The Girl Who Wasn't There

by Karen McCombie

  “Sunlight hitting the window … or maybe the reflection of a cloud, or a plane?” Dad suggests.

  “Maybe,” I agree, feeling calm and common sense creeping over me, banishing the freak-out.

  “Or maybe not,” says Clem from the doorway. “It’s probably the ghost of the old guy who lived here, wandering the corridors.”

  “Clem, honey – that’s not helping!” Dad chides her gently.

  “Hey, it’s not MY fault we’ve come to live in some haunted dump,” she grumbles, turning away and disappearing into her room with a thwack of the door.

  “She’ll get used it,” Dad says to me with a hopeful smile.

  Or we’ll just have to get used to her moaning about this place 24-7, I think to myself.

  “So, are we all good?” Dad asks, jokily bumping me with his elbow.

  “We’re all good,” I say with a grin, bumping him right back.

  I’m always all good with whatever Dad says and does. It’s like Mum wrote in her notebook (which I picked up off the floor and tucked under my pillow): he’s worth listening to, ’cause he always has our best interests at heart. So if Dad says there’re no spooks lurking in Nightingale School, then there’re no spooks lurking in Nightingale School.

  Anyway, I know for sure it wasn’t some old bloke ghost like Clem is trying to get me to believe.

  That trick of the light or reflection of a cloud or a plane or whatever; it looked more like a woman. Or a girl…

  “Fancy an explore, then?”

  Dad suddenly holds up a bunch of keys so huge it’s a joke. There must be forty, fifty of them.

  “Come on … let’s do it!” he says with a wide grin.

  I’m up for it.

  Clem isn’t.

  “Uh-uh. I’m staying here,” she says, arms folded across her chest, when Dad tries to entice her out of her room.

  “Come on, my little Clementine. Don’t you want to investigate your new home?” Dad asks her, jangling the keys in front of her face.

  “Dad, out there is the school. That is not my home. This dump is my new home. I know it has three bedrooms, a bathroom from the Dark Ages, a weird smell – ’cause some old person died in here – and generally sucks. That’s as much as I need to know.”

  “Honey, no one died here,” says Dad, sounding like me earlier. “Anyway, aren’t you the tiniest bit curious to know more about the school and the grounds?”

  “Not even that much,” Clem replies, squidging her finger and thumb tightly together.

  “But what about when Bea and your other friends ask you about the place?”

  “Dad, no one except you – and Maisie – are remotely interested in the fact that we’ve moved here.”

  I’m not totally sure about that. I have a memory of Clem’s mates Bea, Marcus and Alima huddled round the computer, checking out the street view of the cottage on Google Maps. Dad was pointing out the front garden and front door through the railings, and telling them that as well as a back garden and back door, we also had a side door that opened out directly on to the playground. The whole time, Clem had stood apart, clutching her mug of coffee so her knuckles went white, quietly seething at her friends’ enthusiasm.

  “Well, I’m not taking no for an answer,” Dad says cheerily now, steamrollering over my sister’s flat refusals. “Come on my guided tour just this once, Clem, and I promise you I’ll never expect you to step a toe on to school property again!”

  Clem sighs.

  Clem rolls her eyes.

  Clem mutters something under her breath that I suspect might be a swear word.

  Dad pulls a puppy-dog face at her, his hands up in begging mode.

  It works; Clem gives in and grudgingly follows us out of the side door for a mooch around the grounds.

  “It’s beautiful!” I gasp, gazing at the vast lawn of the bottom playground. I’d peeked at it out of Dad’s bedroom, noticed it beyond our tangled back garden and tatty, pointy-roofed summerhouse. But close up it’s so lovely, the sheet of green dotted with pink-petalled bundles dropped from the cherry blossom trees.

  “It’s going to take a lot of cutting,” says Dad, eyeing up the sea of grass where girls like me must spend their lunchtimes lounging.

  (The thought of starting school on Monday makes that knot in my tummy go squidge all over again.)

  Clem keeps her eyes firmly averted from the view, her fingers flying over her mobile as she texts her grievances to Bea or one of the others.

  She’s barely aware of us moving on.

  “It looks new!” I say in surprise as we wander into the top playground and see a purpose-built multi-sports court.

  “Just because Nightingale School is a-hundred-and-something years old, it doesn’t mean the place is full of out-of-date equipment!” Dad laughs. “Wait till you see the ICT Suite…”

  The school I used to go to was only as old as the housing estate we lived on. The classrooms were big and bright; the playground was small and crowded.

  Nightingale is like a different world.

  “Welcome to your new home-from-home,” Dad says, leading the way over to a dark blue door at the side of the building, jangling his keys at me.

  “It’s not MY home-from-home,” mumbles Clem, diverting away from us, arms crossed, heading back towards the cottage. “Have fun!”

  With a sarky wiggle of her fingers, she’s gone.

  Which is a relief, actually. When she’s in one of her moods (which is most of the time), having Clem around can be as much fun as swimming in cement.

  Stepping alone into the cool cream corridor with Dad, I’m instantly lighter, allowed to be excited without my sister’s scorn spoiling things.

  Straightaway, Dad has something to show me.

  “Here’s my office,” he says, unlocking a door that leads to a small, functional room.

  “Great!” I say, though there’s not much to see. “So, do I have to call you this now?”

  I’m smiling as I point at a sign on the door he’s relocking. It reads Site Manager in a large, bold font, with Mr J. Butterfield underneath it.

  Butterfield.

  I like that name. It sounds nicely old-fashioned or slightly funny or even vaguely familiar, somehow.

  “My predecessor,” says Dad, talking, of course, about the previous owner of our cottage. “I’ll ask the ladies in the school office to have it updated on Monday.”

  I wish that tummy knot would stop squidging whenever I’m reminded of my looming first morning at school. I just want to enjoy the newness of all this, not feel flurries of fear.

  I think Dad spots the muddle I’m in.

  “Hey, you can be who you want to be here, honey,” Dad says, giving my shoulders a squeeze. “You can reinvent yourself, or just get back to being the old Maisie Mills!”

  The old Maisie Mills … that sounds good. Till a couple of terms ago, the old Maisie Mills was all anyone knew at school.

  The old Maisie Mills was carefree and fun, someone pretty well-liked by everyone, especially the teachers, especially her for ever best friends, Lilah and Jasneet. The old Maisie Mills smiled a lot, chatted a lot, laughed a lot.

  And then everything changed.

  The new Maisie Mills was hurt and angry most of the time, unless she was safe at home with Dad. The new Maisie Mills confused people – especially the teachers – by crying in class, in the playground, in the loos. The new Maisie Mills was mostly silent, since no one believed her any more. The new Maisie Mills had nothing to smile or laugh about…

  I give myself a sudden shake – I’m getting all pretentious and dramatic again.

  “You can properly close the door on all of the stuff that went on, honey,” Dad says, reading my mind again, as we begin to open door after door to classrooms covered in projects made by girls I don’t know yet, girls who might be my
new best friends, better than the old best friends by a mile.

  “I love it! I love it all!” I tell Dad, as we head up the grand, sweeping staircase, with its Art Nouveau flowered wall tiles and a thick wooden banister that’s worn to a deep, dull shine with more than a century’s worth of girls’ hands gliding up and down it.

  “And you haven’t seen the best bit yet,” says Dad, beaming at me, happy to see me so happy.

  We’re on the first floor, outside a door that’s got the most beautiful patterned frosted-glass panel. The white swirls and leaves are echoed in the windows that stretch along the corridor, screening whatever’s inside.

  “What’s this, then?” I ask, as Dad turns a key in a chunky brass lock and grasps the matching doorknob.

  “The art room,” he replies. “But the word ‘room’ doesn’t really do it justice!”

  He’s right – we step into a huge space, almost the size of the gym at my old school. It’s like being in a gallery: paintings, drawings, collages cover every inch of wall, jostling for my attention. Pots, sculptures, modelling projects teeter on tables and cupboard surfaces. Some kind of suspended junk sculpture – maybe you’d call it an installation? – made out of old drinks bottles and CDs twirls gently from the hook and rope it’s dangling from.

  “Brilliant, isn’t it?” Dad says, sounding as if he’s an estate agent proudly showing off his prize property.

  “Uh-huh,” I murmur, trying to take it all in. It’s about a million times better than the art rooms in my old school. My teacher, Miss Stephens, would just flip through a few images of Mondrian or whoever and tells us to copy the style. Here, it looks like a wonderland of possibilities.

  Please let that go for everything about this school…

  “Hey, you know something, Maisie? I’ll bet this is what you saw from your bedroom window!” says Dad, pointing to the junk sculpture.

  Of course.

  Of course we’re in the room with the three long windows. I hurry over to look out of one of them – the one I thought I saw the face in – and gaze across the roof terrace just outside, across the playground to our cottage. My bedroom window is like an eye peeking up at me (the other “eye” belongs to Clem’s room; I can see her now, angrily trying to put up curtains).

  “Of course,” I say out loud, turning and letting my fingers linger over the plastic bottles and shiny CDs that I’d mistaken for a ghost.

  “Oops – better get back,” says Dad, checking his watch. “I need to get the computer set up so we can make contact with the outside world!”

  I smile a secret smile as I go to follow him out.

  By outside world, I know he’s really talking about Donna. They email and Facebook each other every day, and she’ll be dying to hear how the move went.

  Hey, maybe Dad will invite Donna to come see the place? And give me and Clem the chance to finally meet her? Surely after all these months of dating, Dad can relax enough to introduce us to each other? It’s not as if either me or Clem will give her a hard time. We both know Mum’s thoughts on Dad having a “new relationship”, thanks to what she wrote in the notebo—

  The rustle and clunk makes me spin around, just as I reach the open doorway.

  It’s the plastic bottle and CD installation, dancing around like it’s doing the salsa in some sudden breeze that’s blown in.

  “Dad, I think one of the windows must be open,” I tell him.

  Then a chill settles over me, as I spot all of the windows firmly shut and locked.

  “Hmm?” says Dad distractedly, checking his phone for Donna-texts.

  “Nothing,” I mutter, desperate to get outside to the air and the sunshine of the playground…

  “What? Seen your ghost again?” asks Clem, wandering into the bathroom and frowning at me.

  She’s not looking like my super-sleek sis right now; she’s in her first-thing-in-the-morning disguise of Fuzzy Grouch Monster. She might be addicted to high-street fashion and hair straighteners for vast chunks of the day, but pre-breakfast she’s this sour-faced blur with hair like knitting gone wrong and a dressing gown that’s so faded it’s hard to guess what colour the dots on it started out as (it used to be Mum’s).

  “What?” I ask, blinking at her as I come out of my fug of panicky thoughts.

  There is no ghost. There’s only some dumb art project that I must have brushed by on Saturday as I went to follow Dad out of the art room. And when I brushed past it, it rattled, which rattled me.

  What’s really real, though, is that it’s Monday, it’s 8.25 a.m., and – unlike my sister with her almost part-time sixth-form timetable – I have to be in school in five minutes. My new school. With new people. Who I don’t know and who don’t know me. I won’t know where my classrooms are and I won’t know who to ask to show me.

  “I’m talking about your face, Maisie – it’s as if you’ve seen a ghost. It’s like this!” Clem says, then does something with her own face that makes it look like a zombie who’s just seen a horror movie.

  “No, it’s not!” I snap back, then get up from my perch on the edge of the bath where I’ve been sitting as I brush my teeth.

  Gazing at myself in the mirror above the sink, I realize I do look pale, as if my skin hasn’t seen sunshine for a very long time, or like a vampire sucked my blood in the night. And I guess there is a hint of complete and total panic about my eyes.

  “Look, I know you’re nervous about today, Maisie, and yeah, it’ll be weird for the first hour or whatever,” says Clem, twisting the shower knob on. “But you’ve just got to get on with it and get over yourself.”

  So that’s Clem’s kind, thoughtful advice as I head out to my first day at Nightingale School? Gee, thanks.

  It makes me think of one of Mum’s notebook instructions: Look out for each other, all three of you.

  I mean, if telling me to get over myself is an example of Clem looking out for me, then I’m doomed…

  “Well?”

  “Well, what?” I say, turning away from the mirror image of the scared girl in her new school uniform.

  “Well, can I have some space, please?” says Clem, shooing me out of the bathroom.

  I turn to go, and only realize I’m still holding my toothbrush once the door slams shut behind me and the bolt clunks to lock it.

  It’s all right for Clem, I grump to myself as I pad downstairs. She has most of the same friends now in sixth form as she had in nursery. She’s never had to change schools. She’s never had the experience of being shunned by her best mates, and treated like she’s a little bit worse than toxic by everyone in her class…

  I grab my bag, take a deep breath and get ready for my walk to school, which will take all my tattered courage and exactly seventy-six steps door to door (I did a trial run yesterday, in the still of Sunday morning).

  Here we go… I open the side door that leads directly into the packed playground, where I see girls streaming through the big main gates, laughing, chatting, arms linked. There are so, so many of them, but I guess it’s the same as my last school: eight form classes in each year group.

  Maybe it’s just an optical illusion; the playground seems packed because there’re no boys to break up the sea of navy-dressed girls.

  Will it be strange being at a school with no boys, I wonder?

  The positive side to it is the maths: eight classes times thirty-girls-to-a-class equals two hundred and forty students in my year. Out of those two hundred and forty, surely I’ll find one friend at least?

  But right this second it’s hard to be positive and think of potential friend equations, ’cause my first-day panic is rising like the temperature in a toaster and I feel like something inside is about to pop.

  “Walk,” I whisper an order to myself.

  Five steps: my heart is beating so frantically it’s as if there’s a ticking time bomb in my ribcage
.

  Ten steps: I try to remind myself how I felt on Saturday morning when we unlocked the creaking front door to our new home. The giddy feeling of freedom from my old life, thanks to this shiny new start…

  Fifteen steps: I give up on recapturing the giddy feeling and just try not to throw up with nerves.

  “Hey, you’re looking great!” Dad calls out to me, making a few nearby girls turn their heads to see who the new site manager is talking to. I can tell from their gazes that they don’t share his opinion. A pale-faced, scared girl in a slightly-too-big blazer does not look great. Except to her dad, I guess.

  “Don’t know about that,” I reply, trying to conjure up a half-convincing smile for him.

  “So, are we all good?” he asks, his blue eyes staring into my brown ones, willing me to be OK.

  I look at him in his khaki workshirt and jeans, a stray traffic cone under his arm, left over from the line he’s just set up outside the school gates to dissuade cars from dropping off students where they shouldn’t.

  If I wasn’t feeling sick, I’d probably make a joke about the traffic cone being his new hat, and if he wasn’t busy on his first day, he’d probably put it on, at a jaunty angle.

  “Mm-hm,” I mumble, not able to answer him in a whole sentence, since my fake smile is about to go wobbly. And even if I’m normally good with what Dad says, there’s always an exception to a rule, isn’t there?

  “It won’t be as bad as you think, Maisie. I bet you’ll come out buzzing at the end of the day, and have a bunch of new friends straightaway!”

  “Mm-hm,” I mumble again, then turn to go, aiming myself towards the stern double doors of the main entrance, feeling less like plain Maisie Mills and more like I’m Mary, Queen of Scots, heading for the looming executioner and the chopping block.

  Though I’m actually heading for the school office, which I know – thanks to Saturday’s guided tour of the empty building – is just inside the open doors, to the right.

  “Yes?” says a white-haired woman on the other side of the varnished dark wood counter.

  It’s the sort of moment where you don’t know whether your voice will work and whether you’ll remember your own name.