Sophie decided to brave her friends’ incredulity. She would just say it. “I need the pistol to shoot the bears and the wolves.”
“Do you really think a bullet from a pistol would stop a bear?” Marianne snorted. “They are seriously vicious creatures when they’re angry. Think Sharman in one of her moods … and then some!”
Delphine went back to applying butter to her toast as if she were giving it a manicure. “I need a pool and blazing sunshine.” She looked thoughtful. “Of course, a yacht is always a bonus.”
“Too much outdoors!” Marianne laughed, heaving her overstuffed rucksack onto her shoulder and draining her glass of water. “Just give me a library and a fire.”
“But shall we go and check the bulletin board anyway? Do we have time?” Sophie said. Maybe it wouldn’t be Saint Petersburg, but she wanted to know where she would be spending Easter. Rosemary would probably make some excuse about not being at home, as usual. When Sophie was young, Rosemary had made the best of it by hiring a series of au pairs and doing the best to ignore the disturbance to her ordered, career-focused life. Boarding school, the minute Sophie was old enough, came as a blessed relief to both of them, but holidays were not on Rosemary’s radar.
“Yes, but we can’t be late for physics. I’ll test you on the anthropic principle on the way, if you like,” Marianne offered.
Delphine and Sophie made a face at each other as they made their way out of the refectory, taking the prohibited shortcut through the library. Neither of them had a clue what Marianne was talking about. That didn’t bode well for the physics test.
Marianne sighed at their blank expressions. “The anthropic principle was posited by Robert Dicke, a cosmological scientist, in 1961 to deal with the presence of incredible coincidence in the universe.”
“It’s not a coincidence that you’re boring me silly,” Delphine muttered. “I don’t remember anything about this from class.”
“She’s going to get an A-plus again,” Sophie sighed. “Marianne must be the only girl in the school to get more than a hundred percent on a physics test.”
“But it’s so interesting!” Marianne burst out. “How else can you explain why we are here?”
“Because we’re taking a shortcut through the library?” Sophie offered.
“No. Here. With a capital H. Everything has been working toward this moment, don’t you see? The precise level of weak nuclear force that allows stars to shine, that allows matter to coalesce and form planets, oxygen, water … Only a slight variation and our whole world would fall apart.”
Sophie and Delphine kept walking.
“Don’t you see?” Marianne was in full flow. “We are here, wherever we are, because we can only be here. There is no other place for us.”
Sophie tried to imagine that the whole of the universe had been working toward this one moment — she, Sophie Smith, walking toward the bulletin board — but, as with most of Marianne’s Big Ideas, she gave up.
Delphine breathed, “Fascinating,” and nodded her head as if she were taking it all in, but Sophie could see she was already scanning the far end of the corridor where a group of girls was standing around the bulletin board, laughing and talking excitedly.
Sophie hung back and crossed her fingers. I know it can’t be Saint Petersburg, she said to herself. But just this once, could the office have made a mistake and accidentally put my name down on the wrong list? I won’t eat any more of Marianne’s chocolate-covered cherries or use Delphine’s toothpaste or that lavender shampoo her mother sends from Paris, and I’ll look for a sweater in Lost and Found right now and I’ll be good for the rest of my life …
They got closer to the gaggle of girls. Delphine pushed to the front.
“Oh, typical!” Millie Dresser, a drab girl in the grade above, looked fed up. “I’ve got the battlefields.” She stomped off in a huff.
Sophie couldn’t bear to look. She was just going to stare in the opposite direction and wait until Delphine told her. While she didn’t know, there was still a chance … The voices rose, screams of “Lucky you!” or “That will teach you to be rude in geography!” rolled around her. The tension was unbearable.
“Well?” She nudged Delphine’s back. “Where are we going?”
Delphine got as far as saying, “Cooking Country-Style —” when the bell rang for the start of classes.
Sophie’s heart sank. A familiar feeling of disappointment. She was so stupid to have thought anything beautiful or even different would happen in her life.
“Bad luck,” Marianne said, looking sympathetic.
Sophie turned away — and was confronted by Mr. Tweedie, no longer looking remotely understanding.
“I meant it, Sophie,” he said, his voice strict. “Change your sweater!”
“Mr. Tweedie!” Sophie and the deputy head jumped as the figure of Mrs. Sharman, the headmistress, strode toward them, the embodiment of female determination, excellence, and academic achievement. Her highlighted hair was blow-dried into enormous flicky curls that the morning’s rain had done nothing to deflate. Accompanying her was a tall, thin woman wearing a silk headscarf and improbably large sunglasses.
Mrs. Sharman launched a brief professional smile, like a rocket, at Mr. Tweedie. “Could you spare me one of your girls? Delphine, perhaps?”
“Girls? Girls?” the deputy head replied in confusion, as if, in a school full of them, he had never heard of such a thing as a “girl.”
Mrs. Sharman, extending her smile, nodded graciously at this hapless example of the more feeble gender. “To give our prospective parent here a tour of the school, of course!” she cried, waving her hand loosely in the direction of the visitor. “Mrs…. Mrs….” The woman said nothing, and merely examined her nails, which Sophie noticed with fascination were painted navy blue. Mrs. Sharman pursed her lips in irritation.
Sophie said, “Delphine’s gone to physics.”
The headmistress’s head swiveled to take in the child who had spoken without being spoken to.
Sophie swallowed. “I could go and get her for you.”
Mrs. Sharman gasped. Her eyes widened. “Sophie!” She managed to make the name sound like a curse. “Your sweater!”
Mr. Tweedie cleared his throat. “We were just discussing the sweater …”
Mrs. Sharman pulled Sophie’s arm toward her as if it were a scientific specimen. “There are actual holes!”
“I’ll change,” Sophie mumbled.
“You most certainly will!” the headmistress snapped. It was clear that she was not just referring to the sweater. She dropped Sophie’s arm and clamped the professional smile back in place. “Bring me Delphine! I will see you later, Sophie Smith.”
“Sophie Smith?” The visitor turned sharply, peering over her sunglasses at Sophie. Her eyes, Sophie saw, were enormous and very pale blue, surrounded by feathery lashes. The voice was rich and low.
Sophie felt her cheeks burning as the woman looked her up and down, taking in everything, including the holes in her sweater. Oh, why hadn’t she looked in Lost and Found before breakfast? But just as she turned to go, the visitor’s hand shot out and clutched her elbow. Sophie looked up. The pale blue eyes were fixed on her. Unless she wrenched her arm out of the woman’s grasp, she was stuck.
“I am happy with this young lady …”
“Oh, you don’t want her.” The headmistress frowned. “She is not the pupil for you.” When the woman didn’t let go of Sophie’s elbow, as expected, Mrs. Sharman explained. “We have a very few places at New Bloomsbury College for Young Ladies for students who are on reduced fees.” She mouthed the last two words as if this might somehow spare Sophie’s feelings. “Due to family circumstances …” She raised her eyebrows, implying this would explain Sophie’s orphan status, her unbrushed hair, and the holes in her sweater. “We take our charitable status very seriously! However, I must stress that the majority of girls at New Bloomsbury College come from impeccable families.”
The woman s
eemed to consider what Mrs. Sharman had said. Then she smiled slowly. She included Mr. Tweedie in this gift, and Sophie noticed with astonishment that he blushed. The visitor bent toward him like a heavy tulip and, lightly touching his arm, said in her exotically accented English, “We see your classroom?”
Mr. Tweedie stammered something, and the headmistress hissed, “It might be better if you started with the science labs. But Sophie is not available. She has a class.”
“Sophie Smith is girl for me!” the woman laughed. “We will make good team!” Still gripping Sophie’s elbow, she maneuvered her toward the door to the playground. “He has stopped raining! Now I see ground where you play!”
Sophie glanced over her shoulder. Mr. Tweedie’s face was looking crumpled again, and Mrs. Sharman’s smile had vanished, her mouth a perfect O.
Then Sophie felt herself pushed through the door, the visitor’s hand firmly in the middle of her back.
They stepped into the cramped courtyard that passed for a playground. The woman seemed to forget Sophie immediately. She took off her sunglasses, opened her bag, and got out a pack of cigarettes. The box had a large red heart on it, and the word Kiss.
“Oh, but you can’t smoke!” Sophie gasped.
The woman’s enormous blue eyes opened even wider.
Sophie said, “Not on school premises. It’s against the rules.” Had the woman heard her? Understood her? She had already put a cigarette in her mouth.
“We are outside!” she pronounced. “In fresh air! I need cigarette!” But after a second, she took it out of her mouth, unlit.
Sophie looked around the dismal yard. What could she say about it? Valerian was growing out of the brickwork, and the paint on the window ledges was flaking. The pavement seemed to sweat. The presence of such an exotic, glamorous creature against this drab background made the school seem even more inhospitable than usual.
“So,” Sophie started, “this is our playground. The science labs …”
The woman wasn’t listening. She was rummaging in her handbag again. “I take photograph!” she said, lifting a small camera to her face.
“I think that’s against the rules as well …” Sophie blushed.
“To show my daughter. In Saint Petersburg.”
“You are from Russia?” Sophie blurted out. Of course! She should have known! The woman’s voice, her scarf, her charm, set her apart. Her father had always said it was the most romantic country on earth. And anyone could see that the woman in front of her could not have wandered in from some sorry old corner of England. She could only have stepped out of a land of palaces and poetry.
Flash!
“Turn your head to side!”
Sophie, startled, did as she was told.
Flash!
“How old is your daughter?” Sophie asked.
The woman waved her hand dismissively. “Ten … eleven, maybe. Natalya very clever. All her teachers tell me they are blessed to have such clever child in their class. She can do any sums!” The woman snapped her fingers. “Like that! In head!”
Sophie wondered what such a mathematical prodigy would make of Mr. Webb, the school’s only math teacher, who had taken to talking about the insanity of numbers and how they persecuted him.
The woman rearranged her silk scarf so that the oversized designer logo was more apparent. “I tell them it is because I prepare all her food. Finest food. From import. All organeek!” She glanced up at the sky. “Now it will rain. I do not like rain.”
“Well, maybe the science labs —” Sophie began, though the rain had stopped and didn’t look like it was starting again.
“I do not like science labs. I must speak with nice English man. Oooocheeetel. This is word for teacher in my language.” The way she pursed her lips as she said the word made it sound like a more fascinating job than Sophie could ever have imagined, possibly than Mr. Tweedie could ever have imagined. “But first … leep-steek! Take me somewhere I can make beauty face.” She puckered up her mouth, and gave Sophie a sly look. “You have room where sleep?”
Ten minutes later, Sophie was still waiting outside her own room. The woman seemed to be taking rather a long time just to apply some lipstick. Eventually, she emerged in a storm cloud of scent and with a determined air.
“Photograph at window,” she said. “Is your father?”
“Yes …” Sophie said cautiously. But why, she thought, had the woman been looking around the room rather than at her own face in the mirror?
“He lives abroad?”
Something in her voice made Sophie reluctant to answer. She hated questions about her father, but the woman’s direct, uncaring tone made it even worse.
“No. He’s …” She hesitated.
“Dead?”
Sophie nodded.
But why did that make the woman smile? Without another word, she turned and sashayed off down the corridor. She did not ask Sophie to follow her.
She had looked, Sophie thought uneasily, almost triumphant.
Sophie paid no attention in French. The dream of her father and the winter forest, the holes in her sweater that had caught Mr. Tweedie’s eye, the strange Russian woman … the day was beginning to feel unreal. The assistante warbled on, but Sophie stared out of the window, trying to turn the wet London plane trees into a forest coated in snow. If only she could have gone to Saint Petersburg! She stared hard at a couple of Japanese tourists, dressed in leg warmers and trench coats, with manga-style spiked hair, and half closed her eyes to see if she could get them to become duelists, meeting in the half-light of dawn. Perhaps the taller one could be a poet, if she imagined him with a hat to cover the pink streaks in his hair. And the other one could be a lieutenant, and they had quarreled over a game of cards … no … the taller one had stolen the other’s stallion and ridden it until it was lame …
“Sophie Smith!”
She jumped. “Yes? Sorry, I mean, Oui?”
Someone behind her laughed. She looked at the board. It had become quite full of new vocabulary since she had started staring out of the window. Mademoiselle Deguignet asked her a question. From the tone of her voice, it sounded like it wasn’t the first time she’d asked it. Marianne turned around and mouthed something: the answer, most likely, but despite Marianne’s best efforts Sophie could not work out what she was saying.
At that moment, Mrs. Hingley, the school secretary, entered the room. She was at her most officious, her dumpy frame outlined by a too-tight sweater and skirt, her mean little mouth made to seem even smaller and meaner by her shocking pink lipstick. She had a short conversation with Mademoiselle Deguignet, stared at Sophie with scarcely disguised suspicion, then stomped out again.
“It seems you are required in the headmistress’s office, Sophie.” The assistante looked surprised.
Sophie heard her chair scrape far too loudly as she stood up. Mademoiselle Deguignet winced and the laughter broke out again. This must have to do with the sweater. How she wished she had looked for one in Lost and Found before breakfast! She’d had no time since then — and now she had to face Mrs. Sharman again. Sophie left the classroom and walked as slowly as possible toward the office. She felt sick.
“Sophie!” She turned to see Delphine running toward her.
“What are you doing?”
“I told Mademoiselle Deguignet I needed to go to the loo …” Delphine pulled off her sweater and handed it to Sophie. “Quick. Swap! Mrs. Sharman will have a fit if she sees you in that old thing again.”
Gratefully, Sophie pulled off her sweater and handed it to Delphine, who knotted it around her shoulders: It made her look chic and hid the worst of the holes.
“Bonne chance,” her friend whispered.
Sophie knocked on the secretary’s door. Her pulse was racing and she knew her cheeks were red. She licked her lips nervously and put her head around the door when she was told to enter. Mrs. Hingley’s Jack Russell terrier, in his basket under the desk, started to growl.
Mrs. Hingley direct
ed Sophie into Mrs. Sharman’s office with a grumpy nod.
The headmistress was checking figures on a spreadsheet. Her glasses rested halfway down her nose. Without looking up, she said, “I’ve just called your guardian, but she’s not at any of the numbers we have in your file. Do you happen to know where she might be?”
Sophie stood in the middle of the office. She was quite a long way from the desk, but felt it would be inappropriate to advance any farther. Where was Rosemary, exactly? She had a feeling March was the month she went to Majorca to play bridge.
Mrs. Sharman sighed and looked up. “What exactly did you do today, Sophie?” she asked.
“Er …” Sophie began.
Mrs. Sharman frowned. “When you took the visitor into the playground? Did you say something to her?”
“I told her she couldn’t smoke,” Sophie said.
Mrs. Sharman shook her head. “Anything else?”
Sophie pulled at the sleeve of Delphine’s sweater. Much softer than hers. Probably cashmere. “I don’t think so.”
“Unbelievable,” Mrs. Sharman said under her breath. She stood up. “Well, whatever you did, our extremely wealthy visitor from Saint Petersburg is convinced that you” — and here she shot Sophie a look of utter disbelief — “would be able to persuade her friends to send their daughters here. Apparently, her friends are very wealthy, too.” Mrs. Sharman took off her glasses. “She asked a lot of questions about you; she seemed to be interested — pleased, even! — to know just how poor you are!” Mrs. Sharman shook her head as if nonplussed. “I began to wonder if she hadn’t understood what I was saying! However, against my better judgment, I am going to send you on the trip to Saint Petersburg, Sophie Smith.”
Sophie stood very still, not daring to breathe. Had she heard correctly? She balled her fists and dug her fingers into her palms.
“Of course,” Mrs. Sharman went on, “I think the woman is quite wrong — which is why I will also send Marianne and Delphine. They are the sort of girls who show the benefit of a New Bloomsbury College education!”
The Wolf Princess Page 2