“Mum!”
She whipped her head back around and wrenched the wheel, swerving out of danger with inches to spare as every muscle in my body braced for the impact that didn’t come. The sound of the VW’s angry horn faded into the distance; my muscles stayed firmly locked. The next turn, sharp and angry as Mum took her frustration out on the kerb, flung us down a narrow lane off the main road, and we jerked to a standstill in the middle of a brightly zigzagged ‘School – No waiting’ zone.
“Here we are then,” Mum said in a voice filled with over-the-top cheer. I slowly let out my breath and rolled my shoulders a couple of times. She didn’t kill the engine. I looked over at her, and followed her gaze out across the wide, empty courtyard to the boarding house beyond. It was smallish, but still proper Sunday night drama material from certain angles. It was an old building, really old, and looked like it was overdue for some repairs here and there, but still it managed to look sort of classically elegant, screaming secret corridors and ancient, dusty books.
The sun ducked behind a cloud, and I felt a fresh burst of anxiety as the picture postcard view briefly turned into something more sinister in the gloom.
Mum gave a little shiver, before ramping the heater up, reaching across me to open the glovebox and rummaging around inside.
“That traffic’ll be worse on the way back, and I still haven’t finished the packing. It’ll be a miracle if I make that flight,” she muttered, scrabbling around madly before yanking her phone out on a wave of empty chocolate wrappers. I braced myself for the inevitable onslaught, but something on the screen caught and diverted her anger, and she started furiously pecking away at it in response.
I patted my pocket, checking for my own phone in case it had somehow slipped out when Mum pulled off her kerb-mounting turn; then I flipped down the sun visor to check my reflection. There were dark shadows under my eyes, my cheeks were puffy, and my too-dark, too-long hair looked lank and greasy. My forehead was too high, my nose was a breeding ground for blackheads, and—
I snapped the visor back up. Not looking was probably better.
I leant over and kissed Mum on the cheek. She kept on tapping and tutting, but threw me an air kiss in return.
“Will you see Dad, do you think? When you—”
“Oh, how many times, Abigail? I don’t know,” she snapped.
I felt my eyes sting; tears threatened, and there was no sun I could blame this time. Instead of shouting at me, her eyes softened and she threw an arm around me, her phone still clutched at the end of it. “I will, I’m sure, but it’s complicated, love. He’s all settled out there, and this is my first time. It’s going to take some getting used to for all of us. I won’t see him right away, and when I do it probably won’t be for long. Just send him an email as soon as you get settled. You know he logs on whenever he can.” She kissed my forehead then ruffled my hair, like I was a toddler. “And give me a ring tonight, OK?”
I nodded, not trusting myself to say anything over the lump rising in my throat.
“Make it late though, love. I’ve no idea what time I’ll get in, and the packing…”
Her voice drifted off, and her arm retracted, all attention reverting back to the phone. I nodded again, but she didn’t take her eyes off the screen.
I was stiff from sitting in the car so long, and I felt a hundred years old as I got out – nothing like the fifteen-year-old I was supposed to be. A bubble of guilt burst in my stomach as I pulled my suitcase out of the boot, remembering the two carrier bags hidden carefully inside a sweatshirt at the very bottom. If Mum had found them, well, I didn’t know if I’d even be here. I looked at the case for a second, sitting there on the pavement, full of secrets, and wondered if that would’ve been a good thing or a bad.
I slammed the boot shut, and Mum flung the car around in the road, startling me out of my thoughts. Her window came down. She’d put her big sunglasses on, the ones that made her look like an enormous wasp, and the phone was still clutched in her left hand.
“You’ll be fine, Abigail,” she said over the noise of the engine. “This place will do you the world of good.”
“Yeah. I know,” I lied. I was terrified. “Drive safe, Mum. And…”
She nodded, and smiled, but I couldn’t see if it reached her eyes.
It wasn’t like we hadn’t done this before. Goodbyes were nothing new. This time though, it felt different. Saying goodbye to both of them, to Beth, to home – it was goodbye all round. Suddenly that felt huge. Suddenly I felt more lost than ever.
And then down went the foot: Mum’s ‘legendary lead foot’ Dad used to call it. It was crazy, how hard some habits died. You’d think after what had happened…
I reached for the bracelet.
She turned back out onto the main road, one hand waving out the window, presumably steering with her knees as she pecked away at her phone with the other.
“Right then,” I muttered to myself. “I’ll be fine.”
Hey, it’s only boarding school, Abs! Beth’s voice rang out as clear as a bell in my mind. Stop with the self-pity. Mum’s the one heading off to a war zone, not you. Get a grip!
Beth’s world class when it comes to brutal honesty, and has never had any concept of tact. Everyone needs a friend like that in their lives. Mine just happens to be my big sister. She’s like a jellyfish sometimes, stinging you once, twice, or even three times before you realise it; but she’s usually right on the money. Sometimes you needed a sting to make you get up and out of the water.
I wrestled up the handle of my case, got a grip, and dragged it into line behind me.
**
My footsteps rang loudly on the stone as I walked across the courtyard – an unpleasant, auditory reminder that I should have made more of an effort to diet over the summer. Or, actually, any kind of effort. The start of the school year had always felt so far away. Until suddenly somehow it’s tomorrow, and here I am. Not ready. So not ready.
The building looked completely deserted, and with the sun refusing to come back out from under its blanket of cloud I was starting to get chills. I was also picking up a cheesy horror film vibe – casting myself in the lead role as the classic, vulnerable teenage girl – abandoned in a secluded spot…
In leafy, upper-class Oxfordshire, where endless old biddies peer through their curtains to check on their Volvos and bedding plants every five minutes…
Beth’s eyebrow lifted in my mind’s eye. And I conceded the point. There was probably nowhere safer. But as I looked up at the heavy oaks circling the courtyard they felt dark and oppressive somehow, like they could close ranks any second and trap me inside.
My heart started to pick up speed, and my fingers reached for the familiar, worn cotton as I fought to remind myself that I wasn’t alone; however much it might feel like it sometimes, I was never alone.
Once I’d made it to the wide, crumbling stone doorstep, I had one last look around in case I’d somehow missed a big group of kids huddled together somewhere catching up on all the summer gossip. Maybe they were all up at the school itself; maybe I should’ve gone there first.
“It’s never like that in the books,” I remembered saying to Dad. “The dorms aren’t half a mile away from the school at the bottom of a hill at Hogwarts, are they?”
“Hog-whats?” Dad wasn’t much of a reader.