The Following Girls (10 page)

‘You don’t have to learn logarithms or cosines. There’s a little book. It’s like being made to memorise a bus timetable of somewhere you don’t even live. In Greek.’

‘But there is a logic to it,’ insisted Stott. ‘Look at it. All the metals go here . . .’

‘Arsenic,’ suggested Baker.

‘No need to be nasty,’ Bunty, straight-faced, ‘she’s only trying to help.’

German was followed – just in case any of it stuck – by forty minutes of French conversation practising the future perfect (
I
/
yo
u
/we will have murdered Miss Gray by next Tuesday
).

‘Not what I’d call conversation.’ Stottie was off again.

Stottie, who had a knack for languages, was mid-way through teaching herself
Italian in twenty lessons
from her library book. It was taking slightly longer than promised but it was still a hell of a lot quicker than French.

‘
“
Quel est votre sujet préfér
é
”? Is that really their idea of a conversation? I mean, picture the scene: you, Roger Vadim—’

‘Jean Paul Belmondo,’ purred Bunty, ‘he looks dir-ty.’

‘A corner table in a bistro, checked tablecloth, candle jammed into a wine bottle, an accordion wheezing away in the distance as you sip your Napoleon brandy. “Tell me, chérie,” he murmurs, lighting another little yellow French fag while you humming-bird flick your banana, “
avez-vous des soeurs ou des frères
?
”
I worked it out. A thousand French lessons: one a week from the age of seven; one a
day
the five years we’ve been here.
Madame Dupont va a l’épicerie
? It’s a total con. We should all be bi-bloody-lingual by now. A
thousand
hours down the bloody buggering drain. I’ve spent more time one-to-one with French teachers than I have with my dad. Far more.’ Stottie stopped, sad suddenly. ‘And why
French
anyway?
Loads
more places speak Spanish. Loads more
people
speak Russian. Did money change hands?’

‘
“The language of international diplomacy” Miss Gray says.’

‘Oh yes, very likely. Has Miss Batty got a folder on that in her careers file? Data Processing, Dental Nursing, Diplomacy.’

Miss Revie was flicking through the matrix prep as they barged their way into Room 8 for Beta Maths.

‘Jolly well done everybody, getting all the matrix homework in, not bad, not bad at all.’

Had Miss Revie spotted the massed cheat? Not a chance. She tamped the sheaf of sheets against her desktop. Would the Maths monitor be a sport and hand them all back? And they must all remember tomorrow’s exam and the need for constant revision and could they all turn to the section on Topology and could someone please tell her the maximum number of odd nodes in a traversable system? (Surly silence.) Anybody?

Miss Revie’s good mood swung back to minus one. Hopeless. Thank heavens she was getting the Alphas next year, at least a few of them had an inkling, but God preserve her from fifteen-year-old girls who couldn’t do Maths, whose boring binty mothers could never do Maths, whose boring binty mothers had deliberately inoculated their daughters with their own superstitious dread of fractions, graphs, set squares, protractors and the entire contents of the Oxford Mathematical Instruments set, together with their pea-brained belief that Mathematics, like red hair or cystic fibrosis or a third nipple had some bona fide genetic component. This lot looked indignantly at each batch of equations as if the sums had been delivered in error, and the cheeky ones came right out and said, in their Neanderthal, proto-Benthamite way, that they were never going to
need
differential equations, Miss Revie, not in Real Life. As though the ability to find the determinant of a matrix, dissect a rat or parse a compound sentence were just so much excess baggage that would weigh them down on their breakneck race through life and must be hurled from the back of the sledge at the earliest possible opportunity.

Miss Revie slumped down in front of the projector and picked up her pack of felt-tips.

‘Can you all turn to page seventeen.’

Baker opened her Maths book at the Topology chapter. There was a picture of a TV set next to a Dalek and a caption pointing out that they were topologically equivalent, plus a short hymn in praise of the London Tube map.

Bunty was flicking crossly through her own textbook. ‘There’s a whole chapter on Practical Mathematics in the back here,’ she hissed, ‘all the stuff I can do: compound interest, percentages, how many bathroom tiles to buy. All that malarkey. Not even on the syllabus. I’m
never
going to
need
this rubbish.’ Bunty was almost squealing with frustration as she unconsciously trotted out Miss Revie’s unfavourite phrase. ‘There already
is
a bloody Tube map. And if they wanted a new one they’re never going to ask
me
are they?’

‘Not with your job in the diplomatic corps,
chérie
. Far too busy.’

Baker leaned back in her chair, opened her rough book and began writing ‘
kill julia smith
’ in very small capital letters over and over and over until it filled the page. That bitch was everywhere. By now she would have run the Drumlin to earth and told her that Baker hadn’t managed to see the headmistress and the Drumlin would probably bring it up in the Thursday staff meeting and Mrs Mostyn would add her two pennyworth and they’d phone Dad or write to Dad or fire off some smoke signals to Dad to say that Baker wasn’t keeping to her side of the ‘contract’ and it wasn’t the plimsolls it was the
principle
of the thing and he would shout and pull his face into cross, crumpled shapes and tell her she was just like her bloody mother.

One day, thought Baker, one day he’ll trot out that rubbish again about apples not falling far from trees, he’ll say it again and I will murder him and it will all be Julia’s fault. Fucking Julia. Her Biro went through the paper. No one else hated their parents this much. Unless they did. Maybe they did? Maybe that was why people sighed at sentimental pictures and cried at
The Railway Children
(‘Daddy! My daddy!’). In mourning for the families they hadn’t had.

She could see Dad’s Monday night face in her head, see the girlishly long cowlick of hair flopping sweatily forward. She could see his teeth (you couldn’t as a rule), chubby and yellow like sucked buttermints and stained with strong tea and tobacco that silted up the grooves where they met. She could feel the germy sparks of spit that flew around whenever he started shouting.
Father-like he tends and spares us
? Oh really?

‘So,’ Dad always said when he finally finished, ‘have you got much homework?’ Like someone had pulled a string at the back of his neck.

Queenie had had a lot of talking dolls when she was small. She brought them all to school once: Ken (Barbie’s boyfriend), Stacey (their chatty chum), and evil Captain Black off some
Thunderbirds
thing and the Mandies spent a happy breaktime making up a dolly drama.

‘I think mini skirts are smashing; Barbie and I are having tea; Oh dear. What shall I wear for dinner?’ said Stacey who sounded just like the Queen.

‘We will take our revenge,’ vowed Captain Black.

‘Let’s go listen to Barbie’s records,’ drawled Ken in a desperate bid to lighten the mood.

‘Everyone will die,’ warned the Captain, implacably.

Barbie had a talking boyfriend, a talking friend, a talking enemy but no sign as yet of a talking dad.

‘You’re not going out like that, are you?’

‘Have you written a thank you letter?’

‘Take that stuff off your face.’

‘Apologise to your mother.’

‘We will take our revenge.’

Chapter 6

‘I hate my stepmother.’

‘Well just eat the potatoes.’

Queenie was poking suspiciously at her lunch plate with a fork. ‘Is this really what they eat in Lancashire?’

‘Probbly. All food has to be named after somewhere. Well-known fact: Bakewell tart; Oxford marmalade. All cheese. Biscuits.’

‘Biscuits?’

‘Lincoln, Shrewsbury, Bath Olivers, Nice, Garibaldi.’

‘Gari-baldi? Wezzat?’

‘Near Nice.’

Bunty peered hungrily at Baker’s plate. ‘Are you not going to eat that?’ She smiled a little guiltily at Baker – like they were still friends – and began helping herself to the untasted hotpot.

‘Your stepmother can’t be
all
bad,’ said Queenie. ‘Not if she wants shot of the piano.’

‘Yeah, but she isn’t doing it for my sake, it’s not about me. She just wants a bigger telly and there isn’t room.’

‘I don’t see why you want to get rid of it. I wish mine was as nice,’ gushed Stottie. ‘And you’re really
good
– you can play anything.’

Baker looked down at the remaining yellow discs of potato and pinkish shreds of meat in their puddle of brown grease.

‘Spam makes hotpot:
special
hotpot.’

Queenie sucked air in through her teeth. ‘Never good news, “special”. Special fried rice is always a no-no: peas and prawns and what have you; chopped up leftovers. Nass-ty.’

‘It wouldn’t be so bad if she could bring herself to stick to a proper recipe. It’ll
look
normal and then you’ll discover too late that she’s put curry powder in it, or raisins. She puts raisins in
salad
for Christ’s sake.’

Queenie shuddered. ‘I tried to get Mummy to write the day’s menu up on the kitchen blackboard. You feel such a prannet
asking
all the time. Sounds rude: “Wossis then?” and what with the Cordon Bleu course it’s always Allah something, so it’s not like you could guess or anything.’

‘Mine doesn’t do recipes, thank God,’ said Bunty. ‘Just grills steak, mashes potato and heats up frozen green things. Delish. And if Dad’s off broking somewhere we have hoops on toast and Antarctic Roll.’

‘Arctic, surely,’ corrected Stottie.

‘Same difference.’

‘Even Spam’s specials are better than this Lancashire muck. And another thing: why am I eating off lino?’ Baker banged her hand on one of the fake marble tiles glued along the tops of the trestle tables. ‘Like eating off the floor. Feel like the bloody dog.’ She pushed her plate away untouched.

The others had moved on to pudding which was tinned fruit and a small brick of ice cream.

‘OK guys and gals, mums and dads,’ yodelled Queenie, a yellowish cube pronged on her fork. ‘Time to Name That Fruit.’

‘Yam,’ said Bunty. ‘Yaaaam. Has many uses: ceiling tiles (obviously); animal fodder; the hollowed-out rind can be used as a primitive drinking vessel, and any leftover fibre can be used to thatch a rude hut.’

‘Talking of which . . .’ whispered Baker, ‘have you clocked the Barnet?’

A second year called Nina, who until last Friday had worn her hair in two mousey bell ropes, was sporting a new brown bob.

‘Shame,’ said Stottie.

‘Typical home in Malawi. Maybe it’s her Geography project.’

‘Lot of trouble to go to.’

‘Do you think her mum cut it?’

‘Naaah.’ Baker timed the world-weary sip from her water beaker like a mummy downing gin. ‘Very tidy woman our Nina’s mother. Irons jeans.’

‘They keep their car in a cosy,’ said Stottie, who lived on the same road. ‘If it really
is
a car. Never seen them actually
drive
it anywhere . . . Might be a dirty great car-shaped thing made from cornflakes packets and Fairy Liquid bottles for all I know.’

The room rang with the sound of two hundred sets of cutlery scraping two hundred cheap green and pink and yellow plates, two hundred ravenous chatterboxes all talking with their mouths full. The Nina person stood uncertainly with her tray in the middle of the dining hall, engulfed by the hellish din, a look like headache on her face. Baker turned to watch the girl walk across to the corner where packed lunches were eaten and sit down opposite a smiling Julia Smith. Her again. Were there two of her?

Baker let her head nod forward and watched the corner of the room from behind a safety curtain of fringe. Julia had taken a foil triangle of processed cheese from her plastic box. You were supposed to peel those by pulling the dinky red tag but Julia just ripped away the corner with her thumbnail and squeezed cheese into her mouth. G-
ross
. Nothing about
that
in
The Sensuous Female
.

‘Would you say she was pretty? Attractive?’

Queenie looked at Baker in surprise.

‘Don’t you start. You’ll be awarding points out of ten next.’

‘You lose points for ginger. Brian’s very firm about that.’