by Carmen Reid
‘Are you drunk?!’ Selina wanted to know.
‘Oh . . . just a glug or two,’ Niffy replied.
‘Keep well back from Mrs K,’ Suzie warned. ‘She’s been leaning all over us trying to do a breathalyzer test.’
‘And where did you get to,’ Lucy asked Amy, ‘with that very handsome boy?’
‘Nothing happened,’ Amy insisted. ‘He just wanted to see the tennis courts.’
Everyone who heard this collapsed into giggles.
‘Didn’t I see him with—?’ Janey, who happened to be sitting next to Min, was cut off by a sharp dig in the ribs.
‘Who?’ Amy insisted.
‘And what about Angus?’ Niffy asked, hoping the prank of the night would make everyone forget about where Jason had been and what he might or might not have been up to. ‘I can’t believe I missed that!’ she went on. ‘So what exactly happened?’
It was Selina who filled Niffy in with the details, while everyone else listened in.
‘This big posh guy . . . Charlie something?’ Selina hesitated.
‘Fotheringham,’ Niffy prompted her. ‘I know him.’
‘Right, well . . . Charlie was being teased by Angus about something – I don’t know what it was, I didn’t hear that bit—’
‘Wasn’t it something to do with Min?’ Janey broke in.
‘No!’ Min insisted. She didn’t want anyone else to know about her horrible, embarrassing minutes with Charlie.
‘Will you just let Selina get on with this?’ Niffy insisted.
Min turned her attention to her toast and began to spread Marmite thickly on top of the melting butter.
‘Gross!’ Gina whispered: her one mouthful of the stuff had convinced her that everyone who ate it must be mad.
‘OK, Angus was teasing Charlie, Charlie started teasing Angus – something about he wasn’t a real Scotsman – the usual!’ Selina rolled her eyes, making her audience laugh – apart from Gina, who looked puzzled.
‘You’re only a real Scotsman if you don’t wear anything under your kilt,’ Lucy explained for her benefit, ‘apparently.’
‘Really?’ Gina looked horrified now. ‘No wonder so many guys came in tuxedos.’
‘So then?’ Niffy reminded Selina.
‘Yeah, so then Angus clears his throat and announces to the entire hall: “Ladies and gentlemen, I give you a real Scotsman . . . ” and he lifts his kilt right up and twirls around!’
‘And . . .?’ Niffy asked.
‘He’s wearing a leopard-print g-string!’
Everyone listening to this story exploded into laughter.
‘Oh my Lord!’ was Niffy’s reaction. ‘He must have done it for a bet! He told me he had something planned for later. Hairy bum?’ she wanted to know.
‘No! Smooth and quite muscley.’
This brought fresh peals of laughter.
Selina went on, ‘Just about everybody in the room must have seen him, so Mrs Redpath and one of the St Lennox teachers took him by the arms and escorted him very politely out of the building.’
‘Oh dear. I wonder what happened to him then . . .’ Niffy said.
Janey finished the tale: ‘He had to sit and wait on the school bus. I saw him when I went out for a little walk with Pete—’
‘Ooooooh,’ came the chorus back at her.
‘And that’s when I saw Amy’s guy,’ Janey went on smugly, ‘walking down to the tennis courts with Penny Boswell-Hackett.’
Later, Amy undressed in the dorm in total silence. When she left the room to wash her face and brush her teeth, Niffy told Min and Gina, ‘That Janey is a right cow.’
Chapter Twelve
‘GOD I CAN’T bear this any longer!’ Niffy groaned quietly. ‘Make them stop, make it stop . . . I’m going to have to tell Madame it’s not working: she’s going to have to stop this. This is murder, a massacre. One of my favourite books!’ she added, outraged. ‘Why do we have to read it aloud round the class?’
‘Because we haven’t read enough on our own and Madame’s in a strop with us,’ Gina reminded her in a whisper.
Any casual observer of the Year Four French lesson would no longer have been able to pick out Gina as the newbie. Much to her relief, she no longer stuck out or felt quite so squeakily new. It wasn’t just the short school skirt and tight cardigan Gina now wore to look just like the other girls; nor the narrow metal hair band, over-the-knee socks or Dolcis ballet pumps. No, it was more to do with knowing which desk to sit at in each classroom and which girls she knew would welcome her; knowing what they would be talking about and being up on all the latest gossip.
Thanks to Madame’s strop, everyone was taking it in turn to read aloud two pages of the book they were studying: Alphonse Daudet’s Lettres de Mon Moulin.
The monotonous voice of Claire, who was coming to the end of her two-page shift, rose slightly as she stumbled over her final words.
‘What’s the matter with Min?’ Amy wondered.
The three of them looked over to the other side of the room, where Min’s head was buried in her hands. Her book wasn’t even open – that’s how little attention she was paying to this lesson.
‘Girls, stop it!’ Madame snapped at them immediately. ‘No chit-chatting in the corner. Luella!’
‘But Madame Bensimon, I’ve read this book already,’ Niffy objected.
‘All of it?’ Madame seemed slightly offended that one of her pupils should have raced ahead on her own like this. ‘In French?’
‘Yeah, three times,’ Niffy confirmed.
Madame gave a ‘Hmph’ of discontent. ‘Well then, I’ll expect your reading to be word-perfect.’
Gina suspected Min’s mood might have something to do with what had happened in biology earlier. ‘The teacher wanted to see her after class,’ she whispered to Amy. ‘She ran out of the room during an experiment.’
‘It can’t be that serious, can it?’ Amy whispered back. But all three suspected, from the look on Min’s face, that it was.
Min wasn’t listening to anything going on in the French class. She was replaying the words of Mrs MacDuff, the biology teacher, in her mind.
She’d been summoned for ‘a word’ at the end of the lesson. When Min was summoned for a word, it was invariably to be told how brilliantly she was doing and to listen to new plans with which she could forge ahead: advanced reading books, inter-school competitions, extra-curricular classes and so on.
But one look at Mrs MacDuff’s face told Min that she wasn’t about to receive a big pat on the back. In fact, when she pulled up the chair offered, she got a real dressing down.
Admittedly the lesson hadn’t gone well, but they’d had to prick their fingers and examine their blood cells under the microscope. Anything involving blood always made Min unwell. Still, even she’d been surprised when she had to run out of the room and puke into a bin. But then she saw puking as an improvement on fainting.
However, here was Mrs MacDuff, peering at her over a pair of dark-framed glasses and issuing words like ‘no natural aptitude’ and ‘time to reconsider options’. The teacher then began talking about A-level biology as being ‘virtually impossible’.
‘I know you work very, very hard, Min,’ she had gone on. ‘That’s not the issue. But I’m beginning to believe that your efforts with us are misguided. Maybe biology is a lost cause for you and you need to play to your other strengths.’
A lost cause? A lost cause?
Min was fiddling with her hair as another girl ploughed on through her pages of Lettres. She’d never before been told she wasn’t good at something. It was a genuine shock. Anyway, she was going to be a doctor. There was no back-up plan. There was no other plan! Hadn’t she been given her first play stethoscope at the age of three?
Her parents wanted a family of doctors – though the children were free to choose whichever speciality they wished to follow within medicine. That had been made clear. But the doctor bit wasn’t optional: that was why she was here; that was why thr
ee times a year she got on a jumbo jet to Scotland while the rest of her family made do without holidays and fancy clothes and treats.
How was she going to tell her parents about this? It wasn’t possible. She wasn’t going to be able to do it. Giving up biology was not an option. She would just have to figure out a way of working round her squeamishness and studying harder. If she knew all the other things there were to know, what would it matter if she couldn’t cope with a blood cell or two?
The other thing worrying Min was that her running times were bad too: down five whole seconds on her times from three weeks ago. Five seconds! She wasn’t going to make it on Sports Day. Lauren Gaitling from Year Five was going to beat her. She would be eating the dust kicked up by Lauren’s £150 pair of aerodynamic, extra-cushioned spikes. Well, not that the St Jude’s state-of-the-art running track (installed after extensive fund-raising through the St Jude’s old girl network) had any dust.
‘Asimina! What are you doing?’ Madame’s sharp voice cut across Min’s fraught train of thought. ‘You do not even have your book open!’
What Min might have said in her defence no one would ever know, because at that moment Jenny stood up: Jenny, who’d been upset and tearful for weeks; Jenny, who had now sparked all sorts of increasingly lurid rumours because no one yet knew what it was all about.
Now, she scrunched up the note she’d intercepted and announced loudly: ‘It’s none of your business! It’s nobody’s business! But to stop any more ridiculous rumours like this’ – she threw the note across the room – ‘my dad’s lost his job, so I’m leaving St Jude’s and moving to Burnside Academy.’
Ignoring the collective intakes of breath, Jenny picked up her school bag, walked over to the classroom door and went out, giving it a heartfelt slam.
‘Mais alors!’ was Madame’s outraged response.
‘That’ll be handy for the debating competition,’ Penny Boswell-Hackett commented.
When Gina and Niffy looked at Amy for an explanation for this remark, Amy just shrugged her shoulders and hissed, ‘I don’t know!’
Madame looked confused. Finally, after several moments of deliberation, she must have decided that she should at least make an attempt to bring Jenny back, so she left the room, giving Penny ample opportunity to enlighten Amy.
‘Haven’t you been told, you no-hoper?’ Penny asked her loudly from the opposite side of the room.
Amy made no reply; did not even give the slightest sign that she’d heard this.
‘This House believes that private schools are a waste of money and a social divide unnecessary in modern Britain,’ Penny announced. ‘That’s what we’re debating, loser!’
Then Penny couldn’t resist going on to play her trump card: ‘I had a little walkabout with Jason on Saturday night, but I wasn’t interested in what he had on offer. Apparently that’s how he felt about you.’
Chapter Thirteen
AMY SAT ALONE at a corner table in the Arts Café. Her blonde hair was pulled up into a high ponytail and a dangling gold earring brushed against a cheek perfectly shaded with Mac blusher. On the table beside her was a second drained cup of cappuccino; in her hands was a copy of Vogue, which was no longer as interesting as when she’d started reading it forty minutes ago.
It had taken Amy four hours to get ready for this evening and now it was beginning to look like she’d wasted her time. Her hands were shaking slightly and she knew she was too nervous to have a third coffee – she’d be wired!
On the other side of the café she could hear her friends laughing and joking with Dermot and she wished she was with them, rather than stuck at this table on her own, posing, posing and posing as she waited for Jason to walk through the door. But then, if he did walk through the door, she wanted him to sit with her, not just join in the group.
Despite Penny’s horrible claims, Jason had emailed Amy the day after the ball. Although he’d sounded casual, hadn’t he just been disguising the fact that he was really keen to see her again? Amy felt sure this was the case. She believed that she could understand the real Jason: the person behind the handsome, cool and swaggering façade.
Might be at the Arts Café later. Can you come round? Might be fun to see you and your friends. J.
That’s what he’d written. Can you come round? He’d definitely wanted her to be here. It hadn’t felt like such an exaggeration to tell the dorm she had a date with him.
‘So how old are you anyway?’ Niffy was asking Dermot, who had returned to their table even though there were no empty cups to clear away, because he was enjoying the few moments of banter he could snatch with them during his busy shift.
‘If you’ve just done your Highers,’ Niffy went on, ‘you must be older than you look.’
‘Or a precocious genius,’ Dermot reminded her. ‘How old are you?’ he countered. ‘And since you’re not drinking Irish coffees tonight, you can be honest with me.’
‘You first!’ Gina insisted. ‘How old are you?’
‘I’m sixteen, but I’m going to be seventeen next month.’ He knew, as soon as he’d said it, just how embarrassing that sounded.
‘Ooooh,’ Niffy teased. ‘I’m fifteen, Gina’s fifteen . . . Maybe Dermot wants to send us a birthday card.’
‘No! You want us to send you a card next month!’ Gina teased.
‘Never mind, never mind.’ Dermot was blushing. ‘I’d better pick up your empties and be getting on.’ He looked around the table for an empty mug, but there still wasn’t one.
‘Leave mine alone.’ Gina slapped his hand gently. ‘I’m still drinking!’
‘Look! Violence! The girl is attacking me!’ Dermot joked. ‘I have witnesses.’
‘Nah,’ Niffy assured him. ‘We’re on her side.’
‘Oh, the dorm girls stick together, no matter what, do they?’ Dermot asked. ‘By the way, does your dorm have a name?’
Niffy’s eyes narrowed. ‘Why do you want to know?’
‘Well, they have names, don’t they? Dorms? Pink dorm? Dewdrop dorm? That kind of thing?’ He was trying hard to keep a straight face.
‘If we tell you, we’ll have to kill you,’ Gina replied.
Dermot leaned across the table: his arm was almost touching Gina’s and suddenly she felt all the hairs stand on end, from her wrist right up to the nape of her neck.
‘Go on,’ he insisted. ‘Your secret is safe with me.’
‘We can’t tell you,’ Gina said.
‘Why not?’
‘Because you’ll laugh.’
‘I will not,’ he insisted.
‘Will too!’
‘Bet you a fiver I won’t.’
‘We’re in Daffodil dorm,’ Gina said, spilling the beans, sure it was worth five pounds.
Dermot paused, seemed to struggle with his mouth for a moment, then, turning abruptly on his heels, said, ‘OK, I have to go now – catch you later.’
‘Look!’ Niffy spluttered coffee. ‘I don’t believe it! Lover boy is here!
All four turned their heads to see Jason coming into the café with Angus and Charlie in tow behind him.
‘Aha, not quite the romantic-table-for-two scenario our golden girl had planned then,’ Niffy said, raising an eyebrow.
Amy’s head hadn’t turned. If she had spotted Jason coming in, then she wasn’t letting on. She was busy posing with her Vogue as if her life depended on it.
Niffy gave a wave and the three boys headed over in her direction.
‘Amy is over there,’ Niffy told Jason as soon as he was within earshot. ‘I think she wanted some quiet time with you.’
When this brought loud guffaws from Charlie and Angus, Jason pulled up a chair and said, ‘Tell her to come and join us.’
Gina got up to oblige and also to make sure that Charlie didn’t even consider sitting next to her.
As she explained Jason’s request to a distressed Amy, she couldn’t help saying, ‘I know he’s good-looking, but – I’m sorry, Amy – he just acts like a complete
dickhead . . . some of the time,’ she added quickly, as if that made it any better.
Amy just glared at her, then picked up her bag and headed over to the crowded table.
‘Hi, Amy,’ was all Jason could manage; he gave a little wave. A wave!
Amy chose a seat as far away from him as possible and tried not to let anyone see that she was blushing to the roots of her carefully styled hair and frantically squeezing back the tears forming in her eyes.
Her date was now a group event, the boys all going on about the party Charlie was hosting in his parents’ house the following weekend (were they going to come, because he’d invited ‘almost every other girl in their year’ and, by the way, why hadn’t they come to his house for tea the day after the ball?).
‘Maybe you’d like to ask Min?’ Gina snorted. ‘If she was here she’d explain it to you.’
‘Erm . . .’ Charlie at least looked embarrassed.
‘You’ll have to work very hard to get us to forgive you for that,’ Niffy said. ‘For a start we want proper invitations. You know – something embossed with your coat of arms,’ she teased, ‘for the mantelpiece: Charlie Fotheringham is at home. No point having a party if you’re not going to do it properly.’
‘You think so?’ Charlie seemed to be taking her seriously. ‘That’s a good idea. Invitations! I hadn’t thought of that. Might be a good way of keeping out the crashers. Can’t have the people’s place getting trashed, you know. There are some good pieces in there.’
Pieces? Gina wondered what he could mean. Pieces of furniture? Works of art?
Dermot was obviously delighted to see three St Lennox boys move in on the dorm girls he was so interested in. He banged mugs down so hard and so rudely that coffee slopped onto the table.
‘Clean that up!’ Charlie barked at him.
Dermot reappeared with a wet dishcloth, which he lobbed at Charlie, saying, ‘You wanted a cloth?’
‘How dare you!’ Charlie caught the wet cloth, sending a splatter of water into his face and over his clothes. ‘That’s it! Where’s your boss? I’m going to get you fired.’