“About?”
She looked up at me, still shivering uncontrollably. “I did something stupid.”
I recognised the look of fear in her eyes, and right away, I wanted to cover my ears. It’s not that I didn’t want to be there for her, but the last thing I needed was another one of her secrets to carry around with me.
But she was my sister.
“What did you do?”
“You know how Leon’s been since I slept with him. Following me, threatening to tell Elliott, always making disgusting comments. I’d had enough. I wanted him to leave me alone so I don’t have to look over my shoulder all the time.”
Her voice was empty, emotionless. It was as if she’d purposely numbed herself by wandering around in the freezing cold for hours.
“I told Mischa how sick I was of him,” she went on. “He scares me. So, the day before the party, Mischa told me she had a solution. She said if I could get him afraid, maybe he’d back off. She gave me a Rohypnol tablet.”
My hands shot to my mouth, but not quickly enough to stop my gasp.
“You?” I asked. “You did that to Jesse?”
She shook her head. “I kept the tablet, and all of yesterday, I thought she was right. She said all I had to do was drop the tablet into his drink, and there would be no way to prove it was me. He might not even realise he’d been drugged, just that he couldn’t remember a big part of the evening. The first time I got a chance to slip him the pill was when Mischa came into the living room with champagne. He’d been hovering around me all night, and he put his glass down on the window sill while he went out to the hallway to answer his phone. Mischa whispered to me to do it, to spike his drink, and I got the tablet out but I … I couldn’t do it. So she took it out of my hand and put it in his glass herself. She definitely put it in the glass he put down, but when he came back for it, he must have taken the wrong one.” For the first time, Georgia looked up at me. “I’m so sorry, Izzy, I didn’t mean for this to happen.”
I took some long, slow breaths because I was dangerously close to slapping some sense into her. She may not have been the one to spike Jesse’s drink, but the fact that she’d even considered drugging someone made me feel sick.
“You told me Leon did it,” I said. “You blamed him for something you were going to do to him.”
A glimmer of emotion began to show through in her eyes, so she must have thawed out a little. “I was scared. I was so scared because of what happened to Jesse, and I knew you’d believe Leon did it.”
“God, Georgia, I’ve been going out of my mind worrying about you, and the thought that he was going to-” I stopped, not wanting to say the words that had been plaguing me all day. “Does he know it was you?”
“I think so. I was out in the garden trying to calm down, and he found me. He was really angry that Jesse hit him, and he said he wanted to congratulate whoever drugged him. I’ve never been a very good liar.”
She had me fooled.
“Izzy, if I tell anyone that Mischa did this, she’ll never forgive me, and it’s not just her. It’s me too, I had the tablet.”
Could she be any more self-involved?
“Screw whether or not Mischa will forgive you!” I snapped. “You should be more worried about whether I will forgive you!”
“Shut up!” she hissed. “I don’t want everyone to hear!”
“But they’re going to, Georgia,” I told her, standing up. “I am not keeping this to myself any longer. Earlier, when I thought I was staying quiet to keep you and Elliott together, I sort of understood. But this? No.”
“Izzy, please!” she said, rising to her feet too, and dropping the duvet onto the bed.
?
?Do you have any idea what you and Mischa have done? Of course not, because it never even occurred to you to ask how Jesse is! I’ve seen you twice today, and you didn’t ask what happened to him, when he was coming home, or if he even woke up!”
“Keep your voice down!”
“Get out of my room.”
Georgia shook her head. “Please don’t tell,” she said, tears beginning to spill from her eyes. “Please.”
“Get. Out.”
Still shaking, she started to leave, but turned back as she reached the door. The look on her face would usually have broken my heart, but I was too angry to feel sorry for her. We may have looked identical, but at that moment, she was completely unfamiliar to me.