by Alice Castle
‘Oh, wait a minute, that’s harsh,’ said York, wrinkling his brow.
‘You’re just saying that because she’s young and pretty. But really, who spends that much time pouting into their phone? She’s a schoolgirl at one of the toughest academic schools in the country. She shouldn’t have time to be posting fifty pictures of herself a week, wearing next to nothing but tonnes of make-up and a minxy smile. But Simone, on the other hand. She worked really hard for that place, she had a mother who thought the world of her and wanted the best for her. I think her mum would have known if she was unhappy enough to have killed herself. And I don’t think she’d have done it in a way that made a total show of her death and dragged her family through all this publicity. She was a shy, hardworking girl, and someone did that to her. With Lulu, we haven’t pieced together enough yet to work out what might have happened, but I didn’t think she seemed depressed enough to want to kill herself. Have you thought about whether Sophia’s suicide attempt was out of guilt, though?’
‘Guilt? Is that what you think? That Sophia gave Simone the drugs, and maybe Lulu, too, then felt so bad about what’s happened that she’s tried to top herself as well?’
‘Well, actually, no. That’s not my theory. But it’s better than yours, so far,’ said Beth, with a flash of defiance in her grey eyes. The idea that she was brewing was a lot more radical than that. But she wasn’t ready to expose it to the light of day. Not until she’d had a chance to test it, anyway.
She and York exchanged a long look. Whatever mood of accord had existed, earlier in the evening, was long gone. They were not seeing eye to eye at all and, wearily, Beth wondered if they ever would be.
‘Right. Good to know your views. Well, probably time for me to get going,’ said York, rising to his feet. As usual, Beth felt as though she was getting shorter by the second as he stood up. By the time he was upright, she was like Alice in Wonderland after drinking the shrinking potion.
Chapter Fourteen
Beth slept surprisingly well and, by the morning, was resolved on her course of action. Ben was marched off to school in double-quick time, and Beth was soon letting herself into the research institute which she had so woefully neglected in the last few days. To her shame, she saw there was even a thin film of dust on the box file which served as her in-tray. She hastily wiped it off with her sleeve and settled into the chair. Delving in a drawer, she found the internal phone directory which listed numbers not only for Wyatt’s, but for its sister establishment as well, the College School.
She ran down the list with her finger then stopped and quickly made a call. ‘Yes, it’s Beth Haldane here from Wyatt’s… Just wondered if you had a moment free this morning to discuss the slavery project… I’ve been told to keep you informed of everything that’s going on, as my opposite number. Would that be possible? Yes, of course I’ll hold.’ Beth twiddled the phone cord as she waited. ‘Hello? Yes, that would be perfect. See you soon, then.’
She replaced the receiver with a decisive click. A slow smile of satisfaction spread across her pale oval face. At last. She was really starting to get somewhere.
Forty minutes later, Beth was trotting through the plain gates of the College School. Though the red-brick, solid Victorian building spoke of well-heeled prestige, the girls’ school, like any hard-working blue stocking, had been intended always to stay in the shadow of its glamorous, entitled brother establishment. But, thanks to the efforts of a succession of determined and dedicated headmistresses like Angela Douglas, the College School had crept up and up in the rankings, until today, where it had the audacity to rest a rung or two higher than Wyatt’s. Despite this, Wyatt’s was still the best-known and best-beloved of the two schools, and College girls were try-hard also-rans compared to the swaggering young gents turned out by the annoyingly cool Wyatt’s machine.
Although Beth had been briefly introduced to her College School counterpart at the launch of the research institute, this would be their first proper one-on-one meeting. And, as ever, Beth had an ulterior motive. Would her job ever come first for her, she was beginning to wonder? Or would she always be using it as a pretext to get at some other, more pressing matter? Well, as long as her opposite number didn’t guess her first concern wasn’t the archives, then it didn’t really matter, did it?
By the time Beth had found her way to the door of the office she needed, her heart was hammering and her fringe was sticking to her forehead. She was taking quite a big chance with this meeting. Was she walking right into trouble yet again?
She was just taking a moment to steady herself with a deep breath, when the door opened and a large figure bombed out, nearly knocking her over.
‘Oh, you’ll be the archives girl,’ said Miss Troughton gruffly, steadying Beth with a large hand.
Beth, whose bag had inevitably gone flying, thanked her stars that for once its entire contents hadn’t tipped out all over the corridor. She scooped it up hurriedly and stuck out a hand, hoping it wasn’t clammy with nerves. She needn’t have worried. Once it was engulfed in Miss Troughton’s large, hammily pink fist, and squeezed tight, she could no longer really feel her nerve endings anyway.
‘Come in, come in,’ said Miss Troughton, guiding Beth with what she thought was a gentle hand but what felt to Beth like a hearty shove into a small room. It was almost like the before version of her own archives lair – unloved, full of large cardboard cartons, and smelling suspiciously dusty. It looked like her opposite number gave her job almost as much time as Beth herself did, she thought guiltily.
‘Hum. Got a bit behind,’ said Miss Troughton, giving the shelves a quick glance up and down. She was clearly taken aback at the state of the place. ‘Getting the girls ready for French GCSE. Head of French, you see. Not always as much time for this rub— er, archive stuff, as I might like. Academics have to take precedence,’ she said, her already hectic cheeks turning brick red.
Thank goodness, thought Beth. Miss Troughton was already on her mettle. Now, if she just played this carefully…
‘Really? I’d heard smaller and smaller numbers of pupils were taking modern languages these days,’ said Beth, head on one side, grey eyes shrewd.
Miss Troughton snorted. ‘That’s true. Bunch of… well… But makes it even more important, see, that the ones who do take French achieve a decent grade. If they play it cleverly, they can go an awfully long way now with a good French A level. Not a lot of competition, you see.’ It was a point which played well at parents’ evenings with ambitious parents.
For Beth, who had no axe to grind and no child – yet – to shoehorn into a good university, the whole subject was just a useful entrée to talking about Miss Troughton’s pupils.
‘You teach GCSE as well, don’t you? And the run-up? Year 9?’
‘Year 9. Yes,’ Miss Troughton said it heavily. It sounded as though that particular year group gave her no great joy.
‘Shall we sit down?’ Beth urged. This archives office did boast a largish table and two chairs – a cut above Beth’s own rickety quarters when she’d started in the job, before the transformation to institute status had considerably upgraded her furniture stock. Nowadays, she had a small round table in the corner of her office, where she could hold ticklish discussions about slavery – something she really must get round to doing as soon as she’d straightened this whole mystery out.
‘How do you find teaching the Year 9 cohort?’ she asked Miss Troughton lightly.
The woman peered at her keenly, but it seemed to suit her a lot better to discuss her French classes than to talk about a slavery project which she quite obviously hadn’t broached at all.
‘Year 9 is a nightmare, even at the best of times,’ she said with a sigh. ‘I can’t pretend to have much insight into how girls work these days, but Year 9 is always one of the most difficult years. It can be pretty toxic.’
‘Toxic? Interesting choice of word,’ said Beth, pouncing.
Miss Troughton looked taken aback. From having a ge
neral discussion about classes, they now seemed poised to dive into horribly murky waters.
‘Well, I wouldn’t know the first thing about that,’ she said, with a bluff attempt at airy dismissal.
‘About what, though? About something toxic in Year 9?’
Miss Troughton looked puzzled. ‘Well, surely you’ve heard there’ve been… troubles?’
Beth put her most sympathetic face on. ‘Teenage girls can be so difficult…’
‘You’ve got that right,’ said Miss Troughton gruffly. ‘Beggared if I know what goes on in their heads. Different breed.’
‘Really?’ said Beth with gentle encouragement.
‘In my day, we just got on with it. No time for all this socialising. Keep your head down, do your work, and get out. Otherwise, fail your exams and end up a shop girl,’ said Miss Troughton with a shudder. It wasn’t hard to see the driven grammar school pupil she’d been, eyes on the prize of university and a career. She could never have been a simpering assistant behind a counter. Unless it was at a butcher’s, parcelling up the joints with those huge capable hands, thought Beth.
‘You must have seen so many girls over the years. Is this year’s cohort particularly bad, do you think?’
‘Bad isn’t the word. The trouble starts when you get a bright child who doesn’t need or want to work. There can be a lot of game-playing in girls’ schools, you know,’ said Miss Troughton, darting a frank gaze at Beth.
Beth wondered whether Miss Troughton, back in the day, had been on the receiving end of any of the casual cruelties that can make girls’ lives agony at school – the deliberate exclusion, the sniggered jokes, the messages passed behind a sadly bowed back. But this wasn’t the moment to excavate that corner of history. Beth needed to find out what was going on right now, and what part it might have played in the deadly events still unfolding.
‘Is there one girl that you’d say was the ring leader?’ Beth cut through any idea that bullying and manipulation wasn’t going on in Year 9. Miss Troughton might have been oblique, but the message was clear: there was stuff afoot here that she didn’t care for.
‘There is. Always one, you know?’
‘Would you say she’s worse than others you’ve come across?’
Miss Troughton sighed. ‘She’s very bright, not very happy, and that’s not unusual. I’ve seen it before. But this time, there’s more. It’s – a motiveless malignancy.’
Coleridge’s phrase fell heavily in the small, cluttered room. There was a pause. Beth marshalled her thoughts, trying to find a way to concoct her next question that wouldn’t make her sound a bit loopy. But she needn’t have worried.
‘Do you think she’s… evil?’
Miss Troughton’s expression of relief and gratitude said it all. ‘Yes, yes, I do. She’s evil. There, I’ve said it now. I’ve thought it, many times, but I’ve tried not to believe it could be true.’
Beth absorbed all that Miss Troughton had said. ‘So, do you think that this one particular girl is behind everything that’s happened?’
Miss Troughton, her doughy features suffused with high colour, closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them to gaze beseechingly at Beth. ‘I hope so,’ she said finally. ‘You know, I really do hope it’s her.’
Beth paused. Now they were getting to the sticky bit. ‘But… say this girl is, well, out of commission for some reason.’
Miss Troughton’s small, worried eyes locked on to her own limpid grey ones. Beth knew she wouldn’t get a name from the woman, years of teachers’ confidentiality had drilled discretion into her, not to mention the loyalty to the College School which leaked from every pore. But it was evident that Miss Troughton badly wanted this dismal episode in the school’s history to be over. How far would she go to help her?
‘If the child were indisposed herself, you mean?’
‘Yes, in a way similar to the others… Would you think that was just a bit of a smokescreen?’
‘Yes. Yes, I definitely would,’ said Miss Troughton, nodding with such emphatic relief that her chins juddered.
***
Beth mused on the interview the next day, as she ambled along the road with Ben. It was Saturday morning, and they were off to pay an impromptu call on Charlie and Katie. Normally, Beth would have rung first but, despite the fact that weekends were so closely guarded by Dulwich folk, who frankly needed the recovery time from their hectic schedules, she just had seized the impulse when it struck her.
The night before had been one of those evenings when she’d yearned for a grown-up to discuss things with. She’d tried Katie, but she’d been out at the theatre again and not able to talk. She’d even dialled York, but it had gone to voicemail – and she’d been glad. Her thoughts weren’t yet well formulated enough to present him with. Because she was on the defensive so much with him, being the amateur to his professional, she felt her theory had to have achieved a certain degree of polish before she could lay it before him. And this theory was hardly shining – yet.
So, Beth and Ben bounced up to Katie’s front door – now freshly repainted a delectable shade of radicchio pink, as part of the ongoing spruce-up – and rang the bell. It took a minute or two for Michael to fling open the door. A lovely man, he always appeared slightly tired and a bit rumpled. Today was no exception, as he stood in a creased blue linen shirt, looking vaguely perplexed before stepping forward into the regulation Dulwich double kiss.
‘Ah, Beth. Quite a houseful,’ he said, wandering towards the kitchen with them, then peeling off before they got there to take shelter in the swanky and hardly-used drawing room.
Beth just had time to register this as odd, when she saw why. Katie was sitting at the shiny marble breakfast bar with Maria Luyten, who had a tissue to her eyes and a steaming cup of tea at her elbow.
‘Oh, I had no idea you’d be busy. I’m so sorry,’ said Beth. She felt an immediate nasty pointed arrow of jealousy, at seeing Katie so wrapped up with someone else. It was ridiculous. Katie was allowed to have as many friends as she liked, and her sunny nature drew people irresistibly to her. And there was something else in the mix – a little prickle of alarm.
Before she had time to think it through, she realised Katie was semaphoring something to her with her wide eyes. ‘No, no, that’s great, have some tea,’ she was saying emphatically, flipping the kettle on again and getting Beth’s favourite large mug out of the cupboard. ‘We were just talking about schools, and grades, and entrance exams and… stuff,’ she added rather lamely. It sounded quite intense for a Saturday morning.
Meanwhile Ben, oblivious to the adult undercurrents, had run straight out into the garden, where Beth could see Charlie and little Matteo up to something in the summerhouse. He clearly had no qualms about becoming the third wheel. She went immediately to the sweep of windows, but the boys just seemed to be talking.
Beth wasn’t sure whether to address the elephant in the room – Maria’s tears – but decided that, as the woman was a psychiatrist, it would be ridiculous not to. ‘Hope everything’s all right, Maria?’ she asked.
Maria looked up from her tissue and smiled gratefully. ‘So sorry. You must find me so emotional. It’s just that Katie’s been such a support throughout all this.’ Maria raised swimming eyes to Katie and smiled tremulously.
‘I hope nothing’s happened?’ said Beth. She was being nosey, she supposed, but given Maria’s borderline unhelpfulness last time they’d met at the Wellesley, and especially that well-aimed barb about teenage girls and puberty, she really didn’t care.
‘No, no, not at all. It’s more that everything seems to be settling down now at last, and that’s made me realise how stressed I have been, all this time. It’s such a relief,’ Maria said, dabbing her eyes with the now rather sodden tissue.
Katie and Beth’s eyes met briefly over the shiny brown hair and, if Beth wasn’t mistaken, Katie – the most compassionate and caring woman in SE21 – did the tiniest eye-roll. Sobbing about the good times wasn’t very Dulw
ich.
‘Well, that’s great,’ said Beth in hearty tones which, to her own ears, sounded distinctly fake. ‘I’ll drink to that.’ She raised her scalding tea to her lips and took a tiny, but appreciative, sip. Katie always made an excellent cuppa.
‘Oh look,’ said Katie, pointing to the huge windows at the end of the kitchen, which were closed today as it was cloudy and hadn’t warmed up outside yet. ‘The boys are toasting each other, too.’
Outside, they could see the three lads, each raising plastic beakers to each other. It was too far to see anything clearly – Katie’s garden was genuinely enormous – but Beth could have sworn there was a twig poking out of Ben’s beaker. She put her mug down with a thwack, and tea spilled everywhere.
‘Should they be drinking that? What on earth is it?’ wondered Katie.
The effect on Maria was astonishing. One moment, she was slumping over the marble countertop, twisting her tissue like a lacklustre romantic heroine. The next, she’d sat bolt upright, and all her attention was focused on the boys. ‘Oh no! That’s Matteo’s game at the moment. He likes making these witches’ brews. He calls them medicine. He wants to be a doctor.’
Beth and Katie looked at each other, Beth’s eyes wide with horror, Katie’s startled, not seeing the urgency or the problem. ‘But that’s rather sweet, isn’t it?’ said Katie, reasonable as ever. ‘He wants to follow in your footsteps.’
‘Oh look,’ she added. ‘I think they’re doing a wassail – they’re studying the Vikings in class, aren’t they?’ Outside, the boys raised their arms to shoulder height and clinked their cups in the morning light.
‘Oh, Dio mio! I have to get out there,’ screeched Maria, bolting for the doors.
