by Carmen Reid
‘I’ve just seen five wasps go into that crack underneath the gutter, just there . . .’ Niffy was pointing to a spot as high up as possible.
‘Oh . . . right,’ Mrs Knebworth said, looking up. Not agreeing, because she couldn’t see a single wasp; not disagreeing because, as Niffy had suspected, maybe her eyesight wasn’t up to the job.
‘Well, I’d better book in the handyman and the piano tuner for this week . . .’ she said. ‘Must put that in the diary.’
And with that, the Neb bustled out of the room to go and write it down straight away.
Before anyone could even let out a breath of relief, a Year Five girl appeared at the doorway with the words: ‘Is Gina Peterson in here? Oh, there you are . . . Your mum’s on the phone, says it’s urgent.’
Chapter Eighteen
‘SADLY, WE ARE going to be missing French this afternoon,’ Niffy informed Gina during Wednesday’s lunch break.
‘Are we?’ Gina was surprised.
‘Yeah . . . I have inside information that between one forty-five and three, Banshee Bannerman is going to be talking to the governors over lunch in the annex and bringing her trusty right-hand woman, Mrs Henderson, along with her,’ Niffy announced.
‘Huh?’ Gina was now even more confused.
‘Well,’ Niffy went on, ‘you remember what Miss Ballantyne said to you this morning?’
How could Gina forget? Miss Ballantyne had handed back her latest history essay with the words: ‘Beginning to show signs of improvement, Gina. Maybe you will not be following in your mother’s footsteps after all.’
When Gina had asked, ‘When are you going to tell me what you mean about my mother, Miss Ballantyne?’ the old bat had merely arched her eyebrows and answered, ‘Dear, dear, surely that’s a question for your mother, not for me.’
Gina had tried asking her mother about Miss Ballantyne’s earlier remarks on Sunday, but she hadn’t got anywhere.
‘I don’t remember a history teacher called Miss Ballantyne,’ Lorelei had said. ‘You asked me about her before. What’s she trying to say? That I wasn’t a good pupil? She must be thinking about someone else. I always got straight As, Gina. I considered a B a total failure. But how is your work coming along?’ she’d wanted to know. ‘That’s much more important. My school career was over years ago.’
‘Why is this phone call urgent, by the way?’ Gina had asked. ‘The girl who answered the phone said it was urgent. I was really worried.’
‘Oh . . . I thought that would make them look for you a bit quicker,’ Lorelei had explained. ‘It always takes them ages to find you.’
‘I’m up on the third—’
But her mother hadn’t waited to hear the full story. She’d interrupted with: ‘You know what, honey? I’m going to have to ring you back . . . I have another call coming in.’
As she replaced the receiver, Gina had realized that sometimes she didn’t miss her mother so much. Sometimes she wished there was something even wider than the Atlantic Ocean between them.
‘Do you know what’s kept in the locked office behind the Banshee’s?’ Niffy asked Gina now.
Gina shook her head.
‘Files and files and files on every pupil who’s ever been at St J’s,’ Niffy revealed. ‘Believe me, I’ve had a rifle through them before. It’s very interesting. All you need is a surname and a leaving date, then you can look up everything about whoever you’re interested in. And I think we’re all agreed that the Lorelei Winkelmann file has got to be one worth sneaking a peek at.’
For a moment Gina weighed up the risks of being caught in the headmistress’s office against the possibility of looking through her mother’s school file. There was no difficult decision to be made. She had to see that file. What if there was a really big surprise in there? What if her mother wasn’t a straight-A student at all? What if she’d invented that to make Gina feel bad and work harder at school? What if there were B grades in there? Or even Cs?
‘OK,’ Gina told Niffy nervously. ‘I think we should go in. But what do we tell Madame Bensimon?’
‘Good girl!’ Niffy’s face broke into a grin. ‘I didn’t think I’d have to persuade you. I’ve already prepped Amy to inform Madame that we’re both headed to the dentist’s this afternoon. Fingers crossed she won’t check it with anyone. Now all we need to do is hide in the cloakroom beside the Banshee’s office until ten minutes after the bell.’
It was very quiet in the corridors once the rest of the St Jude’s girls were all settled into their first lesson of the afternoon. Deathly quiet.
Niffy went first on rubber-soled ballet pumps that were completely noiseless. Gina followed behind nervously, careful to walk on the balls of her feet so that her higher heels didn’t clack against the stone floor.
Down the wood-panelled side corridor they went, past the entrance to Mrs Henderson’s office and straight to the door with the brass plaque announcing: HEADMISTRESS.
Niffy tapped quietly on the wood – ‘Just in case,’ she whispered, ‘there’s been a change of plan.’
There was no reply.
Gina looked at Niffy nervously. What if there was a change of plan in about ten minutes’ time and the Banshee appeared when they had their fingers in the files? She didn’t feel nearly as trusting of Niffy now; now that her mouth was dry, her hands were shaking and her heart was pounding like a criminal’s.
Niffy took the round brass handle in her hands and turned it. The door opened and the two girls stepped inside.
‘What are you doing?!’ Gina asked in a shocked whisper as Niffy went straight over to the headmistress’s desk and opened a small drawer on the left-hand side.
‘Getting the key,’ Niffy whispered back. ‘I told you. I’ve done this before . . . just hope she hasn’t moved it.’
After a moment of rummaging, she held up a little brass key in triumph. ‘Ta-da!’
There was a door in the back wall of the Banshee’s office, and this is where Niffy fitted the key into the lock and turned. The door opened and Gina followed her friend into a surprisingly spacious room, bigger than the office, furnished entirely with grey metal filing cabinets.
‘Right, it’s nineteen eighty-two, isn’t it?’ Niffy asked, scanning the neat labels. ‘And W for Winkelmann. Let’s see . . . let’s see . . . Nineteen fifty-two, nineteen fifty-four – maybe into the corner a bit further . . .’
Niffy and Gina couldn’t know that things weren’t going smoothly at the governors’ lunch. The creative arts were the subject of the afternoon’s discussion. A vibrant new art teacher and a new head of drama had been installed a year ago, and although the girls were very happy with the teachers, parents were grumbling about ‘results’.
Mrs Bannerman claimed that results in art and drama were as healthy as they’d ever been, but one of the governors was arguing that there had been a two per cent drop in As.
‘Mrs Henderson?’ Mrs Bannerman turned to her assistant. ‘I know you looked the past three years’ results out for me and put them on my desk, where I’m afraid I’ve left them . . . Would you mind terribly?’ She gave a little smile. ‘I just think it would be easier if we had them right in front of us in black and white.’
‘Here it is!’ Gina exclaimed. ‘Nineteen eighty-two!’ She pulled open the heavy metal drawer and looked at the neatly alphabetical files in front of her. Her hands went immediately to the ‘W’. Walker, Walker, Williams, Winkelmann. ‘I’ve got it!’ she whispered to Niffy. ‘I’ve got her file!’
She pulled out the cardboard document case and was surprised to find just three flimsy sheets of paper inside. Was that it? Her mother’s entire St Jude’s career summed up in three sheets?
Niffy was by her side, peering over her shoulder at the first page. ‘That’s a copy of her A-level results,’ she explained.
Three subjects were listed on the page: mathematics, physics and German.
Gina ran her finger down the results and felt a slight pang of disappointment. ‘A, A and A,�
� she said. ‘No big surprise here then.’
‘What’s on the page behind then?’ Niffy asked. ‘It should have her standard grades. O-levels they were back then, I think.’
Gina turned over to reveal a row of eight subjects: mathematics, arithmetic, English, French, history, German, physics and biology. The big shock was the row of results: Bs, Cs, one lone A for German and, astonishingly, two Fs!
‘She failed two O-levels!’ Niffy’s surprise was evident. ‘History and chemistry! Look!’ She was pointing at the page. ‘No wonder Miss Ballantyne still goes on about it. St Jude’s girls never fail! Not even in the eighties! Blimey, that is shocking! What on earth was she doing? I told you she had white hair and eyeliner and was too cool for school.’
If Niffy was surprised, Gina was shocked. The blood drained from her head, the file in her hands was visibly shaking and tears were springing to her eyes: all she could think about was that her mother had lied to her. Lorelei had always told her what a brilliant straight-A pupil she’d been at school. And right here was the evidence that her mother had lied. Lied! And Gina had no idea why.
‘What’s the other paper behind this one?’ Niffy asked.
Gina, blinking hard, turned over the second page of results to find a typed letter, yellowed with age.
Both girls scanned quickly through it.
It was from Jan Winkelmann, Lorelei’s father, requesting that his daughter be considered for a place in the Upper Sixth to sit her A-levels.
She has re-taken all her O-levels and achieved outstanding marks. She has already begun her A-level courses and is showing great promise.
All she wishes is to be returned to the school so she can study alongside her St Jude’s friends for this final, vital year.
Obviously the distressing matter of her O-levels year is long behind her now.
‘Oh my God!’ Gina whispered. Here was another thing she didn’t know about her mother.
‘She hasn’t told you anything about this, has she?’ Niffy asked, although from the shocked look on her friend’s face the answer to this was obvious.
Gina shook her head. She could not believe it. Hadn’t her mother said on Sunday: I always got straight As, Gina. I considered a B a failure? She closed the file wordlessly, put it back and pushed the drawer shut.
‘You’re not to tell anyone about this,’ Gina insisted, fixing Niffy with a look of deadly seriousness. ‘No one. OK?’
Niffy nodded her agreement, and that’s when both girls heard the heavy wooden door to the Banshee’s office open.
‘Uh-oh!’ Niffy said under her breath and dropped to her haunches. ‘Get out there, Gina, you’ll be fine – play the Yank card.’
Gina looked at Niffy in utter incomprehension, but Niffy was waving her frantically towards the door.
Mrs Henderson was just wondering why the door to the records room was open and heading over to check what was going on in there, when a blonde girl walked out with a look of confusion across her face.
‘Oh! Hello – maybe you can help me? I’m so totally lost,’ the girl asked in a strong American accent, her face breaking into a pleasant smile.
‘Oh!’ was Mrs Henderson’s first response. This must be the Californian girl; she’d not come across her before. ‘And where are you supposed to be?’ she asked her in brisk Morningside. ‘I don’t expect to run into pupils wandering aimlessly about the headmistress’s office.’
‘I’ve been sent to the staff room,’ the girl explained. ‘I just seem to have got the directions completely confused.’
When Mrs Henderson began an explanation of how to find the staff room, Gina asked politely, ‘Do you think you could just point me in the right direction? It’s so confusing out there – so many corridors!’ in her best imitation of West Coast ditz.
Back in the head’s office, Mrs Henderson picked up the three pages of printout from Mrs Bannerman’s desk, then, catching sight of the key dangling in the lock to the filing room, she shut the door, locked it and replaced the key in Mrs Bannerman’s desk drawer. Then she went out of the room and headed back to the governors’ lunch.
There were only two words Niffy could think of to express her feelings when she heard the filing-room door close and the key turn in the lock: ‘Oh bum!’
Squatting down on the floor, she waited until all sounds of Mrs Henderson had disappeared, then looked around the room for a possible means of escape. Well, she couldn’t stay here, could she? It might be days before the Banshee thought to look in her records room . . . And there was no point waiting for Gina to rescue her. Gina would be far too scared to do anything on her own.
No, Niffy had to hope that the small sash window, a good metre and a half off the ground, had not been painted shut.
She hoisted herself up onto the filing cabinet closest to the window and began to tug at the stiff catch. It took a few minutes to work it free, but finally she’d managed to force it aside. Now to try the window. She pulled hard at the bottom frame, trying to slide it up. There was some movement – it had not been painted irredeemably shut – but it was very stiff.
After heaving for long enough to make her break into a light sweat, she’d only managed to open it ten centimetres or so, not nearly enough to get out.
She glanced at her watch: it was already 2.45 p.m. Bannerman’s lunch was scheduled to end at three. The thought of this gave Niffy enough strength to wrench at the window frame one more time. It opened just a bit further, giving her a gap about thirty centimetres high, forty wide. Enough surely?
She stuck out her head and began to wriggle and squeeze her shoulders through. Now she could see the problems facing her on the other side. Because the school was built on a slope with a substantial basement, although the window was only a metre and a half off the ground on the inside, it was over two metres up on the outside. Below it was a floral border with some softer, fall-breaking plants and some decidedly sharp and jaggy-looking rose bushes.
The window was small and there was no ledge, so Niffy knew she was going to have to dive out head first.
‘Big fluffy bum,’ she muttered, trying to tell herself that at least the earth looked as if it had been freshly dug. Nif knew from long experience of various daring physical scrapes that it was best not to think about the risks too long. Best just to take a deep breath, hope for a happy ending and get on with it.
So, using her hands to launch herself through the window, she scraped and wriggled out, then fell much faster than she’d intended.
Hands out in front to save herself, she headed for the ground, landing in a clumsy somersault which left her in a heap, momentarily dizzy and winded.
As she lay with her head in the soil, she registered that nothing felt worse than bruised and pricked: she seemed to have got away with it. Picking herself up slowly, she brushed the earth, leaves and prickles from her uniform and prepared to leave the scene of the crime as quickly as possible.
Suddenly Niffy heard voices approaching, but before she had time to register whose voices and where they could be coming from, Mrs Bannerman and Mrs Henderson walked briskly round the corner, leading a posse of governors on an inspection of the grounds.
‘Luella Nairn-Bassett,’ Mrs Bannerman shot out without hesitation. She prided herself on knowing the full name, age and details of every one of her 443 pupils. ‘What on earth are you doing?’
Niffy smiled, looked quickly around the herbaceous border for inspiration and decided on: ‘I’m collecting larvae for biology, Mrs Bannerman . . . I thought the best place to try would be the rose bushes.’
Mrs Bannerman stared hard at Niffy. Niffy suspected that Mrs Bannerman’s knowledge of the school timetable was so intimate that she would tell her firmly: But Year Four does not have a biology slot at 2 p.m. on Wednesdays; you, Luella Nairn-Bassett, are supposed to be with Madame Bensimon studying French.
Mrs Bannerman stared a little longer, then said simply, ‘I see. Well, on your way, Luella.’
Niffy would have been deli
ghted to go on her way, but there was a slight problem. In the fall, one of her slip-ons seemed to have slipped off. Her eyes were scanning the ground, frantically trying to locate it.
‘Erm . . . I’m actually just waiting for someone else to come round with . . . erm . . . a container. I was supposed to look for the larvae and they’re bringing a jar to scrape them into,’ Niffy managed.
Mrs Bannerman gave an irritated sigh. Her suspicions were aroused now, but she didn’t want the governors to listen to any more of this.
‘I see,’ she repeated huffily. ‘Well, I look forward to hearing more about this unusual experiment from Mrs MacDuff.’
And with that, she continued on her way, sweeping the governors and Mrs Henderson along with her. Although one of the governors turned to look back at her suspiciously, Niffy dropped to a squat and began hunting for her shoe in earnest.
After a thorough search of the soil, the rose bushes, the entire border and even the surrounding path, Niffy was forced to admit that there was only one obvious place the ballet pump and its incriminating name label could be: on the floor of Banshee Bannerman’s records office.
Chapter Nineteen
ON FRIDAYS, AMY stayed on for an extra hour at school because of Art Club, so she was walking back to the boarding house on her own. Not that this bothered her. It was a warm, sunny afternoon and she was strolling down the path between the high hedge and the tennis courts.
It was slightly surprising to hear a whistle coming from the bushes. Amy carried on walking at a quickened pace. Now she could hear rustling, as if someone was about to burst through the bushes, so she speeded up to a jog, but was stopped in her tracks by the male voice that called out after her.
‘Amy! I’ve been sitting here all afternoon looking for you.’
She swivelled on her heel and there, just five metres or so away from her, dressed in a scruffy version of the St Lennox uniform, was Jason.
‘Jason? What are you doing here?’ she gasped. Yet again, he’d managed to take her completely by surprise. She’d not heard from him for fifteen days. In that time, she’d sent him four emails and a postcard. Then, when Gina had confided to her yesterday about Mel, her toes had curled, her cheeks had burned and she’d wished she’d never set eyes on him. Ever.
