The Glass Bird Girl (5 page)

The Strictest School in England

W
hen Edie returned to the dormitory, Sally was there. ‘Matron said I could stay behind during prep to help you unpack,' she said, looking very pleased. ‘I'm your shadow, by the way. All new girls have a shadow, someone who shows them round and looks out for them and tells them what to d— well, helps them if they don't know what to do,' she corrected herself.

Edie was glad it was Sally, not Phoebe, who had been appointed to look after her.

‘Miss Fotheringay asked me,' Sally went on excitedly. ‘I'm the first of the first-years to be made a shadow. The others will have to wait until next year, when we get the next lot of new girls in. I thought she'd ask Alice. She's the good one – she's a form monitor.' Sally sighed. ‘I
always
seem to be in trouble.'

They set about unpacking Edie's things. Sally showed her how everything had to be arranged in a particular way – shirts on one side of the wardrobe, dresses on another, toothbrushes on a particular glass shelf in the bathroom – ‘and you'd better get it right, because if anything's found in the wrong place you'll be given an order mark. And you'll have to put that back,' Sally said, as Edie unpacked a blue dress Babka had made her. ‘We're only allowed one set of home clothes.' Edie put the dress back in the trunk, but took the opportunity of pulling out her torch and sneaking it into her bedside table.

A bell rang. ‘Supper,' Sally said, her face brightening. ‘Come on. All the meals are at different times on different days,' she explained, leading Edie down the stairs. ‘Supper's at quarter to seven today because there's no school council – that's when all the notices are read out – but on other days it's at six-thirty, and breakfast is at half past seven on Monday to Thursday and quarter to eight on Friday because . . . Oh, don't worry, you can always ask me,' she finished hurriedly.

They passed through a stone archway and came to some steps leading up to a heavy oak door, which they arrived at in time to see swing shut. ‘We're late,' Sally groaned, hurrying up the stairs and pushing it open. Edie followed her into a dim panelled dining room full of girls sitting silently at trestle tables. The door creaked as it closed behind them, and everyone turned to stare. There were so many faces Edie felt dizzy, but it was the mistress standing at the end of the nearest table whose
presence she found most disconcerting. She was solidly built, with a flushed face and dark, bulging eyes, a pair of spectacles hanging round her neck. As she looked at them her head seemed to lower, reminding Edie of a bull about to charge.

‘If you are going to take responsibility for a new girl, Sally, you might at least have the courtesy to ensure that she arrives in the dining hall in time for Grace,' she said in a ringing voice.

‘Sorry, Miss Mannering,' Sally mumbled.

‘So you should be. Lateness is a vice which loses wars.'

‘Yes, Miss Mannering,' Sally sighed.

‘Now hurry up and sit down,' Miss Mannering said crisply, holding the room in silence as Sally led Edie to a table in the corner. Then: ‘You may begin,' Miss Mannering said, and all at once the room exploded with the sound of chattering and clattering.

Edie and Sally were the only first-years on their table, and the older girls hardly acknowledged them, other than the occasional remark such as, ‘Butter, please.'

‘Miss Mannering's the deputy headmistress,' Sally explained, helping her to water from a huge tin pitcher. ‘She goes bright red and shouts a lot but you'll get used to it. Phoebe says she's going through the menopause,' she added in a thrilled whisper.

‘Oh,' Edie replied, not sure what this meant.

‘Anyway, you've got to watch out for her,' Sally went on. ‘She loves gating people at the weekends. And she'll
send you to Fothy for the slightest thing – the two of them are thick as thieves. And
that
,' Sally went on in a lowered voice, ‘is Helen. She's the head girl.'

At the end of the table, a statuesque young woman was serving the cottage pie. She was beautiful, with wide hazel eyes and a tumbling mass of golden hair. Edie found it hard to believe that she and Helen were members of the same schoolgirl race.

‘Helen's ancestors lived at Knight's Haddon years ago before it became a school, and the family still owns part of the park,' Sally explained furtively. ‘She's got her own place on the other side of the woods, a little brick tower – the prefects are allowed to have picnics there—'

‘Sally,' Helen said, with a gentle half-smile. ‘Don't whisper at table. It's rude.'

Sally blushed, and Edie noticed how much more chastened she seemed by Helen's mild telling-off than she had by the rebuke from Miss Mannering.

Edie was curious. She had never before heard of any schoolgirl owning her own tower. But the snippets of conversation she picked up at supper gave her a glimpse of a very different world.

‘
If I get a good report this term Daddy's going to buy me a new pony. Clopper's got so fat we can't enter any of the gymkhanas . . .
'

‘
We're going heli-skiing this Christmas. I can't wait . . .
'

‘
Our cook gave in her notice the day before my birthday. Mummy was furious. She says that if she can't find another one we'll all have to spend Christmas in a hotel . . .
'

Edie felt she had nothing to contribute. She
remembered Babka once working as a cook in a Polish restaurant, but she had never met children with cooks of their own. At her old school they had talked about the TV, and Edie had always watched plenty of that. But here, she remembered ruefully, there wasn't one.

‘The food's not bad, is it?' Sally said, passing up her plate for a second helping of treacle tart. ‘They say it used to be disgusting, boiled fish and cabbage and stuff like that, but Fothy put her foot down. Are you any good at tennis?' she asked suddenly, digging greedily into a bowl of clotted cream.

Edie was about to admit she had never played; but then she remembered Cousin Charles's warning about pretending to be the same as everyone else. ‘I'm a bit out of practice,' she said.

It was a relief when a bell clanged, and supper was over.

‘Why did your parents choose this school for you, Edie?' Sally asked as they were walking back to the dormitory.

‘I think . . . I don't really know.'

‘My mother chose it because she came here. Anastasia's mother was here too – they were in the same year and they were so naughty. They used to sneak into the kitchens at night to steal food, and once they ran away together and spent a night in the tower!'

‘Lucky them,' Edie said, thinking of her miserable attempt to run away from her cousins.

‘I know, it must have been fun,' Sally said wistfully. ‘But we can't do things like that any more. It's much,
much
stricter than it used to be. It's probably the strictest school in England now. Didn't they warn you?' she laughed, seeing Edie's startled expression.
Old-fashioned manners by old-fashioned methods
, that's what it says in the prospectus. That's why we're not allowed mobiles or computers, and why we have to write lines, and walk up corridors one side, and down them another, and jump to attention every time a mistress enters the room. Our parents think it's good for us. My mother's an actress and my father works in the City,' she finished breathlessly. ‘What do your parents do?'

Edie bit her lip. She hated telling people that her parents were dead, and then having to deal with their embarrassed reaction. Sally was sure to find out the truth soon enough, but Edie wasn't going to help her.

‘They're journalists,' she replied.

Sally looked uncertain. ‘I don't know anyone else here whose parents are journalists. You might be the only one!'

Edie deflected. ‘Are we
ever
allowed out?' she asked, thinking of London, where she had run messages for Babka up and down their busy street.

‘We're allowed to walk to the village on Saturday afternoons in pairs. But there's not much there, just a couple of tea rooms – and when you're new you end up being gated half the time as you're still learning the rules. Oh, don't look so worried, it's not as bad as that,' Sally said. ‘Most of the teachers are OK. Even the Man is more bark than bite.'

‘The Man?'

Sally giggled. ‘Miss Mannering. That's what everyone calls her.'

Edie thought of the thickset woman glaring at her across the dining room with a lowered head, and thought the nickname very fitting. ‘What's Matron like?' she asked.

‘We call her Matron Mend because she's so good at fixing stuff. She can put anything back together. She even fixed a string on my tennis racquet once.'

‘Is she nice?'

‘Oh, she's all right – but I'm not one of her favourites like Anastasia. She's her complete pet.' Edie detected a note of envy in Sally's voice. ‘I'm too naughty to be anyone's pet,' she went on, taking Edie's arm. ‘Oh, Edie, I'm glad you've come. I didn't like having an empty bed in the dormitory. And some of the others are a bit . . . well, you need to look out for Phoebe – she's always in a bad mood.'

‘Why?'

‘I don't know why.' Sally shrugged. ‘She's just like that. And Alice is nice, but she's a bit of a goody-goody. I think it's because she's on a scholarship and is always afraid of losing it. Her father lost his job.'

‘How do you know so much?' asked Edie, who was making a mental note of everything Sally told her.

Sally shrugged. ‘I just do.'

‘And what about Anastasia?' Edie asked, in as casual a voice as she could muster.

‘Her father's a Russian prince!' Sally said, clearly thrilled to be so well informed. ‘He's got a palace in
Moscow and a place in the South of France. Phoebe says he's richer than the Queen.'

‘She seems cool, though,' Edie said, hoping Sally might expand.

‘She's a bit—' Sally paused. ‘She's a bit strange. Actually, she's more than a bit strange. She's seriously weird. You probably didn't see it just now in the dormitory but you will soon.'

‘What sort of seriously weird?' Edie wondered.

‘Well, she doesn't say much and you think she's just very dreamy, then suddenly something will upset her and she'll get in a real strop. And then she tears through books, like someone seriously clever, but her spelling's atrocious. But weirdest of all is the way she gets upset about losing stuff – she's always accusing other people of taking her things even though whatever she's lost always turns up somewhere she's obviously hidden it herself.'

‘Like what?'

‘Before half-term she accused me of stealing her diary – but then it turned up under her pillow. I pretended not to mind. But Alice could see that I did mind and she said she understood why and that she would have minded too, if Anastasia had accused her. She's basically a real drama queen, anyone can see that.'

When they got back to the dormitory Edie saw to her alarm that her tuck box had gone. ‘Don't worry, Matron will have taken it to the lower-school common room, that's where all the tuck boxes are kept,' Sally said.
‘Come on, I'll show you.'

Edie followed her down the corridor to a long, brightly lit room with dozens of identical black tuck boxes arranged in a neat row along the wall, each with its owner's initials marked on top. Edie sensed this was not the time to rescue her phone from its hiding place – the common room was full of girls, some shouting raucously, others talking in secret huddles.

‘Belinda! . . . Rose! . . . Becky! . . .' Sally trilled, as girls came over to be introduced, but Edie was too overwhelmed to take in all the new names and faces. She was starting to feel very tired, and it seemed for ever until a bell rang, signalling that it was time for bed.

As they returned to the dormitory a woman came down the corridor towards them. Something in her appearance made Edie want to stare. She was tall, with a sculpted bob of jet-black hair, and a body as thin and bendy as a blade of grass. Edie noticed the awed glances she attracted from the other girls as they hurried to bed.

‘That's Miss Winifred, head of Lower School,' Sally whispered. ‘She's pretty, isn't she? She only arrived this term, like us. Apparently she used to live in Monaco!'

‘Will we have any lessons with her?'

‘You bet! She's our form teacher and she takes us for maths. She can be quite strict – before half-term she gave me an order mark for being late with my homework – but she's so much cooler than any of the other teachers. You'll see for yourself tomorrow.'

As Edie changed into her pyjamas she watched the other girls from the corner of her eye. Alice was hanging
her uniform in the wardrobe, while Phoebe was sitting on her bed, angrily brushing the tangles from her hair.