Read Online The Judas Scar by Amanda Jennings - Free Book Online Page A

expelled actually, and I didn’t hear from him again.’
    ‘Why was he expelled?’
    Will turned his head to look out of the window into the moonlit darkness. ‘I don’t know why.’ His voice was edged with sadness. ‘He shouldn’t have been.’
    ‘Was it dreadful there?’
    ‘Yes,’ he said, after a moment or two. ‘Not all of it. But some of it was awful.’
    She kissed his chest. ‘I can’t believe your parents sent you away.’ She was unable to keep the blame out of her voice. ‘I don’t know how people do it. I mean, what age were you? Eight? It’s barbaric. Why have children if you’re going to send them away?’
    ‘Mum didn’t want me to go, though I remember her saying something about it being good to get away from her apron strings,’ he said. ‘It was my father. He thought it was the right thing to do. He saw it as some sort of rite of passage, spouted all that nonsense about boarding school turning boys into men.’ He paused briefly. ‘I suppose it was what people did back then.’
    ‘Not the people I knew,’ she said. She thought of her father-in-law, his holier-than-thou attitude to life, his favouring of etiquette over emotion, the malice in his voice when he talked about immigrants, the way he buttoned his coat before leaving for church and tutted at Harmony as she sat at the breakfast table reading the Sunday papers, his sneering and sniping at Will, his inability to show any signs of affection towards his only child.
    Will once told her he only saw his parents on the last Sunday of each month during term time. They’d drive to a pub on the A131, order three portions of scampi and chips, then he and his father would eat their food as his mother chattered mindlessly to fill the stony silence. It was from the odd anecdote such as this that Harmony began to understand Will’s loathing of his school. They’d driven past the place once, years earlier, after a wedding in Newmarket. Harmony was studying the map as Will drove.
    ‘I thought Clacton-on-Sea was up north,’ she said, vaguely. ‘My geography really is shocking.’
    ‘Want to go?’ Will said, casting her a glance.
    ‘To Clacton-on-Sea?’
    He grinned and nodded.
    ‘But it’s in the opposite direction.’
    ‘So? Come on, let’s go. We can book into a crappy B & B with a grumpy landlady. Walk on the beach and eat greasy fish and chips.’
    ‘What about work?’
    ‘We’ll call in sick.’
    She hesitated but then nodded. ‘Go on, then, let’s. It’d be lovely to be by the sea.’
    They’d been talking and laughing, thrilled by their decision, but then Will fell quiet. He pulled over and stopped the car, his knuckles white as he gripped the wheel.
    ‘What’s wrong?’ Harmony asked.
    ‘Farringdon Hall.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘My old school,’ he said. ‘Back there. We just passed it.’ Harmony turned to look and saw a long red brick wall, too high to see anything behind it. ‘Can I see it?’ she asked then. ‘Will you show me?’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘I don’t know. I suppose I’d like to see if it’s anything like I imagine. It’ll help me picture you then.’
    ‘I can guarantee that place won’t give you any picture of me.’
    ‘Please?’
    For a moment he didn’t move, then suddenly, in one quick movement, he threw the car into gear and reversed at speed back past the entrance where two aged stone lions sat bored on brick piers either side. They turned up the driveway, long and straight and lined by tall, evenly spaced trees like the bars of a prison, and drove towards the huge, gothic manor.
    ‘It’s deserted,’ she whispered. A shiver passed through her as she looked up at the windows that punctured the brick like dead, glazed eyes.
    ‘School holidays.’
    They pulled up in front of the pillared entrance and Will turned the engine off. ‘This is where my father handed me over to that cock of a headmaster,’ Will said grimly. ‘I can still remember his fingers digging into my shoulders and him saying