FATIMA IS THE next to arrive.
It is almost dusk; a warm sluggish breeze filters through the open windows as I turn the pages of a novel, trying to distract myself from my imaginings. Part of me wants to shake Kate, force the truth out of her. But another part of me – and it’s equally big – is afraid to face what’s coming.
For the moment, this moment, everything is peaceful, me with my book, Freya snoozing in her buggy, Kate at the stove, salt-savoury smells rising up from the frying pan balanced on top of the burner. There’s a part of me that wants to hold on to that for as long as possible. Perhaps, if we don’t talk about it, we can pretend that this is just what I told Owen – old friends meeting up.
There is a hiss from the pan, making me jump, and at the same time Shadow gives a staccato series of barks. Turning my head, I hear the sound of tyres turning off the main road onto the track that leads down by the Reach.
I get up from my window seat and open the door to the landward side of the Mill, and there, lights streaming out across the marsh, is a big black 4x4 bumping down the track, music blaring, sending marsh birds flapping and wheeling in alarm. It gets closer, and closer, and then comes to a halt with a crunch of stones and a creak of the handbrake. The engine turns off, and the silence abruptly returns.
‘Fatima?’ I call, and the driver’s door opens, and then I am running across the jetty to meet her. On the shore, she throws her arms around me in a hug so hard I almost forget to breathe.
‘Isa!’ Her bright eyes are as black as a robin’s. ‘How long has it been?’
‘I can’t remember!’ I kiss her cheek, half hidden with a silky head-scarf, and cool from the car’s air conditioning, and then pull back to look at her properly. ‘I think it was after you had Nadia, I came round to see you so that must be … blimey, six years?’
She nods, and puts her hands up to the pins that hold the head-scarf in place, and for a moment I’m expecting her to take it off, assuming it’s an Audrey Hepburn-type thing. But she doesn’t, she only pins it more securely, and suddenly I realise. It’s not just a scarf – it’s a hijab. This is new. New since I last saw her new, not just new since school.
Fatima sees me looking, joining up the dots, and she smiles as she pushes the last pin back into place.
‘I know, bit of a change, right? I was thinking about it for ages, and then when Sam was born, I don’t know. It just felt right.’
‘Is it – did Ali –’ I start, and then instantly want to kick myself when Fatima gives me the side-eye.
‘Isa, honey, when have you ever known me to listen to a bloke when it wasn’t something I wanted to do myself?’ Then she sighs. I think it’s a sigh at me, although perhaps it’s about all the times she’s been asked this question. ‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘Maybe having the kids made me reassess stuff. Or maybe it’s something I’ve been working my way back to all my life. I don’t know. All I know is I’m happier now than I ever was.’
‘Well, I’m …’ I pause, trying to work out how I feel. I am looking at her high-buttoned top, and the sleekly folded scarf, and I can’t help remembering her beautiful hair, the way it fell like a river over her shoulders, draping her bikini top until it looked like she was swathed in nothing else. Lady Godiva, Ambrose had called her once, though I didn’t understand the reference until later. And now … now it’s gone. Hidden. But I understand why she might want to leave that part of her past behind. ‘I’m impressed, I guess. And Ali? Is he – I mean, does he do the whole nine yards too? Ramadan and stuff?’
‘Yup. I guess it’s something we’ve kind of come to together.’
‘Your parents must be pleased.’
‘I don’t know. It’s a bit hard to tell – I mean, yeah.’ She shoulders her bag and we start to walk across the jetty, picking our way carefully in the last shafts of sunset. ‘I think they are; although Mum was always very clear that she was OK with me not wearing a scarf, I think she’s secretly quite chuffed I’ve come round. Ali’s parents … funnily enough, not so much. His mother is hilarious, she’s always like but, Fatima, people don’t like hijabis in this country, you’ll hurt your chances at work, the other mothers at school will think you’re a radical. I’ve tried to tell her my surgery is pathetically grateful to get a female GP who can speak Urdu and is prepared to work full-time, and that half of the kids’ friends are from Muslim homes anyway, but she just doesn’t believe it.’
‘And how’s Ali?’
‘He’s great! He just got made a consultant. I mean, he’s working too hard – but aren’t we all.’
‘Not me.’ I give a slightly guilty laugh. ‘I’m swanning around on maternity leave.’
‘Yeah, right.’ She grins sideways at me. ‘I remember that kind of swanning. It involves sleep deprivation and cracked nipples. I’ll take the podiatry clinic at work, thanks.’ Then she looks around. ‘Where’s Freya? I want to meet her.’
‘She’s asleep – completely knackered by all the travel, I think. But she’ll wake up soon.’
We have reached the door of the Mill, and Fatima pauses with her hand on the knob.
‘Isa …’ she says slowly, and I know, without her having to spell it out, what she’s thinking, and what she’s going to ask. I shake my head.
‘I don’t know. I asked Kate, but she wants to wait until we’re all here. She said it wouldn’t be fair.’
Her shoulders sag, and suddenly it all seems hollow – the meaningless social questions dry as dust on my lips. I know that Fatima is as nervous as me, and that we are both thinking of that message from Kate, and trying not to think about what it might mean. What it must mean.
‘Ready?’ I ask. She blows out a long breath of air from between pursed lips, and then nods.
‘As I’ll ever be. Fuck, this is going to be weird.’
Then she opens the door, and I watch the past envelop her just as it did me.
When I got off the train at Salten that first day, there was no one else on the platform apart from Thea and Kate and a slight, dark-haired girl about eleven or twelve years of age, far up the other end. She looked uncertainly up and down the platform, and then began to walk towards us. As she got closer I saw that she was wearing a Salten uniform, and as she got closer still that she was much older than I’d taken her for – fifteen at least – just very petite.
‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Are you for Salten?’
‘No, we’re a gang of paedophiles wearing these uniforms as a lure,’ Thea said automatically, and then shook her head. ‘Sorry, that was dumb. Yes, we’re going to Salten too. Are you new?’
‘Yes.’ She fell in beside us, walking to the car park. ‘My name’s Fatima.’ She had a London accent that made me feel instantly at home. ‘Where are all the others? I thought the train would have lots of Salten girls on it.’
Kate shook her head.
‘Most people drive their kids, especially after the summer vac. And the day girls and weekly boarders don’t start until Monday.’
‘Are there lots of day girls?’
‘About a third of the school. I’m a weekly boarder myself. I’m only here because I’ve been staying with Thea in London for a few days, and we thought we’d go back together.’
‘Where’s home?’ Fatima asked.
‘Over there.’ Kate pointed across the salt marsh towards a glimmering tract of water, far in the distance. I blinked. I couldn’t see a house at all, but there might have been something, tucked behind one of the dunes, or the stunted trees that lined the railway.
‘How about you?’ Fatima turned to me. She had a round, friendly face and beautiful dark hair swept back from her temples in a clip. ‘Have you been here long? What year are you in?’
‘I’m fifteen, I’m going into the fifth. I – I’m new, like you. I’ll be boarding too.’ I didn’t want to get into the whole story – my mother’s illness, the long hospital stays that left me and my thirteen-year-old brother Will alone while my father worked late at the bank … the sucker-punch suddenness of the decision to send us both away, coming as it did out of a clear blue sky. I had never been any trouble, had I? I hadn’t rebelled, or taken drugs, or acted out. I had responded to my mother’s illness by being, if anything, even more diligent. By working harder and picking up more loose ends at home. By cooking and shopping and remembering to pay the cleaner when my father forgot.
And then, the talk … better for you both … more fun than being on your own … continuity … schoolwork mustn’t suffer … GCSEs an important year …
I hadn’t known what to say. In truth I was still dazed. Will had just nodded, his stiff upper lip firmly in place, but I heard him crying in the night. My father was driving him down to Charterhouse today, which was why I had travelled alone.
‘My father’s busy today,’ I heard myself say. The words sounded relaxed, almost rehearsed. ‘Otherwise I suppose he would have driven me down too.’
‘My parents are abroad,’ Fatima said. ‘They’re doctors. They’re doing this, like, charity thing for VSO? Giving a year of work for free.’
‘Fucking hell,’ Thea said. She looked impressed. ‘I can’t imagine my dad giving a weekend up, let alone a whole year. Are they getting paid anything at all?’
‘Not really. I mean, they get a stipend, I think that’s the word. Like an allowance. But it’s pegged to local wages so I don’t think it’s much. That’s not the point for them though – it’s like a religious thing for them, their version of sadqa.’
As she spoke we rounded the little station house, where a blue minibus was waiting, a woman in a skirt and jacket standing by the door with a clipboard.
‘Hello, girls,’ she said to Thea and Kate. ‘Had a good summer?’
‘Yes, thanks, Miss Rourke,’ Kate said. ‘This is Fatima and Isa. We met them on the train.’
‘Fatima …?’ Miss Rourke’s pen travelled down the list.
‘Qureshy,’ Fatima said. ‘That’s Q, U, R –’
‘Got it,’ Miss Rourke said briskly, ticking off a name. ‘And you must be Isa Wilde.’
She pronounced it ‘Izza’ but I only nodded meekly.
‘Am I saying it right?’
‘Actually it’s to rhyme with nicer.’
Miss Rourke made no comment, but noted something on her page, and then took our cases and slung them in the back of the minibus and then we climbed in, one after the other.
‘Swing the door shut,’ Miss Rourke said over her shoulder, and Fatima seized the door handle and rattled it closed. Then we were off, bumping out of the rutted car park, and down a deep-carved lane towards the sea.
Thea and Kate chatted away at the back of the van, while Fatima and I sat nervously, side by side, trying to look like this was something we did every day.
‘Have you boarded before?’ I said quietly to Fatima. She shook her head.
‘No. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to come here to be honest, I was well up for going to Pakistan with my parents, but Mum wouldn’t have it. How about you?’
‘First time too,’ I said. ‘Have you visited Salten?’
‘Yeah, I came down at the end of last year when Mum and Dad were looking at places. What did you think of it?’
‘I – I’ve not been. There wasn’t time.’
It was a fait accompli by the time Dad told me, too late for open days and visits. If Fatima thought this was strange, she didn’t betray her feelings.
‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘It looks – OK, now don’t get me wrong, cos this is going to sound awful, but it looks a bit like a very classy prison.’
I smothered a smile and nodded. I knew what she meant, I’d seen the pictures in the brochure and there was something slightly prison-like about the photos – the big rectangular white frontage facing the sea, the miles of iron railings. The photograph on the cover of the prospectus showed an exterior that was almost painfully austere, the mathematically precise proportions accentuated, rather than relieved, by four slightly absurd little turrets, one at each corner, as though the architect had had last-minute doubts about his vision, and had stuck them on as an afterthought, in some attempt to lessen the severity of the facade. Ivy, or even just some lichen, might have softened the corners of the place, but I guessed that nothing much would survive such a windswept location.
‘Do you think we’ll get a choice who we’re with? The bedrooms, I mean?’ I said. It was a question that had been preoccupying me since London. Fatima shrugged.
‘I don’t know. I doubt it, I mean can you imagine the mayhem if everyone was milling around picking mates? I think we’ll just get assigned someone.’
I nodded again. I’d read the prospectus carefully on this point, as I was used to privacy at home and had been dismayed that Salten didn’t offer girls their own room until the sixth form. Fourth and fifth years shared with one other girl. At least it wasn’t dormitories, like the years below.
We fell into silence after that, Fatima reading a Stephen King novel, and me looking out of the window at the salt marshes flashing past, the wide expanses of water, the heaped dykes and snaking ditches, and then the sand dunes that flanked the coast road, feeling the minibus buffeted by the wind off the sea.
We slowed as we approached a bend in the coast road, and I saw Miss Rourke indicate, and then we turned sharply into the long white-pebbled drive that led up to the school.
It’s funny, now that Salten House is so graven on my memory, to remember there was a time when it was strange to me, but that day I sat, quite silent in the minibus, as we wound our way up the drive in the wake of a Mercedes and Bentley up ahead, just taking it all in.
There was the wide, white facade, eye-hurtingly bright against the blue of the sky, just as I had seen on the cover of the brochure, its severity only underlined by the regimented gleaming squares of windows that dotted the building at precisely regular intervals, and the black shapes of fire escapes crawling up the sides and twining the towers like industrial ivy. There were the hockey pitches and tennis courts, stretching away into the distance, and the miles of paddock, petering away into the salt marshes behind the school.
As we drew closer, I saw that the black front doors were open wide, and my overwhelming impression was of a bevy of girls of all shapes and sizes running hither and thither, screaming at each other, hugging parents, high-fiving friends, greeting teachers.
The minibus stopped and Miss Rourke handed Fatima and me over to another teacher she introduced as Miss Farquharson-Jim (or possibly, Miss Farquharson, Gym). Thea and Kate melted into the crowd and Fatima and I found ourselves subsumed into the shrieking mass of girls checking lists on the noticeboard and exclaiming over placements and teams, depositing trunks and cases, comparing the contents of tuck boxes and new haircuts.
‘It’s quite unusual for us to have two new girls in the fifth,’ Miss Farquharson was saying, her voice rising effortlessly over the clamour as she led the way into a tall panelled hallway with a curving staircase. ‘Normally we try to mix and match new girls with old hands, but for various reasons we’ve ended up putting you both together.’ She consulted her list. ‘You’re in … Tower 2B. Connie –’ She grabbed a younger girl bashing another over the head with a badminton racket. ‘Connie, could you show Fatima and Isa to Tower 2B? Take them past the buttery so they know where to come for lunch afterwards. Girls, lunch is at 1 p.m. sharp. There will be a bell but it only gives you five minutes’ warning so I suggest you start off as soon as you hear it as it’s quite a walk from the towers. Connie will show you where to go.’
Fatima and I both nodded, a little dazed by the sheer volume of the echoing voices, and lugged our cases after the departing Connie, who was already disappearing into the throng.
‘You can’t normally use the main entrance,’ she said over her shoulder as we followed her, weaving and threading through groups of girls, and ducking down a passageway at the back of the hall. ‘Only on the first day of each term, and if you’re an Hon.’
‘An Hon?’ I echoed.
‘On the Honour roll. It means heads of house … heads of teams … prefects … that sort of thing. You’ll know if you get there. If in doubt, don’t use that door. It’s annoying because it’s the quickest way back from the beach and the hockey pitches, but it’s not worth the telling-off.’ She ducked without warning through another doorway and pointed up a long stone-flagged corridor. ‘That’s the buttery, up the end there. They don’t open the doors until one but don’t be late, it’s a scrum to get a place. Are you really in Tower 2?’
There seemed no answer to this, but Fatima spoke for both of us.
‘That’s what the woman said.’
‘Lucky you,’ Connie said enviously. ‘The towers are the best rooms, everyone knows that.’ She didn’t elaborate on why, just pushed on a door in the panelling and began power-walking up a flight of narrow dark stairs hidden behind. I was panting, trying to keep up, and Fatima’s case was banging with every step. ‘Come on,’ Connie said impatiently. ‘I promised Letitia I’d meet her before lunch and I won’t have time at this rate.’
I nodded again, rather grimly this time, and pulled my case up another flight and along a landing.
At last we were at a door that said Tower 2 and Connie stopped.
‘Do you mind if I leave you here? You can’t go wrong, just head up and there’s only two rooms, A and B. You’re B.’
‘No probs,’ Fatima said rather faintly, and Connie disappeared without further discussion, like a rabbit going to ground, leaving Fatima and me rather breathless and nonplussed.
‘Well, that was confusing,’ Fatima said, after she’d gone. ‘Fuck knows how we’ll find our way back to the butlery.’
‘Buttery, I think it was,’ I said automatically, and then bit my lip, but Fatima didn’t seem to have noticed, or at any rate, she hadn’t taken offence at the correction.
‘Shall we?’ she said, opening the door to the tower. I nodded, and she stood back and made a mock bow. ‘After you …’
I looked inside. Another staircase, this time a spiral one, dis-appeared upwards, and I sighed, and grasped the handle of my case more firmly. I was going to be very fit, if breakfast entailed the reverse of this every day.
The first door we passed turned out to be a bathroom – sinks, two toilet stalls and what looked like a bath cubicle – and we pushed on upwards. At the second landing there was another door. This one simply said ‘B’ on it. I looked down at Fatima, on the spiral stairs below me, and raised an eyebrow.
‘What do you think?’
‘Go for it,’ Fatima said cheerfully, and I knocked. No sound came from within, and I pushed cautiously at the door, and entered.
Inside was a surprisingly nice room, fitted into the curving wall of the tower. Two windows looked out, north to the marshes and west over the miles of playing fields and the coastal road, and I realised we must be in the rear left-hand corner of the building. Below us smaller outbuildings were scattered, some of which I recognised from the prospectus – the science wing, the physical education block. Under each window was a narrow metal-framed bed, made up with plain white sheets and a red blanket over each foot. There was a wooden bedside locker, and between the two windows, two longer lockers, not quite wide enough to be described as wardrobes. I. Wilde, said a printed label on one of the lockers. F. Qureshy said the other.
‘At least we can’t fight over beds,’ Fatima said. She heaved her case up onto the one next to the locker marked with her name. ‘Very organised.’
I was just studying the pack on the desk by the door, promin-ent on which was the ‘Student–School contract – to be signed by all girls and handed in to Miss Weatherby’, when an impossibly jarring, jangling sound rang out, echoing horribly loudly in the corridor outside.
Fatima jumped, visibly as startled as I was, and turned to me.
‘What the fuck was that? Don’t tell me we’re going to get that every time there’s a meal?’
‘I guess so.’ I found my heart was beating rapidly with the shock of the noise. ‘Bloody hell. Do you think we’ll get used to it?’
‘Probably not, but I guess we’d better start back, hadn’t we? I doubt we’re going to find that butter place in five minutes.’
I nodded, and opened the door to the corridor to try to retrace our steps. Hearing footsteps from above, I looked up, hoping we might be able to follow these strangers to the dinner hall.
But the legs that I saw descending the stone spiral stairs were long, very long, and unmistakably familiar. In fact I had watched those legs being swathed in distinctly non-regulation stockings just a few hours earlier.
‘Well, well, well,’ said a voice, and I saw Thea, followed closely by Kate, round the bottom of the spiral. ‘Guess who’s in Tower 2B. It looks like we might be having some fun this year, doesn’t it?’