‘I guess.’ Theo nodded. ‘And people fear people who are odd, weird. They think they’re toxic, contagious.’ He blinked.
‘I suppose we do.’ She gave a small laugh. ‘I was going to give it five more minutes,’ she said, ‘and then run and hide somewhere, but then you turned up. You just might be my knight in shining armour.’
He beamed now. ‘I’m not usually this early. I was working in the library…’ He let this trail, as if there was significance there that he was unwilling to share. ‘It’s a coincidence, really. Out of all the people that might have turned up early… I’m a Montgomery, so you must be…?’
‘Oh! Oh, I see!’ She smiled when she caught his thread. ‘I’m a Montrose. So that explains the seating.’
They both laughed.
‘I think I can get through this, Mr Montgomery, with you by my side. What was your first name again?’
‘My name’s Theodore, but everyone calls me Theo.’
She twisted her head to look at him. ‘Theodore? Let me guess… after Mr Roosevelt? I must confess, I can’t think of any other Theodores right now!’
‘Actually, no.’ His face broke into a wry smile, ‘I was named after Theobald’s House. My father was a Theobald’s boy and my grandfather too, in fact all the men in our family came here, but I think my mother drew the line at Theobald and so Theodore was the compromise.’
‘That’s crazy!’ She put her hand to her cheek. ‘So your family are, like, Vaizey College through and through?’
‘I guess.’ He shrugged. ‘I sometimes wish I was named after Roosevelt instead. It would be easier and quicker to explain.’
‘And is that a Rudyard Kipling novel I see in your bag?’ she peered at the green cloth spine.
‘His poetry actually. For prep.’
‘We have a lot of it in the library at home, you must know some of it already?’ Her eyes blazed with enthusiasm.
The look he gave her made her heart lurch. His hesitation coupled with the flush of embarrassment to his cheeks. ‘I’m afraid not. I haven’t really read any yet.’
Kitty feared she was making him uncomfortable and smiled broadly. ‘Well, why would you? My boyfriend is the same.’ How delicious that word sounded. Boyfriend! ‘He only reads comics, if you can believe that!’ She shook her head and reached for her textbook.
‘You have a boyfriend?’ he asked, sounding shocked and almost disapproving.
Her frisson of joy disappeared as fast as it had arrived and the self-doubt returned. Did he not see her as suitable girlfriend material? Her face coloured. ‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘My cousins are already here at Vaizey – Ruraigh and Hamish Montrose…’
Theo nodded and she was glad to have the connection. ‘They always bring their friends home for the holidays, and he’s one of their gang, so we kind of met a while ago. He’s a fifth-former,’ she said with pride. ‘Angus Thompson – do you know him?’
Theo nodded again, but, strangely for a Vaizey boy, did not go on to share the many ways in which they were connected or recount times when their paths had crossed, as seemed to be the norm for Vaizey pupils, at least as far as her cousins and Angus were concerned. They were also going on about the importance of family connections stretching way back.
‘Are you sporty?’ she asked.
He shook his head. ‘Not really. Are you?’ He swallowed, reminding her of a boy in her primary school who, as the youngest of six, always felt that what he had to say was of little interest and so hurried to get to the point, sparing the detail, allowing the silence to return.
‘Swimming, that’s my thing. I love to swim. My dad always says that one day I’m going to develop gills behind my ears!’ There was something about him that made her want to confide in him, made her think he might understand how lonely she felt, on her first day away from home. ‘I’m finding being here harder than I can say,’ she said quietly.
‘I understand that,’ he replied.
‘My mum and dad are my best friends really. God, I know how naff that sounds, but they are. We do so much together and I would rather be with them than do anything else. Do you know what I mean?’
But he simply nodded at that, obviously didn’t feel ready to share whatever was going on in his home life. She smiled again at the boy who she could tell, even after one short chat, sat outside the pack, on the edge of the circle, was different. And she liked him all the more for it. Theodore Montgomery… it was such a grand name for a boy who seemed anything but.
The moment the bell rang at the end of class, he gathered up his books and left quickly, as if trying to avoid the crowds, as if trying to avoid people. Again, her thoughts turned to her mum, scurrying off to the sanctuary of her bedroom, and her heart lurched for the both of them.
*
‘What do you know about Theodore Montgomery?’ she asked Lulu, a girl in her dorm, as darkness fell on the day.
‘Theo?’ Lulu looked skywards as if trying to place him. ‘He’s one of the background boys – you know, not popular, hardly ever see him, never goes out. A bit weird, really. Gives me the creeps.’
‘Why does he give you the creeps?’ She felt a flash of indignation on his behalf. ‘I thought he seemed quite sweet. Interesting.’
Lulu shrugged. ‘I dunno – just one of those guys who will look at you but never talk to you. Odd. By all accounts, his parents are mega loaded. They’ve got a mansion in London and property and stuff, sports cars, and his mum’s very pretty and dead trendy. I’ve seen her.’
I wonder what everyone would say about my mum, my house… Kitty fell quiet. Up at Darraghfield, no one discussed money or status; it just didn’t interest her or her friends in the village. But at Vaizey it seemed that a family’s wealth was openly talked about, and that the size of their house and what car they drove was important. She couldn’t say that it made her feel comfortable.
She gathered all the information about her new friend and stored it away, thinking again of her own family situation. She knew what it felt like not to be able to face people. Poor Theo, her knight in shining armour.
She would be his friend or at least she would try. There was something about him, a feeling that had lodged itself in her breast, in the way some things did.
It was Theo who found her crying one day a few weeks later on the cricket pitch.
‘What… what’s the matter?’ He approached cautiously, looking left to right as if checking the coast was clear and it was safe to approach.
‘Oh! Hi, Theo. It’s nothing, just ignore me, I’m being silly.’
‘But you’re crying,’ he pointed out, as if to suggest that nothing silly would have prompted that kind of reaction.
His kindness melted her resolve. ‘My pony died,’ she began.
‘That’s awful.’ Theo held her gaze, speaking without guile.
‘His name was Flynn, and I loved him, I really did. My dad found him… in the stable a week ago… and it was too late to get help – he’d just died.’ Her voice wobbled, but Theo was looking so sympathetic, she carried on. Angus hadn’t really got it when she’d told him, so she’d decided not to go into it with him or anyone else. ‘I’m okay if I don’t think about him too much, but sometimes I forget he’s dead.’ She looked up with an embarrassed little smile. ‘Just now I was thinking about going home for the holidays and about how great it would be to see Flynn, and then… I remembered what had happened.’ She swiped at her teary eyes. ‘And it was like I’d just heard the news all over again.’ She raised her arms and let them fall to her sides.
Theo seemed at a loss as to what to say. He looked out towards the hedgerows and took his time formulating his response. ‘I don’t think there is anything I can say, Kitty, to make you miss Flynn any less, but I do think he was lucky to have you. I bet a lot of people have animals in their lives and don’t care for them half as much as you do.’ His voice dropped to little more than a whisper. ‘I can’t imagine anyone loving me so much that they would miss me like you’re missing your pon
y right now, so he was very lucky, wasn’t he?’
‘I guess he was.’ She sniffed, smiling up at her kind friend. His words made her heart flex. She hated the fact that someone as lovely as Theo did not consider themselves loved. She watched him walk across the school field, heading for the groundsman’s crooked cottage, and decided to seek solace in the one place that might cheer her up: the school pool.
Angus had been right – it was pretty grim. The grout between the tiles was grey and thin, some of the tiles were chipped, and it was odd being indoors, beneath the low, timber-clad ceiling. But any pool was better than no pool, so Kitty pulled on her swimming hat, curled her long toes over the edge of the board and dived in. As she lost herself in the watery world of fractured light and distant echoes, her thoughts cleared and her heart-rate steadied. She pounded up and down, working through the aches of her muscles until her body felt soft with fatigue. She forgot her worries, her sadness and even her grief for her boy Flynn – swimming made her forget most things. At one with the dip and swell of each stroke, she imagined she was in her beloved pool at Darraghfield. She became so lost in the moment that when she came up for air at the end of her swim, the breath caught in her throat and she gasped to find herself not in the beautiful Italianate pool built by her great-great grandfather but there in the slightly grubby, over-chlorinated pool at Vaizey College.
Her mind was full of Theo for the rest of the day; she thought about him as she lay in her dorm, waiting for sleep, and she hoped that one day someone might love him as much as she’d loved Flynn, because he was kind and lovely and he deserved it.
*
The term passed quickly and with so much to learn about the Vaizey routine, timetables, her boarding house and after-school activities, she was usually exhausted by the end of the day. In between all the official school commitments there was the challenge of stealing time with Angus. Their favourite spot was the little copse of fir trees beyond the cricket pitch. If Angus didn’t have cricket practice or wasn’t hanging out with his friends, they’d snatch twenty minutes there together in the early evenings, after prep and before supper, exchanging news, holding hands, kissing under the trees in the twilight. With all that, and being so busy with schoolwork, Kitty managed to put her longing for Darraghfield to the back of her mind. She was careful not to give in to her yearning for home; she knew that was a rabbit hole from which there would be no escape. So she painted on a smile and she cracked on.
The rules at Vaizey College were many and varied, not least governing contact with home. All she got was one meagre phone call home each Thursday evening, hardly sufficient but all the more precious as a result. She knew that her dad sat waiting in the estate office, his hand hovering over the phone, ready to pick up immediately and ensure he didn’t waste a second of their monitored chat time. He took calls from Ruraigh and Hamish over in Tatum’s House too, but the times were staggered to allow for that.
Kitty could always tell from her dad’s tone of voice that his emotions ran high, so she did her best to paint the most positive picture she could. She knew not to ask after her mum as there was never any news, no change, and to go over the dire, stagnant situation made them both sadder than they could bear. It also felt like a waste of their treasured minutes, which ticked by all too quickly. Instead, he would tell her about any deer that had come to visit in the lower paddock, they’d reminisce about Flynn together, and he’d talk about Marjorie, telling her how she fussed over him and continued to run the house with rigorous governance. Kitty closed her eyes when they spoke, picturing herself sitting opposite him in the leather chair on the other side of the desk, where the tartan carpet hurt her eyes and the log burner roared on a winter’s night, making short work of the chopped wood that was always neatly stacked either side of the fireplace.
This particular call was coming to a close and she felt her heart drop.
‘So, Kitty,’ her dad began, ‘it’s not long till the summer holidays. Patrick’s getting the pool ready and I might have a wee surprise for you.’ He laughed.
‘You know I hate surprises! Tell me now!’ she begged, feeling an instant lift to her spirits along with the maddening crackle of energy, wondering what his secret might be.
‘Uh-uh, you’ll just have to wait.’
Matron tapped her watch. That was it, time up.
‘Time to go, Dad. Love you. Bye!’
‘Bye, my darlin’. Mum and I love you too, so very much. Never forget it.’
I never could, Daddy…
Kitty lay in her bed with her stomach bunched in anticipation. It was always the same on a Thursday night. Part of the joy of her weekly call was in the recalling of all that her dad had said. Tonight felt extra special. His parting words with the mention of her mum had sent a beat of joy through her. Her mind whirred with all the wonderful possibilities of what her surprise might be, and then it occurred to her – her mum was better! They had fixed the broken part of her brain! Her happiness had come back from Timbuktu! What else could it be?
Turning her face into the pillow, she beat her feet on the mattress with excitement. Her mum was better! This was the very best thing imaginable. Oh, the things they would do together! Her mum could borrow her dad’s horse and they’d hack up along the ridge, or they could jump in the car and make their way to the beach like they used to on a bright sunny day, running up and down on the white sand before eating one of Marjorie’s delicious picnics by the water, then sitting under a thick blanket on the damp sand and watching the red, red sunset.
‘You all right there, Kitty? You sound like you’re squealing,’ one of her roommates called from the other side of the room. This caused a ripple of laughter through the dorm.
‘I’m more than all right.’ She beamed into the darkness, knowing that life was about to get a whole lot better now that her mum had returned from the place far, far away.
Moving Home
Kitty finished her coffee and rinsed the cup, placing it on the draining board. She picked up her phone and fired off a text to her son, Olly.
Good morning! Day started well. House already looking like a storage depot, but getting there. If I collapse under a mountain of boxes, please use your key and come rescue me. In which case, please feed the cat. X
Smiling, she placed her mum’s hairbrush back into the vanity case and thought it might be time for her shower. She trod the stairs and reached into her bedroom to grab her dressing gown from the hook on the back of her door. Her phone buzzed in her pocket; a response:
We have a cat?!
She laughed. He was funny.
The cardboard box sitting at the back of the door was in the way, Kitty kicked it with her foot and as the flap moved, she was drawn to the navy corner of a book that she had not seen for some time. She gathered it into her hands like a precious thing and sat on the corner of the bed, running her fingers over the gold embossed words ‘Vaizey College Year Book 1981’ She chuckled, as she flicked through the pages, each picture, phrase, comment or joke a reminder that took her right back to that place and time. She laughed at the group shots of her peers with backcombed fringes, the pushed up sleeves, narrow ties and skirts rolled above the knee, an insight into how they tried and failed to modify their rather dull bottle green uniform. There were faces and names she had not considered for some time, years even. She turned the page and her heart jumped in her chest at the sight of a young, blonde man in full cricket whites with a bat slung over his shoulder and a wide smile. Angus… it was sometimes possible for her to forget how very handsome he was and the way it had made her feel to be in his company, her desperate adoration of him and the way she craved the feeling of his mouth on hers. She read the print below the image: ‘Angus Thompson. Tatum’s House. Captain of the Cricket 1st XI.’ She noted the way the other boys looked at him with something close to hero worship and realised he was only a couple of years younger than Olly was now. This was scary at two levels, firstly she remembered how grown up they felt when they were in fact
mere pups and secondly how fast she had rocketed into adulthood. She hoped that things for Olly would move more slowly, that he’d have more time to live a little, to enjoy himself. Not that he seemed to be having any difficulty in that department. Someone had taken a biro to the year book page and scrawled ‘scholarship boy!’ in ink with an arrow pointed towards Angus. Kitty closed the book. It was a sharp reminder of the nature and hierarchy of Vaizey and that Angus’ route into its hallowed corridors, not from family money or the old boy network, but because he was a grammar school boy who was smart and who worked hard. This, as then, the thing she admired about him the most.
4
The boys had been quiet since they’d got on the train for the penultimate leg of their journey. She too dozed a little, watched the weather from the window and read from her copy of The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾, laughing at the antics of the hapless boy and his strange family. He made her think of Theo, who’d told her he was off on a family holiday somewhere; it might have been the south of France, she couldn’t quite remember, but she hoped he’d have a wonderful summer in the sunshine with his father and his apparently very glamorous mum.
A bubble of excitement grew in her stomach as the train crossed the border; just to be back in her beloved Scotland felt like a reward. Home! Her first term at Vaizey actually hadn’t been too bad, all things considered, but she couldn’t wait to see her mum and dad, and Darraghfield, of course. She pressed her nose to the window and smiled, despite the rain. She had big plans for the holidays: to spend as much time as possible with her mum, and to swim every single day in a pool without a grotty, stained ceiling and with no one else to upset the rhythm of her strokes. A whole ten weeks! It felt like a lifetime, stretching out before her like an endless path of happiness and laughter. She was still not convinced that Vaizey College was the right place for her to be, but the joy of coming home after so many weeks away made it almost worth it. And who knew, with her mum now better, maybe they wouldn’t send her back? The thought sent a frisson of happiness right through her. She was so happy, she felt like clapping and whooping!
How to Fall in Love Again: Kitty's Story Page 5