Boarding School Girls Read online

  Before Mrs Denbigh speaks, Siena holds out her phone. ‘I presume you’re happy to set up a conference call with my lawyer? Speed dial seven. He’s expecting you.’

  ‘That won’t be necessary,’ says Mrs Denbigh drily. ‘I think we can handle this without legal representation.’

  ‘In which case, I’d like an impartial student representative,’ Siena tries. She must have read this clause in the School Rules, just as I did in my desperate final hours here before accepting that no one would be willing to represent me.

  ‘Libby, you mean?’ I ask. ‘Yes, I’m sure she’d be very impartial.’

  ‘That won’t be necessary either,’ says Mrs Denbigh. ‘In fact, I think you’ll be grateful to hear what I have to say without witnesses.’

  Siena’s expression is studiedly unconcerned but she drums her fingers against her glittery phone as if trying to hide the fact that they’re shaking.

  ‘This is very bad,’ Mrs Denbigh says weightily. ‘Very bad indeed.’

  Siena stops drumming and looks meekly downward.

  ‘I’m not going to ask what happened last night,’ Mrs Denbigh continues. ‘I don’t see that assigning blame is going to get us anywhere.’

  ‘I agree,’ says Siena smoothly. ‘That’s a very helpful approach.’

  ‘Of course you agree,’ I mutter. ‘The whole thing was your fault.’

  ‘No assigning blame,’ Siena reminds us both. ‘We should focus instead on how best to move forward.’

  Mrs Denbigh nods vigorously. ‘You’re right; we do need to move forward. I’ve been lying awake trying to decide how best to do that.’

  There’s no doubt that Mrs Denbigh loves us all as if we were her own children, but it’s possible that she loves some of us more equally than others.

  ‘What conclusion did you reach?’ I ask. My pre-dawn hopelessness begins to recede as I consider the benefits of expulsion. It smarts a little that all these years of trying to fit in have come to nothing – not to mention the practical inconvenience of a nomadic existence – but ultimately there’s something to be said for not perishing alone in a tower-room inferno.

  Mrs Denbigh looks as tired as I feel. ‘I’ve given out detention, lines, solitary confinement,’ she lists. ‘Extra homework. Laps of the football pitch. Letters home. Loss of privileges. A year’s suspension abroad. Yet, at the age of seventeen, you’re caught trespassing in a forbidden area at midnight, drinking alcohol and lighting fires. Can you give me any grounds for not expelling you on the spot?’

  I pray that Siena will stay quiet, because I have a horrible suspicion that she wants to use her favourite defence: that she’s too pretty to be punished.

  ‘You need to understand each other’s point of view,’ Mrs Denbigh continues, breaking her own silence.

  Siena smiles brightly. ‘I’m a very empathetic person, so I already understand Romy’s point of view. In fact, I took Most Empathetic in the last yearbook poll. It was unanimous.’

  ‘Which award did I take?’ I ask.

  ‘Most Lawless,’ she giggles. ‘Amongst others.’

  Mrs Denbigh ignores this. ‘In order to do that, you’re going to spend time together. Rather a lot of time, in fact.’

  ‘What?’ I say. ‘You mean you aren’t expelling me?’

  ‘Of course not,’ she says briskly. ‘Where did you get such an idea?’

  ‘From School Rule Number 43: Unsupervised entry to the clock tower is punishable by expulsion?’ My Rules are well thumbed and I’ve committed most of them to memory. Last year I knew them better than my exam texts, for all the good it did me. ‘Mainly that.’

  ‘That Rule is exercised at my discretion,’ she says. ‘We’ve just got you back, Romy, and the last thing we want is to lose you again.’

  ‘That’s debatable,’ says Siena. ‘What if you expelled her for the good of everyone, like a mercy killing?’

  ‘That’s enough,’ says Mrs Denbigh, but Siena is on a roll.

  ‘How would this work? In case you haven’t noticed, we move in quite different circles now.’

  ‘I’ve noticed, Siena,’ says Mrs Denbigh. ‘That’s why, this term, you’ll be joining the Student Council alongside Romy.’

  My mouth falls open in shock; Siena actually shudders. ‘That won’t be possible,’ she explains when she’s regained the power of speech. ‘Although I’m passionate about politics and students’ wellbeing, my existing extra-curricular commitments leave me little time…’

  ‘Existing commitments?’ I snap. ‘Shooting tequila before breakfast, you mean? Designer-shoe shopping? Hooking up with Jack in every room in the school?’

  ‘Romy, I know you’re jealous of my life,’ she says offendedly, ‘but…’

  Mrs Denbigh holds up her hand. ‘Silence. Siena, you will make time in your schedule for this. It’s nonnegotiable.’

  I shake my head. ‘This is more of a punishment for me than for her. The best thing about Student Council is that there’s zero chance of meeting her coven there.’

  ‘The Starlets aren’t a coven,’ she says. ‘We’re an enterprise.’

  ‘Potato, tomato,’ I mutter under my breath. ‘Witches, bitches … Starlets, harlots…’

  She ignores me. ‘Mrs Denbigh, you must know that the Council won’t dare take Romy back after what she did to Libby. Her only hope would be if we publicly forgave her; if we…’

  She looks suspicious as she identifies the loop-hole.

  ‘That’s right.’ Mrs Denbigh turns to me. ‘Romy, you’ll be rejoining Siena and her friends –’ she stops short of saying Starlets, which I appreciate – ‘at mealtimes and social occasions.’

  ‘I’m afraid she won’t,’ Siena cuts in. ‘As much as I’d like to cooperate with this experiment, Starlet membership is very exclusive, and there are comprehensive rules concerning…’

  ‘Yes.’ I agree with her for the first time in living memory. ‘The Starlets are very exclusive.’

  Mrs Denbigh nods. ‘It’ll be good for you to mix up your friendships; practise a little inclusivity. You should learn to appreciate each other.’

  I wish I possessed Siena’s talent for hiding human feelings behind a mask of bland magnificence. ‘Please…’ I whisper, and I sound as if I’m drowning. ‘Anything but that…’

  ‘There’s no need to be so dramatic,’ Siena says huffily. ‘Most girls would die for this opportunity, and you must have been desperate for it yesterday to risk expulsion yet again.’

  I hunch over and look at my shoes. ‘I want to leave. I should never have come back.’

  ‘We can call your father and talk this over with him,’ Mrs Denbigh suggests as she takes the embers of my gown from her drawer and lays them across the desk. ‘But I think he’ll be displeased to see you in trouble again so soon.’

  ‘If he even notices,’ I mutter. ‘And it’s preferable to dealing with this.’

  ‘It’s not preferable to living out your days in your father’s cellar, uneducated and unmarried,’ smiles Siena. ‘Which is what will happen once every school in Europe finds out about your criminal behaviour.’

  ‘How will you make that happen?’ I ask. ‘Who listens to you outside this school?’

  She continues to smile. ‘Libby is somewhat prominent on Twitter. She’s developed a rather excellent network of contacts across the public school system.’

  ‘You wouldn’t,’ I say. ‘That’s a step too far, even for you.’

  ‘Paris last year,’ she continues blithely. ‘Where next? It’ll have to be so remote that no one has heard of you. Peru? Yemen? Cumbria?’

  Siena’s words soften Mrs Denbigh as if she’s offering aid rather than single-handedly condemning me to a life of ruin. ‘You two shared so much,’ she pleads. ‘Can’t you remember your wonderful camaraderie?’

  ‘Of course I can’t remember it.’ Siena’s blue eyes darken when she’s angry, and now they’re almost navy. ‘Because it never happened. Romy and I have never, ever been friends.’

  M
rs Denbigh looks almost amused. ‘I admire your ability to rewrite history, but there is much photographic proof suggesting otherwise.’

  ‘That’s what you think,’ mutters Siena.

  ‘I expect to see you beside Siena at all mealtimes, Romy,’ Mrs Denbigh says as I snatch up my bag. ‘Siena, the next Council meeting is this afternoon. Don’t be late.’

  We storm out side by side, reaching for the door at the same time and slamming it so hard that it almost falls off its hinges.

  ‘It makes me so happy to see you working together,’ floats Mrs Denbigh’s disembodied voice.

  Chapter Eleven

  Siena

  ‘This is entirely Syrena’s fault,’ I mutter.

  Romy is keeping pace despite my attempts to shake her off. She’s weirdly fond of my baby sister Syrena, and is smiling at the mere mention of her. ‘What’s she done now? Is it worse than pickaxing a hole in the attic floor and falling through your bedroom ceiling?’

  ‘Yes,’ I wince. ‘Worse than breeding a badger colony in the summer house, and cooking my phone inside the Christmas turkey.’

  ‘At least she gave you an excuse for not eating it,’ she says. ‘So what is it?’

  ‘Surely you already know,’ I say. ‘She inextricably, hellishly, bound you and me together on our first day at this school, leaving us with the dismal consequences.’

  Romy pulls an offended face, but I ignore her and take a sharp left down a narrow corridor. I momentarily escape her, but see in her place someone just as unwelcome.

  * * *

  Syrena, now six, was once a jaded two-year-old who stared contemptuously at the car keys my mother Seraphina rattled before her, as if she could be so easily distracted from the fish knife with which she was stripping paint from her nursery walls.

  ‘Will you be taking Siena today?’ asked our nanny Paula in surprise.

  Seraphina gestured affrontedly at her travelling suit. ‘To escort my eldest child to her first day at boarding school? Certainly.’

  Paula nodded, because she was paid to be discreet and unquestioning.

  ‘In fact,’ Seraphina added spiritedly, ‘I can do this alone. You stay here.’

  ‘That’s our mother,’ my middle sister Stella, then seven, explained in a whisper as she strapped Syrena into her car seat. They had not been invited to accompany us, but blowing the whistle on Syrena would mean losing Stella’s company too.

  Paula hugged me tightly, tears streaming down her plump cheeks. She uttered a stream of orders in Spanish about the importance of good behaviour and kindness towards others before her words became unintelligible sobs. Paula had worked for us all my life, and sometimes, although it was disloyal, I preferred her advice to my mother’s. I wondered if I might cry too, but then I noticed Seraphina watching as she pulled on her white gloves, and I wrinkled my nose until the sensation receded.

  ‘I’ll see you at the end of term,’ I told Paula as I ducked out of her embrace. ‘And of course I’ll write to you. In Spanish, even.’

  ‘Why is she so averse to me driving you to school?’ Seraphina muttered when we drove away. ‘As if the idea were somehow unnatural.’

  She looked, startled, into the rear-view mirror as Syrena made a noise from her baby seat. ‘The others have joined us,’ she noted.

  Not until we were some miles away from Paula did I remember that my mother had begun her day with a Bloody Mary, eschewing the virgin option.

  It was raining when we arrived at Temperley High, and we watched through windscreen wipers as students darted back and forth to boarding houses with their luggage. We’d wait all day rather than compromise our hair with damp humidity; not that clement conditions would entice my mother to carry bags and enter a communal living space.

  Stella knelt on her seat and wrapped her arms around my neck, pressing her soft cheek against mine. ‘I’ll miss you,’ she whispered.

  I hadn’t worried about leaving home until that moment, when I felt as if I were being literally uprooted. I held Stella’s hands until a nod from Seraphina reminded me that, as the eldest, I was the setter of examples. I pushed her gently back into her place.

  ‘Your gift, Siena.’ Seraphina opened her handbag to reveal six jewellery boxes.

  ‘Thank you.’ I opened each box to reveal a pair of silver star-shaped earrings. ‘But why do I need six? Syrena won’t be there to eat them.’

  ‘Only one is for you, Starlet,’ she said, using the nickname my father had given me. ‘You’ll see that each box is marked with a number.’

  The pair in the box marked with a 1 was bigger than the others, and inset with more diamonds. Seraphina put them into my ears and held up her mirror as she kissed me on the cheek. ‘Never forget who you are.’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Syrena audibly as the back door swung open and Libby sprang inside.

  Libby and I had been friends in a desultory sense through prep school, the reticence on my side. She’d occasionally visited us at home, and Syrena had taken an intense dislike to her that I secretly found funny. I’d gleaned that Libby had ended up on the rough end of her parents’ recent divorce (in which her father had withdrawn all non-necessary expenses), so I was surprised to see her here. Temperley High, I was proudly aware, was the most expensive school in the county.

  ‘Hello, Libby,’ Stella said politely, motioning at Syrena to follow suit.

  ‘Oh no,’ Syrena repeated sadly.

  ‘I thought you were going to a state school, Libby,’ I said, trying to change the subject.

  ‘Circumstances altered,’ Libby primped, pushing up her sleeve to reveal a Tiffany charm bracelet. ‘They altered considerably.’

  To my surprise, Seraphina gave her an approving nod. ‘Very nice, Liberty.’

  Taking a closer look, I noticed that Libby had indeed improved over the summer. Her long hair was styled and blow-dried into professionally lacquered curls, and her eyebrows were neatly plucked. She’d been small for her age, ignored and drowned in a too-large school uniform, but she’d grown and was now pretty in a way that made sense, where everything fitted together as flawlessly as if she’d been constructed from a flat pack.

  ‘Thank you, Miss Hamilton,’ she said reverently.

  My mother reached into her bag, and, handing me the box marked 2, gestured at me to pass it over.

  ‘Really, Siena?’ Libby gasped as she opened it with shaking hands. ‘Does this mean I’m going to be your number two?’

  ‘Yes?’ I said dubiously, looking to Seraphina for clarification.

  ‘Yes,’ I repeated as she nodded.

  Seraphina peered through the windscreen at the girls hurrying around us. ‘Three,’ she pointed, tapping one of the remaining jewellery boxes.

  Madison, already a knockout, was languidly following a posse of football-playing brothers who staggered under the weight of her fashion magazines, handbags, vanity cases and spindly-heeled sandals. Sample sizes hung as intended from her rangy frame, and her symmetrical face was pretty whether she wore make-up or stayed up all night giggling or played aggressive sports that made most people ugly. She would later accept her earrings with nothing but a flick of her dishevelled straw-coloured hair.

  ‘Nice bag, Libby,’ I said, noticing the tote she was clutching. It was the new Primrose, one of a kind, handmade and obtainable only with the designer’s personal recommendation. It was the bag I’d requested for my twelfth birthday; a request that had not been upheld.

  ‘Thanks, Siena,’ Libby said gratefully.

  ‘Four,’ Seraphina said measuredly as Cassidy slunk past like a stray kitten, compensating for what she lost in deportment with heavy auburn hair that glinted copper in sunshine. Cassidy was messily chic in a way that may have been accidental, with layers of impossibly beautiful clothes and handmade jewellery, and green eyes as bright and almond-shaped as a cat’s.

  ‘How did you get your bag, Libby?’ I pressed.

  ‘Five,’ said Seraphina, as Phoebe, with a black velvet ribbon holding springy flaxen
curls, patent shoes and snow-white knee socks, emerged from the back seat of a Rolls. Turning up her nose at the wet ground, she allowed her chauffeur to carry her over the gravel and deposit her at the front door.

  Libby nodded, all the while making careful notes in her day planner. ‘And number six, Miss Hamilton?’

  Seraphina’s gaze drifted towards a neat little girl called Emmeline, whose father was an earl and who, we’d later discover, had spelt her own name wrong on her entrance test. But, as Libby’s pen hovered over the paper, Seraphina suddenly gasped in horror.

  ‘Disgraceful,’ she muttered.

  It was unnecessary to ask to whom she referred.

  I’d never seen a girl like Romy before, and, from the way Stella’s eyes widened in shock, I knew she hadn’t either. Unattended in the back seat, she’d been teaching something to Syrena. Row-me, she’d repeated patiently as Syrena tried to copy her; now they both fell silent.

  Romy’s tangled brown hair was sun-bleached into irregular highlights, and her face was tanned and freckled. She was inelegantly gangly, with a long scratch down one cheek as if she’d been crawling through hedges. Most shamefully, she hadn’t adhered to the inventory, which was rare in an environment governed by efficient and experienced nannies. Without the regulation trunk, she heaved her belongings from a Daimler in a mixture of dented vanity cases and battered suitcases and decrepit holdalls. She appeared unconcerned even as the contents spilled onto the gravel, occasionally scooping up a sock or kicking a plimsoll along the ground in front of her.

  ‘This can’t be allowed,’ Seraphina hissed. ‘Should we call Security? Where is her keeper?’

  ‘Romyromyromyromy,’ said Syrena at speed.

  ‘Well done, Syrena,’ said Stella.

  ‘What’s she saying?’ asked Libby. ‘What does that mean?’

  I sighed. ‘She’s a baby, Libby. She says lots of stuff that makes no sense.’

  ‘Everything makes sense if you listen to her,’ said Stella.

  Romy twisted up her long hair with a fluffy-ended pencil and took a moment to refasten her blazer so that the buttons didn’t match. I wondered how it would feel to wear my own hair loose and spilling down my back so that it became wet and curly in rainstorms and tangled in the wind. Involuntarily, I touched my head: as if sensing this silent rebellion, and just as Romy pulled a creamy, lop-eared rabbit from her pocket, Seraphina reached out a thin ivory hand and smoothed my ever-perfect chignon.