Miss Lilly was firm. “I’ll deal with them later. Just drive, the gates will open for my car.”
The photographers pushed their cameras up against the car’s tinted windows, but they didn’t follow us in as we drove through and the gates slid shut behind us. The road snaked round to a car park.
Miss Lilly patted my hand. “Come on then. Let’s get you sorted.”
The second we stepped out of the car, a warm wind whipped round us and my hair was thrown about my face. I caught as much of it as I could in my hands and held on to it.
“I should have warned you about the wind!” Miss Lilly called. “Annie has packed plenty of hairbands in your trunk.”
It was all I could do to stay upright as I followed her across a courtyard and towards a large wooden door. She rang a bell and a smiling woman answered.
“So lovely to see you, Miss Lilly. Come in, it’s a bit brisk today! This must be Laura?”
I nodded.
“We’re delighted you’ve chosen Whitman’s. The girls are very excited to meet you – Miss Lilly is an inspiration to them. Any ward of hers will be welcome here.”
A shiver of panic rippled through me. My relationship with Miss Lilly might just as easily make me a target. I could already imagine the comments: “Think you’re special, do you? Well, you’re nothing special here.”
“Laura?”
I snapped back to the moment. “Sorry?”
“Please take a seat while I let your housemistress know you’re here,” said the woman, indicating a pair of velvet armchairs under a wooden panel covered with a list of names painted in curly gold lettering. Miss Lilly’s name was right at the top: Miss Lilly Crisp, Benefactor.
She put a hand on my arm. “You’re going to love it.”
I smiled weakly. This place was so different from everything I’d known – how could I possibly fit in?
I looked around. It was beautiful. Stone steps led up to a hallway with a gleaming wooden floor. There was an old wooden staircase too. You’d think all that wood would make it gloomy but the whole place shone. It didn’t even smell like a school – no old gym shoes and cabbage. It smelled of furniture polish.
I felt odd, like I was outside myself, watching things happen to some other Laura. My old school was made of concrete and plastic. It was loud; full of life and noise. This was the opposite. This was calm and sort of…homely.
A door creaked open somewhere and I heard footsteps. Two girls – one very tall with super-straight shiny black hair, and one very short with Afro hair pulled into a pair of fat bunches – were coming down the staircase, deep in conversation. I watched them round the bottom of the stairs, oblivious to everything but each other. They looked nice. I craned my neck to see where they’d gone. With a little jolt of shock, I realized I wanted to follow them. Life flickered inside me. I wanted to be part of this place. I wanted them to accept me.
I hadn’t expected to feel like this…like, I don’t know, a bit excited.
The instant I realized it, I felt guilty. Alfie would never have this. Never have the chance to make new friends, to learn new things…
The front door opened and a blast of sea air whipped through the hall. The security people who’d driven us here lugged in my trunk. I stood up to help but a voice behind me said, “Laura Henley?”
I swung round.
A pale girl, with hair the colour of dried grass and a smattering of freckles across her narrow face, thrust a hand towards me. “I’m Marsha. I couldn’t wait for Madam, had to come and meet you for myself. We’re so thrilled you chose Whitman’s.”
She had a strange accent, Russian or something. I shook her hand. She was tall, nearly a foot taller than me.
“Hello,” I said, trying to look her in the eye like Ima had taught me. “Are you in my year?”
“And your house – we’re in Blue. It’s the best for allrounders.”
She beamed at Miss Lilly. “I hope you don’t mind me saying, Miss, the girls all love your new range for teens. The spot cream is incredible.”
Marsha was blushing and respectful to Miss Lilly, not at all like those mobbing people in the streets.
“Thank you, Marsha,” Miss Lilly said, standing up. “It’s lovely to meet you. I trust you’re going to look after Laura in the true spirit of Whitman’s?”
Marsha nodded. “Of course. We were all new once.”
Miss Lilly laughed her tinkling laugh. “Indeed we were.”
Marsha spotted my trunk. “That is huge,” she said. “But we can manage it from here, can’t we, Laura?”
I nodded, not at all sure that I could lift it, but determined to try.
Marsha said, “Goodness knows how we’ll fit it in your room. Oh well, we’ll shove it in somehow. Let’s go, shall we? Is that okay?” she asked Miss Lilly.
“Absolutely. Oh, Laura, I almost forgot – here.”
She handed me a small paper bag with a ribbon handle. “Mobile phone, my number’s in it – one of the girls can show you how it works.”
Marsha picked up one end of my trunk as a stocky woman in a tweed suit paced briskly towards us.
“Well done, Marsha,” the teacher said. “Always one step ahead. Keep it up.”
Marsha raised her eyebrows at me as the tweedy woman offered me her hand.
“Madam Hobbs, housemistress. Heard so much. Lovely.” Then, turning to Miss Lilly, “We can handle the paperwork while Marsha settles Laura in, yes?”
Miss Lilly nodded.
“Excellent. Say your goodbyes then, Laura, and Marsha can marshal you!”
She handed Marsha a key, which disappeared into her blazer pocket. Miss Lilly swept forward and kissed my cheek.
“Look after Batfink.”
“Of course.”
I smiled. “Thank you, for everything.”
I didn’t want her to leave. Over the last few weeks we’d become really close. She was the nearest thing I had to a parent now. I hovered between her and Marsha.
“It’ll be okay, I absolutely promise.” She caught me in a quick hug, her lovely scent wrapping round me. “I’ll see you soon,” she said. “It’s exeat in a couple of weeks. Perhaps you could come home? Bring a friend if you want to.”
“Exeat?”
“School-speak for a weekend off.”
Marsha sighed. “People with families who care love exeat. Maybe I go shopping. Come on, let’s take this monster to Blue House and I’ll show you where everything is.”
She started dragging my trunk so that I had no option but to grab the other end and follow her. It was a struggle to hold the weight but I wanted to manage. I wanted this different life and the hope it seemed to offer.
With one last look back at Miss Lilly, who smiled and waved, I followed Marsha down the world’s longest school corridor.
“This is the world’s longest school corridor,” she said, and a tiny laugh escaped me as she voiced my thoughts.
She looked over her shoulder at me. “It really is. I think. Maybe it’s just something they say to gullible new girls.” She stopped and said, “That’s not a poke, a dig, whatever you call it. We were all new girls once.”
“When did you start?” I asked as she began walking again.
“Last term. I didn’t want to come. I loved my school in Russia, but now I love it here.”
I had been right about the accent, but it was hard to believe she’d only been at Whitman’s a few months. “Last term? You seem so at home.”
She stopped again, this time in front of a blue door. “It took a few days to settle in.” She pushed some numbers into a pad by the door and then shoved it open. “Code is so easy it’s pointless: 2222. I don’t know why they don’t get facial recognition like normal people. They put me in Red House at first but it was full of drama scholars. I couldn’t take all the flouncing about. Here, I like.”
Through the door was a narrow hallway, thickly carpeted in blue. Lots of tiny rooms sprouted off it all the way down.
“The
se are study rooms; we share them. And this… Let me just put this down before my arm drops off.”
She rested my trunk on the floor and opened a door. The room beyond was like an old library with a long table down the middle. The back wall was a giant photograph of library shelves.
“Junior Prep Room,” Marsha said briefly, before picking up the trunk handle again. “Right, last stop before I take you up to your room – in here.” She pushed open another door on the left. “This is the ODR, Ordinary Dining Room. It’s just been decorated – nice, isn’t it?”
It was a kitchen. A big stone fireplace, lined with blue flowery tiles, filled most of one wall. A couple of pale blue rocking chairs sat by it. A long counter, with a sink and a hob, ran in front of a wall of shelves stacked with mugs and plates and cookery books. It was laid out so you could stand behind it and face the room. Pale oblong tables with chairs in different shades of blue were arranged in front of it. It was like a giant family kitchen.
“Is this where we eat?”
“Only breakfast, tea sometimes, if there’s a house birthday. I’ll show you the main dining room later. We hang out here quite a bit though.”
“Where is everyone now?” I said.
“Oh, there’s a ‘getting to know you’ trip on for the start of term. They’ve all gone to the Zenathon Aerial Park. You should have had a message about it before you started? I usually TouchTime with my boyfriend on Sundays so I didn’t go.”
TouchTiming didn’t sound like a thing that should be allowed in a boarding school. Marsha read the look on my face and burst out laughing.
“Oh no no! Not that. I forgot, sorry. Okay, so we know about you being from the past, obviously. But we’ve also been briefed. Madam Bentley totally made an entire history lesson about what happened to you. I guess you’ve got some stuff to catch up on in this century – TouchTime is like FaceTime but, you know, more real. We’re not supposed to use it.”
I said, “And FaceTime is?”
“Oh Lord!” She laughed. “You’ve a whole new language to learn. You’ll be nearly as bad as me when I started here only speaking schoolgirl English. Come on, let’s go to your room.”
I followed Marsha upstairs. I liked her. She hadn’t teased me; she hadn’t said anything snide about my clothes. She’d been just…ordinary. She reminded me a bit of Stacey. Her confidence, the slight edge of crazy. I bit my lip.
Stacey. There was the past again.
I pushed it away. I didn’t want to mess things up with Marsha by being distracted and weird. I felt like I might really, genuinely, actually fit in at Whitman’s. Which, given everything that had happened, seemed nothing short of a miracle.
The beach noises of families chattering and the sea shushing over the pebbles faded into a single whooshing noise in my ears. I was frozen where I was, unable to decide which way to run.
“This is my dad!” The little kid’s voice cut through my panic. His dad was big enough to block out the sun. “I told him you were sad.”
“I’m not sad,” I managed to say.
“Yes you are. You got tears.”
“I’m not sad, all right.” I swiped away any possible wetness near my eyes.
“Are you sure you’re all right, sonny?” the dad said. “You look like times have been a bit rough.”
My mouth was doing a weird puffing thing as I tried not to cry. “I’m not a vagrant.”
He held up his hands in surrender. “Sure, sure, whatever. You look like you could do with a bit of help, that’s all. Nice dog. So, do you?”
“What?”
“Need some help?”
I looked around again and there they were, the same two dudes from earlier, coming from different directions but both heading towards me, totally out of place on the beach in their suits. I glanced at the dad. He didn’t look like one of them, but maybe he was undercover or something.
Could you take a kid with you to do undercover work?
I didn’t know what to think. My heart was sending blood to my head so fast my brain was pounding with it.
“You can trust me. I promise.”
I knew I couldn’t trust anyone. I knew it, but I wanted so badly for someone to help me, so I said, “Some people are following me. They said something about vagrancy laws but I’m not a vagrant, I’m just…”
The man said, “Jeez, I heard about that on the news. I didn’t think… Okay, look, come and sit with us and we’ll work out what we can do to help.”
“I can’t give you anything. I’ve got no money.” Which was a bit of a lie; I still had the library lady’s money.
“I don’t want your money, son,” he said, but he wasn’t looking at me now – he’d seen the two men closing in on us. “Ah,” he said, “I see.”
He was going to change his mind. Why get mixed up in my mess? Or he’d hand me over. I tensed, ready to run but not knowing which way to go except towards the water. Could I swim for it with Scrag?
The dad-man put an arm around my shoulder. I almost bolted then, but the kid had got between me and Scrag and I couldn’t go without my dog.
I let him steer me back to their spot on the beach, all the way trying to work out my escape. The mum looked up. She was plump and pretty and looked exactly like I thought a mum should look. She said, “What’s all this then?”
Dad-man said, “Tobes was right, he is sad. Getting some hassle because of the new vagrancy laws.”
“I’m not a vagrant.”
“Of course you’re not,” said the mum. “Sit down, you can share my towel. Do you want a sausage roll?”
“I want an ice cream,” said the little kid.
I sat down because I didn’t know what else to do. I thought it unlikely the three of them were going to bundle me into a van. Scrag tipped his head on one side as if to ask me what I was doing. Then he yipped and lay down next to me.
“What’s your story then, young man?” the dad said.
“Pleeeeease can we get ice cream. I’m meeeeeelting,” the boy said. He was pretty funny. And pretty small. Small enough to pick up and kidnap. I looked at the mum and dad, smiling so kindly at me. How could they just let their kid wander up the beach close enough for them pigs chasing me to talk to him?
Close enough for them to snatch him.
I scanned the beach again. They were still there, standing, watching, dark blots amongst the holidaymakers. Trapping me.
The mum handed me a sausage roll. My stomach growled.
“Thanks.”
Without thinking, I broke it in half and shared it with Scrag. Instead of being annoyed, the mum gave a whole one to my dog and another one to me. Tears snuck up my throat again, making it impossible to swallow. I shoved the second sausage roll in my pocket. The little kid got up and went to wander off again. I said, “Don’t…” and looked up the beach, searching for the men. The dad caught hold of the little boy’s hand and followed my gaze.
I said, “Just…you should be careful.”
He nodded and said to the boy, “Toby, stay here. We’ll get ice cream before we leave, I promise.” Then to me, “Have you got somewhere to stay? Can we drop you off?”
Lumpy sobs were properly threatening to come out of my mouth. I rubbed the stump of my arm against my eye. I didn’t know what to do – these people didn’t fit what I knew. Bert had always told me you shouldn’t trust anyone, but the library lady had given me money, just given it, without asking for nothing. And these people, they weren’t ignoring me, they weren’t chasing me, they weren’t shouting at me.
Could I trust them? Just a little bit?
More than a decade of only ever relying on Bert was hard to shake off but he wasn’t here and I was so tired – to lean on someone else was so tempting.
If I could just get a bit ahead of the men, maybe I’d be okay. I’d got rid of the phone, surely that would lead them miles away. The plan to get back to my shed, check it was safe and lie low for a couple of days seemed the best I had. I wasn’t used to asking for h
elp though.
I sort of coughed out, “Can you give me a lift? It’s not far.” If they just dropped me off near the end of my road, I could go the back way, make sure no one saw me.
He nodded. “Why don’t we head off now, get Toby his—”
The little boy leaped up. “Ice cream! Ice cream!”
“All right, you little terror, we’ll get ice cream.”
I picked up Scrag and stayed close to the family as we walked up the beach. They stopped for ice cream. They offered me one, but I was too nervous to eat and you couldn’t keep ice cream for later.
The men were slowly heading towards us but cautious now, less cocky. Was it because they thought they’d made a mistake? Got the wrong kid? That I couldn’t be homeless because I was with a family? My exhausted brain was spinning out paranoid thoughts like a candyfloss machine. By the time we got to the car, my heart was hammering. I was as certain as I could be that the family weren’t going to kidnap me, but I’d never been in a car. Or any kind of vehicle. Ever.
The mum said, “Hop in the back with Toby. I’ll drive – you can give us directions as we go.”
I tried to swallow down the panic churning in my gut. But a glance back told me we needed to move. I said, “They’re getting in their cars. They’re going to follow us.”
The dad said, “Maybe I should go and speak to them, Shirl? Find out what they want with the boy? Seems a bit out of order to be hounding him on the beach when he’s not even sleeping rough?”
I scrabbled for the door handle. “No. No! Bert said – I can’t, don’t – I shouldn’t have…”
“Hey, hey,” the mum said, “it’s okay. Ted, let’s drive around and see if they follow?”
I said, “You could get in trouble. Why are you doing this? Why are you helping me?”
“Good idea, Shirley,” said the dad. Then, to me, “Because, believe it or not, I was homeless once. Everyone deserves a chance. The new laws were meant to get people like you back on your feet, but from what I’ve heard, the conditions are worse in the detention centres than they are on the street. Strap yourself in.”
The little kid showed me how to attach a strap across my chest but there wasn’t one for Scrag. I tucked him under mine and he licked my face before laying his head against my chest.
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