LOOKING BACK AT Salten House, the thing that I remember most is the contrasts. The searing brightness that came off the sea on a sunny winter’s day, and the midnight black of a country night – deeper than any London dark. The quiet concentration of the art rooms, and the shrieking cacophony of the buttery, with three hundred hungry girls waiting to be fed. And, most of all, the intensity of the friendships that sprang up after only a few weeks in that hothouse atmosphere … and the enmities that went with that.
It was the noise that struck me most, that first night. Fatima and I were unpacking when the bell went for supper, moving around the room in a silence that was already companionable and easy. When the bell shrieked out and we tumbled hastily into the corridor, the wall of sound that met us was like nothing I had heard at my day school – and it only intensified when we walked into the buttery. Lunch had been busy enough, but girls had been arriving all day, and now the hall was rammed, the din of three hundred high-pitched voices enough to make your eardrums bleed.
Fatima and I were standing uncertainly, looking for a space to sit as girls pushed purposefully past us on all sides, heading for their own particular friends, when I saw Thea and Kate at the end of one of the long polished wood tables. They were facing each other, and there was a spare place beside each of them. I nodded at Fatima and we began to make our way over – but then another girl cut in front of us, and I realised she was aiming there too. There would not be enough space for all of us.
‘You take it,’ I said to Fatima, trying to sound as if I didn’t mind. ‘I’m happy going on another table.’
‘Don’t be silly.’ Fatima gave me a friendly shove. ‘I’m not abandoning you! There’s got to be two seats together somewhere.’
But she didn’t move. There was something about the way the other girl was walking towards Kate and Thea that didn’t seem quite right – there was a purpose to it, a hostility that I couldn’t quite pin down.
‘Looking for a seat?’ Thea said sweetly as the girl reached her. I’d later come to know her as Helen Fitzpatrick, and she was cheerful and gossipy, but now she laughed, disbelieving and bitter.
‘Thanks, but I’d rather sit by the toilets. Why the hell did you tell me Miss Weatherby was pregnant? I sent her a congratulations card, and she went completely mental. I’ve been gated for six weeks.’
Thea said nothing, but I could see she was trying not to laugh, and Kate, who was sitting with her back to Helen, mouthed ten points, and held up her fingers to Thea, grinning.
‘Well?’ Helen demanded.
‘My mistake. I must have misheard.’
‘Don’t bullshit me! You’re a filthy liar.’
‘It was a joke,’ Thea said. ‘I never told you it was definite – I said I’d heard on the grapevine. Next time, check your facts.’
‘I’ll give you facts. I heard some facts about your last school, Thea. I met a girl from there at tennis camp. She said you’re not right in the head and they had to expel you. Well, they had the right idea, if you ask me. The sooner they chuck you out of here the better as far as I’m concerned.’
Kate stood up at that and swung round to face Helen. Her face was quite changed from the mischievous, friendly expression I’d seen on the train. It was full of a cold, hard anger that scared me a little.
‘You know what your problem is?’ She leaned forward, so that Helen took a step back, almost involuntarily. ‘You spend far too much time listening to rumours. If you stopped believing every nasty bit of gossip floating around, you wouldn’t have got grounded.’
‘Fuck you,’ Helen spat, and then all the girls jumped as a voice came from behind the little group. It was Miss Farquharson, Gym.
‘Everything quite all right here?’
Helen shot a look at Thea, and seemed to bite her tongue.
‘Yes, Miss Farquharson,’ she said, her voice sulky.
‘Thea? Kate?’
‘Yes, Miss Farquharson,’ Kate said.
‘Good. Look, there are two new girls hovering behind you looking for a space, and no one’s asked them to sit down. Fatima, Isa, make room for yourselves on the benches. Helen, do you need a seat?’
‘No, Miss Farquharson. Jess is saving me one.’
‘Then I suggest you go and take it.’ Miss Farquharson turned and was about to go, when she stopped, and her expression changed. She bent, and sniffed the air above Thea’s head. ‘Thea, what’s this I smell? Please don’t tell me you have been smoking on school property? Miss Weatherby made it very clear last term that if there were any further instances of this we’d be calling your father and discussing suspension.’
There was a long pause. I saw Thea’s fingers were gripping the table edge. She exchanged a look with Kate, and then opened her mouth – but to my own surprise, I found myself speaking first.
‘We were stuck in a smoking carriage, Miss Farquharson. On the train. There was a man there with a cigar – poor Thea was sitting next to him.’
‘It was disgusting,’ Fatima put in. ‘Like, really stinky. I felt sick even though I was by the window.’
Miss Farquharson turned to look at us, and I could see her appraising us both – me with my clear, girlish face and smile, and Fatima, her dark eyes innocent and guileless. I felt my fingers go nervously to my hair, and stopped myself, linking my fingers together behind my back, like a kind of restraint hold. Slowly, Miss Farquharson nodded.
‘How very unpleasant. Well, we’ll say nothing more, Thea. This time. Now sit down, girls. The prefects will start serving out in a moment.’
We sat down, and Miss Farquharson moved away.
‘Bloody hell,’ Thea whispered. She reached across the table to where I was sitting, and squeezed my hand, her fingers cold against mine and still shaking with spent nerves. ‘And … God, I don’t know what to say. Thank you!’
‘Seriously,’ Kate said. She shook her head, her expression a mix of relief and rueful admiration. The steely fury I’d seen in her expression as she faced up to Helen was gone, as if it had never existed. ‘Both of you pulled that off like pros.’
‘Welcome to the Lying Game,’ Thea said. She glanced at Kate. ‘Right?’
And Kate nodded.
‘Welcome to the Lying Game. Oh –’ her face broke into grin – ‘and ten points.’