Uptown Girl (10 page)

‘Did you hear that?’ he asked.

‘What?’

‘Outside.
That noise. It sounded just like a chopper to me.’

‘Oh God.
He hasn’t started that caper again, has he?’ groaned Grace, her irritation clear. ‘We’ve had so many complaints from the locals and I’ve told him countless times it’s got to stop. He’s the most arrogant man on the planet, but I really thought he’d taken notice after last time.’

Will
frowned in frustration. He’d been at Downthorpe for a week and it felt like a foreign country. ‘I’m sorry, Grace, but I haven’t got a bloody clue what you’re talking about. Can you do me a favour and start from the beginning?’

Grace plonked her industrial-sized torch and notebook on a desk and marched across to the window. She pulled up the tattered blind and peered into the gloom.

‘Yep. I knew it. It’s Josef Bogdanov. What on earth are we going to do with the man? He thinks he can do anything, just because he owns half of Mayfair.’

Utterly bemused, Will rose from his chair and joined Grace at the window. Staring out into the pitch black, it was easy to spot the helicopter lights. The chopper was high above the school now, heading south east in the direction of Oxford.

‘What the hell’s going on?’ he muttered. He’d seen some odd things in his career but this beat the lot.

Grace slumped into a battered armchair next to the coffee urn. She loathed being on duty at night. The senior management team, all eight of them, shared the task but even so, her turn came round depressingly often. It wasn’t so bad in the winter when the pupils were less keen on venturing out after dark. But at this time of year the daring ones were always trying their luck. So far tonight she’d found a couple of sixth formers having a fag in the bushes beyond the front lawn, a dormitory of fourteen-year-olds tucking into a midnight feast (‘very Enid
Blyton,’ she’d told them drily before confiscating the lot) and the head boy in flagrante with his new girlfriend.

She glanced at Will, wondering how much of this to tell him. Grace prided herself on being a shrewd judge of character but she hadn’t fathomed him out yet. She couldn’t work out whether he was going to be a tough boss or a laid-back one. Whether he’d leave the day-to-day running of the school to her, like the old head, or whether he’d want to micro-manage every last thing.

Will’s appointment as acting head halfway through the long summer holiday had surprised everyone at Downthorpe. For a start, no one had suspected that the previous headmaster’s life was unravelling at breakneck speed. Jono Rawlinson had been head at Downthorpe for ten years and was the sort of man everyone, staff and pupils alike, looked up to. They’d all thought his marriage was rock-solid too. But it turned out that his wife Rachel had been having an affair with the head of the history department for eighteen months. Rachel had told Jono she was leaving him on the last night of the summer term and she was gone by the next morning.

When
Jono broke the news to the Downthorpe staff he’d insisted that Rachel’s departure wouldn’t affect his work and that it would be business as usual. But just a few days later Grace had bumped into him in the Co-op supermarket in Chipping Badcombe and he was a broken man.

Worse still, the governors convened an emergency meeting and voted to replace him. They set about finding an acting head fast and, deep
down, Grace had hoped the governors would appoint her in Jono’s place. She’d been his deputy for two years after all and knew Downthorpe like the back of her hand. But, after days of deliberation, the governing body had called in a firm of city headhunters who’d recommended bringing in someone completely new. They’d certainly done that all right, thought Grace. Not only was Will Hughes new, but he had a CV that didn’t make any sense. He’d taught at comprehensive schools for years, working his way up from newly qualified teacher to deputy head. But then for some unknown reason he’d chucked it all in for a job in advertising. It was completely bizarre.

‘Look, Grace, I think we need to get a few things straight,’ said Will, his voice terse.

Grace stared at him, an insouciant expression on her face.

‘Sure. What sort of things?’

‘Well, if we’re going to stand a chance of getting this place back on track after the Jono Rawlinson affair, then you and I have to work as a team. You may think I’m a rough and ready outsider from London and you may not like the way I do things - but that’s tough. You’re going to have to grit your teeth and put up with me. So for starters, I want to know who’s flying that bloody helicopter over my school at this time of night. And why.’

Blimey, thought Grace. Maybe this was why the governors had appointed him in
Jono’s place. He might have a charming exterior, but he was steelier than she’d realised. He was good looking too - tall and dark haired, with broad shoulders and a firm handshake. Will Hughes was going to stir things up around here. That was for sure. 

‘You must have heard of Josef
Bogdanov,’ said Grace. ‘He’s a multi-millionaire. Made his money from property. Anyway, his daughter Tatiana started at Downthorpe last year. She’s a sweet girl but she gets terribly homesick, so every now and again Bogdanov lands his helicopter on the playing fields and she goes rushing out to see him.’

Will’s face was grim. ‘Not
any more,’ he said. ‘Not any more he doesn’t.’

TWO

Like most British boarding schools, Downthorpe held lessons on Saturday mornings. The teachers reckoned it was the best way to keep six hundred lively teenagers focused on their studies and out of trouble. Every so often the school council reps had a go at getting rid of Saturday school, but they never succeeded in getting it past the governors.

Despite his late night, Will felt energised by his Saturday morning run.
At thirty-four, he was a good sixteen years older than the rugby team but just as fit. The squad had done eight miles before breakfast, down the drive, across the fields to the village of Buntingdon and back again, and he felt fresh as a daisy. Living in the country and cutting out boozy nights in Shoreditch was doing him the power of good. His new job was far more stressful, but he was drinking less and doing loads more exercise.

When he got back to
Downthorpe he raced up the main staircase and across the vast landing to his spartan first-floor apartment. As acting head, he was entitled to live at Rosedown House, a pretty four-bedroom cottage in the grounds. But the ex-headmaster was in such a state after his marriage breakdown that he’d refused to leave. No one had the heart to evict him forcibly, so Will had been assigned a small flat in the main building instead. Basic and sparsely furnished, the apartment was usually inhabited by Australian students working at Downthorpe during their gap years. They were renowned for their partying and, when Will moved in, he’d had to take two bin bags of empty beer bottles to the recycling centre at Chipping Badcombe.

After a quick shower and a cursory glance at his emails, Will hurried down to the school dining room. He’d decided from the outset that the best way to get to know the pupils quickly was to join them at mealtimes. And even though lukewarm coffee and lumpy porridge were just about the last things he felt like right now, he was determined to stick to his guns.

The dining room at Downthorpe looked like something out of Hogwarts. Long, narrow tables stretched the length of the vast, dimly lit hall and the walls were lined with wooden plaques bearing the names of past pupils. There was also a poignant tribute to old Downthorpians who’d perished in the first and second world wars and a list of headteachers going back two centuries. Will made a mental note to get Jono Rawlinson’s name engraved at the earliest opportunity, otherwise the pupils’ tongues would wag even more. As he nodded to a couple of early-bird teachers, he noticed a large damp patch on the far wall of the dining room. He’d have to have a quiet word with the bursar. The last thing he needed was the school buildings falling into disrepair on his watch.
He grabbed a tray, queued up at the serving hatch to collect his porridge and toast and then joined a group of fresh-faced thirteen-year-olds at their table. The instant he sat down, the merry group stopped chattering and chomped in silence. Will could see they were intimidated by having him there and would far rather have been left on their own. But they perked up slightly when he asked what they liked best about Downthorpe.

‘Chemistry lessons,’ chirped an intense looking boy with owl-like glasses and a mass of ginger curls. Like all the other new pupils, he had a sticker on his jumper with his name on. His said ‘Josh Cook. Form 9H.’

‘Really?’ said Will, spreading his toast with a liberal helping of strawberry jam.

He’d been expecting answers along the lines of ‘making new friends,’ ‘buying sweets in
Buntingdon’ and ‘being allowed to watch a movie on Saturday nights.’

‘Yes, really,’ grinned the boy.

‘Why’s that then? Chemistry’s hard, isn’t it? It was my worst subject at school.’

The boy’s eyes lit up with an enthusiasm that was touching to see.

‘Because Dr Mead makes it so exciting. We’ve only had two lessons but we’ve been doing explosions. Using methane gas and plastic bottles and stuff.’

Will’s heart sank. As if he didn’t have enough on his plate with truculent teachers, a mysterious helicopter and damp patches. Now it appeared that a member of staff was in danger of blowing up the school – and in lesson-time too. He didn’t say anything but made a mental note to find out precisely what Dr Mead was getting up to in his chemistry classes. With around fifty teachers on the staff he wasn’t sure whether he’d met Dr Mead or not. There had been a truculent science teacher with startlingly blue eyes at a staff development meeting a couple of nights ago, so maybe that was him. But the last thing Will needed right now was a lab being blown to smithereens.

Henry Mead breathed a sigh of relief when the bell rang for morning break. Teaching year 10s about the structure of atoms had been like wading through cement. The whole teaching staff agreed that this year’s fourteen-year-olds were the trickiest group in the school and they’d clearly been unimpressed at being forced to sit through double chemistry first thing on a Saturday morning. But Henry refused to take the easy option and stick on a DVD. That’s what Charles Brown, the head of history, always did when he wanted to talk to Jono Rawlinson’s wife on Facebook and couldn’t be bothered to teach. No wonder the school’s history results were going downhill at alarming speed.

In dire need of a coffee before the next class, Henry wrenched open the lab door and immediately collided with a tall man in a well-cut charcoal suit. His papers flew out of his hand and he swore under his breath. Henry’s face turned scarlet. It was the new head.

‘I’m looking for Dr Mead,’ snapped Will. ‘Are you one of the lab assistants?’

‘
Er, no, actually I’m not,’ said Henry, bending down and picking up bits of paper covered in spiky black writing.

Will stared at the slender figure in front of him. Her long dark hair was pulled back from her face in a tight ponytail and she wore a dazzling white lab coat, jeans and bright red Converse trainers.

‘Look, I haven’t got all day. I need to talk to Dr Mead. It’s urgent.’

‘That’s fine by me.’

Will struggled to keep his temper.

‘Very funny,’ he muttered, ‘but can you tell me where I can find him?’

A glimmer of a smile crossed the woman’s face, and then she burst out laughing. ‘It looks like you already have,’ she said, offering him her hand. ‘I’m Dr Mead. Henry Mead. How can I help?’

Will stared at her in astonishment. Why the hell hadn’t he done his research before charging down to the labs like a madman? He’d quickly glanced down the staff list, clocked that Dr Mead’s first name was Henry and stupidly assumed she was a man. When actually, now he came to think about it, she was the prettiest woman he’d set eyes on in a long time.

They stood in silence for a few seconds while Will gathered his thoughts. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said finally. ‘I thought I’d met everyone at the staff drinks party at the beginning of term. Do you remember? The evening when I made a speech and talked about my vision for the school. A bit pretentious, I know, but the governors expected it.’

Henry Mead’s eyes gleamed with amusement. ‘I’m sure you weren’t pretentious at all,’ she said. ‘Although I couldn’t swear by it… I was away at a conference that day. So I missed the drinks.’

‘Well, it wasn’t my finest hour,’ said Will. ‘Nor is this, come to think of it.’

Henry handed him back his papers. He looked so awkward that she felt a bit sorry for him.

‘Look, don’t worry about it. People always assume I’m a bloke. It’s all my parents’ fault.’

‘Sorry,’ said Will. ‘I’m not with you.’

‘For calling me Henrietta. I don’t know what came over them. It’s not me at all. And no one’s ever called me Henrietta. I’m always Henry.’

‘With a y?’

‘With a y,’ repeated Henry. ‘What was it you wanted to see me about, anyway? I take it that you’ve received the chemistry department’s schemes of work for the year?’

Will didn’t have a clue whether he’d got them or not. Grace was in charge of academic matters while he ran everything else. Everything from convincing prospective parents to send their darling children to Downthorpe rather than its rivals to keeping the pupils on the straight and narrow.