Boarding School Girls

by Helen Eve

  ‘I’m not that organized,’ he says as we reach the darkroom.

  ‘We can’t go in there,’ I say. ‘We might destroy a masterpiece.’

  ‘We won’t,’ he says as he unlocks the door. ‘I have permission.’

  With no time for photography until my replacement painting is finished, I haven’t been in here for a while, and today it’s a hundred years away from my last visit. A huge project is in progress, and hanging from the ceiling, propped up against the walls, and covering every work surface, are images that are at once painfully familiar and utterly extraordinary.

  ‘Did you know about this?’ I stammer as I step inside.

  ‘Not until this morning, when Siena brought me the key. It’s your Inspiration.’

  I stare around open-mouthed. There’s nothing here that links directly to Siena, and yet her influence is everywhere. The photographs appear at first to depict Temperley High students through the years, but on closer glance are something else entirely. I see the Council, and the Stripes, and the Starlets, and students who have never fitted into any clique or club, but none of this giant collage makes sense.

  Eric stands fearlessly with his rocks beside Madison showcasing spring-summer espadrilles beneath Avery receiving a place at Oxford above the Stripes celebrating a win overlapping with the Council planting trees in Argentina. Ambrose wears protective goggles beside a smoking test tube as Phoebe pouts in a mermaid costume watching Jack score a winning goal as Bethany is flanked by friends and Cassidy makes snow angels with me.

  A Starlet becomes a Stripe as a Council emblem merges with a TEMPA trophy. Cassidy’s make-up pallets become Eric’s fossils while Siena’s hair is an icy torrent leading the canoeing team to safety. We sit as Fifths with last year’s Shells; as Sixth Formers with thirteen-year-old Stripes; as Fourths with today’s Council; and we’re jagged pieces of ourselves and each other as time flows backwards and forwards and sideways and up and down, the walls a seemingly random map to innumerable outcomes as every student in the school is woven into a sea of possibilities, all of them Head Girls and Boys and scientists and beauty queens and graduates and star performers and politicians and brides and grooms.

  ‘I can’t believe she did this,’ I whisper. ‘I didn’t think she cared about me at all.’

  ‘I’m pretty sure it’s the best thing she’s ever done for anyone,’ he says. ‘Why did she choose this as your Inspiration?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ I say. ‘This kind of possibility; of choosing our own futures? She knows I don’t believe in that.’

  ‘You don’t believe that we decide our own futures?’

  ‘Rather than repeating our parents’ errors?’ I ask. ‘Siena doesn’t believe that any more than I do. She let me into the Starlets because I could tell fortunes. She convinced Libby that they needed me to keep them on the right track.’

  ‘I remember that,’ he laughs as I regress to the moment that changed my life forever; the moment when Libby first anointed girls with earrings that glinted and sparked and danced as the rest of us watched in silent frenzy, even without knowing what they meant.

  After Phoebe had accepted this membership symbol that was as platinum-sharp as her triumphant smile, Libby and Siena conferred in a heated whisper. I scanned the room for the likely final recipient, but, before Libby could make her announcement, Siena stood up.

  ‘You,’ she said in a voice as cool as water.

  And Siena wanted me.

  ‘I hear you tell fortunes?’ Libby’s eyes were narrowed in barely disguised disapproval at this unexpected situation as I stood before them.

  Siena was smiling. ‘She gave my sister a reading yesterday.’

  I remembered Stella; the Star.

  Libby was waiting. ‘Go on then; impress us.’

  I reluctantly shuffled my Tarot cards, hoping for inspiration as I held them out to Phoebe. Libby laughed at her choice as Phoebe scowled at the Fool.

  ‘That seems about right,’ Siena conceded. ‘Now Libby.’

  Libby picked the High Priestess with a grudging smile, before Siena raised an eyebrow at her Tower card.

  ‘It means you’ll reach dizzy heights,’ I improvised. ‘Higher than anyone else.’

  Having momentarily diverted every girl’s gaze from Siena’s silvery perfection, I’d never been more aware of my untreated hair or my chipped nail polish, let alone my laddered tights.

  Why you? came in waves of disbelief as everyone ignored Mrs Denbigh’s introductory assembly about loyalty, integrity and a sense of fun; as Siena looked into her mirror and Libby looked at Siena and the other Starlets looked as if they couldn’t believe their luck and everyone looked at me as if they couldn’t believe mine.

  * * *

  ‘Siena has some fascinating ideas about deterministic chaos,’ Jack muses, his eyes lighting up as I imagine Siena laughing at this in-depth analysis. ‘See how she’s illustrated her theories on the butterfly effect with actual butterfly images…’

  ‘Saved by the bell,’ I interrupt as I look at my ringing phone, freezing in shock as I see who’s calling.

  ‘Romy?’ my dad says. ‘I’ve come to visit you, if you have time.’

  ‘You called me Romy,’ I say incredulously.

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Siena

  I sit on Seraphina’s velvet chair before the three light-bulb-surrounded mirrors from her days as a model. The reflections show off my full triptych of apathy as she tries out new hairstyles, twisting and weaving and tightening curls as if I’m a doll. I stare at my faces, then at hers, so that we blur into each other and out again, and I see not only myself but my sisters as they grow old enough to sit in my place, bored and beautiful mannequins who think only of calories and popularity and status.

  That won’t happen to them, I remind myself. Stella’s life at Temperley High will be different to mine. We just have to make it that far.

  ‘I’m not sure about this,’ I venture as we regard the wedding dress hanging against the door. ‘Perhaps I should wear something else tonight.’

  ‘Perhaps you could have mentioned that earlier,’ she rebukes me as I remember the hours I’ve spent here having the dress moulded around me, gripping me from all angles like skeleton fingers.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘It’s so tight.’

  ‘Do I take it that you are not going to win this … election?’ she says.

  We both know that she means something entirely different when she says election, and that I lack the courage to follow this conversation through.

  ‘What if I don’t want to win?’ I whisper.

  She releases my hair so that it crashes to my waist. For a second I look exactly like Stella, and I know what she’s thinking.

  ‘You’re not my only child,’ she says. ‘So you may do as you wish. In turn, I may invite whom I like to your victory dinner party tonight.’

  ‘Not Stella,’ I stammer in panic. ‘You can’t invite Stella!’

  ‘Jealousy is a most unattractive trait,’ she says, a smile playing across her lips.

  ‘I’m not jealous,’ I say. ‘I just don’t want her attending dinner parties at her age.’

  ‘You did.’

  ‘I was different. I want her left alone. I don’t want anyone looking at her.’

  ‘So you are jealous,’ she says triumphantly.

  I answer her by crossing the room, removing my dressing gown and putting on the dress, wincing as it pinches and bruises my ribs. But this is endurable, because as long as my mother has me, and as long as I can be what she wants, she has no need of Stella.

  ‘I am your only child,’ I say. ‘In every way that counts. I’ll wear this dress, and win everything you want me to win.’

  I watch the dress in the lights of the mirror. I don’t look like myself at all, and I remember that Seraphina was the same age I am now when she last looked like this.

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Romy

  My dad is in the stables with his back to
me, awkwardly feeding Star a carrot. He motions me onto a bale of straw as formally as if it’s a boardroom chair, sitting opposite and clearing his throat.

  ‘You have a baby brother,’ he announces, pride creeping into his voice despite his attempt to remain businesslike. ‘He was born last night.’

  ‘Wow.’ I try to process this. ‘A brother! Is Vivienne okay?’

  ‘She’s fine now,’ he frowns, ruefully rubbing his arm where a handprint of bruises is visible. ‘Whatever our differences – we wanted to tell you as soon as we could.’

  ‘I appreciate that,’ I nod. A baby brother.

  ‘I behaved badly after your mother left,’ he says after a moment’s silence. ‘But I want you to know, Romy, that it was her choice to leave, and hers alone. There was no affair.’

  ‘She must have seen it in her Tarot cards,’ I say. ‘Even if you and Vivienne hadn’t started anything, she must have seen it happen. She knew she couldn’t escape it.’

  He shakes his head vehemently. ‘Romy, she didn’t see it happen; she made it happen. Her decision to leave wasn’t imposed on her.’

  ‘She wouldn’t have gone unless she had to,’ I insist. ‘Why would she leave me?’

  ‘I wish I had a better answer for you,’ he says. ‘She was unhappy living in one place, and I didn’t want to travel. We were incompatible, and I’m afraid you were the casualty.’

  ‘But you moved on immediately,’ I remind him. ‘She hadn’t been gone a month before Vivienne moved in.’

  ‘I was wrong,’ he admits. ‘As crazy as it sounds, I thought I was doing the best for you. I didn’t know how to handle you, and I wanted you to have a mother.’

  ‘You sent me away too.’ I’m crying, even though it’s pointless. ‘You didn’t want her, and you don’t want me either. No wonder she left, when you don’t care about either of us.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ he says, looking stricken. ‘I never stopped caring about your mother, and I’ll never stop caring about you. I think … you’re so much like her, it’s been hard for me to be near you. Perhaps I punished you because I couldn’t punish her.’

  ‘You’re still punishing me,’ I say. ‘Last year you blamed me without even listening. You were happy to have an excuse to get rid of me.’

  ‘There’s a lot I haven’t listened to,’ he says. ‘But I’d like to get to know you, if you’ll let me.’

  Confusing anger flares inside me, and, perhaps for the first time in years, begins to subside. ‘Can you forgive me?’ he asks.

  ‘I don’t know. Are you still throwing me out?’

  He looks around as if fearful that Vivienne is listening. ‘I wish things were different for us. Maybe in the future…’

  ‘In the future, who knows?’ I say as something inside me realigns like a river changing course, breaking and speeding and separating as the possibilities of my future swell and multiply until they are too many to conceive. ‘Maybe no one can decide that but us.’

  He hugs me as he gets up to leave. ‘Good luck in your election tonight.’

  ‘Who told you about the election? Was it Mrs Denbigh?’

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘It was one of your friends – she sent me something…’

  ‘I won’t win,’ I say as he reaches into his pocket. ‘I can confidently predict that.’

  ‘I don’t care who wins.’ He hands me a photograph of me taken at Speech Day. It’s been doctored in the style of a yearbook picture, but instead of my Best Felon sash, I’m encased in the words Most Loyal. I wonder for a moment who taught Siena to Photoshop.

  ‘I understand that your old friends have forgiven you,’ he says. ‘Mrs Denbigh tells me you’re doing very well.’

  ‘I suppose I’m making progress,’ I concede.

  ‘I’ll collect you at the end of term, shall I?’ he asks as he steps away. ‘We’ll see where the river takes us.’

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Siena

  Stella and Syrena arrive to witness this final fitting, dressed as neatly as bridesmaids, Syrena’s ice lolly confiscated in case we all end up stained with blackberry.

  ‘Do you think one day we’ll go to a party together?’ Stella asks, modelling her dress.

  ‘Of course,’ I tell her, although I never want her exposed to a world of sticky floors and men who objectify her and girls who toss drinks at her because she represents something they believe they want. I don’t want to imagine a Stella beyond this little girl, although perhaps I can’t see a life beyond this one for any of us.

  ‘What will you be when you grow up, Syrena?’ I ask, hoping to be convinced otherwise.

  ‘A circus master,’ she says indistinctly, twirling at high speed so that her dress spins out wide.

  ‘Good girl,’ says Seraphina, believing her response to be metaphorical.

  ‘And you, Stella?’ I ask.

  ‘I want to be you,’ Stella says.

  ‘Who am I?’

  She doesn’t answer, and I wonder if this is because I’m nothing more than a beacon shining before her and beyond her, always out of reach and because of that – only because of that – impossible for her to relinquish.

  ‘What do you see in your future?’ Seraphina asks me.

  ‘I want to go to Oxford,’ I say, surprising myself with this answer.

  ‘Why? Where will that lead you?’

  I lead myself, as a recent Art project has taught me, into an infinite set of possibilities that, however unlikely, might form my future. I’m a university student, cycling to a lecture down an ancient cobbled street. I’m in the catacombs on a research trip in Rome. I’m one of hundreds in an echoing theatre, weighed down by a mortar board and white fur collar, as my sisters witness a ceremony of which I’m truly proud to be part.

  Then it’s not alien, or bad, to imagine myself dressed for an office, walking through revolving doors with a briefcase, enduring team outings and communal kitchens and six weeks’ annual leave. In none of these images is there a husband by my side, and nor do I mourn his absence.

  Seraphina speaks weightily, as if she can read my thoughts. ‘I’m considering taking you out of school, Siena. I don’t care for its teachings, and I no longer feel that I can trust you to follow mine.’

  Panic rises in me at the prospect of being kept here in the state she wishes me to remain. While my classmates have careers and babies and families, as their youth metamorphoses into crow’s feet that remind them of sadness and happiness and loss and gain, I remain here with a mother who doesn’t age and doesn’t move and doesn’t love. It’s a gilded prison in which we don’t alter or improve or achieve; but, in fear of ageing, and thickening, and wrinkling, find it preferable to live like stone. And I wonder if the reason my father left was this: because my mother never really lived with him even when she did.

  As my sisters circle me like handmaidens and throw gold lace at me like confetti, I remember a time just months ago when it seemed that nothing mattered but this, and there was no achievement greater than a wedding, because if my mother never needed more than that, then why should I?

  Chapter Fifty

  Romy

  Jack is still in the darkroom when I return, no doubt formulating ever more complex analyses of Siena’s newly discovered genius.

  ‘I need your help,’ I say as I begin to tug at the installation. ‘We need to move this out of here.’

  ‘What are you…?’ he asks. ‘Are you sure about this?’

  ‘Surer than I’ve ever been about anything.’ I carry the first set of photographs out of the room and gesture for him to follow me with the next.

  * * *

  ‘Put your back into it!’ Libby is screaming as Cassidy and Madison, both close to tears, struggle with a giant bin of confetti. They’ve been in the hall since sunrise, and it looks like a cross between the Gatsby curtain scene and snow blindness, complete with Siena-decorated bunting and an Aston Martin waiting outside with balloons tied to the bumper.

  ‘Good grief.’ Jack stumbl
es at the sight of the white chairs, carpet, table decorations, lectern-cum-altar, and wall-length posters of him and Siena captured in their most romantic moments. ‘Is this where bridegrooms come to die?’

  ‘What are you doing here?’ asks Libby in panic. ‘It’s bad luck. You aren’t supposed to see the room until the—’

  ‘Wedding?’ he asks. ‘Is that where you were heading?’

  ‘Of course not,’ she says feebly. ‘Election is what I meant.’

  ‘Well, it’s a good thing I came, because I didn’t approve this décor.’

  ‘You said we could take charge,’ says Phoebe indignantly. ‘You said you’d rather die than look at any more colour charts.’

  ‘That was before I found my style … pizzazz,’ he says. ‘As Head Boy-elect, I have a say in this, and I’ve brought my own decorations.’

  He steps aside to reveal the Stripes, who are each carrying a section of Siena’s photography.

  ‘You can’t come in.’ Libby is always a happy believer that she can get the outcome she wants simply by being loudest. ‘What is this atrocity?’

  ‘This atrocity is our lives,’ I say as the Stripes pile in more images. ‘Whether you like it or not.’

  ‘None of these moments happened!’ protests Libby. ‘Everything’s mutated. Is it the result of a virus?’

  ‘All these things happened,’ whispers Cassidy.

  ‘Not like this!’ Libby argues. ‘They happened separately, and the ones we didn’t see might as well not have happened at all. This is all distorted.’

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ Cassidy says. ‘And it all sort of happened … or could’ve happened.’

  ‘It needs to be removed,’ says Libby. ‘It makes no sense – it’s the opposite of our aesthetic. It suggests that anyone can be anything … that the future is random … that we should live communally … God, it actually suggests that we’re all the same.’

  She takes a break to glare at me. ‘I’m sure I don’t have to ask who’s responsible?’