The Following Girls (21 page)

The phone began ringing again the instant she replaced the receiver: Bunty’s voice wanting to know where had Baker disappeared to all afternoon and saying that she was excused lawn-mowing and what time should they meet tomorrow. ‘It’ll have to be quite early. Meeting Nick outside the Wheatsheaf at three.’

Just what Baker had wanted, only now she didn’t want it after all, just someone to kill time with till the pubs closed? No thanks.

‘Can’t. Sorry. Spam’s taking me shopping.’ (Always a first time.)

Baker spent the rest of the weekend alone in her bedroom making a poster to pin up in the hideout, cutting up Spam’s magazine archive and teaming the scraps with random headlines. Spam popped by with mugs of tea and plates of biscuits and sandwiches every few hours or so, in between dashing off to the shops or running back down to the kitchen to get something out of the oven. Baker stuck
The bust you’ve always wanted is probably your own
over a picture of Burt Reynolds showing off his chest hair. And the shark from
Blue Water, White Death
was nuzzling up to a half-naked blonde stroking herself in happy anticipation:
Things happen after a Badedas bath
.

‘That’s nice.’ Spam back again. Cheese on toast this time: horrible cheese – men’s cheese. Her stepmother’s hair was in curlers and her bare feet were snared in a sponge thingy that was supposed to make painting your toenails easier. Maybe Julia was right: bored bored bored.

‘Very nice,’ she said again. ‘Clever. What’s it for?’

‘It’s a
project
.’ You could say that about anything. Baker could have been sat there on her corduroy bean bag stripping down a Kalashnikov and Spam wouldn’t have batted an eyelid if she’d said the magic word. Dad, back from an old boy meeting planning the cricket season, was less convinced.

‘Haven’t you got any revision to do?’ droned Captain Black, just for a fucking change.

Chapter 14

Baker arrived at school unusually early on Monday. Dad was en route to a business meeting in Ipswich (or possibly Droitwich) and was up and about, knotting his tie and huffily buffing his shoes. Spam had an equally early start every Monday for staff training or, just possibly, coffee and Danish pastries in a cosy Italian café with her mate Sandra. (Bob didn’t like Sandra.) Spam always laid out her toothbrush, cleansing lotion, make-up bag and styling comb by the kitchen sink and was up and out before you knew it. Her husband’s (far rarer) early starts would rouse the whole house at six with his very vocal search for a Thermos flask, a book of road maps and some kind of recognition that he, the main breadwinner, had had to get up at the crack of bloody dawn (win more bread).

The general upheaval meant that Baker was in early enough to hide her poster behind the filing cabinets in the organ corridor before nipping up to the Shells cloakroom where she found Bunty in a twisted heap in the corner. Her face was swollen with old tears and she was crying still.

‘God, I am
so
stupid.’

And yes, she was a bit as it turned out.

After a Saturday night and Sunday morning of mad passionate love in the monster bedroom suite, Bunty and the mysterious Nick had removed all the evidence, changed all the bedding, then gone off to the pictures for a goodbye grope in the cheap seats. The car was in the drive when she got back and her red leather, day-to-a-page, gilt-edged diary was on the tea table in place of the usual fruit cake.

As ill luck would have it, the conversation at the Shropshire wedding breakfast had turned to childhood diaries and Bunty’s mother had remembered that the one she had given Amanda last Christmas had never been seen since and she had thought about it all the way back down the M1. The toy lock on a battered old briefcase was never going to be proof against Gloria Bunter-Byng once her curiosity was roused. A quick twist with a nail file had seen off the catch and she found herself in a sordid teenage world of French letters and back seat couplings and unnatural acts with chocolate bars. She raced through the three-month confession in a fever of blushing, watched over by Bunty’s father wearing weekend corduroys and a look of furious anticipation.

‘What is it, Gloria? What has she written?’ demanded Roy. ‘What has she said about
me
?’

‘Everything was in it,’ wept Bunty. ‘
Everything
. Oh God. I am such a silly cow.’

The missing Mandies arrived and were swiftly brought up to speed.

‘Oh you poor dozy mare. At least mine’s in code,’ said Queenie, smugly.

‘Bully for you,’ snapped Bunty. Oh. The sour note in her friend’s voice distressed Baker more than tears. Bunty was never bitter.

‘Sorry. Stupid thing to say.’ Queenie squeezed her hand, almost in tears herself.

‘Don’t you start,’ sniffed Bunty. ‘Didn’t even know you kept a diary. What kind of code?’

‘Made it up: hearts, diamonds, squares and circles and plus signs. They’d never crack it.’

‘Might try.’

‘You kidding? Mummy has enough trouble with the new washing machine instructions. Got “Do not bleach” confused with “Do not wash”. She was taking everything to the dry cleaners when we first got it: pyjamas, rugby shirts, everything.’

The cloakroom had filled and the Upper Shells were undressing and dressing again, ready for the Monday dose of Drumlin.

‘Sod that,’ said Baker. ‘Let’s go and have a fag.’

‘Bring plenty of matches,’ said Bunty, reaching into her tote bag, ‘we need to burn this.’

Queenie managed to smuggle out the cloakroom waste paper bin by folding the thin metal almost in half and ramming it under her coat. The four of them tramped up past the netball courts to the bicycle shed where Bunty opened the handsome little book and began tearing out page after page after page, shredding each sheet with her fingernails and scattering the scraps into the blazing bin. The other three joined in, but made a special point of not watching their hands at work, each wanting Bunty to see that they weren’t seeing, weren’t trying to steal her secrets, but you couldn’t help yourself reading the shreds of charred paper as they floated into view with the updraught:
days late
,
bi-lingual!
, secrets shared with Bunty’s gilt-edged confidante. Not with Baker.

‘God! Yesterday evening was a
night
-mare,’ wailed Bunty. ‘She insisted on setting up shop in the spare room and Daddy’s now on the sofa bed in the study because their bed is now unusable – “soiled” was one of the words she used, like sanitary towels. Gross. And “polluted”, that was the other one.
Pollute
d
! Like oily puffins. I wouldn’t mind, but we always did it on a towel.’

‘Gross.’ Queenie made a gagging gesture.

‘And darling Daddy is doing his darnedest to mind as much as she does, but after a couple of hours of carrying on he starts mooching around the drawing room, poking the fire and winding the clock and bashing the barometer in a kind of “Where’s my bloody supper? Am I master here or not?” sort of way. Didn’t get any supper in the end – had to make himself hoops. I feel a bit sorry for him to be honest.

‘Then
she
gets hold of the upstairs extension and shuts herself in the spare bedroom to phone Aunt Marcia in Shwop-sha. I caught the odd word.’ Bunty puffed ruefully on her fag. ‘I’m a “
perverted, depraved little tar
t
” apparently. That must have been the you-know-what.’ Bunty made a pout with her lips, like she was daring them to ask what she meant. ‘And never leaving off about the bed: “The bed we bought when we got married . . .
”
’ Bunty tightened her larynx to match her mother’s county contralto.
‘
“My
bridal
bed.
”
’

There was an awkward silence while the other Mandies mentally beat off thoughts of Ma and Pa Bunter-Byng finding a legitimate use for a queen-sized, pocket-sprung Slumberland mattress.
Gross
.

Bunty’s mother had put the sheets and pillowcases in the dustbin (which was a bit of a joke as her daughter had only just changed them all), and the silver satin eiderdown was hanging on the line in the vegetable garden where it was given a vicarious thwacking with a Celtic knot of wicker every time Mrs Bunter-Byng passed it on her way back from dead-heading live daffodils.

Bunty’s diary was almost completely consumed.

‘You might have known she’d read it, you twazzock,’ said Stottie. ‘They can’t help themselves. My mum reads mine. I always know when she’s been at it. I do that thing with a hair.’

‘What thing with a hair?’

‘That thing where you stick a hair over the cover so you can tell if anyone’s opened it. I knew she would. I only write it for her to read: worry about homework, worry about marks, must try harder, that kind of thing. And what a pain Stephanie is and how all the teachers hate her and how I wanted to kill myself when I didn’t get distinction. All that. Definitely does the trick. She got me some chocolate yesterday.’

Stottie seemed genuinely taken aback by their silence.

‘What?’

All four girls were so busy looking for a stick to stir the ashes with that they didn’t hear the Drumlin tiptoeing up to the shed in her green flash Dunlops.

‘And what the Devil do you think you’re doing?’

The games mistress hadn’t been able to keep the thrill out of her voice.
All four of them
. Smoking. Out of bounds.
Arson
, practically. Wilful damage. It was like a dream come true until Amanda Bunter-Byng turned her bloated, tear-stained face towards the games mistress and you could see wind visibly leaving the Drumlin sails.

‘Bunty’s mum read her diary.’

Baker’s toneless voice robbed the scene of all its drama. Miss Drumlin stared down at the leafless leather cover, the charred fragments of excited girlish scribble:
cock
,
packet
.

‘How rotten. Gosh. Gosh that is rotten. Still,’ she brightened, ‘no excuse for being out of bounds. You can all report for detention to Mrs Mostyn this lunchtime: “Idling away an entire Games lesson”. And clear this mess up, Amanda, Amanda.’

‘Wossat word?’ said Bunty as they dawdled back to the main building.

‘What’s what word?’

‘That word.’

‘Brick?’

‘Thassit.’

They weren’t alone in that lunchtime’s detention. Natasha and Bryony, of all people, had written the name of some pop star all over their white canvas shoes in Biro (a fashion the Drumlin was determined to stamp out) and had also been made to report to the Geography Room for a summary punishment. Bryony had never been in detention before. Bryony’s dad had promised her a colour portable for her sixteenth birthday if she kept a clean sheet. Bryony had been crying.

‘I need hardly say how disappointed I am, Bryony,’ said the Snog Monster, already mentally composing the stiff letter home. ‘You have always been so . . . so
School
.’

Mrs Mostyn was actually rather pleased to see them all as she had a bit of a rush job on. The three daughters of a South Asian diplomat were starting at Fawcett Upper after Easter and it was finally time to address the sad fact that Ceylon was no more.

‘We did
mean
to do the updating at the time,’ she smarmed, ‘but it’s never really been on the syllabus and Africa was so much more
pressing
.’

The mistress carted the huge stacks of atlases to the glueing tables. She was wearing the violet Crimplene again. It looked even nastier up close. Like Artex, thought Stottie, like it would graze your skin if your mum pushed you into it after a pint of Cinzano.

‘Amanda?’ Four heads failed to look up. ‘Bunter-Byng? Perhaps one of you could colour and label this final batch of Africas while the others get on with –’ a cross little pause
‘
“
Sri Lanka
”.’

She left them alone and sloped off to scrounge fresh supplies of glue from the Art Room.

Bunty pursed her lips and began shading the maps and inking in the names of countries with furious concentration, while the other five cut out and stuck down two hundred Sri Lankas under maps of India and Southern India and ruled through the Ceylons on a hundred world maps.

‘I can’t believe I’m doing this. I feel like a medieval monk. Has she never heard of Xerox?’

‘This what you were doing last week?’ asked Queenie, casually pasting another maplet into place.

Baker nodded. ‘There are worse jobs, much worse. The Drumlin made me blanco her tennis shoes once.’

The Mandies raced to keep up with each other, but the mountain of atlases in front of Brian and Tash was slower to melt because the pair of them, unseen by the Geography mistress, were passing a long note backwards and forwards, half in blue, half in the prattish turquoise ink that Natasha thought expressed her personality (‘What does your pencil case say about you?’).

‘Bryony Cotter! Hand me that paper!’