The Exclusives

by Rebecca Thornton

  The Exclusives

  Rebecca Thornton

  Contents

  Jordan, 2014

  1996

  2014

  1996

  2014

  1996

  2014

  1996. THE MORNING AFTER . . .

  2014

  1996

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  1996

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  1996

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  1996

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  1996

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  1996

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  1996

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  1996: THAT NIGHT

  2014

  1996

  2014

  1996

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  Copyright

  For my parents. With love and thanks.

  JORDAN, 2014

  Everything changed when I was given the badge. I only had it for four months, but I wore it that whole time, just above my left breast. Blood red, with gold lettering: Head Girl.

  Four months was all it took. Four months with that stupid badge. And, now, all these years later, I imagine telling my colleagues what happened with Freya, over flasks of coffee, the dirt of an archaeological dig tickling our lungs.

  You were just young, they might say, laughing. Young, naive and stupid.

  Young, yes. Stupid, no.

  But I would laugh with them and say, Yes, yes, I was. As if the words could salve the ache that flowers across my chest. I couldn’t tell them though. Of course I couldn’t.

  And then last night, for the first time in eighteen years, Freya got in touch.

  She is coming here to Amman. ‘On business’, so she says. The email arrived just before I had climbed into bed, worn and heavy with exhaustion from the day’s digging. My computer had pinged an alert and there it was, in cold, black type: Freya Rogers. I had wanted to delete it straightaway but my hands had cemented themselves flat to my chest. What does she want? My mobile had rung two minutes later, a green glow on my bed. My God. That’s her, too, I had thought. It wasn’t, of course. Barely anyone has my number but, by then, she was everywhere. In the yellow walls, the distressed wood-framed mirror, even the catch of laughter from downstairs. I had gone to the bathroom before opening the email, looked at my reflection, close up, but all I could see was Freya. The beauty of her. ‘I’m coming back for you,’ she had said once. ‘No,’ I had replied to the mirror. ‘No, you aren’t.’

  Back in my room, I had worked up the courage to read what she had written. The email had looked odd. I was used to seeing her small, clumsy handwriting, sloping as it reached the edge of the page. She was Freya Seymour before, and I think of what else she used to be: freckly, blonde, with legs and hair that tangled all over the place and a smile that made your heart spin. I had to read the email five or six times and even then I could hardly make sense of it. I was still unable to breathe, the base of my skull thick with fear.

  Josephine,

  I do hope you are well. I’m not sure if you still have this email address. I heard from Verity that you are currently based in Amman. She read your name in The Times and I’m there, doing some pro bono business training in a couple of months. So long has passed and I hope you might like to meet. I know it’s out of the blue but, even after everything that happened, I hope you say yes. I really must see you. I know your dig is going on for a year, so let me know if you’ll be around in September.

  Freya Rogers, née Seymour.

  Freya must see me? And had felt it necessary to sign off with her married name? She probably wants to show me she’s moved on, that she’s no longer the girl from the past.

  And even now, a day later, as the sun’s rays tighten my skin, my colleagues digging around me, I continue to re-play the words in my head: Verity. Verity Greenslade: former Deputy Head Girl. I still like to think everything was her fault, but of course it wasn’t. And then I realise they are still friends, and the sun hazes and I need to lie down. I screw up a dusty tunic behind my head and lie on a chunk of rock. Freya – what would I say to you? And what do you want from me? I smooth down my overalls and take off my gloves, setting them next to me. My hands have gone cold and dry and my insides feel like they are rotting. The shadow of a colleague bears over me.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  I squint up. It’s Jeremy, our intern. ‘Of course,’ I reply. ‘I’m great. Just trying to cool down for a minute.’ Willing him to go away, I shut my eyes and he walks off. Beneath the sunlight, a perfect vision forms. I can see Greenwood Hall down to the last, dark brick. I can see that disgusting, open-mouthed gargoyle, perched on the side of the school chapel, that Freya and I used to pretend to kiss and the missing piece of stone where we used to leave each other coded notes. 4 4 A 3 FIRE. I recall our messages that would lead one of us to a secret part of the woods where the other would be waiting, cigarette in hand.

  I inhale, relieved. The memories are not always like that. They surface, on the whole, when I least expect them, freewheeling out from my subconscious. Peeling an orange for breakfast and Freya’s face forms. ‘Here,’ she is saying, dressed in her school sports kit. ‘Last orange segment. Quick. I saved it for you.’ And sometimes it’s just a sense of her: a low-level disquiet. There’s one in particular, though, that I’ve come to expect. Rely on, almost. The glint of a coin. That little Spanish peso she used to thread through the shoelace of her boots. ‘This is my lucky charm,’ she would say. ‘This and you.’ The vision of her army boots is a sharp one too. She wore them all the time when we went clubbing. The scuffed toe, the little fluorescent beads; her calves lost in the top of them. And then, without warning, the image will shift. I see her in perfect detail, twisted mouth, red eyes. Coming at me. I don’t . . . can’t . . . think of everything that happened. Just the bit where Freya found out what I’d done. Her face. My God.

  I get up, unable to lie for much longer – I need to move with my thoughts. How dare she? All this time later, when I’m halfway across the world. I pick up my spade, squeezing the handle until my fingers are numb. I drop it and, instead, pick up a rock lodged between two big stones. I squeeze that. I don’t feel anything but, when I look up, Jeremy is in front of me again, looking at the dry sand. Three drops of blood soak into the ground.

  ‘Josephine?’

  ‘What? What do you want?’ I snap.

  He steps back. I must look as if I’m about to hurl the rock at him. I laugh, a mean laugh, but Jeremy doesn’t say anything, just walks to the medical kit, which is lying on the sand next to a big white van, left there after an earlier incident with a tin opener.

  ‘Here, let me sort that out for you.’

  Without the will to resist, I let him tend to my hand.

  ‘It’s small but quite deep. What did you do?’ he asks.

  ‘Nothing. It’s nothing.’

  Nothing. Is it? And as the sharp, pleasant sting of antiseptic infuses itself into my cut, I wonder what Freya would make of me now – what she remembers of me then. Does she think of the weekends spent at her house, the chocolate fug of our midnight feasts in the den? Or the holiday in Cornwall, where she helped me wrench out my first tooth with a red thread torn from her favourite knitted jumper? Or does she just remember the bits at the end? The bits that are full of
shattered hope and betrayal and . . .

  The sun, it’s so hot, but I start to shiver. I tell the team I’m leaving early. They all look worried. ‘I’m fine,’ I say, tapping my watch. ‘I’ve got to finish that paperwork, remember?’ No one says anything.

  ‘Get back to work.’ Jeremy motions for everyone to start digging.

  ‘See you later,’ I say. ‘We can all have a drink together.’

  Mia, the team assistant, is now squinting at me, her hand like a baseball cap over her eyes. I quickly pick up my faded pink cloth bag, stuff in the leftovers from my lunch – a half-eaten piece of Arabic bread and a sweaty slice of cheese – and disappear.

  I make my way through the dust, back to the main road. It’s a half an hour walk and I’m barely able to hold myself up but, somehow, I manage to get there, whilst mentally composing variations of emails back to Freya. ‘Hi Freya, that’s fine. Would be great to see you . . .’ No, that could never happen . . . ‘Freya, I’m sorry, I’m very busy and can’t manage to get any time off at the moment . . .’ That’s more like it, that’s what she would be expecting me to write. So maybe, just maybe, I should surprise us both. I wonder what I might say if I saw her, how things would change if she came back into my life. If, together, we would be able to make sense of everything: the shards of memory, the cloaked edges of my mind. Or if seeing her would destroy everything I’ve worked towards. Everything I’ve made my life into without her, spent years creating and shaping. Maybe we would be able to reach penance? Forgiveness? I don’t know. And when I’m thinking about forgiveness, I know I can’t ignore her and I know what I have to say.

  I start running, and hail a taxi back to my hotel room. ‘Duwar Al Khamis. Fifth circle,’ I say, throwing two notes at the expressionless driver. I need to get to my computer and tell her what’s going to happen. To stop the vision of her face flashing its way through my mind. And so, hair scraped back from the burning sweat, with the low echoes of a muezzin from outside, and a cooling Turkish coffee for company, I begin my reply.

  1996

  It’s the start of the Upper Sixth, autumn term. There’s a group of us outside, waiting to be called into Announcements. The Gothic building is set against a grey sky and there’s the heaviness of expected rain. I am pleased about the lack of surrounding colour, as though nothing is expected of me. But, of course, it is. I stand apart from the other girls, who are all plumped with the possibilities of the new term ahead. The huge, shiny black iron gates stand opposite me. People often hoot when they drive down from the town past the school, gearing up towards the motorway. ‘Posh girls,’ they shout, making rude gestures. As we wait, a boy in a passing car winds down the window, wiggling his tongue through V-shaped fingers. I wave wildly in return. The boy looks frightened and the car swallows him back down. A light tap on my shoulder makes me turn around. It’s her, of course.

  ‘Hi, Freya. OK?’ I say.

  ‘I’m OK, but how are you? Nervous?’

  ‘Hmmm. No, not at all. I’m alright,’ I say.

  ‘Good. I’m glad. As long as Verity doesn’t . . . you know.’

  ‘I know,’ I reply. ‘I couldn’t take it.’

  ‘Me too. Don’t worry. It’s not going to happen. And even if it does . . .’ says Freya. If it does. I think of my mother: the sweep of hair, all puffed up at the front so she looks an inch or so taller than her five foot six frame. The upwards thrust of her chin when she thinks she’s been wronged and the tired drop of her eyelids. And the rest of it. Do not let your mind go there, I think. It will not happen. It will not.

  Freya points out a bead of sweat on my forehead. ‘I know it’s going to be OK,’ she says. A bell rings, the sun comes out and we both go inside. The question of where to sit during School Announcements has been bugging me for a week. Main School is huge. It easily fits the six hundred students: rows of blue-backed plastic chairs, surrounded by glossy, light wooden benches. If I’m too near the main stage, where the teachers congregate, I’ll look expectant, eager. Too far and I run the risk of tripping over a wayward foot. Freya solves my problem, as is so often the case. Grabbing my arm, she pushes me into the third row from the front, near the end of the aisle.

  ‘Here.’ She hands me a faded green hymn book.

  ‘Thank you.’ I flick to page thirty-seven. The piano music begins, with Mr Tredegar playing. ‘All things bright and beautiful,’ we sing. As the last note is delivered with a flourish, the headmistress, Mrs Allen, stands.

  ‘Girls, good afternoon. Please sit.’ She claps her hands tight and the sound echoes around the room, stilling everyone into silence. ‘Since there is no chapel today, let us say the Lord’s Prayer.’ We lower our heads and I can hear Verity nearby, loud and brusque, like she’s telling someone off.

  ‘. . . For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.’

  ‘Amen,’ we all repeat. I tap my forehead, breastbone, left shoulder, right shoulder; a ritual of habit, more than a sign of belief.

  ‘Welcome back, everybody. I hope you all had wonderful summers. Right. I’d like you to give a warm welcome to the new girls who’ve arrived at the school, from both the UK and abroad.’ There’s bored clapping; even the teachers can’t feign enthusiasm.

  ‘Thank you everyone. There’s a new girls’ tea later next week. Your Housemistresses will give you details. And now . . . for the school notices. First, I would like to extend thanks on behalf of the entire school to the ten retiring Prefects and to the Head and Deputy Head, for their incredible hard work throughout the past year. They’ve worked tirelessly to keep the school together, and I’d like you to give them all a round of applause.’ We all clap dutifully but everyone wants Mrs Allen to hurry up and announce the new Prefects and Head and Deputy Head Girl positions. ‘I’ll read out the Prefects in a few minutes. Before that, I’ve just got a few things to say.’

  The usual school notices are read out. How much we’ve all raised for charity (Yes! I’ve won, with my general knowledge quiz raising one thousand and forty-three pounds), updates on dances with boys’ schools, and Sarah Maynard for School Games Captain, surprise surprise. Freya and I giggle as Sarah walks to the stage, head bowed. ‘She’s so annoying,’ Freya says, clapping extra hard to cover the bite.

  ‘Lastly, girls, before the big Announcements, I’ve got some other news. It’s about the Anne Dunne Scholarship this year. As I’m sure you all know, Anne Dunne was the founder of the school. She set up the scholarship as a way of bringing out the best in our girls. There’s no financial reward, however the chosen person will gain automatic entry into Miss Dunne’s former college, Somerville, at Oxford University. As long as she gets a minimum of three A levels, of course. As you know, Miss Dunne was a huge champion of women going into further education and Oxford are delighted to be involved.’

  I don’t need to look around to sense that people are staring at me, as though my winning is a given. Sally Aylsford has turned around, giving me a weird, encouraging nod. I can even feel Freya looking at me out the corner of her eyes.

  ‘And some more news about the Anne Dunne this year. We’ve decided to open up the scholarship to our sister schools – St Catherine’s, St Margaret’s and Lady Goring’s. Each school will put forward three of their top girls and they will go and have an interview and sit one or two general knowledge exams.’

  Opening it to other schools? Why? I think. Sally is still staring and I force myself not to make eye contact. I do a quick mental calculation of how this might lower my chances of winning. And then consider the fact I might not be put forward at all. The thought translates into a smile and Sally sits bolt upright, smiling back at me and revelling in misjudged complicity.

  ‘So, we’ll make final announcements about who we will be putting forward for the scholarship in a few weeks. No decisions have been made as yet, so please work hard until then. And . . . now the moment you’ve all been waiting for.’ Mrs Allen clears her throat. ‘I’m going
to read out this year’s Prefects. Please make your way to the front of the stage and Mrs Bevell will present you with a badge and certificate.’ Freya looks at me. ‘From Clifford House, your Prefect is . . . Mrs Bevell, please could you pass me the list?’ Mrs Bevell draws her hands to her face. ‘Gosh, sorry. Here we go.’

  ‘From Clifford House, we have Emma Jameson.’ The school goes wild as Emma gets to her feet and goes onto the stage. Emma is one of the popular ones. The list continues and I get to my feet, along with pretty much the rest of the school, after Freya’s name is called. ‘I told you,’ I mouth at her. She clasps her hands together and grins.

  ‘And Josephine Grey, who has been made Prefect on account of her all-round achievements.’ Mrs Allen beckons me up. ‘Come and join the others.’ I walk, head very still. The school is clapping and my feet feel light.

  ‘Thank you,’ I say. Mrs Allen’s hand squeezes mine. The other Prefects pat my back and I can see Verity looking at me, mouth pressed white.

  ‘Well done, well done,’ they say.

  Freya smiles, rides up on the balls of her feet. ‘Think we can go for a fag after this?’ she whispers. I widen my eyes in warning, and ignore her.

  ‘And now we have our Deputy and Head Girl announcement to make,’ Mrs Allen says. The air around me grows thick and, again, I feel all eyes on me. Chin up, I pull my back straight. I stare at a tiny point in the ceiling above Mrs Allen’s head.

  ‘We’ve come to a final decision, girls. It was no easy task, believe me. Our decision is based on academic achievement, integrity, a responsible nature –’ Mrs Allen looks around the room and takes off her glasses ‘– and, above all, the ability to lead. Five hundred and eighty-two of you here at Greenwood, with over fifty staff, and the girls we’ve chosen as both Head and Deputy Head, will be expected to be moral and academic guides to each and every one of you.’ Freya shuffles next to me. ‘And so our Deputy Head this year . . .’ She pauses. ‘Is . . .’

  The entire school looks from me to Verity. Mrs Allen is busy getting the badge ready. ‘Sorry, girls. The Deputy Head this year is . . . a great leader who has shown a fantastic attitude both in her personal and school life. She’ll be a strong role model . . .’ It suddenly crosses my mind that she might be talking about me – she hasn’t mentioned sports, which is Verity’s big triumph. I wipe my hands on my skirt and force a smile. ‘If you’d like to come up and get your badge, and everyone please give a cheer to . . . Greenwood’s new Deputy Head, Verity Greenslade.’ My insides swell with relief and I exhale, very slowly. I remain outwardly calm, clapping softly. Verity strides up to shake Mrs Allen’s hand. She turns to face the school and places a squeezed fist in the air. She’s still looking at me, though, eyeballs set with fury.