We’re from St. Cecilia’s School,” Alice enunciated as clearly as she could, shooting an exasperated look at the ninth-grade students clustered round her. It was Wednesday afternoon, and they were standing in the recreation room of the old people’s home in Hasted, trying to communicate with one of its elderly residents. “We’re just here to chat with you for a while. Is that all right?”
“Pardon me, dear?” The lady Alice was talking to cupped her liver-spotted hand behind her ear. “Who are you?”
“Students from St. Cecilia’s.”
“Pardon?”
“St. Ce-ci-lia’s!” Alice shouted for the fourth time.
“Ooh, no, don’t know anybody by the name of Cecil,” the woman said, an air of confusion clouding her already cloudy eyes. “Are you sure it isn’t someone else?”
Alice shut her eyes for a moment, ready to scream in frustration. This woman must be at least two hundred years old. There was no way they were going to get her to understand. She sighed. It wasn’t that she didn’t like old people. It was that being around them brought back memories of the miserable Christmases her family used to spend at her grandmother’s mansion in Hampshire, before Alice and her brothers had refused to go anymore. The place was so huge and so gloomy—Grandma Lucinda refused to open any curtains or turn on any overhead lights—that Alice was terrified even to walk down the hallways alone. Grandma Lucinda was as hard of hearing as this woman here. She never spoke, in fact; just rustled silently from room to room, glaring at anyone she came across.
Alice turned toward the girls whom Mr. Logan had made her chaperone, wondering how she could escape this hellhole. Thank fuck there were only two more days till she and Tally dashed off to Paris. They were taking the 7:32 p.m. Eurostar on Friday. Their hotel was booked and their excuses were sorted: Alice had already forged the notes from their parents getting her and Tally off Saturday-morning lessons. She’d used the great-aunt-keeling-over-and-dying story. Teachers could never check up on things like that—it’d be too insensitive.
Alice’s eyes fell on Charlotte Calthorpe de Vyle-Hanswicke, Mimah’s fourteen-year-old sister. The fact that Charlie was here was another piece of bad luck. Back when Alice and Mimah had been friends, Alice used to spend weeks at a time at the Calthorpe de Vyle-Hanswickes’ mansions in Wiltshire and Spain, so she knew Charlie well. Just last Easter, the girl had been innocent and boisterous—still a kid—but she seemed to have taken her dad’s notorious philandering to heart. Today, typically, she was wearing black eyeliner so thick it looked like she’d smeared it on with a spatula, and a gray school skirt that barely covered her thighs. Her coal-colored hair hadn’t been cut in months.
“Excuse me, dear,” the old woman said, smiling hopefully at Alice. “Would you like to see my collection of teeth?” Behind her thick spectacles, her eyes seemed to be blinking out from fish tanks.
“Er, no thanks.” Alice backed away. But the woman was already reaching into her pocket, pulling out a plastic tortoise-shell box.
“Here you go. Lovely, aren’t they?” she smiled, shaking the box. The lines of white dentures inside it rattled like dice.
Alice’s eyes darted toward the glass doors.
“Know what?” She nudged Charlie. “I reckon I’ll go for a walk.”
“You can’t,” Charlie argued. “Your job is to stay and supervise us.”
Alice regarded her coldly. Younger students weren’t meant to talk back to their superiors. Trust a Calthorpe de Vyle-Hanswicke to disregard the status quo.
“Wrong,” she said. “I can and I will. Tell the others I’ll be back at five.”
With that, she pushed past Mimah’s sister and the rest of her charges, and booked it for the center of town.