His ears pricked up when he heard his own name mentioned, but he felt a little deflated when he realised that he was still stuck with library duties.

He’d been hoping he could spend the day with Trudy.

*

Patsy Arles was feeling more and more desperate. Ever since the accident, and the subsequent visit of Jasper and Juliet Vander to her house, her nerves had begun to stretch tighter and tighter.

What had once seemed such a great and fantastically sophisticated adventure had now taken on the aspect of a nightmare.

Although Juliet had said that the trick they intended to play on Terrence Parker was something that he’d thoroughly deserved, how could she be so sure now that that was even true? She’d felt the tension in the air that night they’d come to her and told her to keep quiet about things, which meant they were nervous and unsure, and that, as much as anything, had really spooked her.

Juliet and Jasper had always been a law unto themselves. Superbly self-confident and untouchable, they’d struck her as beings who lived on a different plane to other, lesser mortals such as herself, and to see them acting almost, well, scared had jarred her.

And the fact that even they were rattled was frightening her most of all, because everyone knew how scary Jasper could be when he was crossed or felt under attack. Hadn’t he got poor Lionel Willis expelled from school that time Lionel had dared beat him at that silly old cricket match? Everyone knew Jasper got up to all sorts of things, but the teachers couldn’t touch him. He was far too clever for them, and everyone was too scared of him to snitch on him. All her friends at school had fancied him rotten, whilst at the same time being terrified by his bad-boy reputation.

And Juliet, Patsy knew, was no less intimidating. Whilst being utterly fabulous and beautiful and chic and witty, she could be as dangerous as a viper.

And why had they given her all that money? If the trick they’d planned to play on Terry James was so harmless, why all this concern that she didn’t talk to the police investigating the accident?

Patsy was not so gullible that she hadn’t learned, in this life, that when things went wrong, it wasn’t the well-heeled and well-connected people like the Vanders who ended up paying the price, but those much further down the food chain. In this case, one Patsy Arles!

Once again, Jasper and Juliet had cleverly arranged things so that if anything went wrong, they could deny any wrongdoing – a typical trademark of theirs.