23.

‘All right everyone, settle down,’ Mr Patterson bellowed from the top step of the big porch. ‘You’ve got one hour to chill out before tea, which, by the way, is stew tonight.’

‘Aww no, Sir,’ groaned Stewart Stevenson, ‘I hate stew.’

‘Shut it, Stevenson. You’ll eat what you’re damn well given. Now, bugger off the lot of you, and be back here at 5.30 p.m. sharp.’

Someone produced a football from somewhere and the boys began kicking it around on the grass at the side of the house. Most of the girls went up to the dorm, giggling and whispering, eager to exchange gossip about who was trying to get off with whom. The teachers went into the lounge to have a smoke and sort through the pile of worksheets. Biddy stood alone outside the big house while the others dispersed. Not knowing what to do or where to go, she walked back up the path to the big birch tree and sat on the grass with her back resting on its trunk. She picked at shoots of grass and thought about the stew. She liked stew. Food didn’t generally excite her, but stew was one of her favourite meals. Her father made a big pot every other Monday, and it lasted two or three nights. It was his mother’s recipe, he’d told her, and her mother’s before that. He didn’t know how far it went back – generations, probably. Anyway, he’d have to teach her someday. He said that every time he dolloped the first steaming spoonful of the fortnightly pot onto her plate, and every single time she inhaled the sweet, warm smell of meat, carrots, onions and something she didn’t know the name of, she wondered when that ‘someday’ would be.

Her tummy gurgled, either with nerves or with hunger. It didn’t matter which, as after last night she knew she wouldn’t be able to eat anything anyway, no matter how good the stew looked. She’d eaten nothing at breakfast, even though she wasn’t sitting at Alison’s table, but she did wrap a piece of dry toast in a napkin which she slipped under her cardigan and ate in the toilet before they went off on the hike. Lunch was a picnic on up the mountain, the same as yesterday, only with a ham sandwich this time. She’d managed most of it as she sat alone on a moss-covered rock surrounded by clumps of wild purple heather, mesmerised by the peregrine falcons.

The sound of low voices coming from somewhere behind made her look up, just in time to see Alison and Georgina dart around the back of the big old greenhouse. They were probably going to smoke a cigarette, just like they had last night. They hadn’t seen her, but just the sight of Alison unnerved Biddy. She had managed to avoid her for most of the day as they’d been put in different groups. Everyone in her group ignored her completely, but nobody did anything bad. Biddy could cope with people not talking to her. She was used to that. She liked it that way. But at teatime, she would be back in the same room as Alison, and then it would be bedtime, and somewhere along the course of the evening Alison was bound to have something or other planned for her. The lump started to move up her gullet into the back of her throat and she swallowed repeatedly to keep it from pushing into her mouth. She thought about her father and his stew and the half-hug they’d had yesterday morning before she left, and she really, really wanted to go home.

Alison and Georgina reappeared, arms linked, giggling together. Alison threw her head back, tossing her long golden hair, which glistened in the warm September sunshine. Biddy held her breath, willing them not to see her. But they were too busy gossiping about something or other more important than Biddy to notice her, and disappeared around the back of the house. She exhaled, sighing with relief. A crow squawked loudly above her head. Biddy looked up to see three of the large black birds high above her, swooping from the tallest chimney on the roof of the big house down to the glass roof of the greenhouse and back again, dipping closer to her with every dive, crying out as they passed. She was sure they were calling to her. Her father and his stew and that evening’s dinner and Alison and Georgina were forgotten, as an urge to draw the crows consumed her. But her sketchbook was in her case, and that would mean going into the dormitory where some of the other girls were sure to be. Maybe they would just ignore her. Maybe they wouldn’t even notice her. She decided to risk it. She’d get in and out as quickly as possible.

As Biddy pushed open the dormitory door, she briefly scanned the room. The scene was pretty similar to the one last night, only this time it didn’t hold the same fascination. Georgina, Jackie and Julia were lying on Julia’s bunk, flicking through a magazine. They were making the same familiar oohing and aahing noises that Jill and Nicola had been making last night. Vanessa Park was putting blue eye-shadow on Jane Gilbert’s eyelids. Pamela Brown was brushing Karen Robinson’s long black hair. Jill Cleaver was rifling through her rucksack looking for something. Clare Watson was showing Angela Duggan and Kathy Young her newly pierced ears which she thought might have gone septic. And Nicola appeared to be writing in her diary. There was no sign of Alison. Biddy scuttled over to her bunk, head down, teeth tightly clenched and pulled her case out from under her bunk. She hoped no one would notice her.

‘Oh my God,’ exclaimed Georgina loudly, ‘what is that smell. Did somebody drop one? Oh. It’s only B.W. God, has anyone got any perfume?’ Some of the girls sniggered. Most just carried on doing what they were doing. Georgina tried again.

‘Seriously, has anyone noticed the stink coming from B.W.’s bed? Like cat’s wee? Maybe she wet herself.’

Julia and Jackie giggled.

‘Hey, B.W. Did you wet the bed last night?’

 

Biddy’s back was turned away from Julia’s bunk. She started to shake and felt her cheeks flush with hot embarrassment. How did they know? she thought. She had stayed in bed that morning, with the quilt pulled over her head, waiting until all the other girls went into the bathroom together to use the toilet, have a wash and clean their teeth. She knew there was no one in the room to see her pull on her clean pants and trousers or stuff her damp pyjama bottoms under her pillow. Was there a smell? She couldn’t tell. Had they looked under her pillow? She swallowed hard several times.

‘Give over, Georgina, would you?’ said Karen.

Biddy was surprised. No one ever spoke back to Alison or Georgina, but since they’d been here, Karen Robinson had done it to both of them.

Georgina herself was furious. She could never muster up the same enthusiasm from the others for goading Biddy as Alison could, a fact which always irked her. She glared at Biddy hoping to evoke a reaction at least from her, a sign that she was scared. But Biddy always looked scared, so Georgina didn’t know if she was getting to her or not. She shrugged her shoulders in a ‘see-if-I-care’ kind of way, and returned her attention to the pictures of Duran Duran in Julia’s Jackie magazine.

Biddy snatched her sketchbook and pencils from the case, shoved it back under the bunk, and slunk out of the room, keeping her head bent low, not wanting to risk eye contact with anyone. She was so relieved that Alison hadn’t been there. Alison would probably somehow have discovered that Biddy really had wet herself. In her hurry to get away from the dorm and back to the birds, she lost her bearings. Turning left at the end of the corridor instead of right, she ended up on an unfamiliar large square landing. There were corridors running off in three directions, a staircase leading up to the next floor and two more flights of stairs at both sides of the landing going down. Disorientated, Biddy circled the landing before deciding to take the narrower of the two downstairs staircases, reckoning that there was less of a chance she would bump into anyone on that one. Just as she reached the turn halfway down, she heard the sound of laughter coming from above. It was a girl’s laughter, light and high. Then someone’s voice – a man’s, low and deep.

Biddy stopped and backed up against the banister, afraid of getting caught somewhere she shouldn’t be. The laughter came again. Instinctively she looked up, and there standing against the banister right above her head was Mr Patterson. And he was holding onto Alison. Then Alison reached up and ran her fingers through Mr Patterson’s hair. Alison giggled and Mr Patterson made a sort of groaning noise. ‘Christ, you’re gorgeous,’ he said in a low, croaky voice. ‘You’re so fucking hot.’

Biddy swallowed hard. She didn’t want to see this. She didn’t want to hear this. She didn’t want to know this. She wanted to un-see and un-hear and un-know, and never think of it again. Terrified to move in case they heard her, she held her breath and closed her eyes tight, willing them to disappear. But when she opened her eyes again, she couldn’t help but look up, and saw Mr Patterson kissing Alison on the mouth. And Alison was kissing him back. Biddy had never seen people kissing like this before, not in real life anyway, and whilst the idea of kissing did intrigue her, she wished she wasn’t witnessing these two people doing it. Not them, not here, not now. Why did she look? Why? She closed her eyes again and squeezed them tight, still afraid to move. This was wrong. This was all so wrong. Alison and Mr Patterson were responsible for what happened to Miss Jordan. He was the one who had told Mr Duncan about the day in Rankin and McMordie. Alison was the one who told the Principal that Miss Jordan had been helping her in the toilets. How could they do that? How could they make something that was so nice and so good and so completely innocent look so ugly and bad and wrong – when they were doing this? When they’d probably been doing this all along? In those few seconds, Biddy Weir wasn’t scared of Alison Flemming; she hated her. She hated her and she wanted her to pay for what she did. An unfamiliar rage pumped through her veins with such ferocity she felt that she might burst. But then she made a fatal error: she looked up again. The kissing had stopped, and Alison’s head was resting on Mr Patterson’s shoulder, her fingers still trailing through his hair. But she was staring down at Biddy, her hazel eyes brimming with venom. ‘Weirdo,’ she mouthed, slowly, deliberately. Then she closed her lips and ran her index finger along them in a menacing ‘zip it’ motion. And just like that, the unfamiliar sense of bravado Biddy had felt a few seconds earlier vanished, and the fear was back.

Biddy turned and ran down the rest of the stairs two at a time. At the bottom, she raced along a narrow corridor, past a scullery and some store rooms, until she eventually came to a fire door at the bottom which led her outside. She kept on running up the driveway and past the greenhouse, and past the birch tree, until, breathless and shaking, she came across a huge oak tree, and collapsed behind it, vomiting up the pitiful amount of food in her stomach.