Jessica's Ghost (5 page)

Brenda Parsons, the new Head Teacher of John Felton, was a little surprised when Francis appeared in her office on Monday morning with the request that Andi be placed in the same class as himself. She had read Andi’s file, and wondered if he knew what he was letting himself in for.

‘Are you sure about this?’ she asked. ‘You know, she comes here with a certain … reputation.’

‘I know,’ said Francis. ‘But we seem to get on. And I thought if we were in the same class, it might help Andi settle in.’

‘Yes. Well, it’s a kind thought.’ Mrs Parsons consulted the file on her desk. ‘But I’m afraid that won’t be possible.’

‘Oh …’ Francis looked rather crestfallen. ‘Why not?’

‘According to Andi’s file, her work is not at the same standard as yours. If she moved into your class she’d never be able to keep up.’

‘I see …’ Francis frowned. ‘Is it possible that there’s been some sort of mistake?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘It’s just that when I was doing my maths homework the other night,’ said Francis, ‘I got the feeling Andi would have no trouble with it. No trouble at all.’

‘Really?’ Mrs Parsons looked at the maths report in Andi’s file. It said things like ‘has little natural ability’ and ‘makes no effort to fulfil her potential’, which at least implied that there was a potential to fulfil. ‘I tell you what.’ She closed the file. ‘We’ll see how it goes for a week and if her work is as good as you say, I’ll move her up a set.’

‘Would it be possible,’ said Francis, ‘to put her in my class to start with, and then put her
down
a set if it didn’t work out?’ He leaned forwards in his chair. ‘The thing is, I think Andi was very unhappy in her last school, and
that’s partly why she got into trouble there. I think if she was with me, there’d be less chance of that happening. We really would like to be together if it was possible. We have … we have things in common.’

Mrs Parsons took off her glasses and twirled them thoughtfully between her fingers. She did not normally debate her decisions with pupils, but Francis had a point. Judging by her past record, Andi was not going to find it easy to settle in at John Felton and being with a friend might help curb her tendency to lash out when provoked.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘We’ll try it your way. But if she can’t cope with the work I’ll have to move her down. There’s no point her being in a class where she can’t understand the lessons.’

‘Thank you,’ said Francis.

‘If she’s outside,’ said Mrs Parsons, putting her glasses back on her nose, ‘you can tell her the good news and send her in. I wanted a word with her anyway.’

Andi sat in the chair opposite the Head Teacher and watched as Mrs Parsons wrote busily at her desk.

‘She’s writing a note to your form tutor,’ said Jessica,
hovering behind the Head Teacher’s chair, ‘to say you’ll be joining the same classes as Francis.’

‘I’m writing a note to your form tutor,’ said Mrs Parsons, ‘to say you’ll be joining the same classes as Francis.’ She looked up. ‘He argued very persuasively on your behalf and I hope he was right when he said you could cope with the work. Mr Williams will probably want to give you a test before he lets you join his maths set, but you won’t mind that I presume?’

‘Tell her it’ll be fine,’ said Jessica. ‘I’m good at maths. I can give you the answers.’

‘That’ll be fine,’ said Andi.

‘Good,’ Mrs Parsons folded the note and tucked it into an envelope. ‘In that case, you can give this to Miss Jossaume.’ As Andi stood up to leave, she went on, ‘But before you go, I want to remind you of what I said when you came in with your mother last week. If there is any repeat of the violence you showed at your last school – any repeat at all – you will be straight out the door. So no fighting, with anyone, for any reason. Is that understood?’

‘No fighting,’ said Andi. ‘Understood.’

The morning went well. Francis and Andi sat together for their lessons, with Jessica standing between them but with her body sunk into the floor so that her head was at the same level as theirs. In maths, Mr Williams did, as Mrs Parsons had warned, give Andi a test, to see if she could cope with the level of work. It didn’t take very long.

‘What’s a quarter of a half?’ he demanded briskly, almost before she was inside the door.

‘An eighth,’ said Jessica.

‘An eighth,’ said Andi.

‘Nineteen times twenty?’

‘Three hundred and eighty,’ said Jessica.

‘Three hundred and eighty,’ said Andi.

‘OK …’ Mr Williams looked at her carefully. ‘Four thousand nine hundred and ninety, take away three thousand and six.’

‘Hang on,’ said Jessica, holding up a finger to indicate she was thinking.

‘Hang on,’ said Andi, holding up a finger.

‘One thousand nine hundred and eighty four,’ said Jessica.

‘One thousand nine hundred and eighty four,’ said Andi.

‘You’ll do!’ Mr Williams smiled. ‘Welcome to the top maths set!’

He told the Head Teacher in the staffroom at lunch that the new arrival was clearly a sound mathematician.

‘Are you sure?’ said Mrs Parsons. ‘The report from her last school said she had no natural talent.’

‘Well, I can’t understand that,’ said Mr Williams, cheerfully. ‘I asked her several questions during the lesson, and what really impressed me was the way she never
rushed
to give her answer. She always thought about it for a moment first. I liked that. It’s not often you get a student who’s not afraid to stop and think.’

‘No,’ said Mrs Parsons, with a rather puzzled look on her face. ‘No, it isn’t.’

After the success of the maths lesson, Andi had made a similar impression on Mrs Archer, the history teacher, and now in the lunch break Francis and Jessica were giving her a tour of the school grounds so she knew where everything was.

They were walking round the back of the sports hall to the science labs, when they met Quentin Howard coming the other way.

‘Ah!’ His face lit up when he saw Francis. ‘If it isn’t the doll-fancier himself. And look! He’s found himself a real live doll!’ He peered down at the diminutive Andi. ‘Has he started knitting you a little cardigan yet?’

What happened next happened so fast that if Francis had blinked he would have missed it. Andi took a step forward and drove the stiffened fingers of her right hand straight into Quentin’s stomach. Then, even before the pain had registered on his face, her left hand chopped down with an audible thwack on to his thigh. Quentin tried to cry out, but there was no air in his lungs to make a noise. Instead, his legs gave way, his body doubled over and Andi caught him by the arm, calling to an open-mouthed Francis to take the other side.

‘Give us a hand,’ she said, then nodded towards a low wall. ‘We’ll sit him down over there.’

Horrified, Francis did as he was told, and together they dragged the semi-paralysed Quentin over to the wall
and sat him down. Andi pushed Quentin’s head down between his legs.

‘You’re just winded,’ she told him calmly. ‘You’ll be fine in a few minutes.’ She waited patiently until Quentin’s desperate efforts to catch his breath had subsided to an asthmatic wheeze. Then she took a firm grasp of his hair, lifted his head and brought his face to within a few inches of her own.

‘Let’s get one thing straight, shall we?’ Her voice was still quiet, but there was no mistaking the glint in her eyes. ‘I don’t like people being rude to me. Or to my friends. And if you
ever
do it again … Or if I ever hear you’ve said something rude about me when I’m not there … Or if I even
think
that you might have been
thinking
something rude about me – or my friend here – you’ll be going home with something a lot worse than a couple of bruises. So you’d better be very careful what you say and who you say it to. Have you got that?’

Quentin nodded.

‘All right.’ Andi let go of his head, and turned to the others. ‘Let’s go.’

Francis glanced nervously round to see if anyone had been watching. ‘I don’t think you should have done that,’ he said.

‘He was being rude,’ said Andi.

‘That doesn’t make it OK to hit him.’ Francis glanced back to where Quentin was trying manfully to stand up. His leg gave way almost immediately and he fell to the ground with a small cry of pain. ‘Look! He can’t even walk!’

‘It’ll wear off in a few minutes,’ said Andi. ‘He’ll be fine.’

‘And suppose he tells someone what you did? Suppose he goes to Mrs Parsons?’

‘He might,’ said Andi. ‘But even if he does, I’d still prefer it to him thinking he can say things like that and get away with it. He knows now that if he does it again, there will be consequences.’

‘Yes …’ Francis took a last look at Quentin before they set off again to the science labs. ‘Well, if I’m ever rude to you, I wouldn’t mind a warning
before
you start hitting me. At least give me the chance to apologise first.’

‘You?’ Andi laughed. ‘I’m not sure you’d know how to be rude. People like you are just … nice.’

‘You’ve always been nice.’ Jessica threaded a ghostly hand through his other arm. ‘Anyone can see that.’

‘Mum says I should try and be more like you.’ Andi was still talking to Francis. ‘She says I should learn to walk away when someone says something to annoy me. Take no notice. Ignore them. I don’t know why I can’t. I think I’m just made differently.’ She looked up at him. ‘But I’ve always envied people like you.’

‘Funny you should say that,’ said Francis, ‘because I’ve always been a bit envious of people like you.’

That evening, Francis was up in the attic room with Jessica, working on a skirt to go with the off-white cotton blouse. He had found a length of Prince of Wales check that he thought might match it nicely, and normally would have started by sketching out some possible designs before deciding which he liked best.

With Jessica, however, none of that was necessary. If he just showed her the material and explained roughly what he had in mind, Jessica could ‘think’ herself into the design, and he could see at once whether it worked or not. If he wanted to change it, he had only to ask and Jessica would ‘imagine’ a different hemline, a different waist, a tighter shape, a gentle flare … She could, as Francis said,
earn a fortune in the fashion industry, if she could just sort out this business of most people not being able to see her.

It was while he was cutting out the paper pattern for the design they had finally settled on, that he said something about the incident with Quentin that morning, and how he hoped word of it would not leak out.

‘Because if Mrs Parsons gets to hear of it,’ he said, ‘she’ll tell Andi to leave. I know she will. All it’ll take is for Quentin to complain. Or to tell his parents.’

‘I don’t think he’ll complain,’ said Jessica. ‘He won’t want everyone to know he got thumped by a girl. Especially a girl only half his size.’ She paused, before adding thoughtfully. ‘One of the others might though.’

‘Others?’ Francis looked up from his pattern.

‘Oh, of course …’ Jessica gave a little smile. ‘You weren’t there, were you? She did the same thing later to Denise Ritchie and Angela Wyman.’

‘Are you
serious
?’ Francis stared at here. ‘Where? When?’

‘In the girls’ changing room. They came in when Andi was packing up her stuff at the end of games. Angela said
something like ‘Look at the hair on that one, it’s like a doormat’, and Denise said ‘There should be a law saying something that ugly should be covered up’ and next thing they know, Andi is standing in front of them.’

She had, according to Jessica, been very calm. She had not shouted or yelled. She had simply said that she had a friend who said she ought to give people a chance to apologise when they had been rude, and that this was their chance. Angela’s reply had been to try and push Andi out of the way and a second later, she was doubled up on the ground gasping for breath, just as Quentin had been. Andi then turned to Denise, who called her a name, and a moment later she was on the floor as well.

‘Andi sat them both on a bench,’ Jessica continued, ‘and gave them The Talk. You know? Like she did to Quentin? She was really calm and quiet, but she told them what would happen if they were ever rude to her again. I think they got the message.’

Francis listened to the story in open-mouthed astonishment. ‘She got into two fights? On her first day? After everything Mrs Parsons said?’

‘Yes. I know it was wrong and she shouldn’t have, but …’ Jessica’s face broke into a grin. ‘It was
brilliant
!’

Francis may not have approved of what Andi had done, but the results, in the short term at least, were surprisingly pleasant.

Although neither the girls nor Quentin reported what had happened, somehow word got round very quickly amongst the other students that Andi was not someone you upset if you could help it. The next day, Francis noticed that people were very careful what they said when they were near her. Most of them tried not to be near her at all.

Denise and Angela in particular made sure they kept out of her way. In the weeks that followed, neither of them ever spoke to her or about her to anyone else. It was almost as if they had decided to pretend she did not exist.

And with Quentin, the results were even more dramatic. If they passed him in the corridor, he would avoid any eye contact, and hurry past as quickly as he could.
In the science class they shared, he sat as far away from Francis and Andi as possible, and there was never a hint of the once regular jokes about what clothes Francis might be making for his dolls these days.

The difference this made to Francis’s life at school was extraordinary. He still did not really approve of what Andi had done, but being able to go through the day without wondering when Quentin might appear and what he would say when he did was like a huge weight lifted from his shoulders. He had had to brace himself, mentally, against it for so long that he had almost forgotten how good it was not to have to worry about what people might say. Because now, nobody said anything.

They didn’t dare.

As a sort of thank you present, Francis made Andi a T-shirt. It was in red, her favourite colour, with a design on the front that was slightly off-beat – and she liked it. She liked it so much that she asked him to make her another one, so she would still have one to wear while the other was being washed. He did as she asked and, a little later,
made her a sort of waistcoat out of some denim material that went with it rather well and she liked that too.

Mrs Campion saw it, and was most impressed.

‘Does he do all this sewing himself?’ she asked Mrs Meredith, when they were sitting one day in the kitchen. ‘Or do you help him?’

Mrs Meredith laughed. ‘I’m not allowed anywhere near his precious sewing machine,’ she said. ‘I’m far too clumsy.’ She held out the cheque that Mrs Campion had just given her. ‘Look, are you sure this is all mine? It seems rather a lot for a few bowls.’

‘That is just the beginning,’ said Mrs Campion happily. ‘I promise you, by the time I’m finished you’ll be needing to take on extra help.’ She sipped thoughtfully at her coffee. ‘It’s funny, isn’t it?’

‘What is?’

‘How the two of them get on together. I mean Thuglette’s never been remotely interested in fashion, and Francis doesn’t seem to go much on sport …’ Mrs Campion paused. ‘Yet they seem to spend all their time together. Do you have any idea what they talk about?’

‘Not really,’ said Mrs Meredith. ‘They come back in from school, disappear upstairs and that’s virtually all I see of them.’

‘Yes.’ Mrs Campion nodded. ‘That’s what happens when they come to me as well.’

At that moment the front door opened and Francis called from the hall to say that he and Andi were going upstairs. It was something that seemed to involve a lot of laughing and noise.

‘Still,’ said Mrs Campion, as the noise receded, ‘I’m not complaining. They sound happy enough.’

Andi and Francis
were
happy, though they would both have found it difficult to explain why. It wasn’t as if they did anything very much. Mostly they were just hanging out together. They went to school, they came home, they did homework, Andi worked out, Francis made things or drew them …

But they had Jessica and, as Andi said, almost anything was fun when you did it with a ghost for company. Watching Jessica think herself into a new outfit – which she did several times a day – could make clothes interesting
even to Andi. Sitting in class with someone who might suddenly decide to pose on the teacher’s desk in a bikini could make any lesson amusing, while a walk into town with someone who could walk through walls and tell you what was going on the other side was never going to be dull. Andi reckoned you’d have to be dead not to enjoy life with someone like Jessica around.

But there was one thing that bothered her. She still had no answer to the question she had asked Jessica that first weekend. The question of how she had died. Neither Jessica nor Francis seemed to have much interest in the subject themselves, but Andi had never lost her desire to find the answer and she had worked out a very simple way it could be done. If the others weren’t interested, she decided, then she would do it alone.

Because it was the sort of thing Jessica
ought
to know.

Everyone should know how they had died.