Room 13 (2 page)

THEY WERE OFF
by twenty-five past nine, growling slowly up the drive while Mr Joyce and a handful of parents stood in a haze of exhaust, waving.

Fliss and Lisa managed to get seats together. Lisa had the one by the window. As the coach turned on to the road she twisted round for a last glimpse of the school. ‘Goodbye, Bottomtop!’ she cried. ‘And good riddance.’

‘That’ll do, Lisa Watmough.’

Startled, she turned. Mrs Evans was sitting two rows behind, glaring at her through the space between headrests.

‘Yes, Miss.’ She faced the front, dug Fliss in the ribs and giggled. ‘I didn’t know she was sitting so close. Where’s Mrs Marriott?’

‘Back seat, so she can keep an eye on us all. And Mr Hepworth’s up there with the driver.’

‘Huh! Trust teachers to grab all the best seats. Who’s this in front of us?’ The tops of two heads
showed
above the headrests.

‘Gary Bazzard and David Trotter. I hope we’re nowhere near them in the hotel.’

‘You won’t be,’ said Ellie-May, who was sitting across the aisle from Fliss. ‘Our Shelley says they put girls on one floor and boys on another so you don’t see each other with nothing on.’

‘Our Shelley,’ sneered Fliss. ‘Our Shelley says this, our Shelley says that. I hope we’re not going to have a week of what our Shelley says, Ellie-May.’

‘Huh!’ Ellie-May tossed her head. ‘I was telling you how it’ll be, that’s all, misery-guts. Anyway, you can naff off if you want to know owt else – you won’t get it from me.’

‘Good!’ Fliss shuffled in her seat, turning as far from Ellie-May as she could, and sat scowling across Lisa at the passing scene.

Lisa looked at her. ‘What’s up with you?’ she hissed. ‘We’re supposed to be enjoying ourselves and you look like somebody with toothache going into double maths.’

‘It’s her.’ Fliss jerked her head in Ellie-May’s direction. ‘She gets on my nerves.’

‘She was only telling you. You wanted to know if we’d be anywhere near Baz and Trot and she said we won’t. What’s wrong with that?’

Fliss shrugged. ‘Nothing.’

‘Well then.’

‘I don’t feel too good, right? I had this dream last night – a nightmare, and I couldn’t sleep after it. And then this morning in the hall, Bazzard starts going on about Dracula. Saying he lives in Whitby, stuff like that, and I wasn’t in the mood.’

Lisa pulled a face. ‘No need to take it out on other people though, is there? You could go to sleep here, on the coach. Look – the seat tips back. Lie back and shut your eyes. There’s nothing to look at anyway, unless you like the middle of Leeds.’

So Fliss pressed the button on the armrest and tipped her seat back, but then the boy in the seat behind yelled out that she was crushing his knees and demanded that she return it to its upright position. When she refused, settling back and closing her eyes, the boy, Grant Cooper, began rhythmically kicking the back of the seat, like somebody beating on a drum. Fliss sighed but kept her eyes closed, saying nothing. As she had anticipated, Mrs Evans soon noticed what the boy was up to. A hand came snaking through the gap between the headrests and grabbed a fistful of his hair. ‘Ow!’ he yelped. Mrs Evans rose, so that the top part of her face appeared over the seat. She began speaking very quietly to Grant Cooper, punctuating her words by alternately tightening
and
relaxing her grip on his hair.

‘Grant Cooper.’ (Squeeze) ‘The upholstery on that seat cost a lot of money.’ (Squeeze) ‘It was fitted to make this coach both smart and comfortable.’ (Squeeze) ‘It was not provided so that horrible little so-and-sos like you could use it for football practice.’ (Squeeze) ‘How d’you think your mother would like it if somebody came into your house and started kicking the back of her three-piece suite, eh?’ (Squeeze) ‘Eh?’ (Squeeze) ‘Like it, would she?’ (Squeeze)

‘Please, Miss, no, Miss.’ Grant’s eyes were watering copiously and his mouth was twisted into a grimace which would not have been out of place in a medieval torture-chamber.

‘Well, then,’ (Squeeze) ‘kindly show the same respect for other people’s property that your mother would expect to be shown to hers. All right, Grant Cooper?’ (Squeeze)

‘Yes, Miss.’ The grip loosened. The hand withdrew. Grant slumped, like a man cut down from the whipping-post, and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. Mrs Evans’ face sank from view. Fliss smiled faintly to herself, and drifted off to sleep.

FLISS OPENED HER
eyes as the coach swung into a tight turn which nearly catapulted her into the aisle. ‘What’s happening – where are we?’

‘Pickering,’ said Lisa. ‘We’re stopping. You’ve been asleep ages.’

Fliss looked out. They were rolling on to a big car-park with a wall round it. As the coach stopped, Mr Hepworth stood up at the front. ‘This is Pickering,’ he said. ‘And we are making a toilet stop.’ His eyes swept along the coach and locked on to those of a boy near the back. ‘A toilet stop, Keith Halliday. Not a shopping stop. Not a sightseeing stop. Not a “let’s buy packets of greasy fish and chips, scoff the lot before Sir sees us and then throw up all over the coach” stop. Have I made myself quite clear?’

‘Sir.’

‘Right. The toilets,’ he pointed, ‘are down there at the bottom of this car-park. To get into them,
you
have to go out on to the pavement. It’s a very busy road, and I don’t want to see anyone trying to cross it. Neither do I want to see boys going into the ladies’ toilet, or girls into the gents’. Have I said something funny, Andrew Roberts?’

‘No, Sir.’

‘Right.’ He looked at his watch. ‘It’s ten past eleven. The coach will leave here at twenty-five past on the dot. Make sure you’re on it, because it’s a long walk back to Bradford.’

‘When we get back on,’ whispered Fliss to Lisa, ‘it’s my turn for the window seat, right?’

Lisa nodded. ‘You feeling better, then?’

‘Yes, thanks. I had a lovely sleep.’

‘I know. You missed a lot, though. There was this field – a sloping field with millions of poppies in it. The whole field was red. It was ace.’

When Fliss got back on the coach there was no sign of Lisa. She sat down and watched the kids straggling across the tarmac in the warm sunshine. Soon, everybody was back on board except her friend. The driver had started the engine and Mrs Marriott was counting heads when Lisa appeared from behind the toilet block and came hurrying to the coach. As she clambered aboard, Mr Hepworth looked at his watch. ‘What time did I say we’d be leaving, Lisa Watmough?’

Some of the children were sniggering and Lisa
blushed
. ‘Twenty-five past, Sir. I forgot the time, Sir.’

‘You forgot the time. Well, for your information it is now twenty-six minutes to twelve, and we’ll be lucky if we arrive at the hotel by midday, which is when we are expected. The meal which is being prepared for us might well be ruined, and it will be all your fault, Lisa Watmough.’ He bent forward suddenly, peering at her jeans. ‘What have you got there?’ Something was making a bulge in the pocket of Lisa’s jeans and she was trying to conceal it with her hand.

‘Nothing, Sir.’

‘Take it out and give it to me.’

‘It’s just this, Sir.’ She pulled out an object wrapped in tissue paper and handed it over. The teacher stripped away the wrapping to reveal a green plastic torch in the shape of a dragon. The bulb and its protective glass were in the dragon’s gaping mouth. Mr Hepworth held up the torch, using only his thumb and forefinger, and looked at it with an expression of extreme distaste.

‘Did you bring this – this thing with you from home, Lisa Watmough?’

‘No, Sir.’

‘Oh. Then I suppose there’s a little kiosk inside the ladies’ toilet where patrons can do a bit of shopping. Am I right?’

‘No, Sir.’

The teacher frowned. ‘Then I’m afraid I don’t understand. You didn’t bring it from home, and you didn’t get it in the ladies’. You haven’t been anywhere else, yet here it is. Perhaps you laid it, like a hen lays an egg. Did you?’

‘No, Sir.’

‘Then what did you do?’

‘I went in a shop, Sir.’

‘You did what?’

‘Went in a shop, Sir.’

‘And what had I said about shopping, Lisa Watmough, just before you got off the coach?’

‘We weren’t to do any, Sir.’

‘Right. Then why did you go into that shop?’

‘I don’t know, Sir.’

‘You don’t know, and neither do I, but here’s something I do know. This evening, when the rest of the group is listening to a story in the hotel lounge, you will be in your room writing two apologies – one to the children for having kept them waiting, and one to me for having disobeyed my instructions. When both apologies have been written to my satisfaction, this torch will be returned to you. In the meantime you can leave it with me. Go to your seat.’

‘What the heck did you do that for?’ whispered Fliss, as Lisa slid into her seat. Lisa was one of
those
girls who seldom step out of line and are rarely in trouble at school.

She shook her head miserably. ‘I don’t know, Fliss. I don’t even need a torch – I’ve got a better one at home. You’ll think I’m crazy, but I couldn’t help it – it was as though my feet were going by themselves.’

‘Oh, don’t you start,’ groaned Fliss.

‘What d’you mean?’

‘Nothing. Forget it.’ She looked out of the window. They passed a sign. North Yorkshire Moors National Park. The coach was climbing. Fliss gazed out as green pasture gave way to treeless desolation. She shivered.

‘HEY LOOK!’

A boy on the right-hand side near the front of the coach stood up and pointed. Everybody looked. Out of the bleak landscape rose three white, dome-shaped objects, like gigantic mushrooms breaking through the earth. As the coach carried them closer, they saw a scatter of low buildings and a fence. The great spheres, gleaming in the sunlight, looked like objects in a science-fiction movie.

‘Wow! What are they, Sir?’

Mr Hepworth got up. ‘That’s the Fylingdales early-warning station,’ he told them. ‘Inside those domes is radar equipment, operated by the British and American forces. It maintains a round-the-clock watch for incoming missiles. They say it would give us a three-minute warning.’ He smiled wryly. ‘Three minutes in which to do whatever we haven’t done yet and always wanted to.’

‘What would you do, Sir?’ asked a grinning Waseem Kader.

‘What would I do?’ The teacher thought for a moment. ‘I think I’d get a brick and throw it through the biggest window I could find.’ He smiled. ‘I’ve always fancied that.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t, Sir – I’d run to the Chinese and get chicken chop-suey ten times and gobble it right quick.’

‘Yeah!’ cried Sarah-Jane Potts. ‘That’s what I’d do and all – we wouldn’t have to pay, would we, Sir?’

‘I’d get a big club and smash our Shelley’s head in,’ said Ellie-May. ‘I hate her.’

‘There’d be no point, fathead!’ sneered a boy behind her. ‘She’d be dead in three minutes anyway.’

The noise level rose. Excited voices called back and forth across the coach as everybody tried to outdo everybody else in what they’d do with their last three minutes. The fact that many of them would have needed several hours or even days to carry out their plans was disregarded, and the discussion continued till the vehicle topped the highest rise and Mrs Marriott raised her voice, drawing everybody’s attention to the ruins of Whitby Abbey, which were now visible in the hazy distance.