere at that time of day. It was almost compulsory to shout “wankers” if you saw them. No time for that now though, I had to find out if Max was in the café. I peered through the window, trying to see right into the back where we normally sat. My heart sank – no sign of anyone I knew. Sophie would pay so badly for this. I stood for a minute, panting, wondering what to do next, and then I saw him – right across the road, leaning against a phone box, with Juliet and Miranda, and then everything was ok again, and I called out and waved as I crossed over.
Miranda saw me first. She was just licking the paper on a roll-up, which she held out to me;

“Problems all sorted out now?”

I took the cigarette gratefully

“She believed me in the end….. thanks for backing me up”

She shrugged

“I just said I didn’t know what she was talking about – it was easy. Anyway……now you’re here we have to make a move. Juliet’s been invited to a cocktail party at the House of Lords and I’m going along to see what it’s like. I’ve never been before”

Max and I stood watching as they wandered off towards Westminster. As soon as she was out of our hearing, Max started laughing softly and shaking his head

“Your friends are all a bit weird.”

I laughed

“it’s a weird school………anyway – shall we go? How exactly do we do it?”

He put his arm around me, and we headed off towards St. James’ Park tube, while he explained how it worked.