She decides to play it cool. Jemma needs to understand that Imogen is not like some of the desperate girls in her year, who are happy to abase themselves to earn Jemma’s friendship and become one of the popular kids. Imogen won’t do that. She knows Jemma too well and she’s known her for too long.
Her fingertip flies across her phone screen.
If you’re not going to the party tonight let me know because there’s another one I might go to.
A bluff, but the lie does the job. Jemma’s typing bubble appears immediately.
I’m around and party is on.
Imogen smiles and sees Jemma is composing another message.
Message me when you’re in Bristol and we’ll meet up & make a plan.
Emojis flow at the end of Jemma’s message, suggesting how much fun they’re going to have. That’s better. Now, getting out of camp feels like it might have been worth it.
Imogen feels a little flutter inside her. She can’t tell Jemma, but the reason she really wants to go to this particular party is because she’s hoping Matt, a friend of Jemma’s brother, will be there. Even if she had Matt’s number, which she doesn’t, she wouldn’t dare message him to find out if he’s going, because that would be so lame. But every cell in her body is desperate to see him, for him to make eye contact with her across the room and for it to carry the same message it did last time they met:I want you.
She shivers almost imperceptibly, from nerves and excitement. Jemma lost her virginity over a year ago, Imogen thinks, and some of the other girls in her year did it when they were way younger than that. If she’s going to do it for the first time with anyone, it’s Matt. It might not be tonight, and she knows it shouldn’t be because she hardly knows him, but this evening could be the start of something.
Cranking up the volume on her music, she stares at the countryside flashing by, enjoying the blur of it, the promise of later. The moment when she walks into that party can’t come quickly enough.
Ruth shakes her head. Her urge to drink is strong, but even so, she can’t stomach the idea of Edie’s champagne.
The thought that Edie has targeted her personally to be the butt of such a malicious joke horrifies her. She doesn’t know what she’s done to deserve it. Ruth makes a virtue of being the kind of person you don’t hate. She’s a keen pleaser. This feels like a very personal failure, and she has the sense that she’s got something fundamental wrong, about Edie and about herself, and it frightens her.
“I’m not touching it,” Emily says.
“I’ll put it in the fridge, then,” Jayne says. “Maybe later.” She’s disappointed in the others.
“Why would Edie do this to us?” Emily asks. She’s still finding it hard to understand. Before the others answer, something else occurs to her. “She must have known the men weren’t going to come with us. And known in advance. Or the letter wouldn’t have an impact.”
Jayne shuts the fridge. Emily’s right. Yet Mark only made the announcement that he wasn’t coming first thing that morning. Was it planned in advance? Did he already know he had no intention of coming? Did the other men? For the first time, she feels a little nervous.
“When did you find out that Paul wasn’t coming?” she asks Emily.
“A couple of days ago.”
“Toby?” Jayne turns to Ruth.
“Yesterday.”
“Paul’s not here because of work, right?” Jayne asks. Emily nods.
“Same for Mark,” Jayne says.
“Toby’s gone to help his sister.” But Ruth sounds uncertain.
They exchange glances and nobody’s reassured.
“Edie’s arranged this,” Jayne says. “She has to have. She’s lured the men off somewhere to mess with us.”
“No way. Paul’s definitely working,” Emily says. “But I want to talk to him.” She feels the urge to lash out. “How can you lot call each other friends if this is the sort of thing you do to each other?”
“Don’t blame this on us,” Jayne says. “Ruth and I are incomers, just like you. We’re not part of the original gang either. Maybe that’s why she’s targeted us.”
“What gang?” Emily asks. She hasn’t heard Paul use this word to describe his friends before. It seems a bit full on.
“Paul, Mark, Toby, Rob, and Edie were all at school together. You know that, right?”
