Nine Liars (Truly Devious, #5)(2)

Theodora Bailey: Without question, the academic of the group. A medical student from Notting Hill in London. The one who planned on using her degree. The one who fixed you up after a long night. The director. The one who figured it all out. As a Black woman at Cambridge, the one who had to deal with the looks, the muttered remarks, and the remarks said right to her face about the color of her skin. Usually locked hip to hip with Sebastian.

The Nine. Going off on a final adventure in two cars down a country road late on a June night.

“The trouble with Julian . . . ,” Sooz went on.

“Oh God.” Yash put his hands over his face. “Enough. We’ve talked about Julian nonstop for three years. Let’s call a moratorium this week, all right?”

“How do we not talk about him when he’s right there?”

“He’s not here now, in this car.”

“I just want Rosie to know she did the right thing. You know that, don’t you, Rose? I did the same myself when he did it to me. He’s a cheat. He’s rotten. One of us should have killed him a long time ago.”

Rosie maintained her distracted silence, her brow furrowed in thought.

“We’re close, aren’t we?” Theo said. Theo was the fifth passenger in the car, squeezed between Yash and Rosie. In the middle of everything, as usual. This attempt to redirect the conversation fooled no one, but it had an effect.

“About ten minutes away, darlings,” Sebastian replied.

Sooz accepted that the topic had been adjourned and reached into a bag of cheese and onion crisps. She found that there was nothing but crumbs left and crushed the empty bag into the pocket of her tracksuit bottoms. Or someone’s tracksuit bottoms. Possibly Peter’s, as they were long, and Peter was both tall and one of the few people in the house with any sportswear. In their house at Cambridge, the laundry would get mixed together, and clothes slowly became communal property. If you didn’t take your shirt off the drying rack fast enough, it would be claimed by someone else.

“Here,” Sooz said, reaching into her purse and producing five large black sleeves of photographs. “Forgot to show you these. Pictures from the last two weeks. I picked them up yesterday.”

She passed the photos to the passengers in the back seat.

“Are you still getting free developing from that guy at Boots?” Theo asked.

“Is that what they’re calling it these days?” Sebastian said.

Sooz playfully swatted him, almost causing him to drive the car into a hedge.

“I can’t help it if he likes me. And it saved me almost twenty quid.”

The photos roused Rosie from her reverie. She reached for one of the packs. For a few minutes, conversation ceased as the passengers in the back looked at the photos, Sebastian steered the massive Volvo through the twisting lanes, and Sooz fiddled with the radio. There was music, there was sunset birdsong, there were probably more crisps somewhere in the car, and all was right in the world. Sebastian turned through an opening in the hedgerow that was barely wide enough to accommodate the car, then made his way down a pitted dirt path through the trees. They had reached a tall iron gate, the only break in an ivy-covered brick wall.

“Who’s going to get out and open it?” Sebastian said.

“I’ll do it,” Yash said, popping open his door.

“The code is 19387. Pull the right gate toward you a bit. It sticks. Hold it for the others. It closes quickly.”

Yash did so, holding the gate so both the Volvo and the Golf could pass. They proceeded onward, down a peaceful drive arched by trees that created a lush hall of greenery, with slender beams of late-day sun poking through. This was England at its finest—the Hundred Acre Wood, the magical forest, the green and pleasant land of yore.

“Have to go slow,” Sebastian said. “Chester is hard of hearing. It would be a bad start to the week if I ran over our beloved gardener while he was standing on the drive.”

“Might make a good sketch,” Yash said. “You run over the gardener but then still keep trying to have a weekend party like nothing happened.”

“That’s not a good sketch,” Theo said.

Yash considered for a moment.

“No,” he said. “It’s not. Well, maybe with some polish on the idea. Remind me to mention it to Peter. We still have one sketch to write for Edinburgh . . .”

“You are not working this week,” Sooz said.

“We have to,” Yash replied. “At least a little. This is the Fringe Festival we’re writing for, Sooz, not the usual knobheads at the pub. Peter thinks that—”

“I don’t care what Peter thinks. No. Working. This. Week. Sebastian, do something.”

“If you think I can stop Peter and Yash on their quest for comedy glory,” Sebastian said to her, “you have more faith in me than I deserve.”

“Theo?”

“I am but one woman,” Theo replied. “I cannot perform miracles.”

They made the final turn of the drive, breaking out of the woods. Suddenly they were surrounded by walls of hydrangeas in hypnotic shades of electric blue and violet. Around them there were pergolas and paths wound with wisteria, and rosebushes with peach-colored blooms that stood on point. The air was full of the smell of lilacs that trapped the raindrops and released their perfume into the air.