The Girl from Lace Island

by Joanna Rees

  Edwina swung her leg over the bench opposite Leila, and Georgina and Elaine sat either side of Leila, who shifted uncomfortably. What did they want? Why were they crowding her?

  Edwina was blonde with freckles over her nose and was wearing a metallic-pink lipstick and blue eyeshadow that clashed with her brown eyes. Her school shirt was unbuttoned one button too low in order to display her ample cleavage.

  ‘You not speaking?’ Edwina demanded. ‘You mute or something? Cat got your tongue?’

  Leila felt fear ripple through her.

  ‘Please leave me alone.’

  Edwina laughed loudly, doing an impression of Leila. ‘“Please leave me alone.”’ Elaine and Georgina joined in too.

  Now Edwina took some photographs out of her pocket and put them on the table. Leila’s heart contracted, recognizing the photos straight away. They were from her diary. They were the only pictures she had of home. Of Rasa and her friends. Edwina must have been into her cupboard and found her diary. How dare she?

  ‘Look at this one. He your boyfriend, is he?’ Edwina taunted. ‘Is he from The Jungle Book?’

  ‘Look, he’s wearing a dress,’ Georgina added.

  Edwina picked up the photograph of Rasa in his white dhoti, putting it to her lips and smearing her lipstick over it, pretending to kiss it. Her eyes danced with contempt over the top of it.

  Leila launched herself across the table, trying to get the photo from Edwina, but she dodged out of the way, ripping the photo in two. Leila grabbed Edwina’s long ponytail and yanked it so hard she fell backwards off the bench, taking Leila with her. Leila found herself on the floor on top of Edwina. She could hear the shocked hush ripple around the room.

  ‘Uh-oh. You just made a big mistake,’ Edwina taunted, delighted. Then she flipped Leila over and punched her in the face.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Switzerland, present day

  Jess rearranged the bottles on the duty-free cart, enjoying the sensation of making it look perfect. She liked this part of the flight best, when the meal was over and everyone was excited about landing. So far today, everything had gone well, and now, over fifty flights in, Jess was getting the hang of being cabin crew.

  It was like being on stage. And with each new journey she felt like she really was shedding her old self. She’d stopped apologizing for flunking school, stopped making excuses about her age and all the failed jobs she’d had up until now. Instead, she behaved like the other crew did: like she deserved this.

  And OK, yes, there were annoying things about the job, like the fact that she said hello and goodbye to each of the passengers on the way in and out, yet only a handful returned the favour or thanked her. Or the out-of-control kids who repeatedly pressed the service-call button, or the people who tugged on her skirt as she walked past to get her attention, but Jess didn’t mind at all. Despite the long hours and the fact that she hadn’t had time to go to the gym once, Jess knew that this was absolutely what she wanted to do for the rest of her life.

  Tony had been right. Being thirty-five thousand feet in the air was keeping her out of trouble. At least, it was keeping her away from Angel, which is what mattered most.

  Glancing out of the tiny window, Jess could see the Alps glistening with snow way down in the distance. She pictured all the people skiing down there, all the families like the ones in the cabin behind her. Nice middle-class families who didn’t have to deal with crack-addict flatmates.

  Jess had been doing this route to Geneva for just over a month now, but she’d never had the chance to stop over long enough to get to the slopes. The thought of whooshing down a mountain appealed to her, just because she’d never done anything like it in her life. Maybe on this stopover, she could find a way. Although maybe not with Gina. She didn’t look like the adventurous type, Jess thought, glancing across at her colleague.

  ‘You ready?’ Jess asked.

  ‘Yep. Coming now,’ Gina replied, her eyes not leaving the magazine.

  Jess had met girls like Gina on the crews she’d worked with before. Life for Gina-types was simple, Jess concluded. She was here to cruise the aisles in the hope that one day, a husband might appear in seats A to F. Jess was sure that like lots of the other stewardesses, the second she landed, Gina would be straight on the dating apps on her phone, swiping to annihilate or approve potential hook-ups. It all seemed so brutal to Jess. Like sex and love were commodities.

  What happened to old-fashioned romance? And not sleeping with someone on the first date? Sex was great, but surely there was so much more to life than that?

  ‘What’s so interesting?’ Jess asked.

  Gina was shorter than Jess, her hair tied up in a blonde bun. She smelt overpoweringly of the latest Armani perfume as Jess leant in and looked over her shoulder down at the magazine.

  ‘Look at her, there,’ Gina said, pointing a manicured nail at the picture of an American celebrity’s latest surgical enhancement.

  ‘Why do people do that?’ Jess said. ‘She used to be so pretty.’

  ‘It’s because she’s rich.’

  ‘If I was rich, I certainly wouldn’t do that to my face,’ Jess said.

  ‘Well, you wouldn’t have to, would you?’ Gina replied. ‘You’re pretty as you are. Actually, she reminds me a bit of you,’ Gina said, in her Essex accent, remembering the job at hand and walking to the trolley, smoothing her uniform pencil skirt over her hips. ‘Not now, but before,’ she added kindly. ‘She’s got that “every girl” thing going on. You know, not European or South American or Asian. I’m not being racist or nothing, but she’s sort of in between. Like, um . . . what’s her name?’

  Jess frowned and smiled, bemused at Gina’s backhanded compliment.

  Gina rolled her eyes. ‘Can’t remember. It’ll come to me. Where are your parents from, anyway?’

  Jess was saved from making up a lie by Duncan, their senior cabin-crew officer, who appeared round the grey curtain. ‘Will you two stop gassing and get on with it?’ he said, flipping the curtain to the side and fastening it with poppers.

  Gina and Jess shared a look. He’d been in a mood since they’d come on board. He had a sheen of sweat on his balding head.

  ‘They are a right bunch today,’ he told them, in his strong Scottish accent. ‘I don’t know what you gave out earlier, but the guy in twenty-seven is drunk. Watch out.’

  Jess looked at Gina again, who gave her a shrug. Neither of them could remember serving the guy. Together, they headed down the narrow aisle between the passengers. Gina could certainly turn on the charm, Jess noticed, and before long, they’d clocked up several good sales between them.

  Then Jess heard a slurred voice and she turned to see a man standing three-quarters of the way down the cabin. His arm swung out towards her. The drunk in twenty-seven. Duncan hadn’t been kidding. The guy was off his head, Jess noticed, and upsetting the polite passengers around him.

  ‘Hurry it up. I need a drink,’ the guy shouted again. Jess, sensing the discomfort of all the passengers around her now, quickly directed Gina to push the trolley further down the aisle so that she could position herself next to the guy.

  ‘Sir, sir, could you please sit down?’ He had a tattoo on his neck and a rough crew cut, but Jess wasn’t fazed. Where she came from, drunk guys like him were a common sight. They didn’t usually get their act together to board an aeroplane, though.

  She leant towards him. Alcohol fumes were thick around his head, like a swarm of bees. ‘Please sir, sit down.’

  Something about her stare subdued him and he sat back down. Gina poured a whisky and Jess topped it up heavily with water.

  ‘What a prick,’ Gina said, as they passed to the end of the cabin. ‘Hang on, we’re out of hot water,’ she said, picking up the jug. ‘I’ll go.’ She pulled the cart into the far galley so that she could get past and set off up the aisle. Alone now, Jess rearranged the cart, checking the money was safe and tipping it from the plastic cup into the tray in the cart.

/>   Just then, she heard someone behind her. It was the drunk guy. She turned just as his hand groped between her legs from behind.

  ‘You want it, don’t you?’ he slurred.

  Jess knew there were protocols, but she ignored them now, gut instinct kicking in. In a second, she’d elbowed the guy in the ribs, then smacked him backwards. She watched, horrified, as he fell away from her, flailing, before hitting his head on the unit and falling to the floor.

  Jess gasped. She stared at the man who’d just come out of the toilet cubicle. He looked at her and then at the drunk man flat out on the floor. Then suddenly Gina was there, bustling past him.

  ‘What did you do?’ Gina asked, her hand flying to her mouth.

  ‘He . . . I didn’t mean . . .’ Jess said, crouching down near the man.

  Duncan was walking down the aisle now, having sensed the commotion. ‘What’s going on here?’

  ‘That fucking bitch. She fucking punched me,’ the man said, glaring at Jess, who recoiled. ‘I’m going to sue you. I’m going to sue you and this airline. That is grievous bodily harm.’

  ‘Watch it, son,’ Duncan said.

  ‘He groped me,’ Jess explained to Duncan, outraged. ‘I was defending myself.’

  ‘She’s lying,’ the drunk guy said, and Jess stared at him, seeing his eyes glinting with malice. He was enjoying this. Enjoying having the upper hand.

  ‘This is not how we deal with things,’ Duncan told Jess very pointedly, doing up the poppers on the curtain to shield the man from the curious passengers.

  ‘But—’

  ‘When we land, you will have to fill out a report.’

  ‘But I—’

  ‘She’s new, I take it?’ the drunk guy said. ‘That bitch is out. And you – you’d better call a paramedic for when we land. I think I’ve got a spine injury.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  Surrey, 1990

  As the school secretary opened the large white door to the headmistress’s office, Leila sniffed, dabbing her swollen cheekbone with the icy green kitchen roll the school matron had given her. She stumbled forwards into the large room, with its thick yellow carpet covered in part by a plastic runner – presumably to stop the pupils’ feet marking it. There were ornately framed oil paintings of hunting scenes on most of the walls, as well as a large bookcase full of old red and green leather-bound books. Through the bay windows between their heavy gold curtains, Leila could see the rain plopping into puddles on the Cotswolds-stone terrace. Beyond the fat stone balustrade, a green carpet of lawn gave way to playing fields. In the distance, she could see two teams of girls playing lacrosse. The muffled sound of the game and the girls’ gruff shouting was just audible, along with a shrill whistle. The games teacher, Miss Sussman, had laughed in Leila’s face when she’d politely enquired whether there was a cricket team at Hillmain. She’d been told that cricket was for boys.

  She directed her attention to the desk, as the headmistress rose from her seat, hoping that she would be sympathetic, hoping that after she’d heard the truth, she’d discipline Edwina and her awful friends. But Mrs Grayson-Smith wasn’t a friendly sort of person.

  She had a pinched, pale face that looked like it had rarely either seen the sun or laughed at a good joke. She had powdered cheeks, and a double set of pearls were visible at the high neck of her frilly white blouse. She was wearing a brown tweed suit with large shoulder pads and half-moon glasses on the end of her nose, which she peered through at Leila now.

  ‘I know I’m in trouble,’ Leila began, ‘but—’

  ‘Young lady’ – Mrs Grayson-Smith took off her glasses and fixed Leila with a laser-beam stare – ‘you will wait until you’re spoken to. And if you will insist on talking, you can address me properly. As “Headmistress”,’ she continued, momentarily closing her eyes and doing a kind of head-wobble shudder as if having to lower herself to cover such basics was a disgrace. ‘And you’d be much better off losing that foreign accent of yours,’ Mrs Grayson-Smith said. ‘We try to speak the Queen’s English here, and you sound, well . . . odd.’

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ Leila said, trying to put on a proper English accent, but it felt all wrong. Like she was doing an impersonation of someone uptight and weird. Or like she was doing a skit for Rasa, telling him a joke on the porch of his hut on the far side of the paddy field. She held the image in her head. Of the bright green sun-drenched paddy fields of home.

  The headmistress glared at her, as if she thought Leila were being sarcastic, and then she sat down in her chair. Leila heard a low growl and saw a small white terrier stretch in a basket on the far side of the desk. It plodded out from on top of its blue cushion and barked at Leila, who recoiled.

  ‘Mortimer, sit back down right now,’ Mrs Grayson-Smith snapped, in a voice so terrifying the dog whimpered and skulked back to its basket, casting a mournful glance at Leila. ‘Well,’ she concluded. She looked towards Leila and then at the dog, as if it had made some kind of character decision about Leila with which she now wholeheartedly agreed.

  She took a deep breath, as if trying to control her patience. ‘So . . .’ she began, ‘how do you explain yourself?’

  ‘It should be Edwina who is in here in trouble, not me, Headmistress,’ Leila protested. ‘She started it.’

  ‘First of all, I will not tolerate snitches,’ the headmistress snapped. ‘Secondly, I will not tolerate violence in my school. I heard you behaved like a savage beast. In the canteen. In front of all the girls.’

  ‘I didn’t. I—’

  The headmistress held up her hand. ‘I can see very well now why the Everdenes were so adamant that you be educated and turned into a proper lady, although on current form, I think that may well be impossible.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ Leila protested. ‘Edwina stole my things. She’s just a bully.’

  ‘Edwina is one of our most promising pupils,’ Mrs Grayson-Smith snapped, her bust rearing up. ‘As I said,’ she continued, ‘I will not tolerate snitches. That will not help you to fit in. If I were you, I would seriously consider changing your attitude.’

  Why wouldn’t the headmistress listen to her? Didn’t she want to know the truth? Leila simply couldn’t understand why she wasn’t being given a chance. Bibi had always listened to her. Always been fair. But this horrible woman wasn’t even giving her the opportunity to tell her side of things.

  ‘Do you realize how lucky you are that we’ve offered you a place at this school? Because I have to tell you that here at Hillmain, we have a long heritage of educating real princesses,’ the headmistress continued before Leila had a chance to speak. She emphasized the word ‘real’ pointedly, as if she didn’t believe that Leila’s mother was descended from a maharaja at all, or that Leila was in any way special.

  ‘And do you know how we do that so very successfully?’ she asked. Leila sensed it was another rhetorical question. She shook her head meekly. ‘I’ll tell you, young lady. It is by treating everyone equally. If you remember that and you stay in your place, then I’m sure we can furnish you with an education. Dismissed.’

  Leila rubbed her palms on her skirt and rose. ‘I think you’re being very unfair. You can’t see what’s going on in this school underneath your nose. Edwina is a bully, and as for everyone being treated equally—’

  ‘I said, dismissed,’ the headmistress said pointedly.

  ‘You know, if you want to expel me, it’s fine,’ Leila said. The words were out before she could stop them. But she meant them. It was true. ‘All I want is to go home.’

  The headmistress fixed her with a beady eye. ‘Then that’s exactly what you won’t be doing. And, Leila? Don’t ever answer back again.’

  Outside the headmistress’s office, Leila felt her knees shaking and she let out a stifled sob. She’d hoped the headmistress would listen to sense, would see Leila’s point of view and how unfairly she’d been treated, but instead Leila had made an enemy of her too. And now she had no idea how to fix it.

 
; Did she mean it? About Leila not going home? For how long? What if she was stuck here, in this prison, forever?

  She noticed a girl in the corridor studying the long rows of school photos. She turned when she heard Leila and pulled a lollypop from her mouth. She had a mass of frizzy ginger hair and freckles over the bridge of her nose.

  ‘She give you a roasting?’ the girl asked, and Leila nodded, trying to hide her tears. She turned her head away, unable to face another girl being mean, but she didn’t seem to be going away. She walked closer and put her hand on Leila’s arm. ‘You just got to learn to play the system.’

  ‘But how?’ Leila asked desperately.

  ‘Read books about sex and play lacrosse,’ the girl said matter-of-factly. ‘That’s what the popular girls do. Not that I care. I’m just marking time in this shithole until I can get a break in the music business. I sing,’ she said. ‘Follow me.’ She quickly started to walk away and Leila took a deep breath, wondering whether to trust her or not.

  The girl stopped and turned. ‘Come on,’ she said, flicking her head. ‘I know where Edwina put your photos. I’m Judith, by the way. Let’s go nick your stuff back from that bitch.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  Switzerland, present day

  The bar in the Geneva hotel was crowded, the air warm and heavy. Jess almost lost her nerve and retreated back to the lift, but she really didn’t want to be alone in that soulless room, and she was too stressed out to watch TV. Anyway, she’d had an Instagram from Gina of the drink that was waiting for her. She glanced around the plush bar. In the far corner, a frizzy-haired woman in a blue sequinned dress was singing jazz standards, accompanied by a guy playing a shiny grand piano.

  It was all so civilized and nice, but already Jess felt that this whole scene had slipped away from her. That she was watching herself from the corner of the room.