The phone rang several times.
‘Yo.’ His voice was so reassuringly familiar and normal that for a second Allie thought she might cry.
‘Hey. It’s Allie.’
‘Allie! Bloody hell. Where have you been?’ He sounded as relieved as she felt.
‘In lockdown.’ She glared at her mother’s back. ‘They took my phone away, and my computer. They won’t let me leave the house. How are things with you?’
‘Oh, the usual.’ He laughed. ‘The parentals are pissed off, the school’s very pissed off, but it’ll blow over.’
‘Are they kicking you out?’
‘What? Of school? No. Are they kicking you out?’
‘Allegedly. My parents are sending me away to a prison camp they insist on calling a school. Somewhere in Outer Mongolia.’
‘Seriously?’ He sounded genuinely upset. ‘That sucks! Why are they being so lame? Nobody got hurt. Ross’ll get over it. I’m going to do some community service, apologise to everybody and then it’s back to normal school hell. I can’t believe your parents are being so medieval.’
‘Me neither. Listen, the Medieval Ones say I won’t be able to talk to you once I get to this prison school, but if you want to find me, it’s called Cimmer …’
The line went dead. Allie looked up to see her mother holding the plug, which she had pulled from the wall. Her face was expressionless.
‘That’s enough of that,’ she said, and smoothly lifted the phone from Allie’s hand.
Her mother returned to slicing the tomato as Allie stood stock still, staring at her. Over the course of thirty seconds she felt her face first pale, then redden as she fought back tears. Finally she spun on her heel and stormed out of the room.
‘You. People. Are. Crazy!’ The words started low, but rose to a scream as she mounted the stairs. She slammed the door to her room, and once inside stood in the middle of it, staring around her, bewildered.
She no longer recognised this place as her home.
When Wednesday morning arrived hot and bright, she was surprised to find that she was actually relieved. At least this phase of her punishment was over with.
She stared at her open wardrobe for half an hour trying to decide what to wear. She finally opted for skinny black jeans and a long black vest with the word ‘Trouble’ scrawled across it in sparkly silver. She brushed her bright red hair and left it loose.
Studying herself in the mirror, she thought she looked pale. Scared.
I can do better than this.
Grabbing her liquid eyeliner, she applied a thick black swoosh to her eyelids and then coated her lashes in mascara. Next, she dived under the bed and pulled out a pair of dark red, knee-high Doc Marten boots, lacing them up over her jeans. When she walked downstairs a few minutes later she looked, she thought, like a rock star. Her expression was mutinous.
Her mother looked at her outfit and sighed dramatically but said nothing. Breakfast took place in icy silence, and afterwards her parents left her alone to finish packing. She piled her clothes up on the bed and then sat among them, her head resting on her bent knees, counting her breaths until she felt calm.
When they walked to the car that afternoon, Allie stopped and looked back at their ordinary terraced house, trying to memorise it. It wasn’t much, but it had always been home, with all of the emotional beauty that word implied.
Now it just looked like every other house on the street.
THREE
The car journey was excruciating. Normally she would have been happy to leave the city on a sunny summer day, but as London’s crowded streets gave way to rolling green fields dotted with white sheep dozing in the warmth, she felt a wave of loneliness. The mood in the car didn’t help. Her parents barely acknowledged her presence. Her mother held the map, and offered occasional directions.
Huddled in the back seat, Allie stared resentfully at the backs of their heads. Why couldn’t they get a GPS like everybody else?
She’d asked them this same question many times, but her father just said they were happy to be ‘Luddites’ and that ‘everyone should know how to read a map’.
Whatever.
Without access to the map, Allie was left trying to figure out precisely where she was going.
She’d never been told where the school was, and the town names whizzed by (Guildford, Camberley, Farnham …). Then they left the A-roads and began to wind their way up and down hills on tiny country lanes surrounded by high hedges that blocked any view, through villages (Crondall, Dippenhall, Frensham …). Finally, after two hours, they turned down a narrow dirt track. Her father slowed the car to a crawl. The road passed into thick forest where it was cooler and quieter. After a few minutes of jostling and bumping as her father swerved to avoid deep holes in the road they arrived at a tall iron gate.
They stopped. The rumble of the car engine was the only sound.
Nothing happened for a long minute.
‘Do you need to beep the horn or push a buzzer or something?’ Allie whispered, taking in the forbidding black fence, which extended into the trees as far as she could see.
‘No.’ Her father’s voice was also hushed. ‘They must have CCTV or something. They know when someone’s here. Last time we only waited a few …’
The gates shivered and then, with a clanging metallic sound, swung slowly inward. Inside, the forest continued, and the sun barely filtered through the thick branches.
Allie stared into the shadows ahead.
Welcome to your new school, Allie. Welcome to your new life.
While the gates swung open, she counted her heartbeats. Boom-boom-boom … Thirteen beats and she could see the road ahead. Now her heart sounded so loud that she checked surreptitiously to see if her parents had noticed. They were waiting patiently. Her father drummed his fingers on the steering wheel.
Twenty-five beats and the gates had locked into place with a shudder.
Her father put the car into first gear.
They were on the move.
Feeling her throat closing Allie focused on breathing. She really didn’t want to have another panic attack right now. But she couldn’t shake an overwhelming sense of dread.
Stop freaking out, she told herself. This is just another school, Allie. Stay focused.
It worked; her breathing steadied a little.
Her father pulled the car forward onto a smooth gravel drive that rolled through thick trees. After the rutted dirt road outside the gates, the drive was so smooth and well maintained that the car seemed to float.
Allie continued to monitor her heartbeat; for one hundred and twenty-three beats nothing but trees and shadows, then a coronary drum roll as they emerged into the light and she saw a building ahead.
She lost count.
It was worse than she’d feared. Looking out of place in the bright sunlight at the foot of a steep forested hill sprawled an enormous Gothic mansion of dark red bricks. The three-storey structure looked as if it had been ripped from another time and place to be dropped here in … wherever they were. Its jagged roof jutted sharply in peaks and turrets, topped with what looked like daggers of wrought iron stabbing the sky.
Holy shit.
‘It is such an impressive building,’ her father said.
Her mother snorted. ‘Impressively ghastly.’
Terrifying. The word they are looking for is ‘terrifying’.
In contrast to the intimidating structure, the gravel road ahead was transformed by the sun into a piece of ivory, curving towards a big, mahogany door in the dark brick wall. As they entered the shadow cast by the school, her father slowed the car.
The second the car stopped moving, the door swung open and a slim, smiling woman slipped out and ran lightly down the stairs. Her thick, dark blonde hair was held back loosely with a clip, and it curled up at the ends as if it were happy to be there. Allie was relieved to see how normal she looked: her glasses were pushed up on top of her head, and she wore a creamy cotton cardigan atop her
pale blue dress.
Allie’s parents climbed out and walked over to meet her. Lagging behind unnoticed, Allie reluctantly opened her door and left the back seat of the Ford, which suddenly seemed so friendly and familiar. She didn’t close the door.
Rather than joining the group ahead, she leaned against the car and warily watched the scene in front of her. Waiting. Twenty-seven heartbeats.
Twenty-eight. Twenty-nine.
‘Mr and Mrs Sheridan, it’s so nice to see you again.’ The woman’s voice was warm and lilting; she smiled easily. ‘I hope the drive wasn’t too tedious for you. The traffic can be awful between here and London. But at least the weather is lovely today, isn’t it?’
Allie noticed she had a faint accent, but she couldn’t identify it. Was it Scottish? It added delicacy and complexity to her words, as if they were filigreed.
After more pleasantries were exchanged and the conversation lulled, the three turned towards Allie. Her parents’ polite smiles disappeared, replaced with the cultivated blankness with which she’d grown uncomfortably familiar. But the headmistress smiled at her warmly.
‘And you must be Allie.’
Scottish, definitely. But such an unusual accent – very subtle.
‘Allie, I’m Isabelle le Fanult, the headmistress at Cimmeria Academy. You can call me Isabelle. Welcome.’
Allie was a bit surprised to hear her nickname, rather than ‘Alyson’, which is what her parents always called her. To be told to call a headmistress by her first name seemed weird too.
But quite cool.
Isabelle held out a slim, pale hand. She had oddly beautiful golden brown eyes, and up close she looked younger than she’d appeared from a distance.
Allie didn’t want anything to do with this place – anything to do with this woman – but she found herself reaching out. As her hand was grasped in a surprisingly strong, cool grip, shaken and then released gently, she relaxed a little.
Isabelle held her gaze a second longer, and Allie thought she saw sympathy in her expression, before she turned back to her parents with a smile and an apologetic shrug.
‘I’m afraid it is our policy that parents bid farewell to their children here. When the students cross the threshold they start their new lives at Cimmeria, and we like them to do that independently.’
Turning back to Allie, ‘Do you have many bags? Hopefully we can carry them between the two of us. Most of the staff are busy at the moment, so I fear we must fend for ourselves.’
For the first time, Allie spoke. ‘I don’t have too much.’
It was true. The school supplied most things and allowed so little that in the end she only had two medium-sized bags, mostly filled with books and notepads. Her father carried them from the boot. Isabelle lifted the larger of the two with surprising ease. She exchanged a few final pleasantries with Allie’s parents and then stepped back away from them.
‘Work hard and drop us a line now and then,’ her father said. He was still distant but he looked sad, and he gave her a quick hug.
Her mother smoothed a strand of hair out of Allie’s face, avoiding her eyes. ‘Please give this place a chance. And call us if you need us.’ For just a second she hugged Allie tightly, and then she let go and walked to the car without looking back.
Allie stood still, her hands at her sides, watching the car turn and head back down the smooth gravel drive. She felt tears prickling the backs of her eyes, and she shook her head fiercely to ward them off. Picking up the remaining black bag, she turned towards Isabelle, who was watching her.
‘It’s always difficult the first time,’ Isabelle said, her voice gentle. ‘It gets easier.’
She headed briskly towards the steps saying over her shoulder, ‘I’m afraid we have a little distance to go. You’ll find this building is simply endless.’
Her voice faded as she walked inside. After a moment’s hesitation, Allie followed.
‘I’ll give you the pocket tour as we go …’ Isabelle was saying, but Allie hardly heard as she gaped at the vast entrance hall.
Inside it was dim and chilly, the bright sunlight filtered into colourful shade by a stained glass window far above her head. The ceiling was at least twenty feet high, held aloft by thick stone arches. The stone floor had been polished smooth by thousands of feet over hundreds of years. Candle holders five feet tall stood like sentinels in each corner. Some walls were covered with old tapestries, though Allie didn’t get a good look at them as she hurried after the headmistress.
From the entrance hall they moved on into a wide hallway with dark wooden floors. Isabelle turned into the first room on the right. Inside were more than a dozen large, round, wood tables, each with eight chairs around it. Along one wall an enormous fireplace reached well above her head.
‘This is the dining room. You’ll have all of your meals here,’ she said, pausing a moment for Allie to take it in before striding off down the hallway.
A short distance away and on the opposite side of the corridor, she walked through another arched doorway. This vast room had polished wooden floors, a ceiling nearly as high as the one in the entranceway, and was largely empty. Its fireplace dwarfed Isabelle, and huge metal candelabra hung from the ceiling on chains.
‘This is the great hall. We have events here, balls, gatherings, and so forth,’ Isabelle said. ‘This is the oldest part of the building. Much older than the façade. Older even than it looks.’
She turned on her heel and headed back into the hallway. Allie scrambled to keep up, panting slightly from the exertion. Isabelle was surprisingly fast. Turning to the left she gestured at another door, explaining that it was the common room. Then they began climbing a wide wooden staircase with an impressive mahogany banister. Isabelle’s espadrilles made a soft shushing sound as she skipped upwards, all the while reeling off facts and figures about the building. Allie was a bit dazed by it all – the staircase was Edwardian, or had she said Victorian? The dining room was Reformation … or was it Tudor? Most classrooms were in the east wing, but what did she say was in the west?
At the top of two flights of stairs, Isabelle turned left and walked down a wide corridor, then climbed a narrower flight of stairs which led to a long, dim hallway lined with wooden doors painted white.
‘This is the girls’ dormitory. Let’s see, you’re in 329 …’ she hurried down the hall until the appropriate number appeared, and swung the door open.
The room was very dark and small with a single, bare bed, a wooden dresser and desk, and a wardrobe, all painted the same clean shade of white. Isabelle walked across the room and flipped a latch Allie couldn’t see, swinging open a wooden shutter covering a small arched window. Instantly the room glowed with golden afternoon light.
‘All it needs is a little fresh air,’ she said cheerfully as she headed for the door. ‘Your uniforms are in the wardrobe, your parents gave us your sizes but let us know if anything doesn’t fit. You should have everything you need. Shall I leave you to unpack? Dinner is at seven, you know where the dining hall is. Oh by the way …’
She turned back. ‘I noticed you’ve been having trouble in English class lately so I’ve added you to my own class. It’s a special seminar with a smaller class; I hope you’ll find it interesting.’
Overwhelmed with information Allie nodded silently; then, realising that words were needed, she said haltingly, ‘I … I’ll be fine.’
Isabelle tilted her head to one side, studying her for a second, then nodded. ‘There’s lots of information about the school and your classes in the envelope on the desk,’ she said. Allie hadn’t noticed the big envelope with her name on it at first glance, but now she wondered how she’d missed it.
‘Any questions before I go?’
Allie started to shake her head then stopped. She looked down at her feet and then up again. She tugged at the edge of her T-shirt hesitantly. ‘You’re the headmistress, right?’
Isabelle nodded, looking slightly puzzled.
‘So why ar
e you doing all of this?’ Allie made a sweeping gesture.
‘I don’t understand,’ Isabelle said, obviously baffled. ‘Why am I doing what?’
Allie tried to explain. ‘Meeting me at the door, showing me to my room, giving me a tour …’
Isabelle hesitated, crossing her arms loosely across her chest. Her voice was gentle. ‘Allie, your parents told me a lot about you. I know what happened, and I am so very sorry about your brother. I know what it’s like to lose somebody close to you, and I’m aware how easy it is to get caught up in that … horribleness, and never get out again. But you mustn’t let what happened destroy your life. You have a lot to offer, and my job is to get you to realise that. To help you get yourself back.’
Isabelle walked to the door and rested her hand against it.
Three breaths in and two out.
‘I’ll send a prefect around to introduce herself and answer any questions you might have,’ Isabelle said. ‘She’ll come at six, which should give you time to get everything sorted before dinner. Mealtimes are strict – please be there on time.’
She whirled out at her usual speed, but the door shut lightly behind her and latched with a quiet click.
Allie exhaled.
With the room to herself Allie had time to think. Why had her parents told Isabelle about Christopher? That had always been a private family matter. And how strange was this school? Why hadn’t they passed a single student in the hallway on the way here? The place felt empty.
It was weird.
She lifted a bag up onto the bed. Unzipping it, she began pulling things out and finding places to stow them. Books went onto the narrow bookshelf beside the desk. Clothes went into the dresser, but as she opened drawers she found many were already full of T-shirts, shorts and jumpers in white or midnight blue, with the Cimmeria crest above the heart.
Curious, she opened the wardrobe to find skirts, shirts and jackets, all in the uniform’s style. She rummaged through the back of the wardrobe until her fingers felt something light and filmy. Pulling out the hangers she found they held delicate frocks in various colours. Isabelle had mentioned balls, but she hadn’t said that the school would supply formal gowns. She held up a dress in dark blue velvet – it looked vintage, with a full, knee-length skirt and a sophisticated, beaded V-neck.