The following day was a Thursday. Just after lunch, Matron presented Dianna with a shopping list of odds and ends to pick up from Bathory Basics in the village, permitting her to choose two people to accompany her. As Clarice was in the doghouse over her continued bullying of Tabby, Matron had banned her from leaving the grounds and was now watching over Tabby like a very fierce eagle. So me and Regan were to accompany Dianna on the jaunt and the others gave us their lists.
I still hadn’t found Babbitt, Tabby’s toy rabbit that had gone missing.
‘Give my love to young Charles, won’t you?’ Maggie winked as I put my coat on.
I smiled. ‘Yeah yeah.’
‘And see if you can get anything out of Princess Di about the whole white bag thing. She’ll tell you, I bet.’
‘Yeah right. Listen, will you look after Tabby for me while I’m gone?’
‘What d’you mean? I thought Matron was keeping a closer eye now?’
‘She is but Matron’s busy making dinner and cleaning and doing paperwork and stuff and I just don’t want her left by herself. And don’t mention beasts or anything. Clarice has taken her cuddly rabbit thing away and put it somewhere too. See if you can find it, will you?’
‘God, that girl is one Insane Jane, I tell you.’
‘Just make sure she doesn’t go near her. I don’t know why she’s zoned in on Tabby.’
‘I told you, she’s a dick. That’s what dicks do. But yeah, I’ll watch the little squirt. She can help me do the washing-up and vacuum the dorms. In fact, she can just do it all. Let’s get me out of the equation right and quick.’
‘Just don’t let her out of your sight, okay? She’s on bathroom duty.’
‘Got it. Leave her with me. I’ll do the business, find the bunny thing and all. I’ll be like Cameron Poe at the end of Con Air, coming through the flames with the toy bunny for his little kid. Actually, they sell DVDs in the shop, don’t they?’
‘Yeah—not many though. And they won’t be new ones.’
‘See if they’ve got Con Air though. I fancy watching that. Plane full of desperate convicts. Nicolas Cage with a mullet. What’s not to love?’
I sighed. ‘Uh, the plot?’
‘So insignificant when you have a plane blowing up in Vegas and the awesomeness of The Cage and his Nickelback hair.’
I sighed. ‘Okay, I’ll see if they’ve got it. Just try not to blow up the school while I’m gone.’
‘Killjoy.’
Bathory village was our Hogsmeade, except we didn’t have a joke shop or a Shrieking Shack or Butterbeer. What we did have was a small park with swings, a phone box and a surprisingly well-stocked general store called Bathory Basics. Together, they provided the four things any Bathory girl wanted more than anything—freedom, a link to the outside world, decent tampons and chocolate. In Sickbay, Matron only ever stocked the very cheapest sanitary towels that felt like surfboards and made you walk like you’d been riding a horse all your life, so boarders had to make sure they returned from every holiday or exeat with enough period-ware to see them through the term. It was never enough though. There had once been a post office in the village too at some stage, but that had long gone, along with the garage, pub, paper mill and cake shop. There wasn’t much in Bathory village, but it was our sanctuary, and we took every opportunity to walk the three miles to reach it. The only downside was that we felt every inch of that walk.
‘God, I’m freezing,’ said Dianna, burrowing her face further into her scarf.
‘So am I,’ I lied. I was actually pretty snug in my coat, thick woollen scarf and Mum’s cashmere gloves, and the anticipation of seeing Charlie again was keeping me warm. ‘I think it’s going to snow soon.’
‘And my shoe’s rubbing.’
‘So’s mine, right on my heel,’ Regan added.
The road was an endless grey stretch, sided by fenced-off fields. In the distance were the moors, already iced with a light fall of snow. The temperature and distance were very unforgiving on our thin regulation navy pea coats and Mary Janes. I walked beside Dianna and Regan stayed behind us. Every so often, a car would thunder past and we would bunch up together and smoosh ourselves into a hedge.
‘Gross!’ Regan shrieked, as we all dived into the hedge for the fourth time in as many minutes. She had unwittingly discovered a fresh roadkill badger by treading in it.
‘Oh my God, that’s disgusting. What did you do that for?’ said Dianna helpfully.
‘I didn’t see it,’ cried Regan, standing stock-still and looking like she was going to be sick, modelling the dead badger like a grotesque new shoe. I wrapped my hand in Matron’s Bag-for-Life and plucked it off her foot by its ear, swinging it bodily through a gap in the hedge. The dead weight made it very heavy.
‘There, gone,’ I said, peeling the Bag-for-Life from my hand and balling it up. Regan smiled at me in thanks, and examined her gunk-covered heel. ‘Wipe it on the grass, maybe?’
‘That was vile,’ said Dianna, carrying on walking.
‘She couldn’t help it. How come you chose us two to come anyway?’
‘Why?’ she said, as we stopped yet again to allow a Land Rover to pass. ‘Because Maggie can’t stand me, Clarice is weird and Tabitha’s a liability.’
‘You’d like Maggie if you got to know her.’
‘She hates me.’
‘She doesn’t. She just doesn’t like being bossed around, that’s all. If you tried …’
‘I don’t know, being a bit less bossy with her maybe …’
‘I’m supposed to be bossy. I am her boss, technically.’
‘You’re not, Dianna,’ I laughed.
‘I kind of am. I’m Head Girl after all.’
‘Don’t remind me,’ I muttered, waiting for Regan to catch up.
‘Do you hate me?’
‘What?’ I said, readjusting my scarf.
‘For getting made Head Girl. I know you were first choice.’
‘I don’t care, Dianna. No, seriously, I don’t.’
Dianna stood still too. ‘You did mind though, at the time. I saw your reaction when it was announced in Prayers.’
‘I smashed Clarice’s face in, Dianna. No way was Saul-Hudson going to make me Head Girl after that, was she?’
‘I’m not doing a good job, though. I’ve just got so much on my plate at the moment, I’m not thinking straight. And the other girls hate me.’
‘They don’t. Do they, Regan?’
‘Yes,’ said Regan. ‘Everyone hates her.’
Dianna exhaled. ‘I knew that. They all like you, Nash. I don’t know why they made me Head Girl. You’d have been a much safer choice.’
The phrase because bullshit always beats brains was dancing around my head, but I mentally flicked it away. ‘No, listen: they don’t hate you. They don’t like your tone sometimes, maybe. How you go running to Saul-Hudson about every single little thing.’
‘But that’s what being Head Girl means, isn’t it? I’m supposed to be the eyes and ears of the Headmistress among the student body.’
‘Yes, but sometimes you could just turn a blind eye. Like when Maggie wore her indoor shoes outside the other week. I always just looked past stuff like that.’
Dianna seemed fragile. Broken. Was now a good time?
‘Dianna, is something going on with you?’
She looked back at me briefly, but didn’t slow her pace. ‘What do you mean?’
‘You seem a bit guarded. And when you asked me to swap chores …’
‘I told you, I wanted some more fresh air.’
‘Yeah, I know, but you get plenty of fresh air, we all do. Is there something else? If you want to talk about anything …’
‘No, I don’t,’ she snapped, as a beer lorry thundered past, scaring us all half to the grave and cutting my line of questioning dead in the process. She deliberately increased her pace, pulling away from us.
We arrived at the sign for the village. Another two hundred metres and we’d be at the shop.
As we rounded the bend and saw the swinging ice cream sign outside Bathory Basics, Regan asked, ‘Nash, do you think the Beast killed that badger?’
‘No, I don’t,’ I replied. ‘It was roadkill. The End.’
‘All right, I only asked.’
‘Well, I’m sick of hearing about this Beast of Bathory. It doesn’t exist, Regan. I was mistaken. You were mistaken. You have to stop thinking about it.’
‘Tabitha said she saw it yesterday. She told me at breakfast.’
I stopped and faced her. ‘Have you been talking to her about it?’
‘Yeah. She believes me.’
‘So that’s why she thought it was the Beast. Look, stop filling her head with stuff. It’ll give her nightmares. It was Chief Brody that she saw. Remember him? Big black dog?’
‘No, it wasn’t.’
‘It was. Just stop with the Beast stuff. It’s getting really boring, okay?’
School was a scary enough place to be stranded during the Christmas holidays without some starey-eyed imp like Regan banging on about man-eaters and things that go rawr in the woods.
She said nothing more, but she gave me that look again. That lingering look, like she was peeling back the layers of my lies, silently telling me she knew I’d seen it.
At last the warm glow of the Bathory Basics window, with its tantalising display of home-made jams and chutneys and sign promising ‘Freshly baked bread and cakes’, filled our vision. It was the only shop within five miles and there were lots more than just the basics inside. It was like a Tardis—a lot bigger inside than it looked and there were different little nooks and rooms depending on what you wanted. There was a cooked meat counter, a cheese counter, magazines, cold drinks, milk and yoghurt, a pharmacy area for medicines and dressings, an ice-cream freezer in the back of the shop, sweets and a small room to the side which offered toys, books and jigsaws. There was the odd Beast of Bathory souvenir in there too, for the tourists. It was a trove of precious jewels; a little chunk of paradise to us all.
And Charlie Gossard was the paradise pin-up. Him and Maggie had a long-running spat going. She started it last June by pulling down his shorts and running out of the shop screaming. In return, he posted her a dead mouse. She posted him a live cockroach. The next time she went to the shop, he glued her hand to a Lion bar. She spread a rumour there was dog crap in their doughnuts. If memory served, it was Charlie’s turn.
He was crouched on the floor, rearranging the display of charity Christmas cards when we walked in. His shoulder blades looked amazing.
‘Oh hi, Nash.’ He smiled, looking up at me.
‘Hi,’ I said, taking the briefest look at him before looking everywhere else but. I consulted the lists Tabby and Maggie had given me and began putting items in my basket.
‘Do you need any help? Anything from the counters on either of those?’ He jumped to his feet and craned his neck over my shoulder so he could see them more closely.
‘Uh yeah, actually,’ I said, feeling hot. ‘I think Matron wanted cheese and some slices of ham, didn’t she, Dianna?’
Dianna was reading a paper. She snapped her head up. ‘Pardon?’
‘Cheese and ham? Matron? You’ve got her list, haven’t you?’
‘Yes,’ said Dianna. ‘Uh, somewhere.’ The list was dangling from two fingers beneath the crease so I grabbed it and handed it to Charlie. Dianna seemed jittery. I hoped she didn’t fancy Charlie too. She did have a smaller waist than me.
He took Matron’s list. ‘No probs. I’ll sort that all out for you. We’re out of mince pies though. They didn’t come in with the delivery this morning for some reason. I can drop those down to you when we get the next one, if that’s all right?’
‘Yeah fine,’ I said, secretly watching every movement he made as he strode towards the counter. He looked almost as gorgeous from the back as he did at the front. He’d had a haircut recently too. There was a slightly-too-long tuft of blond hair on his neck that had been missed. I had a barely controllable urge to kiss it.
‘Does that say two pounds or ten pounds of Cheddar?’ he said, squinting at the piece of paper he’d placed on the top.
I joined him to look, moving my face closer to his. I wasn’t taking the blindest bit of notice of the list but I knew the answer anyway. ‘Uh, two, I think.’
He started slicing Cheddar behind the counter as I put the rest of the stuff on Maggie’s list (big bar of milk chocolate, tampons, chewing gum and Con Air on DVD) and Tabitha’s (Smarties, iced gems, pink hair bands and a pony comic) in my basket. His dad came in from the back of the shop with a stack of bread crates and set them down before him.
‘Put that lot away when you’ve finished,’ he said, not looking at Charlie. Charlie didn’t look at him either.
‘Maggie not come today then?’ Charlie asked as Regan passed by, her basket already full of items from Clarice’s list (hair serum, hair dye, shampoo, condoms and painkillers).
‘No, not today,’ I laughed, even though it wasn’t funny. ‘You’re quite safe.’
‘That thing with the doughnuts really hurt us, you know. We chucked out over a hundred quid’s worth of stock.’
‘Did you? I’m sorry.’
‘You didn’t have anything to do with it.’ He cling-filmed the cheese and labelled it, then started on slicing the ham. His eyes were Pacific in their blueness. The word ‘gooey’ was created for these exact moments.
His dad sidled past him, straightening up the wall clock as he went. ‘Three o’clock we have to be there, isn’t it, Charlie?’ he said.
‘Yeah,’ said Charlie, continuing to slice the ham. I loved watching the movements of his forearms as he sliced things. I could spend more time looking at his forearms than I could at a priceless statue. Looking at how tanned they were. At the tiny blond hairs. At his cluster of friendship bands.
‘You sure you’re all right down here then, son?’ said Charlie’s dad
‘Yes, fine.’
‘I’ll get on with some paperwork then, all right?’
‘Yes, again,’ said Charlie, and his dad patted his shoulder and left through the curtain at the back of the shop.
‘Have you got to go somewhere?’ I asked him, as he bagged up the ham and weighed it out.
‘Yeah, the doctors,’ he said, rolling his eyes. ‘I’ve got to have this check-up thing about my asthma.’ He removed a small pill bottle from his jeans and rattled it to show me.
‘Oh,’ I said, my heart skipping the smallest beat. I did like vulnerably lovable boys. ‘You’ve got asthma?’
‘Yeah. They changed my tablets, which made it worse, so they’re gonna put me on some different ones.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘My brother has that, but he has inhalers.’
‘I used to have inhalers, but I’m allergic to steroids,’ he said. ‘These are preventers. No steroids. They really work too, I’ve had way fewer attacks this year.’
‘Oh right.’
He must have it really bad, I thought. I remembered when Seb had a bad attack at his school sports day and had to be taken to hospital. I’d never been so scared in my life, waiting for news. Until now, of course. Charlie put the ham next to the cheese by the till. I smiled at him, hoping somehow he’d translate what it meant into words.
‘Anything on your list?’
‘Um,’ I said, playing for time as I looked down at my piece of paper—Frosties and Post-its. ‘I’ll have some Cola Cubes please. And toffees. About two pounds worth of each.’
‘Coming up.’ He smiled, walking round to the other counter where the sweet jars were. I continued to watch his forearms as he took down the Cola Cube jar and began weighing them out.
‘You don’t have Con Air on DVD by any chance, do you?’
He frowned as he crouched down to get the toffees from the bottom shelf behind the counter. ‘Not sure. Have a look on the rack.’
I picked my way through the DVDs, desperately trying to think of something else to say, something to ask him, but everything I could think of was a platitude. The weather. The shop. School. I wanted to ask him something about himself, something that would segue us into a conversation about going out or something, but I couldn’t think how to do it.
Amazingly, I found Con Air with a £3 sticker on the front. I put it in my basket.
‘So when do you go home for Christmas then?’ Charlie asked me.
‘Some of us are here till Boxing Day, others for the duration. My parents are in South America. I’m not sure when they’re coming.’
‘That sucks,’ he said, looking genuinely sad for me.
‘It’s okay.’ I shrugged.
‘How many of you are left?’
‘Six, not including Matron. Maggie’s there till the New Year I think.’
He nodded. ‘Cool.’
‘How come?’
He smiled, winding round my sweetie bag. ‘Just good to know, that’s all.’ My hopes sank like a plank. I knew why he had asked about our Christmas plans. He was going to play a prank on Maggie, that was all. Nothing to do with my availability for a date or anything.
He looked around, seemingly checking for his dad who might be lurking to pounce on him if he wasn’t working hard enough, then he leaned forwards over the counter. ‘So, do you get any time out?’
‘Huh?’ I said, picking up a two pence piece that had dropped out of my purse.
‘Do you get allowed out anywhere?’
‘Um …’
‘I thought you and me could, I dunno, maybe go into town or something?’ His dad popped his head through the curtain. ‘Yeah?’ said Charlie.
‘I’m going upstairs to change, all right? There’s a delivery coming in a bit. Keep an ear out?’
‘Yeah.’ When his dad had gone, he seemed to relax a bit more. ‘So anyway, there’s a Christmas fair on over at Dyerston. Or we could go up the Gorge or something?’
Jackpot. My mouth was out-of-control smiley all of a sudden. ‘Really?’
‘Yeah.’
‘What, all of us?’
‘No.’ He smiled, ‘I thought just you, maybe.’
‘Um,’ I said, still smiling. ‘Well, yeah, I’m sure I could ask Matron. Though I don’t know about going into town. And I’d have to be back for Prep at six o’clock.’
‘That’s all right. We could hang out here, but there’s not much to do in the village really. There’s crazy golf up at the Gorge and some caves and shops and stuff. I think there’s a petting zoo or something as well. It’ll be dead quiet now it’s winter.’
‘Will your dad let you off work though? You seem to be quite in demand here.’
‘Yeah, no worries. I’m due some time off. And anyway, it’s Christmas, right? Spirit of goodwill and all that. I’ll handle him, don’t worry.’
The Gorge, I thought, scrolling in my head through the number of times of Bathory girls had said they’d been taken ‘up the Gorge’ by some boy or another. It was the hot spot in Bathory for first dates, first kisses, first anythings with a boy. I felt so proud Charlie had asked me, I could have sprouted wings from both shoulders.
Before my mind could list all the other obstacles, problems and worries I just said, ‘Yes, I’d love to.’
He smiled back at me, brilliantly, and it was like the sun came out in my chest.