The Following Girls (18 page)

Miss Gray was already three-quarters of the way up the adjacent aisle, turning over each blotter as she went, unmoved by the snorts of outraged innocence. She reached the back of the room and, just as she made her turn, Baker wet her finger, dabbed at the diagram and posted it onto her tongue. Her mouth was instantly parched by the Quinky scrap of narrow feint and it took two goes before she could finally swallow the evidence.

‘Is that
chewing gum
, Amanda?’

‘No, Miss Gray.’ The truth for once.

Baker had almost forgotten about Julia but the passed note reminded her of her lunchtime tryst and the worry of it pretty much turned her brain to mush. She shivered. The school heating system had been put on a timer thanks to some sort of oil crisis and the radiators were now off from ten thirty till afternoon Registration, thanks to energy saving by Dr O’Brien who had a handy slimline convection heater in the knee-hole of her desk but who maintained that warm teenage bodies would keep the school at a reasonable temperature once the morning chill had been taken off the classrooms. Baker nuzzled her face into the top of her sweater and
huurrred
unavailingly into the wool. Still bloody freezing. Her watch said quarter past one.

Baker dawdled her way to the bottom of the out-of-bounds staircase that led to the organ’s innards, darting up the steps the instant a passing goon disappeared round the corner – first prefect she’d seen all break. Were the rest all holed up with Julia in the loft, ready to make threats? To pinch where it wouldn’t show? She leaned against the wall when she reached the turn in the stairs, screened by a long row of filing cabinets, and listened: no voices above, no footsteps below, just the faraway slaughterhouse screams from the playground. They called it butterflies, that horrible churning fear you got in your stomach before exams, fillings, meetings with Julias. Why butterflies? Butterflies wouldn’t hurt.

Baker tiptoed up the last few steps, checked over her right shoulder, then opened the unmarked door, being careful not to disturb the padlock that still looped through the rings of the broken hasp.

Julia was entirely alone, sitting with her legs outstretched along one of the joists, blazered back propped against a palisade of organ pipes.

‘Watch your feet, for God’s sake. It’s like paper in between.’

Baker looked suspiciously around the room, waiting for the trap to be sprung. She watched her footing as she negotiated the next solid stretch of timber then looked up to see Julia placing two long, thin American cigarettes between her lips. They were from a soft-sided duty-free packet with nothing about damaging anybody’s health on the side. A handful of unsafe red-headed matches had been tucked into the top and she winkled one out and struck it – dead, dead casual – against the three-inch zip on her purse belt, releasing a bonfire night whiff. Baker reached automatically for the cigarette held out to her.

‘Took your time.’

Julia began blowing smoke rings towards a skylight that had been pulled open by a dangling loop of grimy string.

‘I’ve brushed up most of the dust – dead giveaway otherwise – but no one ever comes here, doesn’t even feature on the prefects’ lunchtime circuit. Just have to be sure to pull the latch thingy back in place when you close the door.
Relax
.’

She propped her lean, bare legs against the opposite wall: no red blotches on the thighs, no goosebumps on the milky skin.

‘Don’t you ever feel cold?’

‘Nope. Anywhere’s warm after double hockey.’

‘Says you.’ Baker unknotted the belt of her gym slip and tented the pleats over her raised knees. ‘The radiators in our form room don’t come on again till half two. They’ll be too hot to touch, let alone sit on, but the room’s still like ice. Quite a trick.’

‘Fuckface ought to set it as a physics problem: heat capacity and whatnot. Like filling baths full of holes.’

Julia held out a tube of caramel sweets. ‘Wanna choc?’ Baker shook her head and Julia gave a mirthless laugh.

‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen you eat.’

Baker flashed a tight smile. ‘So why am I here?’

Julia checked the time on her wrist, the kind of butch watch that probably told you what depth it was or measured background radiation or fired poison darts.

‘Relax, for Christ’s sake. Eat something. Smoke something. Don’t be so paranoid. Should have seen your face on the train yesterday – talk about condemned man. I just felt . . .’ Sorry for you? Was that what came next? If it was she had more tact than to say it, but Baker reached across and pincered a sweet from the packet.

‘I thought you were on their side. If O’Brien writes home . . .’ Baker broke off. ‘My dad hasn’t spoken a word to me in three days.’

‘You and your little lot are practically all they talk about at the staff’s prefect meetings: vandalism, persistent rudeness, failure to hand in work, unhealthy influence, cigarette smoking.
Unschool
, basically. You wanna watch it. They’re
dying
to expel somebody. How many pink slips have you had this term?’

‘Dunno. Four?’ Baker nibbled at her finger. ‘But O’Brien didn’t seem too fussed when I saw her this morning.’

‘Means nothing. O’Brien likes to think she’s in charge but she’s taken her eye off the ball lately: letting Mrs Mostyn do all the assemblies, bunking off staff meetings. The staff hate the whole fireside chat thing: undermines discipline they reckon. There they all are, doing their best to crack the whip and then O’Brien goes and tells you everything’s fine and what kind of career were you planning. You watch: they’ll force her to expel somebody,
anybody
, and she’s such a weasel. Mind you, they’d probably rather sack one of their “charity pupils”, snobby old cows – don’t lose any fees that way.’

They each lit another fag. Baker, annoyed by Bunty’s flowery smokes, had switched to a high tar brand with a picture of a bearded sailor on the packet (not actually very nice but she was damned if she’d say so).

Julia left the cigarette burning on her lower lip and began mocking up a wedding ring with the foil from the roll of sweets. ‘You remind me of me.’ She brushed a few atoms of ash from among the pleats of her skirt. ‘O’Brien say anything of interest?’

‘Told me to bide my time, get some decent grades, then try for “a nice little job in market research”.’

‘She’s big on that lately. Last year it was Punch Card Operators.’

‘And you?’

‘Fuck knows. They want me to be a PE teacher.’

‘And?’

‘I hate PE. Hate all games. Hate them, hate them, hate them.’

‘Could have fooled me.’ Baker jerked her head at the pick ‘n’ mix sports kit. ‘If you hate them, why the hell do you play so many?’

‘
Because they leave you alone
. You can wear what you like, go anywhere in the building, slope in and out at strange times, use the staff room phone. And the extra-curricular bollocks takes up so much time they let me off prep. I don’t even
play
very often any more: just pick teams and referee – “A shining example to the younger gels.” Beating them at their own stupid games. Talking of which, I got you a little present.’ She reached into her bag and produced a tiny tube. ‘Superglue. A thousand uses. Miles better than bleach. More subtle. And I’ve had a brilliant idea for Founder’s Day: fun for all the family.’

Julia stretched herself back along the joist and sucked on the last millimetres of her cigarette (
Leave a longer stub
).

‘Nice legs.’

‘So Miss Drumlin keeps saying.’ Julia twisted her knees in and out, admiring the lean curves. ‘Show us yours.’

Baker unbent her knees and hitched up the gymslip, gazing forlornly at her bulging thighs.
Sausage
.

‘Lovely and thin. You should get yourself a shorter skirt. Wear games kit. I’ll say you’re doing shooting practice with me if you like. Under my wing. O’Brien’ll like that: likes wings.’

‘Why me?’

‘I told you, doll: you remind me of me. Besides, there’s no one nice to play with in the sixth form. Bunch of swots and goody-goodies. They don’t even smoke unless there’s a bloody boy watching.’

‘Are you actually doing A levels? You seem to get a lot of free periods.’

‘Naah. Maths re-take and elementary bloody Book-keeping. My dad made me. I was supposed to be doing Spanish O level as well, but sod that: French was bad enough. One more term and you won’t see me for dust.’

The bell sounded for afternoon Registration.

‘Same again tomorrow? We could have a picnic.’

Julia slipped her chewing gum under the hasp of the latch as she closed the loft door behind them, even had the presence of mind to start shouting at Baker when they reached the bottom of the staircase. The corridor was out of bounds to Shells and the bell had gone and where was her room and get a move on and do me a hundred lines by Friday (‘I will not be late for Registration’). Spoken like a native.

Chapter 12

There was just time to pop to the loo before the Latin mock. The secret graffiti patch was almost completely filled in (‘I live in hope; I sleep in Sydenham’), plus a fresh string of increasingly nutty attacks on the Snog Monster and various students (‘Davina Booth is an evil cock-sucking whore’ being the mildest). Some joker had added a new one under the loo roll holder really low down where only someone sitting on the loo could see it: ‘Domestic Science O levels: please take one’. ‘Beware of lesbian limbo dancers’ was also new, probably written by one of the Brians.

Bryony and Co had a bit of a thing about lesbians. Any close friendships were immediately suspect and best friends were frowned upon. Gangs were more ‘School’. They were pretty vague about what lesbianism consisted of, and an approach to the Biology mistress (via the anonymous question box she used for the muckier parts of the syllabus) met with a bare-faced ‘I can’t read the writing on this one’. The Mandies were little better informed.

‘What do they
do
exactly?’ wondered Queenie.

‘Fuck knows.’

‘Fuck nose?’ (much sniggering).

‘Tri-bad-ism,’ said Bunty.

‘Eh? Wossat?’

‘Haven’t the foggiest. Read it somewhere. Nothing about it in the
Reader’s Digest Family Dic
, but then the
Reader’s Digest
people don’t have cunnilingus either, or orgasms. I checked.
Tri-bad-ism
. . . probbly rather enjoyable. Maybe it’s tribad as in
tribe
: feathers and tattoos in a special hut made of palm fibre . . .’

Baker left the loo and hurried down to the exam hall where Miss Hurd was invigilating her own exam and handed out the two-hour paper the instant they sat down.

The Latin mistress had spent the last two terms chipping away at her group’s encyclopaedic ignorance of participles and datives and gerunds (what did the English department
do
all day, for pity’s sake?), and line by painful line she had helped them thrash out a close, literal translation of Book Four of the
Aeneid
and Livy’s account of Hannibal crossing the Alps. Pacing the room like a tigress in tweeds, she was surprised to see that today’s examinees were all getting through their Livy translations at an
extraordinary
speed.

Miss Hurd was fairly new to teaching, but any seasoned classicist could have told her what was happening. Despairing (rightly) of ever being able to crack that fiendish Patavinian code from a standing start, the entire class of thirty had quite simply learned the whole lot by heart. All of it. Unfortunately one bit of Livy XXI looked much like another and quite a few of them had plumped for entirely the wrong passage. Thus, having learned their translation with much loss of evening hours and with considerable effort, the Upper Fifth, notwithstanding a fine and dedicated teacher, made a complete bloody shambles of the Latin literature paper.

Baker, translation done, had drawn five neat rows of cassocked martyrs tied to stakes on a fresh sheet of exam paper and, as the minutes ticked by, built up a heap of faggots beneath them, sketched in the flames, crossed them through and pinged a halo above their bowed heads: six down, thirty-nine to go. Across the aisle Stottie, bored with martyrs, had drawn a matching set of caped vampires who were finished off with an encircling coffin shape and the all-important stake, working away happily until she looked up at the clock: five to four. Only five more to go.

‘Ensure that your name and candidate number are entered on each sheet and make sure your handwriting is legible,’ droned Miss Hurd.

Stottie looked back over her handiwork, tidying up the fangs and widow’s peaks here and there until the papers were finally collected.

Baker and Stott emerged from their exam room to find Queenie and Bunty leaning against a wall outside the neighbouring Biology lab, staring glumly at the open exercise book in Bunty’s hand.

‘I give up. I really give up. Really, really,
really
give up.’

‘Wossup?’

‘
Look
at it.’ She held the book out at arm’s length.