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“She did that to Zeta for an art project?” says Lo in a high voice. There’s redness on her cheeks.

  “Shhh,” I said. “Monro says she thought the prescription was harmless, and she found it in the pigeonholes.”

  Lo made a snorting sound. “It was private. And to pick on Zeta…”

  “Veronica’s misjudged it,” I agreed, but although that’s what I thought, I wasn’t going to be the one to spoil her project by revealing her secret to other students. At least not yet. I wondered if the housemistress in Davison knew about it. “Listen, let’s keep it on the down-low for now.” I looked at the other two, waiting until they nodded.

  “She’s encouraging us to snitch on each other though, isn’t she?” said Meribel.

  “Sort of, I suppose.” I submerged three Cheerios under the milk in my cereal bowl with the round side of my spoon. Only one of them rose to the surface to the side of it. I’d have to hope the reveals didn’t get out of control. It would be OK if the project became fun, not nasty.

  “Why’s she doing it?” asked Lo. “Did Monro say?”

  I shook my head.

  “Let’s pin something up,” I said. “We’ll make it something amusing. Not embarrassing.”

  “So sadly that rules out a photo of you snogging Bernard then,” said Meribel.

  “Also, it doesn’t exist,” I said. “Thank God.”

  “Let’s find something about Veronica,” said Lo. “Give her a taste of her own medicine.”

  “No,” said Meribel. “Clemmie. In the first form, she had a secret crush on those brothers with the pink wigs who thought they could rap. D’you remember, Lo? She swore she hated them but she was listening to them in the junior common room that time when she hadn’t pushed her earphones into the socket of her phone properly.”

  I smiled at how embarrassed Clemmie must have been. “Were they the ones who had that big hit and went spectacularly bankrupt because they bought some restaurants and had no idea how to run them?”

  Lo said, “Yeah. And we’d heard Clemmie tell everyone that Zeta was such a loser for listening to their stuff. Zeta had never even heard of them.”

  “I’m going to Photoshop a photo of her standing next to them,” said Meribel.

  “Nice idea,” I said.

  Since Calding didn’t seem to be in a fighting mood that day, I took the opportunity to drag the others into the office with me to tell her we didn’t want to take on any extra duties. I was ready with excuses about the volume of work in the fifth form but she didn’t ask for reasons. She did her thing of pulling her thumb and forefinger over the corners of her mouth before removing them to say, “I’m not surprised, to be honest. You Pankhurst girls have so much potential, but you can be so selfish. Such enormous egos and lack of social responsibility.”

  We were taken aback by that.

  In art, I began the preparation of paper clay. I added a couple of rolls of toilet paper in a bucket of water and let it soak, swishing it a bit while it disintegrated. When it had completely pulped I would add it to white clay, but in the meantime I made a structure from soft wire. It was the loose outline of a pair of hands that ended at the wrist, which I would cover with the paper clay. I worked from a photo of an elderly person’s hands. I imagined them as Elsie Gran’s. I’d ask her to get Maria next door to take a photo of them and send it to me.

  “Did you know your mouth hangs open when you concentrate?”

  I knew it was Bernard before I turned my head.

  “Yes, I’ve been told that before,” I said.

  “It makes you look like you’re about six.” He picked up my pliers, and opened and closed them. “These look sharp.”

  “Give them here,” I said, and held out my hand. “Got to clip off the end of this wire.”

  “You were probably pretty cute at six,” he said.

  I clipped the wire with more force than I needed to. I remembered being six. It was the first time I felt ugly.

  “I was talking to Tessa Malone about your party,” said Bernard. “She told me she’d been invited. I’m not going round blabbing, in case that’s what you were thinking. Anyway, she thought fireworks over the cliff at midnight would be cool. What d’you think? She’ll get her mum to have some delivered if you like.”

  Fireworks would be perfect. “D’you know how to set them off?” I asked. “Without killing anyone?”

  “Of course. I help my uncle with his firework display every year. Leave it with me. I’ll get you a price first then sort it.”

  Mr Hayes was nearly at my desk, on his rounds to see what we were all working on.

  “Better go and do something arty, I suppose,” Bernard muttered.

  “Thanks for the fireworks,” I said.

  “No problem. Here for your every party need,” he said and saluted. “I want you to have the party you deserve.”

  CHAPTER 14

  It took Meribel a couple of days to get her Photoshopped picture right. She’d done an intricate job of making it look as if Clemmie had her arm round one of the rappers. She’d given her a pink jumper to match the boys’ hair and a cheerleading pom-pom. In the meantime other things had appeared on Veronica’s collage, among them a pale blue lacy bra, an article about nose-picking, a leaflet from a clinic for sexually transmitted diseases, and a stern written comment from a teacher ripped off the bottom of someone’s history essay, all fastened with drawing pins purloined from other noticeboards around the school. Lo reckoned Veronica was responsible for them all. It was hard to tell.

  Monro found his driving licence up there and swore loudly. At least he had one, I supposed.

  “Yeah, you look pretty ropey in that photo, mate,” said Bernard, and Monro had ignored him.

  I hadn’t had a chance to be with Monro on my own again since Thornley harbour. He’d been in Davison common room at the same time as me, but had been preoccupied. One time he’d been buried in a book, which was unusual because this was the common room, and not a study area. He had glanced up and smiled briefly, before folding over a corner of a page, then flipping to the back, as if an index was the most riveting reading material ever. When he left the common room, he pushed it under the armchair he was sitting on. Curious, I fished it out and saw it was an old paperback from the library upstairs, last taken out seven years ago: Hidden Treasures: 100 Places to Explore in the British Isles. The folded-over page was of a map of Great Britain. As I pushed it back under the chair, I wondered if he’d only been reading it so he could listen in to other people’s conversations, or to avoid talking to me.

  Meribel snuck out of school to go to Davison at lunchtime to position her printout, and came back to where we were sitting in the rose garden. She said she’d nearly been run over by Calding driving too quickly away from Pankhurst, not that Calding had noticed.

  “Where d’you think she was going?” asked Lo.

  “Who knows? That woman is so uptight I don’t know how she doesn’t explode,” said Meribel. “Her body language says she’s not enjoying being housemistress. Trust me, over the summer, I watched loads on YouTube about body language. I’m going to take bets on when she resigns. She won’t make it to the end of the term.”

  “Hope not,” I muttered.

  Lo said, “You don’t think Calding is working undercover, do you?”

  “What sort of undercover?” I asked.

  “Dunno,” said Lo. “Perhaps she’s a school inspector or journalist. Or police.”

  “You might be on to something, Lo,” said Meribel. “I’ve heard she’s a rubbish science teacher.”

  “And she’s been trying to recruit fifth-formers to run the science club she’s supposed to be in charge of,” said Lo. “Like she can’t be bothered.”

  “We should definitely keep an eye on her,” I said. Lo’s theory made Calding a whole lot more interesting.

  My phone vibrated with an email notification. I only ever received emails from school, and I was supposed to pick them up in the evening when I had permission to be on my ph
one. They were usually about class assignments or club information, but not this time.

  “Oh, fabulous,” I said sarcastically. “I have to give a visitor a tour of the school on Saturday morning. Saturday? I don’t even get to miss lessons.” I swiped it open and read out loud, “Dear Kate, as House Prefect of Pankhurst, you are requested to blah blah blah… Oh, wait, this isn’t so bad.”

  “Sounds like a drag to me,” said Meribel.

  I shook my head. “Listen: You and House Prefect of the Lower School at Churchill will meet Mr Lee in reception.”

  “House Prefect of the Lower School at Churchill – that’s Hugo!” said Lo.

  I nodded. “Correct. Not so bad. In fact, bring it on.”

  We wanted to be there when Clemmie saw herself Photoshopped. We followed her and Paige over to Davison, bunching closer to them as they walked through the door. There were already a few people there, mostly sitting at tables. Veronica was squishing a teabag against a mug in the kitchen. Hugo was by her artwork, looking at the picture.

  “What’s that, Hugo?” called Paige. Seeing if there was anything new on the collage had become something most of us did on walking into the common room.

  “Something silly,” said Hugo. He sounded dismissive, but I saw him look at Clemmie nervously as she and Paige came closer.

  Clemmie stared at the photo and her face reddened.

  “That’s so funny,” said Paige. “Look at you, Clem. I remember that group. What was their name again? They were your guilty pleasure.”

  Someone called out, “RapBros.”

  “What’s all that about?” asked Flo.

  “What’s any of it about?” called Bernard. He was throwing crisps at another boy in our year. “I’d like to know about the bra, though.”

  Clemmie yanked the printout off the collage, so the drawing pin that was attaching it pinged off on to the floor.

  “Who put this up?” she demanded. She spun round. “Who was it?”

  “What’s the matter, Clem?” said Paige in a soothing voice. “Someone’s just done it for a laugh.”

  Clemmie ripped it up, chucked it in the bin and walked out, nearly colliding with Monro as he came in.

  “That was extreme,” murmured Lo.

  Meribel nodded slowly. “Talk about oversensitive.”

  The following day I skipped lunch and went to the art room instead. Under the watchful eyes of my dragons in the cabinet, I mixed my paper pulp into prepared clay. In the firing process the paper fibres would burn away, leaving lighter clay. I kneaded the mixture, and thought about Hugo. We had a connection. Doing the tour together on Saturday was an opportunity to get to know him better.

  The art room was empty apart from a technician who had his earbuds in and was singing along to the Hamilton soundtrack. When I heard the door squeak open, I thought it was Meribel or Lo, coming to persuade me to sit outside with them in the September sunshine.

  “I want to get this done,” I said.

  “Kate?”

  I swung round to see Calding. What was she doing here? The science department was in a completely separate part of the building.

  “Is my granny OK?” I asked, saliva drying up as I suddenly thought of Elsie Gran. She’d messaged me in the morning, but anything could happen in the space of a few hours.

  Ms Calding nodded. She pulled a stool from under the desk parallel to mine. I needed to scrape the clay from my hands and wash them, but the desire to know what she had to say was greater.

  “It’s about a letter,” said Calding. I hated her over-serious manner at the best of times, but she was taking it too far now with the slowed-down speech and pauses. “It was sent to your grandmother’s house from the father of a former student.”

  My hands found their way back to clay, and I started kneading. So Sasha’s dad had found my address too.

  “And your grandmother sent it on to us. It says you had something to do with his daughter’s expulsion last term. Sasha Mires.”

  I wished Elsie Gran had warned me, but she probably hadn’t thought it was worth bothering me with.

  Calding reached into the pocket of her jacket. I stopped kneading and watched her pull out a folded piece of paper. I could see Elsie Gran’s writing, made by a black ballpoint pen pressing too hard. Calding handed it to me and I held it at the very edges, so as not to get clay on it.

  To whom it may concern,

  My granddaughter, Kate Jordan-Ferreira, would certainly not be involved in anything like this. The school should be aware of this defamatory letter.

  Elsie Jordan

  She’d spoilt the sternness by adding a peace symbol. I turned the page over and saw the typed letter from Mr Mires. I skim-read it, taking in the words, falsely accused of stealing an exam paper, slur on her character, devastating effect, your granddaughter needs to speak up if she knows something, school negligent, formal apology… I clamped the inside of my cheek with my teeth, and handed the letter back.

  “I’m trying to get to the bottom of this,” said Calding.

  The clay was drying on my hands, making them look ghostly. Trying to keep myself occupied, I wrapped the big lump on the round wooden board in front of me in a section of plastic sheeting so it didn’t lose any more moisture.

  “Tell me what you know,” said Calding.

  “Did you read my statement?” I asked. “It’s all there.” It felt as if my hair was sticking to the back of my neck with sweat.

  Calding encouraged me to repeat how Clemmie had come to my room to do some of our geography project together, and that she’d left before Lo was back from dance club. She asked if we’d chosen to be partners for the geography project.

  I looked at her bony face, and frowned. “No,” I said. “We didn’t want to be partners, but we had to get it done.” It was the most truthful thing I’d said. We hadn’t got a good mark for that project on urbanization. We’d worked on our parts separately on our laptops and I’d pieced it together.

  Did Sasha’s parents know I’d provided an alibi for Clemmie? “Has Sasha’s dad been sending these letters to everyone?” I asked.

  Calding shook her head. “I don’t know. Your grandmother is the only person who’s told us they received one.” She settled back on her stool. “I’ve spoken to Mr Mires. He says his daughter never stole anything, and had never seen that exam paper before.”

  “I heard Sasha’s login was used on the teacher’s laptop,” I said. I’m not sure why I did because I knew what Calding would come back with.

  “That doesn’t mean it was Sasha who logged in, does it? Someone might have known her password.”

  “I guess it’s possible,” I said.

  “Whoever logged into the laptop in Miss Wibberton’s office was a boarder at Pankhurst,” said Calding. “The CCTV camera at the front door didn’t show anyone coming into the building who shouldn’t have been there.”

  I thought of telling her it was easy to bypass the CCTV at the back of Pankhurst, but for obvious reasons that wasn’t a sensible move.

  She continued, “If you can think of anything you might have forgotten to tell me, anything at all, please let me know.”

  I nodded. The conversation was over. I’d survived it.

  “OK,” said Calding. “Please tell your grandmother we’ve spoken about this.” She stood up and hitched her trousers up by the waistband. I caught a glimpse of her pale flat stomach underneath the stripy shirt and navy jacket, taut like the rest of her.

  I couldn’t concentrate on the sculpture after she’d left. I picked up the board, placed it in the corner of the cupboard and went to find the others, who were stretched out on the empty cricket pitch, their heads resting on rolled-up blazers.

  “I’m trying to persuade Lo to become an influencer,” said Meribel. “She’d do a far better job than our dear friend Clemmie.”

  “The things I want to influence can’t be monetized,” said Lo. “Equality, tolerance…”

  “Oh, purlease.” Meribel lifted her a
rms up and blocked out the sun with her crossed-over hands. “I was sent a bikini for free last week by a company I modelled for. Retail value: £195. They want me to post a photo of myself wearing it.”

  “Are you going to do it?” I asked.

  Meribel shook her head and shifted on to her elbow. “Not without the right backdrop. I’m not taking a photo of myself in my bedroom here. You can have it if you like, Lo. It’s floral, oranges and pinks.”

  I settled down beside Lo, head straight on to the soft grass because my blazer was in my locker so I didn’t destroy it in the art room, and said, “You’d look good in it.”

  “I literally never wear florals,” said Lo, flicking the side of my face gently. “Why are you being so nice?”

  I breathed in the sweet scent of the grass, “Because… What can I say, Freckle-Face? I want you to like me,” I said.

  Lo squeezed my hand. “So needy, Kate Jordan-Ferreira.”

  CHAPTER 15

  School wanted as many students as possible to attend a talk by a motivational speaker in the assembly hall on Friday evening after dinner, but hardly anyone from Pankhurst apart from Lo and Zeta could be bothered to trudge back up to school and hear how some climber had survived a night in an ice crevice. Meribel said she’d seen a film that sounded very similar so there was no point, and I knew I couldn’t sit and listen to someone who’d done heroic things. Not tonight when I couldn’t stop thinking about the letter Sasha’s dad had sent to Elsie Gran, and Elsie Gran’s total conviction that I was innocent.

  Bel and I watched a film in her room, and came downstairs when we knew cookery club would be offering tasters of what they’d made. This week it was bite-size quiches, which tasted like bland scrambled egg in pastry. Back upstairs, we were joined by Lo, and settled down together to watch our favourite Vampire Diaries episode, shushing Lo from time to time as she remembered gruesome details from the climber’s speech.

  “You’re quiet, Kate,” said Meribel, when it was over and we’d hopped on to YouTube.

  “Thinking about your date with Hugo?” suggested Lo.

  I rolled my eyes. “Give me a break. I’m tired, that’s all.”