The chapel clock chiming five told me that I was a little bit late getting downstairs.
I’d been tonging my hair so that it fell really straight and shiny, and then dragged my case downstairs to find that a mean, mizzling rain was falling, just enough to have made it absolutely pointless me tonging my hair at all.
I could see a convoy of racing-green Land Rovers already moving off slowly down the drive. For a moment I panicked; I thought I’d missed my ride. (So ironic. Of course, now I wish I had missed my ride.) I’d presumed from what Jesus had said when I’d received The Invitation that I wouldn’t be the only newbie going from STAGS – surely I’d be travelling with the other unknown guests, or even the Medievals? But it was OK – there was one Land Rover still standing in front of the steps. A massive stocky man stood leaning on the bumper. It was impossible to tell his age from his weather-beaten face – he looked like that guy from Guardians of the Galaxy, the one who is basically a tree. I couldn’t really see his hair as he was wearing a flat tweed cap. He had on a checked shirt and a sort of quilted green waistcoat. He was smoking discreetly, his cigarette curled in the palm of his hand like a sixth-former hiding it from the Friars.
‘I’m Greer,’ I said, much more breezily than I felt.
He touched his cap, unsmiling. ‘Howdo,’ he said, a northern, contracted version of the greeting Esme had given me upstairs. Usually a northern accent comforts me, but not this time. He was about as unfriendly as he could be. Unhurriedly he took a final drag on his cigarette, squinting his eyes at me and against the smoke, then ground it out on the sole of his heavy walking boot. He tucked the stub neatly in the pocket of his waistcoat.
He put out his huge nicotine-stained hand. I nearly shook it, the way I’d shaken Esme’s, before I realised he was offering, in his curt way, to take my wheelie case. I rolled it to him and he slung it in the back of the car, slamming the boot loudly. I considered making a joke about riding shotgun, thinking it would be witty to say this to a gamekeeper, but he didn’t seem like a jokey kind of guy; plus he opened the back door for me. Then he got in the front and started the engine. As we drove away I turned for a last look at the school. And this I particularly remember: every single window in the place had a face in it. The whole school was watching the chosen ones go. Even the Friars.
As we headed down the drive, only the fact that we were following the other estate cars reassured me that I wasn’t, in fact, being kidnapped. The headkeeper drove in absolute silence, concentrating on the road ahead. Once we got out into the real dark of the country, we would, at times, fall behind the others on the winding roads. Then it was as if my silent driver and I were the only people in the world. When I was a kid and my dad used to let me sit in the front seat of his camera truck – I guess we were both lonely – I used to think that tail lights were creepy red eyes watching me in the dark. Tonight whenever I caught sight of those red eyes, I felt ridiculously relieved. I watched the back of the gamekeeper’s head. He drove easily, one big hand on the wheel, cap still firmly on his head, saying nothing. I assume the Land Rover had a radio, but he didn’t put it on. I could have done with some stupid cheerful tunes. I didn’t know any of the new releases since the phone ban, but the silence was really starting to freak me out. I tried desperately to think of something to say to start a conversation, and fell back on the old British fail-safe. ‘D’you think we’ll have nice weather this weekend?’ I asked.
‘’Appen,’ he grunted. There didn’t seem to be any point in probing him further. So I gave up and tried to see out of the window, wiping the misted glass with my sleeve. Being late October, it was already night. I knew from Esme that Longcross was somewhere in the Lake District. ‘Good hunting country,’ she’d said. And in fact as I peered out I could see, between the massive dark hunched mountains, glassy moonlit lakes, which would appear for an instant and disappear again like hide-and-seek. I don’t know how long we drove for. (There was no clock on the dashboard, I don’t wear a watch and, of course, no phone.) It can’t have been much more than an hour, but it felt like ages. The silence seemed to get louder and louder, becoming so oppressive it almost made me want to scream. My nerves were stretched to breaking point. But just as I felt I couldn’t bear it any more and I was going to have to ask him to pull over, I saw a shining beacon in the darkness. There, in the distance, was a constellation of lights, like a huge ocean liner in the black sea of hills.
If I’d had a chatty car journey, in company, with the radio on, the sight of Longcross would have reminded me to be afraid. As it was, after an hour in the dark with the taciturn gamekeeper, I saw the approaching lights with nothing but relief.
It didn’t occur to me at the time that that might have been part of the plan.