“There is no internet signal here.” The headmistress must have known what Parva was thinking. “But if you have any kind of computer with you, you are welcome to use it for the preparation of PowerPoint presentations and Word documents to assist in your lesson planning. If you wish to use it to communicate with the outside world, I am afraid you will have to travel quite a distance to get a signal.”
Parva could believe that. Here she was in the middle of Wales, surrounded by hills, the only way out a network of roads so minor that even a twenty-mile drive might take the best part of half a day. She suddenly found herself wondering if flashlights and mirrors were forbidden too, just in case it led to a spate of attempts to communicate with someone on the other side of the valley.
“Is there something wrong?”
Parva wasn’t aware that she had been smirking, but there was always the chance, and so she assumed the most serious expression she could come up with.
“No, Miss Arbuthnot.”
The headmistress pointed at the locked drawer. “In that case I take it you are happy with this arrangement?”
Parva shrugged. It didn’t look as if she had much of a choice. “I can’t say I am,” she said, “but I’ll comply if that’s what’s needed for me to work here.”
Miss Arbuthnot gave her a triumphant smile. “Indeed it is, Miss Corcoran. I’m very pleased to see you’ve decided to play ball.” She got to her feet. “If you’d like to come with me I’ll show you around, get you settled in, and of course introduce you to the girls. I can tell you’re dying to meet them.”
5
Miss Arbuthnot allowed Parva to get her bags from her car (and gave the gleaming black Mini a disapproving look as she did so) before instructing her to leave them in the headmistress’s study while they toured the school. Parva deliberately left her laptop locked in the car boot, just in case the old lady had any more tricks up her sleeve and she found herself without her luggage as well as her phone. She could just about manage without the mobile, but without her computer, and the contact numbers she’d backed up on it, she would be totally lost. As she dragged her suitcase away from the car she tried to dismiss thoughts of the Mini not being there when she returned for it.
For God’s sake, girl, she thought, it’s a school, not some sort of cult commune.
At least, she hoped it wasn’t.
“We start the day with school assembly,” said the headmistress, leading Parva away from her office and down a narrow path that corkscrewed its way between high hedgerows.
“Is the assembly hall in the main building?” Parva asked, looking around her.
“Goodness me, no,” came the reply. “We don’t have a hall.”
As they emerged into the open Parva realised why as, with some degree of pride, Miss Arbuthnot gestured to the robust, medieval-looking building complete with stained glass windows and bell tower in front of them.
“We have a chapel.”
“Striking.” To Parva it looked anything but. In fact it more resembled the kind of thing you might find on some windswept mountain than in a posh girls’ school.
“Would you like to take a look inside?”
Absolutely not. “Of course.” Parva gave the woman a big smile and led the way to the heavy oak door.
It was locked.
“You can never be too careful,” said the head mistress, producing a heavy iron key from somewhere about her person and rattling it into the gaping keyhole. It took a little bit of effort but eventually, after a grinding of tumblers that suggested the lock could do with a decent oiling, the door creaked open.
The inside was quite a revelation.
Parva had expected dusty carpets, mouldering hymnbooks and dusty hassocks, but instead the building she walked into was spotless and decorated to the point of decadence. The pews had been fashioned from a deep mahogany that had been given just the right delicate layer of varnish. The lectern looked as if it must have cost a fortune, and the two manual organ was obviously a recent, and expensive, addition.
‘This chapel has been here for at least five hundred years.” Miss Arbuthnot was making her way down the aisle as she spoke, her voice echoing around them both in a way that was obviously pleasurable for her. “Of course back then there weren’t any other buildings close by. It was the religious centre for the local farming community. People would come from miles around to attend services. The vestry has records going back as far as the time of Oliver Cromwell, but sadly before then we’re quite in the dark about local habits.”
This was obviously another well-rehearsed lecture. Parva allowed the woman to carry on while she did her best to take in as much as she could of what she saw.
“Did you buy this, then?” she asked.
Miss Arbuthnot gave her a black look, clearly unhappy about having been interrupted. “I did not buy it,” she said. “My great-grandfather inherited the land, and decided to build a school here. An exclusive school that would cater to the needs of those whom he thought would most benefit from the education it would have to offer.”
You mean the children of the rich landowners who were his friends, Parva thought, picking up a hymnbook and flicking idly through the pages.
“He supervised the construction of the buildings around the main quad. For many years that was enough, but any school with a reputation like St Miranda’s is bound to become a victim of its own success and so in the 1980s a number of extra buildings were added to the campus. That was when I took over, and when I decided to implement the policy that exists here to this day.”
“You mean no mobile phones?”
“There weren’t mobile phones back then, my dear,” Miss Arbuthnot hissed. “No. What I mean is that, with the school at the very height of its success, I would endeavour to keep it that way forever, frozen in time, using teaching methods that would not change, never mind what the so-called educationalists might say. And then, yes, as time went on I realised that a restriction on certain modern technologies like mobile phones might be a good idea, and my ideas were met with encouragement by parents keen for their girls to enjoy a good old fashioned education.”
You mean they didn’t want to be bothered by their little darlings. Parva kept a respectful distance behind the headmistress as she made her way to the pulpit. For a moment Parva thought she was going to ascend the steps but instead she turned to address the empty room.
“I am very proud of what I have been able to achieve here over the last thirty years,” she said. “The school’s academic and sporting record has been exemplary. Which is why I have been doubly upset by recent events at this institution, events that I feel I must detail while we are alone like this.” Miss Arbuthnot paused then, clearly in a state of some distress. “Two weeks ago, Miss Corcoran, something quite, quite terrible took place, the kind of thing one only tends to read about in the most reprehensible of the newspapers. Fortunately, the relationships we are able to enjoy with certain bodies meant that common journalists were dissuaded from getting too near. Miss Corcoran, I don’t really know how to tell you about what happened,” she took a deep breath, “but I must, because I would hate you to hear it from the girls and find yourself distressed beyond all measure during one of your lessons. Two weeks ago...” She seemed to gird herself.
Parva took a step towards her. “It’s all right, Miss Arbuthnot, only tell me what you need to.”
The headmistress laid a hand on Parva’s forearm. “It’s just that the whole business was so horrifying that I...”
Parva patted her arm, sympathising with the woman while at the same time realising she needed to get as much information out of her as possible while she seemed willing to talk. There was nothing for it but to give her a little push.
“Did something happen to one of the girls?”
“Four of them!” the headmistress finally blurted out. “Four of them found dead in one of the rooms. A suicide pact the note said, a suicide pact between sisters who wanted to contact the afterlife. Oh, and all tha
t terrible stuff strewn around the bodies.”
This was more than Parva had been expecting. In Willoughby’s briefing there had been no mention of a note or objects found at the scene.
“What kind of things do you mean?” Parva asked as gently as possible.
“Symbols, that Ouija board thing, the candles...filthy black candles. I never could have imagined such sweet innocent girls were into such horrors.”
“Are you trying to say that four girls killed themselves here as part of some kind of ritual?” Parva was finding it difficult to sound sufficiently shocked and press on with questions at the same time.
“Oh my dear, I hope I haven’t made you think you’ve come to a house of horrors. I did my best to conceal the worst of it - took away all those horrid accoutrements, burned the letter, made sure they looked decent before I phoned the police.”
Parva patted her arm again. “I’m sure you were only doing what you thought was best,” she said. “So the police don’t know any of that?”
Miss Arbuthnot shook her head. “No one else knows,” she said. “I was taking my Sunday morning constitutional when I saw their light on and thought I’d better check on them. Most of the girls had gone home for the half term week. Those that stay behind tend to be from abroad. I never expected to discover such...” She gave Parva an imploring look. “It still haunts me,” she said. “I’m sorry I’ve burdened you with all this but I needed to talk to someone.”
“Do the other teachers know?” Parva asked.
“Only that four girls committed suicide here. Everyone knows that - including all the girls. But all that horrid black magic stuff - I’ve not told anyone that before now.”
“Well if you’d rather I didn’t pass it on,” said Parva, “the secret is safe with me.”
“Oh thank you,” Miss Arbuthnot sniffed. “It’s been difficult enough keeping things quiet as it is. If word of this got out I can see all the parents dragging their children away from here.”
“Do the parents know about the deaths?” Surely the teachers and pupils couldn’t have been sworn to secrecy? And even if they had, there certainly wasn’t much Parva had been able to keep from her mother at that age.
To Parva’s surprise, the headmistress nodded. “They understand,” she said. “Suicide is a terrible thing, a tragedy, but it’s not something that puts their own children at risk. The girls involved had formed their little group for some time, and it was well known amongst both pupils and staff that they sometimes got up to rather lively behaviour.” Parva wanted to ask what but knew it would be overstepping the mark at this stage. It could wait until later. Perhaps one of her own students might let something slip.
“Anyway, I contacted each set of parents individually, explained the situation to them, and to a person they said they were happy to maintain their children as students at St Miranda’s. Most of them offered help, and from a powerful few of them I was grateful to receive it.”
Parva said nothing. Little did Miss Arbuthnot know that Parva was there because of the suspicions of at least one of the parents of the dead girls.
“You mean in suppressing the story?”
The head mistress nodded, wiping the corner of her eye with a tissue, even though there was no trace of tears. For a fleeting moment Parva wondered if this might be an elaborate show put on just for her and that, perhaps, this wily old lady was already onto her. She wasn’t ready to dismiss it out of hand and filed it away for future reference.
“Is there anything else you’d like to tell me?”
The old lady looked around her and tucked away her handkerchief. “No,” she replied. “Only that this chapel is a beautiful old building, and that St Miranda’s is a beautiful old school. I have given my life to it and I hope, my dear, that you are happy here, for however short a time you may be in residence.”
Was that a threat? It was difficult to tell from the woman’s tone, and her face had resumed the stern mask with which she had greeted Parva in her office.
“I’m sure I shall be very happy here,” said Parva, putting on her best smile. “Are you going to show me the rest of the college?”
The headmistress looked at her watch. “Only very briefly,” she said. “I hadn’t realised the time. I’ll show you where your first lesson will be at two o’clock, and the residence block where I’ve arranged for you to have a room, then I’m afraid I shall have to leave you.”
Parva looked at her own watch. It was already 1.30pm. “Two o’clock?” she said with raised eyebrows.
“Yes indeed.” Miss Arbuthnot was striding towards the door, the almost-weeping old lady of a moment ago completely vanished. “There are a group of young ladies who can’t wait to hear about the kidneys.”
The headmistress was already outside as Parva struggled to keep up, wondering why there was such an urgency that she start as soon as she arrived. She hoped she could remember something about renal physiology so she wouldn’t look entirely stupid.
Mind you, she thought, it could have been worse - she might have had to wing it with photosynthesis.
6
“And so you can see that by this calculation we get the clearance which is defined as the volume of plasma per unit time that is cleared of a substance by the kidney. The clearance of certain substances can give us an estimate of the glomerular filtration rate which in turn gives us...?”
Parva turned round from the diagrams and formulae she had scribbled on the classroom whiteboard to behold nine confused-looking teenaged faces, and one that probably would have looked confused if it had been awake.
She looked back to the cross-section through the kidney she had drawn two hours ago, then at the diagram of the glomerulus, the part of the kidney that filtered the blood. It all looked straightforward enough to her. Had she gone through it all too quickly?
“No one?”
A hand was raised tentatively into the air.
“Samantha?” Parva pointed at the girl with long dark hair seated on the far left of the row who was venturing to say something.
“Please, miss - is it an index of the function of the kidney?”
Parva breathed a sigh of relief. At least something had gone in this afternoon.
“Exactly. Now, does everyone else see why that should be?”
Silence.
“I’ll be taking that as a yes if no one shouts out now.”
Still silence.
“A ‘yes’ or perhaps an ‘I don’t care’?” Still no response. “Either way, I think we’re finished here for today.” I certainly am, Parva thought, as the school bell rang. She had never been more relieved to hear such a noise. “Your assignment tonight is to read the chapter on renal physiology in your textbooks,” she called as the girls slid off their chairs and sloped toward the exit, presumably stunned by two hours of science. Thank god it hadn’t been physics, Parva thought with a grin - they’d probably be in need of emergency medical aid.
One girl who wasn’t leaving with the others looked as if she might need it anyway.
She had been sitting on her own, in the row behind the other girls, for the entire lesson. Now as the others sidled out she stayed put, regarding Parva with eyes that looked worried. She hadn’t said a thing during the afternoon, but that hadn’t made her any different from ninety per cent of the class. Parva tried to remember the name she had told her at the beginning but couldn’t bring it to mind.
“Don’t worry,” said the girl as Parva struggled, “no one ever remembers my name.” She clutched at the capacious bag on the desk in front of her, the one she had been hiding behind for most of the lesson. The pale brown sacking decorated with badges and jangling charms looked almost homemade, but the lines were a bit too neat, the shoulder strap buckle looked to be engrained with semi-precious stones, and the whole thing had a ‘worn chic‘ look to it that meant it had probably cost several hundred pounds at a London boutique.
“No, it’s...” Come on, there were only ten of them in the class! “...Emily,
” Parva said, trying her best to keep the triumph out of her voice.
“You probably wrote it down to help you remember.”
“I didn’t actually.” Parva wondered what the girl wanted, apart from some human contact. “I like to think I can remember everything I get told.”
“Everything?”
Parva nodded.
“Ok, then remember this.” Emily was getting to her feet. “You should leave this place now. Get out while you still can. I know you won’t because no one ever listens to me. They didn’t listen to me.” She gathered her bag to her. It rattled as she did so.
“They?” Parva frowned and took a step towards her. “Do you mean the girls who died?”
Emily nodded. The hand that wasn’t holding the bag clawed at her lower lip with nervous fingers. “They didn’t listen. I told them to leave it alone but they wouldn’t. You should leave it alone, too.”
“Leave what alone?”
Emily was close to the door now. Parva willed her to stay - she didn’t want to be seen chasing girls into the corridor on her first day there.
“You’ll see, if you stay long enough,” came the reply. “Which you shouldn’t do. But you will, won’t you?”
“I’ll stay as long as I need to,” Parva said. “But no longer, if that makes you feel any better.”
Emily made to open the door, then turned and gave Parva a suspicious look. “Are you the one Jocelyn saw on the way here?”
Parva shrugged. “How should I know?” she said.
“You should,” said Emily. “It was your car that nearly ran her over.”
And with that she was gone, leaving Parva with an empty classroom, a whiteboard filled with science, and the wish that real life could be so easily explained as the scribbling behind her. She’d need to talk to Emily again, of course, but gaining the girl’s trust wasn’t going to be easy. The afternoon hadn’t been a complete waste of time, though. Now she had a name for the girl who had emerged from the hedge in the pouring rain and stopped for a moment in front of her. Jocelyn had looked distressed, wet, and was quite possibly injured. Parva switched off the lights and decided to take a little tour of the campus.
The Pact Page 3