Secrets at St Jude's: New Girl (26 page)

‘Gina? Why?’ Amy asked.

‘There’s something she has to talk to her mum about before she goes back home.’

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Chapter Twenty-Four

‘Mom, it’s Gina. Hi!’

‘Oh, hi. Hi, honey. How are you?’

After Gina had caught up with everything going on at home, Lorelei wanted to know all about school and Gina’s schoolwork. How was it coming along? Had she finally settled in and got her head down?

‘Yeah,’ Gina assured her, ‘I’ve been working really hard. My biology results are good. My physics is apparently improving . . .’

‘That’s great! Fantastic news!’

Gina went on down the list. ‘I think even Madame Bensimon might have some hope for me, and English . . .’ She thought about Mrs Parker and all her praise and encouragement over the past few weeks –

Another A for Gina . . . Girls, we have an essayist in our
midst, a composer of polemics, a future journalist
maybe? An opinion former? At the very least, a brilliant
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book reviewer
. No teacher had ever been so nice to her before, and as a result, her reading list was growing by the day.

‘English,’ Gina told her mother modestly, ‘is going really well. I’m sure I’m going to get a really good report card for this term, Mom. You’ll be proud of me.

Maybe you’ll even let me come home.’

‘Wow, baby, I
am
proud of you!’ Lorelei replied. ‘Of course you’re going to come back now! We can’t wait to see you. All of us. Your friends included. I was speaking to Paula’s mom and Paula’s got a whole summer of fun planned out for you. Three parties in the first week of the holidays alone. And you may go!

‘It must have been so hard for you,’ she finally acknowledged, ‘fitting into a totally different school, with all those new people. I am so proud of you.’

‘So . . .’ Gina took a little breath to help her get the question out. ‘Mom . . . how come you did so badly at your O-levels?’

She pressed the receiver tightly against her ear. For a while all she could hear was the gentle buzzing a transatlantic line sometimes makes when no one is talking.

‘Oh . . . you found out about that?’ Lorelei asked in 298

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a voice which sounded much less certain than usual.

‘How did you—?’

‘Never mind how I found out,’ Gina interrupted. ‘I think you should just tell me what happened.’

‘But I . . . I didn’t want you to find out about that,’

Lorelei said.

‘Why not?’ Gina asked, exasperated. ‘In case I thought you were anything less than perfect?’

Down the line, she could hear her mother’s deep sigh.

‘Don’t you think you should have told me about this?’ she went on. ‘Don’t you think just a little bit of information about how you did at school might have been helpful to me?’

There was a pause before Lorelei said in her defence, ‘I just wanted to be a really good role model for you.’

‘By lying?’ Gina shot back. ‘That’s wonderful – I’ve learned so much from that!’

‘Gina! There are lots of things I’ve done well’ –

there was a quaver in Lorelei’s voice that Gina didn’t think she’d ever heard before – ‘but nothing’s more important to me than being the best possible mother to you, because . . . well . . . you know . . .’

Gina realized what her mother was trying to say: 299

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until Mick had come into their lives, she had been bringing up Gina all on her own.

Much of the anger had gone out of Gina’s voice when she told her mom, ‘You
are
the best. But that doesn’t mean you have to pretend to be perfect.’

The quiet buzz of transatlantic silence filled Gina’s ear again. She worried that her mother was going to cry – something she didn’t think she’d ever experienced before. Well, not for a very long time anyway.

‘So what happened that year?’ Gina heard herself asking, half wanting to know, half dreading upsetting her mother even more.

After a long pause Lorelei said, ‘It was a really difficult time. My dad was sick and I met this boy who was there for me when I needed someone.’

‘Oh.’ It suddenly dawned on Gina that she didn’t know anything about her mother’s first boyfriends . . .

had never thought to ask about them.

‘His name was Carl,’ Lorelei went on, ‘and he was really cool and nice and really quite . . . beautiful.’ And then out came the story: Gina listened to every word of it, fascinated. She would replay it over and over in her mind for weeks to come.

Spring term 1980 and sixteen-year-old Lorelei was 300

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supposed to be studying hard for her O-levels; instead she’d been falling madly in love with ‘cool and nice and really quite beautiful’ Carl, who was seventeen.

‘He was there for me,’ Lorelei told her daughter again, ‘when I needed someone. I could talk and talk and talk to him. I spent all my free time with him, and all the time I wasn’t with him, I was wishing I could be!’

Then the unthinkable had happened: Carl’s father got a new job in London and the family had to move away in less than two months’ time.

‘I know this sounds crazy, Gina’ – Lorelei was almost laughing at herself – ‘because we weren’t much older than you . . . God! We weren’t much older than you at all. But we just couldn’t handle the thought of being apart. We were so
obsessed
with each other – it says a lot about what else was going on in our lives, doesn’t it? That we just couldn’t face being separated.’

Then there was a pause, but Gina waited, hoping that the rest would come.

‘We made a plan to run away together.’ Lorelei’s voice was low. ‘He had a motorbike and a tent, and we were planning to go to France. I think we were going to pick fruit . . . or grapes, or wash dishes or 301

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something. It was so romantic and so totally nuts!’ she added quickly.

‘Anyway, I had packed a rucksack and we were going to leave in the middle of the night. I don’t know why we had to leave at night – maybe because we were spending so much time reading Beat poetry or something . . . So . . .’

Then came a pause and a trembling sigh, which made Gina grip the phone tightly.

‘But he crashed his bike,’ Lorelei said. ‘Well . . . some idiot driver didn’t see him at a junction, pulled out and went straight into him.’

‘Oh no!’ Gina cried, feeling a lump in her throat.

‘Oh, honey, he wasn’t killed,’ Lorelei went on, ‘but he was a mess. He broke a wrist, his legs had to be pinned, his face needed fifty-eight stitches; it was seven months before he could walk properly again . . .

and . . . well, when his parents found out the full story, they were absolutely furious. I was allowed to visit him in hospital once and that was it. They froze me – and my newly bleached blonde hair, by the way – totally out and I was devastated.

‘So . . . no big surprise that the subjects you really have to study for: chemistry and
history
’ – there was enough emphasis on that for Gina to suspect that her 302

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mom remembered Miss Ballantyne very well – ‘I flunked . . . But they let me back for my A-levels . . . so I’m very grateful to St Jude’s really.’

‘You should have told me all this,’ Gina said.

‘Should I?’

‘Yes!’

‘I think I was going to,’ her mom began. ‘I think I was waiting until you were old enough to really understand. And I guess you are now . . . First love, baby –

it’s just incredible and I hope you enjoy every moment of it, but it always seems to end with broken glass of one kind or another.’

‘Did he move to London?’ Gina wanted to know.

‘Yeah . . . He sent me a postcard with his new address! But I never wrote back – it was all just too upsetting.’

‘So you messed up your O-levels and went to a different school for a year?’

‘Yeah, a college in Frankfurt, where Dad was based.

He got better and then St Jude’s let me back for my A-level year. Even though I was still way too into hair bleach and eyeliner!’

‘And you did really well.’

‘Yeah, but that doesn’t mean you get to mess up your first exams!’ Lorelei warned.

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‘Hey . . . it’s OK. Looks like I might finally do better than you at something! Thanks for telling me, Mom,’ Gina added, holding the receiver right up against her ear. ‘All I want is for you to be honest with me.’

‘Ha! Honest?’ Niffy, cramming a large chunk of chocolate into her mouth and stretching her long arms out along the fire-escape railing, couldn’t help laughing at this. ‘Parents are never honest. I don’t know why not . . . Apparently it’s because they’re trying to protect us from the ugly, evil, bitter truth.’

‘Yeah, but we usually find out about it anyway and then they just look really stupid,’ Amy added, a significant memory of her own popping to mind. In the holidays she’d walked in on her dad’s ‘business meeting’ in the hotel in Dubai. ‘
Oh, that kind of
business
,’ she’d managed to say to the bare behind in front of her, before backing out of the room and slamming the door shut.

‘Why didn’t you just tell me?’ she’d asked her dad in a flood of tears later in the day. ‘Why should I be the last to know?’

‘I didn’t know what to say,’ he’d insisted, fighting back tears of his own. ‘I had no idea what you’d 304

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think . . . and I don’t ever want you to think badly of me.’

Well, that at least had been honest.

‘But now I think you’re a liar as well as everything else,’ Amy had told him. ‘Can’t you just be honest?

With me as well as everyone else?’

But Amy wasn’t being honest now, was she? She still hadn’t mentioned one word about her father’s new life to her friends. And she’d already told him that she would . . .

Min took the slab of chocolate from Niffy and broke off a piece. All four girls were out on the fire escape: it was after ten p.m., so they were confined to their dorm, but it was such an amazing evening, the sun still visible in the sky, that they couldn’t bear to go to sleep yet.

‘I asked my mum why she was so desperate for us all to be doctors,’ Min told them, ‘and do you know what she said? It totally surprised me – I’d thought it was because she wanted us all to have great jobs and earn good money so that she could be proud of us all

– but she told me it was because she and my father still feel guilty that they had such a good education and can afford to give us one too.

‘The only way of getting over the guilt is for us to 305

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work helping people less fortunate than us. If she’d told me that before, I think I’d have understood it.

Instead I just felt this terrible pressure that I couldn’t veer from their course.’

‘What about my mum?’ Niffy added. ‘She’s the biggest liar of them all. Apparently she didn’t want me to worry . . . she still doesn’t want me to worry. She wants me to stay on here and pretend that everything is just fine!’

‘You must be so scared,’ Gina said, rubbing Niffy’s shoulder.

‘I’m not as scared as I was when I first found out.’

Niffy broke off another chocolate chunk and thoughtfully nibbled a little corner from it. ‘Why do we not have fags and booze?’ she asked.

‘You’re going to live at home,’ Amy reminded her.

‘You’ll have to adapt your vices. Chocolate and chips from now on.’

‘I’ll be the size of a house the next time you see me.’

Niffy held her arms out wide to demonstrate.

But the thought of her managing to alter her rangy frame to anything house-sized just made her friends laugh.

‘I won’t be in the hockey team next term!’ she exclaimed, as if this thought had just occurred to her.

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‘Bum! Obviously Gina won’t be here either . . . Willow, at least, will consider that a blessing. But what will you do without me?’

It was obvious that Amy and Min were suddenly too choked to answer this question.

‘Speech Day tomorrow,’ Niffy said brightly in an effort to cheer them up a little. ‘Wait till you see me crossing the stage in one of Amy’s poncy frocks. I think we should play Banshee Buzzword Bingo for money – that’ll take our mind off . . . things.’

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Chapter Twenty-Five

After lunch, Niffy and Gina went back to the boarding house to change. Speech Day, the final day of the school year, involved a huge gathering in the school hall for pupils, staff and all the parents of the leavers.

Every girl leaving the school that year crossed the podium in a dress of their own choosing, had a little summary of their academic and sporting achievements read out by the Banshee and received a handshake, a book and a round of applause for their efforts.

‘You look really nice,’ Gina assured Niffy, who actually just looked uncomfortable in the borrowed red summer dress, admittedly a little short at the waist and the hemline. Niffy put her feet into flat red pumps, bought specially for the occasion so she didn’t have to wear riding boots again.

‘I can’t believe I’m leaving,’ she confided. ‘I keep 308

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telling myself it’s just for a short time – Mum will get better really soon and I’ll be back . . . But what if it isn’t? What if this is it? I spend the next three years of school somewhere else, and Amy and Min . . .’ Niffy couldn’t finish the sentence because her voice was breaking.