That feeling of being watched was still pinching at the back of my neck, stronger now, closer. Maybe it was just the conversation with Sam getting to me, but all of a sudden I wanted to know for sure. This electric ripple from somewhere in the dark, Sam’s stories, Rafe’s father, all these things pressing in on us from every side, looking for weak spots, for their moment to attack: for a second I forgot I was one of the invaders, I just wanted to yell Leave us alone. I unwound my mike sock and tucked it into my girdle, along with my phone. Then I switched on my torch for maximum visibility and started walking, a casual, jaunty stroll, heading for home.
I know a variety of ways to shake off a tail, catch him in the act or turn the tables; most of them were designed for city streets, not for the middle of nowhere, but they’re adaptable. I kept my eyes front and picked up the pace, till there was no way for anyone to stay too close without breaking cover or making an awful lot of noise in the underbrush. Then I did a sudden swerve onto a cross-lane, switched off the torch, ran fifteen or twenty yards and squished myself, as quietly as I could, through a hedge into a field left to run wild. I stayed still, crouching down close against the bushes, and waited.
Twenty minutes of nothing, not a pebble crunching, not a leaf rustling. If there was actually someone following me, he or she was smart and patient: not a nice thought. Finally I eased myself back through the hedge. There was no one on the lane in either direction, as far as I could see. I picked most of the leaves and twigs out of my clothes and headed home, fast. Lexie’s walks had averaged an hour; I didn’t have long before the others started worrying. Over the tops of the hedges I could see a glow against the sky: the light from Whitethorn House, faint and golden and shot through with whirls of wood smoke like mist.
That night, when I was reading in bed, Abby knocked on my door. She was in red-and-white-checked flannel pajamas, her face scrubbed shiny and her hair loose on her shoulders; she looked about twelve. She closed the door behind her and sat down cross-legged on the end of my bed, tucking her bare feet into the crooks of her knees for warmth. “Can I ask you a question?” she said.
“Sure,” I said, hoping to God I knew the answer.
“OK.” Abby tucked her hair behind her ears, glanced back at the door. “I don’t know how to put this, so I’m just going to come straight out and ask, and you can tell me to mind my own business if you want. Is the baby OK?”
I must have looked gobsmacked. One corner of her mouth twisted upwards in a wry little smile. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you. I guessed. We’re always in sync, but last month you never bought the chocolate… and then when you threw up that day, I just figured.”
My mind was racing. “Do the guys know?”
Abby shrugged, a little flip of one shoulder. “I doubt it. They haven’t said anything, anyway.”
This didn’t rule out the chance that one of them did know, that Lexie had told the father-either that she was having a baby or that she was having an abortion-and he had flipped out, but it went some way towards it: Abby didn’t miss much. She waited, watching me. “The baby didn’t make it,” I said; which was, after all, true.
Abby nodded. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m really sorry, Lexie. Or…?” She raised one eyebrow discreetly.
“It’s OK,” I said. “I wasn’t sure what I was going to do about it, anyway. This sort of makes things simpler.”
She nodded again, and I realized I had called it right: she wasn’t surprised. “Are you going to tell the guys? Because I can do it, if you want me to.”
“No,” I said. “I don’t want them knowing.” Info is ammo, Frank always said. That pregnancy could come in useful sometime; I wasn’t about to throw it away. I think it was only in that moment, the moment when I realized I was saving up a dead baby like a hand grenade, that I understood what I had got myself into.
“Fair enough.” Abby stood up and hitched at her pajama bottoms. “If you ever want to talk about it or anything, you know where I am.”
“Aren’t you going to ask me who the father was?” I said. If it was common knowledge who Lexie was sleeping with, then I was in big trouble, but somehow I didn’t think it was; Lexie appeared to have lived most of her life on a need-to-know basis. Abby, though; if anyone had guessed, it would be her.
She turned, at the door, and gave that one-shouldered shrug. “I figure,” she said, her voice carefully neutral, “if you want to tell me, you probably will.”
