by Carmen Reid
Now that Gina had his familiar arms round her waist, his face against hers, his eyes looking into hers, she remembered with a tingle of excitement how much she really, really liked him.
‘Hey, you,’ she said, before moving her mouth towards him. His lips brushed against hers.
Then they were kissing, properly: her eyes shut, concentrating on nothing but the connection, the very close and tight connection between them. He tasted of the coffees he’d gulped down this morning: warm and a little earthy. Funny how when they’d started the kiss they’d almost seemed a little out of practice. Their noses had bumped together.
But now, as their lips touched and their tongues moved around, it seemed practised and delicious and perfect.
Once she started kissing Dermot, Gina never felt as if she wanted to stop. Ever. He pulled her in tightly, moving his hands up her back.
‘Missed you . . . missed you a lot,’ he said when they finally broke off.
‘I can’t just see you at the café,’ she complained.
‘Shhhhh . . .’ Dermot moved his face towards her to kiss again. But then they could both hear footsteps coming up the staircase.
The footsteps paused in the hallway and a voice called over: ‘Hey, Dermot, is that you?’
Dermot looked down, over Gina’s shoulder, and saw the questioning grin of one of his school friends.
‘Callum!’ he called out. ‘How’s it going?’
At this, Gina turned. She saw a boy of about Dermot’s age, seventeen, in jeans and a black leather jacket. His hair was jet black and casually spiky and he had a strikingly handsome, smooth-skinned face.
‘You’ve got to be Gina,’ he said with a little sideways smile and a raised eyebrow. ‘I’ve heard a lot about you.’
‘Yeah . . .’ Gina said, feeling a little unprepared. Although she really wanted to meet some of Dermot’s friends, he hadn’t said anything about this happening today.
‘Gina, this is Callum Cormack, he’s in the same year as me. In fact, he’s doing all the same classes as me . . . in fact, I would even go so far as to call him a friend,’ Dermot laughed. He came down off the stairs and smacked Callum on the back. Then he pulled open the café door and suggested they all go back in.
‘Are you sure?’ Callum asked. ‘I feel as if I’ve interrupted something a little juicy.’
‘No, c’mon in with us,’ Dermot insisted.
‘Very, very nice to finally meet you,’ Callum said to Gina and held out his hand for her to shake.
As she took it and said ‘hi’, she felt as if she was being scrutinized just a little too closely.
Callum followed her and Dermot over to the table where Rosie and Amy were deep in conversation. Once Callum had been introduced, he pulled up a chair, and after Dermot had sorted his friend out with a coffee, a busy half an hour or so passed.
Amy and Gina asked Callum all sorts of embarrassing and revealing questions about Dermot. Dermot, who now had to wait tables, kept flitting in and out of the conversation, his ears burning.
‘My favourite book is not Winnie the Pooh! What on earth are you telling them? No, I do not like High School Musical! Shut up!!’ was one of Dermot’s interruptions. ‘And anyway, what about you? You had an emo phase last term. You even wore eyeliner.’
‘Did not!’ Callum pretended to be outraged.
The girls found the teasing going on between the two boys very funny.
‘Do you want to know something very, very interesting about Dermot?’ Callum turned to Gina and asked.
‘Yeah,’ she answered, still giggling.
He gestured for her to move much closer . . . closer still. When he cupped his hand over his mouth, she understood that Callum wanted to whisper in her ear. So she leaned the side of her head towards his face.
‘Dermot . . .’ Callum began in a whisper.
Suddenly Gina felt a little too aware of how close Callum was. She could smell the clean, soapy waft of boy toiletries coming from him.
She looked at his hair, slightly damp with gel, and the smooth skin on the stretch of cheek beside his ear.
‘Dermot . . .’ Callum repeated, ‘has boxer shorts with the Simpsons on them.’
‘And socks,’ Gina said. She didn’t know if either of these things was true, but she didn’t want Callum to feel that he knew Dermot oh-so-much better than she did.
‘Sorry to break up the party, but we really have to go,’ Amy announced. She tapped at her dainty watch. ‘It’s nearly twelve thirty. We have to be back to the boarding house for lunch and then there’s no going out again until next Saturday!’ she added gloomily.
‘Is it boarding school you go to, or is it prison?’ Callum asked.
‘We’d probably have more fun in prison,’ Amy replied.
As soon as the girls had said their goodbyes and were out of the café, they all wanted to gossip about Dermot’s friend.
‘He was very funny,’ Rosie spoke first.
‘And cute,’ Amy pointed out.
‘Yeah,’ Gina added, ‘so if anyone happens to be interested, I could ask Dermot to bring him along the next time we go to the café,’ she suggested.
‘You want to watch yourself there, Gina,’ Amy chipped in. ‘As far as I could see, the only person Callum really seemed to be interested in was . . . you.’
Chapter Eight
BY THE TIME Gina, Amy and Rosie were at the bottom of Bute Gardens, it was three minutes to one and the lunch bell.
‘We have to run!’ Rosie urged the other two, because being late was awkward. Being even a few minutes late meant all sorts of disapproving looks from the Neb and filling in special forms and having a little red mark placed against your name, and if you earned two of them, you lost one evening pass. And so on.
‘Run!’ Rosie urged her friends again.
Amy and Gina upped their speed to a sort of enthusiastic jog, because they were both wearing tight, heeled boots.
As they approached the boarding house, Niffy’s head appeared from an upper window and she shouted out a countdown: ‘Fifty-nine seconds till the bell . . . fifty-six, fifty-five, fifty-four . . .’
This gave the three joggers the encouragement needed to speed them up and send them hurtling into the front door with just thirteen seconds to spare.
As they went panting into the sitting room to sign in, they saw that Mrs Knebworth was not there.
Usually at crucial signing-in moments, the Neb loved to lord it over the signing-in sheets, her watch raised up to her face, noting the exact lateness of everyone who came in after the curfew.
‘Hello . . . just in time,’ Miss McKinnon said pleasantly. She was sitting on the sofa with a newspaper in her hands. ‘Have you had a nice morning?’
‘Yes,’ Amy answered, sounding almost surprised at this burst of niceness. Then the siren went off, alerting everyone to Saturday lunch and making any further conversation impossible.
As soon as Niffy caught sight of her friends, she broke the news that everyone else who had been in the boarding house that morning was bursting to discuss.
‘Have you heard?!’ Niffy hissed, as everyone scraped chairs and took their places at the dining tables.
‘What?’ Amy asked.
‘The Neb has gone out . . .’
‘On a Saturday?’ Gina broke in. This was big enough news in itself.
The Neb was such an in-built part of the boarding house it was hard to imagine the building even existing without her. She obviously had to leave the house during term time, but it never, ever seemed to be when the girls were actually there.
‘Not only that’ – Niffy paused and let a grin break out across her face. This news was just too good to be true, she was going to relish every moment of sharing the information – ‘but she was picked up in . . . a blue Jaguar . . . by . . .’ She paused, loving the way that every face was hanging on her every word, ‘. . . a man!’
Before anyone could spoil the gossip, Niffy quickly added, ‘And don’t worry, I have perso
nally interviewed every single girl who saw this man and no, he was not young enough to be her nephew or her daughter’s boyfriend or anything like that. He looked a bit older than the Neb, apparently, and they were both very pleased to see each other.’
‘Did they kiss?’ Amy wanted to know straight away, although she was pulling a face at the thought of anyone wanting voluntarily to kiss the Neb.
‘Haven’t been able to establish that,’ Niffy said. ‘Reports are mixed. Some claim there was a cheek-on-cheek moment, some say a brief hug. But there was definitely enthusiastic physical contact of some kind.’
‘Gross!’ was Gina’s verdict on this.
‘So is that why your head was poking out of Rosie’s dorm window?’ Amy now understood.
‘Totally,’ Niffy confirmed, scooping a big forkful of beans and sausage into her mouth.
‘You wanted to see for yourself?’ Amy asked.
‘Yup. Soon as I’ve finished here, I’m going back to my post. Unfortunately I can’t stay after two thirty this afternoon, so I was hoping you would volunteer.’
‘What’s happening after two thirty?’ Gina wanted to know.
‘I’m going off to my hockey training.’
‘Thought you were gated,’ Min chipped in.
‘Yeah, well, but apparently you can still attend official school business while gated.’
‘Thought hockey training didn’t start till four?’ Amy asked next.
‘Shhhhhh,’ Niffy warned her; she didn’t want this to be widely known. ‘Miss McKinnon doesn’t know that though, does she?’
Amy looked up at her friend in surprise. ‘So what are you planning to do out there on the streets of Edinburgh for ninety minutes in your school uniform with your hockey kit on your back?’
Niffy just tapped the side of her long nose. ‘Mind your own beeswax,’ she replied.
‘I will not!’ Amy said angrily.
‘I have an appointment. It’s nothing dodgy, it’s perfectly normal and fine but I just want it to be a surprise. That’s all.’
It didn’t matter how many wheedling questions Amy, Gina or Min asked after that, Niffy refused to tell them anything more. She said that when she got home from hockey, everything would be revealed. Once they’d finished lunch, however, she did persuade them all to come up to Rosie’s dorm, along with Rosie, to do a Mrs Knebworth watch.
‘Miss McKinnon said she expected her back some time after lunch,’ Niffy told them, her face pressed right up against the window.
‘Maybe they went out for lunch,’ Gina suggested. She was perched on the end of Rosie’s bed, along with Min. Neither of them was half as interested in seeing Mrs Knebworth’s lunch-date as Niffy, Rosie and Amy were.
Amy had pulled a chair up to the window so she could chat and be comfortable without losing sight of the driveway for a moment.
‘So the car pulled right in to the drive down there?’ she just wanted to establish.
Niffy nodded; she was concentrating intensely on the street leading up to the boarding house.
‘Blue car approaching!’ she called out. ‘Action stations!’
Now Gina and Min couldn’t resist coming to the window as well.
‘Pull back!’ Niffy warned them. ‘They’re not going to do anything interesting if there’s a crowd.’
Everyone stood about a metre back from the window. Fortunately it was a wide Victorian bay window with plenty of room for everyone to still get a look.
The blue Jaguar indicated and turned into the driveway.
‘It’s them!’ Niffy hissed. ‘It’s got to be.’
The car drew smoothly to a stop. For a moment or so nothing happened.
‘If they’re kissing, they’re kissing in the car,’ Amy decided.
‘No . . . no . . . wait . . . what have we here?’ Niffy asked.
The driver’s door opened and a man in a suit and tie stepped out. He walked round the bonnet and then went to open the passenger’s door.
‘Oh! He’s opening the door for her! That is so sweet,’ Gina couldn’t help adding.
‘She’s stepping out . . .’ Rosie said in a whisper. ‘He’s offering her his arm . . . they are walking towards the steps.’
All craned their necks so they could look down. The steps were beneath them and had a very inconvenient roof.
‘Was that . . .?’
‘Did he . . .?’
‘Awwwww . . .’
‘I think . . .’
Not one of the five had been able to get a clear view of what had happened. The heads had seemed to turn towards each other and pull a little closer, but because of the little roof above the staircase, it had been impossible to tell what had happened next.
The pair could have kissed or they could just have turned to smile at each other. Mrs Knebworth could have been involved in full-on mouth-on-mouth action! But the girls were never going to know.
‘OK, next time she goes out with him, we have to make friends with the Lower Fives in Poppy dorm. They have a bay window with a side view. Mrs K’s snogathon will not escape us from there,’ Amy said.
‘Why don’t we go down to the little kitchen and make tea? Maybe she’ll want a cup after all that kissing . . .’
‘Eeeeeuwwww,’ Gina squeaked.
‘Maybe we can find out more!’
Chapter Nine
‘YOU KNOW, IF Mrs Knebworth wants to date someone, it’s kinda interesting but it’s not soooo interesting that I need to sneak downstairs and start spying on her,’ Gina told her friends with a shrug of her shoulders.
‘I agree,’ said Min.
‘But you two don’t really understand,’ Amy protested. ‘We’ve known the Neb since we were eleven years old and she’s never even left the boarding house at the weekend before, except to go to church. This is completely bizarre.’
‘Whatever.’ Gina gave another shrug. ‘I need to try and call my mom . . . I still haven’t heard from her. I thought she would have called by now . . .’ Just the slightest flicker of worry travelled across her face as she said these words.
‘The big deal?’ Amy remembered.
‘Yeah. I thought they were going to hear on Friday, but there’s been no word.’
‘Maybe they’re celebrating?’ Amy wondered.
‘You and Niffy can go down and wind Mrs Knebworth up if you like, but I’m going back to the study,’ Min declared.
‘Suit yourself,’ Niffy replied. ‘C’mon, Amy . . . you go ahead, there’s just something I need to fetch first. To make sure I can still get out at two thirty . . .’
‘Huh?’ Amy asked, but Niffy was already heading out of the door.
When Niffy arrived at the little kitchenette beside the dining room, where girls were allowed to make tea and toast in between meals, Amy was already there waiting for the kettle to come to the boil.
‘Is she about?’ Niffy whispered to Amy.
‘In her sitting room,’ Amy murmured back.
Niffy stepped out into the hallway and listened.
The door to Mrs Knebworth’s sitting room was shut, but she could hear voices. Miss McKinnon must be in there with the Neb.
‘Anyone like a cup of tea?’ she called out cheerily in the direction of the closed sitting-room door.
The voices stopped for a moment.
Then Miss McKinnon replied, ‘Yes, that would be very kind. Two white teas, one with a sugar.’
‘Coming right up,’ Niffy replied.
‘Quick,’ she hissed at Amy as she came back into the kitchenette, ‘you make the tea. I’ll add the surprise.’
‘What?!’ Amy asked, as Niffy pulled a packet out of her trouser pocket.
‘Wait and see,’ came Niffy’s instruction.
Amy poured boiling water onto teabags in the two mugs she’d prepared, stirred in milk, then fished the bags out and flicked them into the swing top bin.
Meanwhile, Niffy emptied most of the contents of the sugar bowl into a mug and sprinkled the white powder from her sachet over the
rest.
‘You’re not going to poison the Neb, are you?’ Amy asked cautiously. ‘Not even a bit.’
‘No!’ Niffy protested. ‘This is just for fun.’
She shot Amy a wink.
As Niffy tried to put the empty powder sachet in the bin, Amy managed to snatch it out of her hands.
‘Aha,’ she said, reading the instructions before Niffy could snatch it back. ‘I saw the boots you were playing in yesterday afternoon,’ she added.
‘What?’ Niffy looked confused now.
‘You were playing hockey in your old boots yesterday. Not shiny new ones. This packet comes from the box in your locker, doesn’t it? You’ve got plans, haven’t you?’
‘She gated me for three whole weekends,’ Niffy said. ‘She has to expect a little bit of rebellion in return.’
‘What else is in that box?’ Amy wanted to know. ‘I hope you’ve got something much more exciting than trick sugar.’
‘Shhhhh!’ Niffy instructed, and picked the mugs up with one hand and the sugar bowl with the other.
‘Niff, how are you going to get out at two thirty now that the Neb’s back? She’ll know there’s no hockey till four.’
‘Shhhhh!’ Niffy repeated.
She walked over to Mrs Knebworth’s sitting-room door and pushed it open with her shoulder.
The Neb was sitting in one of the armchairs and Miss McKinnon was perched on the edge of the sofa beside her, as if she didn’t intend to stay in the room for long.
‘Hello, Mrs K,’ Niffy said with a smile. ‘It’s so unusual to see you going out in the middle of the day.’
‘Oh! Well, just lunch . . . lunch with an old friend. Relative, really. No, I suppose a friend . . .’
She seemed a little flustered. She lifted her glasses away from her face and rubbed at her eyes before she settled the specs back in place.
‘Here we go.’ Niffy handed Miss McKinnon her mug of tea, then gave Mrs Knebworth hers.
Niffy held out the sugar bowl to the housemistress, who loaded up her teaspoon and sprinkled sugar over the hot liquid.
Amy, standing watching at the doorway, held her breath.
As soon as the powder hit the steaming tea, it began to fizz, froth and bubble. Foam began to rise up in the mug, then gush down the sides. Boiling hot, foamy tea was dripping all over Mrs Knebworth’s skirt before she had time to react.
