Secrets at St Jude's: New Girl (5 page)

‘Yeah, then at some point in the fifties,’ Min went on, ‘the school dropped the cooking and sewing classes and started teaching the girls how to become Edinburgh doctors and lawyers themselves.’

‘My mum always said that one of the scientists who invented the Pill was from St J’s,’ Niffy added. ‘But it’s always been hushed up because it doesn’t fit with the school’s image. St J’s is very, very proper.’ She gave a roll of her eyes. ‘They’d still make us wear hats, gloves, pinafores and corsets if they could.’

‘What else should I know?’ Gina asked.

But Min had a question: ‘Should we be telling Gina to steer clear of Penny and her gang?’

‘I’m sure she’ll work it out quickly enough,’ Amy 44

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replied. ‘Let’s just put it this way. Every year has a set of poisonous bitches in it, and Penny, Piggy and Weasel are ours.’

‘Piggy and Weasel?’ Gina felt as if she needed some further clue to these girls than just the nicknames the dorm girls had given them.

‘Tiggy and Louisa. Tiggy must be short for something, but no one ever calls her anything else, so who knows? I don’t think you’ll want to hang around long enough to find out. Unless you like the company of snobby Edinburgh bitches,’ Amy added.

‘Oh, they probably aren’t that bad if you’re a friend of theirs,’ Niffy chipped in. ‘It’s just that Amy and Penny have never really got on. Penny once went out with someone Amy was considering chucking—’

‘Yeah, but I hadn’t!’ Amy reminded her. ‘He was still my boyfriend, that’s the point.’

‘And,’ Niffy went on, ignoring the outburst, ‘Penny has been at St J’s since she was three and she’d got used to being the cleverest girl in the class and the best at everything. So when Amy arrived at the age of ten and started doing better than her at maths and art, not to mention Min turning up two years ago and being brilliant at physics and chemistry, Penny just went in a huff . . .’

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‘Yeah, and she’s been in it ever since,’ Amy added.

‘Unfortunately 4C is quite small,’ Min said, ‘so it’s a little hard to distance yourself from the three of them.’

Oh great
, Gina was telling herself again. Didn’t matter where in the world you went to school, there were always gangs. Another thought crossing her mind was that when she got back home, back to her real school, she was going to be so, so much kinder to new girls. It had never occurred to her before how terrifying it was to join a new class, make new friends, new enemies, find out where everything was and how everything worked all over again.

Because Min had been the first person to respond to her uniform crisis, because she seemed the nicest of the three and the geekiest and the one least likely to refuse, Gina – hating having to do this – turned to her and asked quietly, ‘You will . . . um . . . be around today, won’t you? Just to kind of show me where everything is? Won’t you?’

Min smiled and nodded.

The words, ‘I spy boarders,’ greeted them as they walked into the classroom. They came from a tall girl with a pale, narrow face, a mane of long, curly brown hair and cruelly short fringe. She might have been 46

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pretty if she hadn’t had the fringe and such a sneer across her face. ‘Did you sleep well, girls, in your cosy little dorm? Ooh – and a new girl . . . She’s almost as tanned as you, Amy. Been to the Costas for a holiday, have you? Daddy got a little place in Benidorm?’

‘Go away, Penny,’ Amy growled.

But Penny held out her hand to Gina and said,

‘Penelope Boswell-Hackett. How do you do?’

‘Gina Peterson.’ Gina shook the hand offered; she didn’t feel as if she had much choice, although this was obviously the Penny she’d been warned about.

‘So where are you from?’ came the abrupt question.

‘I’m just here for a term. I’m from the US . . .

California.’

‘Oh dear,’ replied Penny. ‘Blonde
and
Californian

. . . good luck. Let’s just hope you’re not stupid as well.

And you’ve had to borrow a uniform, you
poor
old thing.’ And with that she turned on her heel and headed back to the far corner of the room, where a knot of girls giggled at her return.

Gina felt her face burning. ‘Where do I sit?’ she hissed at Niffy.

‘Here, just take the desk beside mine.’

Gina sat down at the cramped, old-fashioned desk.

She watched as Niffy lifted up the lid and began to 47

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unpack some belongings from her school bag into the belly of the wooden beast. This was like being at school in a different century. The room was pea-green with a scuffed wooden floor, a chipped iron monster of a radiator and two enormous windows, set high up in the wall. If a teacher in a long woollen dress carrying a cane had walked in, Gina would not have been surprised. She wondered if her mother had sat in this classroom once, and yet again she struggled to understand why her mother had wanted to send her to this place.

When the school bell rang at 8.50, an almost normal-looking woman came into the room and took the register. Gina tried to put names to faces, but gave up halfway through. It would take some time.

‘Welcome back, girls . . . Welcome to our new girl, Gina Peterson . . . And off we trot to assembly,’ the class teacher, Mrs Redpath, instructed.

Along with the rest of her class, Gina headed for the cavernous wood-panelled hall, already filling with hundreds of St Jude’s girls. She followed Niffy and Min into a row of seats somewhere in the middle of the hall and picked up the small red hymn book on her chair before sitting down.

‘You’re about to see the Banshee in action,’ Niffy 48

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whispered. ‘Pick a word, girls:
excellence
,
ambition
,
dedication
or
proud
. Person with the lowest score buys the treats on Friday.’

Gina had no idea what Niffy was talking about, but she heard Min choose
proud
and Amy
excellence
.

‘Still chasing Jasey-Wasey, are we?’ Penny, sitting in the row in front of them, turned round to direct this at Amy. ‘Shame, because guess who I saw in the Harvey Nichols café stroking the beautiful hair of Camille from Year Five? Oh yes – one Jason Hernandez. And’ –

she paused for effect, arching one eyebrow – ‘when I spoke to Camille afterwards, she said she wouldn’t touch him with a barge pole because he’s such a druggie.’

‘Shh!’ came the hiss from Mrs Redpath.

Niffy’s hand went up to Amy’s arm, as if to restrain her from making any reply, but it didn’t help.

Amy spat out, ‘And I suppose you think Llewellyn’s such a saint, don’t you? He’s probably got his head in a bag of glue right now, along with all the other wasters from Burnside Academy. At least if Jason did drugs, he’d be able to afford the good stuff. But for your information, he doesn’t.’

‘I don’t think you’re quite in the same league as Camille though, are you? Little jumped-up 49

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Glaswegian nouve,’ came the vicious response.

Although Gina didn’t know what this meant, she could tell from Amy’s face that it was insulting.

‘Penelope,’ Mrs Redpath warned, ‘turn round and be quiet!’

‘See you later!’ Penny muttered as she swivelled.

‘Not if I see you first,’ Amy hissed, adding for Gina’s benefit, ‘Like I’m supposed to be embarrassed that my dad comes from Glasgow and isn’t a pompous lawyer.

Cow!’

The piano struck up and the hall was filled with the sound of 450 chairs scraping wood as the girls got to their feet.

A loud burst of singing began. Gina looked at her neighbours, wondering which page to turn to, but found that no one was looking in the book. This was probably the school hymn and everyone knew it off by heart.

Niffy’s version was clearly the unofficial one –

something about lifting up your skirts on high so ‘
the
king of glory enter may
’. She was shaking with suppressed giggles.

A severe-looking woman dressed in a dark suit and white shirt with wide lapels was striding in sensible court shoes towards the wooden lectern in the centre of the stage. Her short hair was swept back smartly 50

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and she had one of those complicated silver brooches pinned to her jacket that might as well have been a label reading: I’M OVER FIFTY AND TAKE MY POWER

ACCESSORIES VERY SERIOUSLY.

‘Banshee Bannerman,’ Niffy announced. ‘Count those buzzwords!’

‘Girls,’ the Banshee began. ‘Welcome back for what I know will be a hard-working summer term. Our senior girls have their exams ahead of them. I know each and every one of you is going to make St Jude’s proud.’

‘Yess!’ hissed Min. ‘One–nil.’

‘I know that your dedication to your studies will pay off . . .’ the Banshee continued.

‘Result!’ Niffy hissed.

And on the Banshee went, racking up four points for Min, two for Niffy but still no score for Amy.

‘Come on!’ Amy was urging. ‘
Excellence
– we’ve got to have some
excellence
in here.’

‘And now, girls,’ the Banshee said, ‘I’d like to introduce two new members of staff. First of all, one of our games teachers, Mrs Tweedie, has suffered an unfortunate car accident during the holidays.

She’ll be off for most of the term, but is expected to make a full recovery, so I’d like you to welcome 51

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Miss Chrysler, who will take her place temporarily.’

As loud applause broke out for Miss Chrysler, Amy, Niffy and Min all turned to look at each other.

‘Bum!’ Niffy exclaimed. ‘Here’s hoping Miss Chrysler knows
something
about winning hockey and tennis matches.’

‘Now the other news,’ the Banshee continued once the clapping had died down, ‘concerns our dedicated students of physics.’

Min leaned forward in her chair.

‘I’m afraid Mrs Wilson has been called away from school for some time by an urgent family matter.

However, we have organized a more than capable replacement who will continue to strive for excellence in this most important of departments.’

Just as Amy’s face lit up – finally
excellence
had been uttered – Min’s fell.

‘Please welcome Mr Wilbur Perfect.’

‘What!’ Min gasped.

The loud clapping could not drown out the hilarity bubbling up from 450 girls who had just learned that their school staff now included a Mr Perfect.

‘Mrs Wilson?’ Min whispered. ‘She’s not going to be here? I can’t believe it! Why didn’t she tell me?’

Niffy whispered, ‘Maybe she will, Min.’

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‘But,’ Min began, ‘I just can’t get through everything without her!’

By the time the lunch bell sounded, Gina had lived through her first four classes at St Jude’s. It had been tough going, especially the gruelling ninety minutes of

‘double’ French.

St Jude’s seemed to specialize in teachers of the severe variety, who were determined to make learning as joyless as possible. And, boy, did they take class seriously here! There was no talking or time for anything fun, just heads down over the books and work, work, work. Gina didn’t know if she was going to be able to stand it, let alone keep up. It wasn’t like anything she’d experienced before. In her school back home, she was used to class discussions, group projects and a sense of ‘let’s find this out together’. Here it was just about listening to what the teacher told you: a boring information overload. And the girls all lapped it up without much complaint. She could understand now why everyone who came here did well.

The French teacher was actually French, which was kind of interesting. She wore a glamorous oyster Silk blouse a scarlet slash of lipstick and her hair up in a
chignon
.

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As soon as Madame Bensimon spied new girl Gina, instead of doing something to make her feel welcome, she’d asked her to read a passage in French out loud –

maybe so she could assess her. Gina had clearly heard the snorts and giggles coming from the other girls as she’d stumbled her way through the complicated text.

‘
Hmmmm . . . très Americaine
.
Laid
,’ had been Madame’s verdict, ‘
Penelope, à vous
.’

That was the other thing: because Madame Bensimon spoke in high-speed French all the time, Gina struggled to make out any of her instructions.

But it became clear that she wanted Penny to read the passage again to show Gina how it was done. There was no mistaking Penny’s smug and melodious French accent.

‘
Bien fait
,’ Madame had said at the end, gracing Penny with an indulgent smile. ‘
Merveilleux
.’

‘She had a French au pair from the age of two and she holidays in France every year with her family,’

Niffy had whispered to Gina. ‘She’s probably going to tell us that yet again.’

And sure enough, Penny had smiled back at Madame Bensimon and told her in fluent French that darling Paulette and summers in the Luberon meant 54

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she could now speak it almost like a native – although,
grace à
Madame Bensimon, her grammar was improving all the time.

At this, Amy had made vomiting actions.

Biology was hardly more fun. The girls had sat in long rows and copied furiously from the scrawled notes of a grumpy teacher, who seemed to have it in for Min.