by Carmen Reid
‘What was that?’ Zarah said, sitting up straight and closing her magazine.
‘A door,’ Min replied. ‘I definitely heard a door shut.’
‘Down on the ground floor?’ Clare asked.
All three were thinking exactly the same thing: Was this another school girl, wandering about at night? Or was it the Neb?
‘Which direction?’ Zarah began, but Min just hissed, ‘Shhhhh.’
Now they all listened, straining their ears. It began softly at first, but then grew clearer and louder. Footsteps, slow but steady footsteps, were moving down the corridor towards the sitting room.
‘Hit the lights,’ Clare hissed. Min jumped up to the side light beside the piano and clicked the switch.
Now the three girls were in darkness listening to the clump, clump, clump as it came down the corridor towards them.
‘It’s the Neb,’ Zarah said in a terrified whisper. ‘We’re toast.’
‘Hide,’ Clare whispered, so quietly it was almost under her breath.
Min crouched down behind the arm of the sofa, Zarah moved behind a curtain and Clare got up from her armchair and shrank down behind it.
Clump, clump, clump . . . The footsteps kept on coming.
Min pulled herself into a tiny ball.
When the footsteps were right up outside the door, they paused. All three girls inside the sitting room held their breaths.
The door began to creak slowly open. Min scrunched her eyes shut, held her breath and did not move one single muscle.
There was silence. Whoever had opened the door was standing there, holding it open, peering into the dark room and trying to decide what to do next.
It was Niffy! Min told herself. Niffy in her hair trauma couldn’t sleep and had decided to come downstairs. Niffy was standing at the door trying to decide whether to risk turning on the light or not.
Well, if it wasn’t Niffy, it was bound to be someone else from the Upper Fifth. Who else would come into the Upper Fifth sitting room and be standing there anxiously wondering whether or not to switch on the light?
Min decided to risk opening her eyes, just to see if she could get a glimpse of anything useful.
Just then, Zarah, behind the curtain, let out a squeaky, stifled, but unmistakable sneeze.
The overhead light clicked on and Mrs Knebworth demanded in an icy voice, ‘Just who is hiding in this room? You had better come out right this very instant and face the music.’
Chapter Twenty
FOR A MOMENT, there was absolute silence in the room. No one moved a muscle. No one even blinked.
‘Who is behind the curtain?’ Mrs Knebworth boomed, her voice loud enough to wake the entire boarding house.
The curtain moved and Zarah shuffled forward, her head bowed guiltily.
‘Zarah!’ Mrs Knebworth exclaimed.
As soon as Min and Clare realized Zarah had been caught, they got up too, not wanting Zarah to feel the full force of a furious Mrs Knebworth all on her own.
‘Clare and Asimina!’ Mrs Knebworth added in an outraged voice. ‘What on earth are you all doing in here?’
She came into the sitting room, closed the door behind her and to their surprise began a thorough search of the room.
‘Is there anyone else in here?’ she demanded, as she looked behind armchairs, behind the other curtains and in any other place she could think of. ‘Has anyone else been in here?’ came her second question.
‘No,’ the girls answered, looking at her in bewilderment.
‘No boys then?’ she asked. She had stopped hunting; obviously satisfied that no one else was stowed away in the room.
‘No!’ Clare said, almost laughing at the idea.
‘Well, this isn’t the first time I’ve come across a night-time gathering and more often than not boys are involved.’
She said the word ‘boys’ with the deepest disapproval: the way some people might say the word ‘criminals’.
‘So what are the three of you doing here, out of your beds at three thirty in the morning?’ she barked, tying the belt of her quilted pink dressing gown around her.
She looked totally strange to the three girls, because although she was wearing her thick, round glasses, the Neb was devoid of the pale Estée Lauder foundation and bright-pink lipstick which she wore every single day, not to mention the tweed suit and sensible pumps. Plus, her hair was clipped into a neat row of foam rollers.
‘We were doing a bit of homework . . .’ Min began.
‘Homework?’ the Neb repeated, her eyebrows shooting up towards the curlers.
Min pointed to the page with Clare’s scribbles, and to Zarah’s Jane Austen book.
‘Why are you gathered in the Upper Fifth sitting room at three thirty in the morning to do homework, may I ask?’
‘We couldn’t sleep,’ Clare explained.
Mrs Knebworth picked up the page of work on the maths equations, studied them for a moment and said, ‘No wonder.’
Then she did another surprising thing.
She walked over to the sofa, lowered herself slowly down into it, then with a sigh, she ordered the girls to: ‘Sit down.’
‘Are the three of you down here every night doing homework?’ Mrs Knebworth asked, once they’d settled into nearby chairs. No one dared sit on the sofa beside her.
‘No,’ Min replied. ‘Not every night.’
‘We’ve met up a few times, by accident really,’ Zarah added.
‘We’ve got insomnia . . . I think it’s the exams,’ Clare explained.
‘Oh dear.’ Mrs Knebworth gave another sigh.
Maybe because she wasn’t wearing her tweeds and her pussy-bow blouse or her fierce pink lipstick, Min couldn’t help thinking that Mrs Knebworth looked a little less harsh tonight; a little softer almost, a tiny bit fuzzy, out of focus even.
‘Insomnia . . . oh dear,’ the Neb repeated. ‘Well, I know all about that. OK, you put the kettle on, Zarah, and maybe we’ll all have a cup of tea together. I see you’ve got chamomile on the go, that’s good. Very soothing.’
The girls looked at each other. If Mrs Knebworth had suggested going out to a nightclub together instead of sitting down to a cup of tea, they might have been less surprised.
‘Tea?’ Zarah asked, just to make sure she’d heard that properly.
‘Yes, we’ll have a little chamomile tea. I’ll tell you everything I know about insomnia, then we’ll all head back to bed and try to get a bit more sleep before the day starts in earnest.’
Min and Zarah exchanged a glance.
Did this mean they weren’t in trouble? Really?! It was too surprising. There was nothing the Neb liked more than telling people they were in trouble.
The kettle went on and Zarah set out mugs and teabags as Mrs Knebworth began to talk.
‘I always used to sleep like a log. Very soundly. Enjoyed going to sleep, dreaming deeply and waking up refreshed in the morning. But when George was unwell . . . Do you know anything about George, girls?’ she interrupted herself to ask.
‘He was your husband,’ Clare replied.
Everyone in the boarding house knew that Mrs Knebworth was a widow, but not many girls knew much more about the story than that.
‘Yes,’ Mrs Knebworth answered. ‘For nineteen years. We have a daughter, she’s at university now. But poor old George, he got cancer and he died.’ She said this a little too matter-of-factly, as if she was trying to keep all the emotion of these words tightly under control.
‘I’m very sorry,’ Min said. ‘Was he ill for a long time?’
‘About a year, Asimina, which isn’t such a long time. But it felt like it . . . oh my goodness, it felt like a very, very long time, especially as my days were all about twenty-two hours long.’
Zarah handed Mrs K the mug of tea. The housemistress held it tightly in both hands as she talked on.
She told them a little about George’s final months, when she’d been rushing in and out of hospital with all the stress of trying
to carry on as normally as possible for her daughter.
‘I couldn’t sleep. You’d have thought I’d have been exhausted, with all the worrying, all the rushing around every day, but when I finally lay down in bed, I just stared up at the ceiling and sleep would not come. Hours would pass, and if I finally drifted off, I would wake up only a little bit later and it would be impossible to drop off again.’
Min nodded her understanding at this.
‘When George died, you’d have thought that maybe the sleep problem would have solved itself. The worst had happened – nothing more to worry about. But it got worse and worse. Finally, when I was so exhausted that I fell asleep at the wheel of the car one day and landed up in a ditch, I decided I had to get help.’
The girls were all listening to Mrs Knebworth with fascination now.
It was so strange to hear her speak about herself, and for her to be talking just like a normal person, instead of barking instructions and sharp disapprovals.
It occurred to Min that she had never given much thought to Mrs Knebworth’s life, not really. She’d never thought about where the Neb went when she wasn’t at the boarding house or what her life had been like before she came there. To be honest, Mrs Knebworth never seemed like a real person – more like a boarding-house fixture. Girls came and went, wallpaper changed, rooms were re-painted, but Mrs Knebworth stayed the same for ever.
‘I found out that you have to just relax in bed. If you can’t get to sleep, just rest and relax,’ Mrs Knebworth said, ‘and it’s very important not to worry about the insomnia. Never look at the time when you’re in bed awake. It never, ever helps. Pretend it’s the time you want it to be: two minutes after midnight with the whole night ahead or six thirty-five in the morning, not long until you get up.
‘Share your worries with your friends too, then they won’t seem nearly so bad and are less likely to keep you awake at night. I bet Asimina here’ – she turned to look at Min – ‘is in a total fret about her exams and how she won’t do well enough, when she’s one of the cleverest girls in the year! Asimina, my dear, you are going to get a string of As, as long as you don’t deprive your busy brain of the rest it needs.’
‘Mrs Knebworth,’ Clare said. ‘Did we wake you up tonight? Or have you still got insomnia?’
‘Oh . . . no . . . I sleep pretty well these days, when I’m not being disturbed by boys in the back garden,’ the Neb said with a strict look, just in case any of them was thinking of inviting boys to the back garden. ‘It’s just been a strange time. I’m delighted to have Miss McKinnon helping me out, but it’s a lot of work, showing her the ropes . . . and then there’s George’s cousin . . .’
Mrs Knebworth paused.
Min, Zarah and Clare all leaned forward in their chairs, breathless with interest.
George’s cousin? Surely this must be the Jaguar man. What was Mrs K about to tell them?
‘We used to be very friendly with him . . .’ she went on. ‘Then after George died, his cousin went to work abroad. Now, years later, he’s moved back to Scotland.
‘He’s looked me up, of course, and we’ve been out together for a meal a few times. It’s lovely to see him again,’ she added, ‘but it’s thrown up lots of old memories and not all of them happy . . .’
Chapter Twenty-one
‘JUST TWO DAYS to go . . .’ Gina stated the obvious at breakfast the following Saturday. ‘First exams on Monday morning.’
‘All leave is cancelled,’ Amy reminded them, as if they were likely to forget. ‘What are we going to do around here all weekend?’ she groaned.
‘Study?’ Min suggested.
‘What time does the post arrive on Saturdays?’ Niffy asked, whacking the top off her boiled egg.
‘About eleven, I think,’ Amy replied. ‘Expecting something? Postcard from Angus?’
Niffy just snorted at this.
‘Not likely. Let’s just say I’ve sent a certain someone something . . . and you’ll want to see her face when she gets it.’
‘Niffy, do you mean Mrs—?’ Min began.
‘Shhhhhh!’ Niffy cut her off sharply.
‘But wasn’t the toilet monster enough?’ Min asked in a whisper.
‘Nearly,’ Niffy admitted.
‘She’s going to catch you, plus . . . I don’t think you’re being very nice.’
‘Nice?!’ Niffy asked in astonishment. ‘Why should I be nice to the Neb?’
‘She’s not that bad . . .’ Min began, causing Niffy’s eyes to widen further.
‘And,’ Min went on, ‘I think she’s a bit stressed at the moment.’
‘Oh, a bit stressed. Right, fine, well I’ll try and remember that the next time she gates me for something that wasn’t even anything to do with me.’
‘But you did hide the booze,’ Min had to remind her.
After this, no one said anything else. The rest of breakfast was eaten in silence, then most of the boarders dutifully trudged off to the study room.
Just before eleven, Niffy whispered to Amy and Gina to come with her.
She didn’t ask Min, who would just have disapproved anyway.
‘I can’t be bothered,’ Amy whispered back with a roll of her eyes. ‘Take Gina, then the two of you can tell me all about it.’
‘C’mon,’ Niffy tried to convince Amy, ‘it’ll be worth it.’
‘No,’ Amy said. ‘If my dad’s going to have to live in a bedsit to send me here, I have to try and do well.’
Niffy shrugged. There was nothing she could say in reply to that.
Niffy and Gina left the study room and walked along the corridor towards the main entrance hall where the post came in every morning.
‘The plan is that we’ll make tea in the kitchenette until we hear the postman. Then we’ll dash out and offer to sort through it,’ Niffy explained. ‘I just hope there are plenty of people about when the Neb gets her letter.’
Just as they arrived in the hallway, the postman was visible on the other side of the glass door.
‘Bingo!’ Niffy exclaimed.
Catching sight of Mrs Knebworth in the large sitting room, the housemistress chatting to Miss McKinnon and a set of parents who must have arrived this morning to see their daughter, Niffy called out:
‘Mrs Knebworth, the post’s here. Shall Gina and I sort it out for you?’
‘Thank you, dear,’ Mrs Knebworth replied in her especially-sweet-for-the-parents voice.
Niffy opened the front door and brought in the bundle of mail.
Pulling off the elastic bands, she set the stack of envelopes down on the side table behind the door, then she and Gina began to sort through them. There were many boring-looking brown envelopes for the boarding house, a handful of air mail envelopes for the foreign girls, bank statements, credit card bills, charity requests, the odd stiff envelope that maybe contained an invitation and then – yes! There it was!
Niffy held out a large, bright yellow envelope for Gina to take a look at.
It was addressed to Mrs Knebworth, but that wasn’t what caught Gina’s immediate attention. No, the first thing she read was the black lettering printed across the front of the envelope.
The words, all capitalized, read: ‘URGENT: DEMENTIA TEST RESULTS.’
Gina’s mouth opened with surprise. ‘Did you send her this?’ she asked in a whisper.
Niffy nodded proudly. ‘I think I’ll take it to her right now.’
She picked up all the boarding-house bills with one hand, held the yellow envelope in the other and headed for the sitting-room door.
‘No!’ Gina whispered, half wanting to stop her friend, but half, she had to admit, wanting to see what was going to happen next.
Niffy gave a little tap on the door to which Mrs Knebworth replied: ‘Yes?’
‘Just dropping off your mail,’ Niffy said, and walked calmly into the room as Gina hung about in the doorway curiously.
The set of parents in the room couldn’t help staring slightly at Niffy, who was an u
nusual-looking sight. Her jeans were totally faded and torn at the knee, her jumper was long and tomboyish and her very short hair was still a patchwork of brown and orange which stuck up in an odd and frizzy way.
So far, she’d refused all offers of help to re-dye her cropped mop back to brown. She was convinced that any further attempts to sort it out were just going to make it even worse.
Yes, there had been a bit of teasing at school, but most girls felt so sorry for the obvious hair disaster that they hadn’t said anything at all.
‘Here we go,’ Niffy said, handing over the brown pile of bills and envelopes to Mrs Knebworth. ‘And there’s also this,’ she added, with a flourish of the yellow envelope.
‘What on earth is that?’ Mrs Knebworth said, holding the bright envelope right up in front of her face. As she read the words on the front, Miss McKinnon and the visiting parents were easily able to read the large lettering emblazoned on the back of the envelope: ‘PRIVATE – MENTAL HEALTH TEST RESULTS.’
There was some throat clearing by the parents, and Miss McKinnon began to blush.
‘Urgent? Dementia test results?’ Mrs Knebworth was reading out loud from the front of the envelope.
For a moment there was a totally embarrassed silence in the room.
Then Mrs Knebworth fixed a slow and deliberate look on Niffy.
Niffy’s mouth was twitching as if she was struggling to keep it under control. Her special wide-eyed innocent look was firmly in place though.
‘Hmmmph!’ Mrs Knebworth snorted. ‘And I suppose you know nothing at all about this envelope, young lady?’ she asked.
Niffy couldn’t help herself. Usually she could pull off a prank with a completely straight face, but the tension in the room was unbearable.
The parents looked horrified, Miss McKinnon seemed to be hoping that the floor would swallow her up – and Mrs Knebworth?
Mrs Knebworth looked like Mount Vesuvius about to erupt into one huge earth-shattering explosion, but because she had parents with her, she was going to have to hold back.
