Free Scarlet Wakefield 01 - Kiss Me Kill Me by Lauren Henderson

silent.
    “Scarlett’s parents died when she was very young,” she continues, with so little feeling in her voice that it’s as if she were telling them what time it was. “She is the ward of her grandmother, and I agreed to put Scarlett up in my house during term-time on the strict condition that she would obey a system of behavior I deemed appropriate for a girl of her age. Any deviation of those rules, and she would no longer be welcome. She has kitchen access during specific hours of the day, and her own bathroom. And up till now, I must say, she has been very little trouble, all things considered.”
    Both policemen turn and look at me. There’s silence for quite a while. Then the younger policeman holds up an index finger to the older one in a “hold on” gesture, gets up from his chair, and leaves the room. We sit there, saying nothing, till he returns. He’s holding a polystyrene cup, which he slides across the table to me. Hot tea with milk.
    I’m really grateful. I blow on it and take a sip. It’s got a lot of sugar in it, which picks me up a little bit. And it makes talking easier, even though it hurts to swallow.
    The policemen, despite themselves, are looking at me with pity now. Strangely, I dislike that even more than when they were doing the bad-cop interrogation routine. Pity’s worse than anything. Just ask an orphan—they’ll tell you that.
    Great. How tragic is it to have policemen feeling sorry for you because you’re a pathetic orphan with the social life of roadkill? I almost preferred it when they were thinking I was some kind of drug dealer. Still, I do want them to believe that the last thing in the world I wanted was to harm Dan.
    God, I can’t believe he’s  .  .  . gone. Tears prick at my eyelids. I shove the awful memory away. I’ll cry later. When I’m alone.
    “How did you get permission to go to the party, Scarlett?” the older one asks, quite nicely now.
    “Scarlett told me that she had been invited by the Saybourne girl,” Lady Severs answers. “A very good family. I see nothing wrong with the occasional socially acceptable gathering, once a month or so. Scarlett had a curfew, of course.”
    The only thing Lady Severs didn’t know was that the party was unsupervised. A small detail that I conveniently left out. Only now I wish that Lady Severs had forbidden me to go. That way, none of us would be here.
    And Dan might still be alive.
    “Scarlett,” the younger policeman says. “You’re sure you didn’t see Dan take anything?”
    I shake my head. My whole body feels so heavy, I feel like I’m sinking.
    “No. The paramedic kept asking me that, but he didn’t do anything but drink a bit of champagne. He kept scrabbling in his pockets, though, when he was  .  .  . when he was choking.”
    I’m about to cry, so I have to stop talking. I stare down at my tea, squeezing the polystyrene to make the liquid into an oval shape, distracting myself so the tears won’t come again.
    “He had severe allergies, apparently,” the younger one says. “You weren’t aware of that?”
    “No,” I murmur. “But I hardly knew him.”
    “You hardly knew him, but you were outside on the terrace with him, alone?” asks the younger policeman curiously.
    “We were just talking,” I mumble.
    He looks at his notes and follows his writing with his index finger. “You told the paramedic that you were kissing when he started to choke.”
    Lady Severs turns to stare at me, making a loud, disapproving tutting sound with her tongue. The blood rushes to my face. Oh God, this is so awful. Why don’t they just write MURDEROUS SLUT on my forehead with a marker? They might as well. Plum will do it as soon as I go back to school.
    Dan’s life is over, and my life is ruined. Feelings of misery are swallowing me whole. The older policeman has to repeat his next question before I take it in.
    “Did you see Dan with a kind of glass tube? Like a thermometer, but bigger?”
    “No,” I