at Aunt Rosalind.
“Well,” my aunt’s determinedly cheerful voice bounces off the walls. “I don’t think it’s so bad, Naomi – honestly, sweetie, it’s not as awful as the boarding school you were sent to!”
Her words stop me in my tracks. “That’s really not at all helpful, Aunt Rosalind!” I shout. Up ahead, the prefect jumps at the sound of my voice.
Ma flinches.
My cheeks burn.
“Ma went to boarding school in the middle of the Second World War when everything was awful, and I’ll bet you, it looked just like this place …” I wave my hands about in despair.
Ma looks stricken.
“Exactly,” I hiss. “It’s terrible.”
The prefect spins around. Aunt Rosalind ignores her. She turns towards me and points her finger in my face. “Don’t you talk to me in that tone of voice,” she snaps. “I’m not your mother!”
Ma flushes. “Apologise to Aunt Rosalind at once, Jennifer!”
My lip curls. “Sorry, Aunt Rosalind.”
The prefect takes a deep breath. “There’s only one dormitory in use at the moment,” she says over her shoulder. “It’s for the younger boarders – they sleep together, so they don’t feel so lonely. Mrs P says the girls are happier when they have roommates.”
I tap Ma on her shoulder. “I’m not sharing a room, Ma.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she snaps. “You’ll do as you’re told.”
She scowls, shakes Aunt Rosalind’s hand off her arm, and gestures brusquely to the prefect to move on. I notice her face is beaded with nervous sweat, and I smile a small, tight smile.
Like a small flock of sheep, we follow in the bellwether’s rubber-soled footsteps. At the far end of the corridor, the prefect comes to a stop. She leans forward slightly and knocks perfunctorily on the open door of a small room where a girl is eating an apple and reading a magazine on a narrow bed. The girl looks up and frowns.
“Yes?” she says. She looks past the prefect at me. “Oh, hi.” She smiles. “You must be the new girl?”
She marks her place in the magazine, shifts forward, and stands up, tugging at the back of her skirt. I stare at her. She looks just like an English jolly-hockey-sticks-and-games sort of girl, I think. I nod and smile, take in the second bed against the opposite wall, a small table and wooden chair separating it from its twin opposite, and a narrow sash window, greasy curtains of an indeterminate colour and design hanging limp on either side. Metal lockers stand at the foot of each bed. Dark with age and dirt, they’re covered with graffiti scratched deep into their green paint. Ma and Aunt Rosalind crowd behind me in the doorway.
“Hi, Denise, this is the new girl.” The prefect glances briefly at me. “Jennifer,” she adds by way of introduction.
Denise nods. “Ramsey,” she says, ignoring her. “Everyone calls me Ramsey.”
The prefect clears her throat. “Mrs P said to tell you, you must explain to Jennifer how things work here – you know, tell her about the rules and regulations. Show her where everything is, okay?” She smiles weakly at Ma and Aunt Rosalind, ignores me, and backs out of the room. I can hear her footsteps hurry away down the sticky corridor.
The window rattles. The wind’s picked up outside. The limp curtains billow out over the small table, and a fetid stench blows into the room.
“Oh my God,” I gag. “What’s that smell?”
“Isn’t it disgusting?” Ramsey waves her hand in front of her face. She leans over the table and bangs the window shut. “It’s from the kitchen downstairs. They forget to empty the rubbish bins in time, so they’re always overflowing with rotting garbage.” She looks at me and grins. “Wait ‘til you hear the cats fighting in them at night.”
I feel sick. Ma looks cross.
“It’s too hot to keep the window closed all the time.” Ramsey shrugs. “You’ll get used to it,” she says. “I did.”
Ma and Aunt Rosalind peer through the closed window. Ma looks horrified. Aunt Rosalind turns her head towards her; the expressions on their faces are identical.
“Oh dear,” Aunt Rosalind breathes, “it is dismal, isn’t it?”
Bristling like dogs with tension and anxiety, Ramsey and I size each other up, cast quick, furtive glances, assessing and judging the other for kindness, for neatness, forbearance.
“I think it’s time to leave you to unpack, Jen – get settled in.” Ma smiles at Ramsey. “I’m sure you two are going to get on famously—”
Aunt Rosalind interrupts her: “Goodbye, sweetie.” She smiles at me. “You’ll get used to it, Jen, just give it time – work hard, make your mum and dad proud!”
Her perfume drifts around her. I look at the floor. “Yes, Aunt Rosalind.”
“That’s the way!” She nods briskly and walks to the door. “I’ll wait for you in the corridor, Naomi.”
Ma brushes my fringe out of my eyes. She puts one hand on my shoulder.
“Do your best, love. Knuckle down and work hard. Behave yourself. I’m sure you’ll make lots of new friends – your roommate seems very nice …” Her smile is feeble.
I look long and hard at her. “Do you remember, Ma? What you once promised me?”
She stares back at me. Her eyes are like ice. An errant shaft of sunlight wavers through the window of the small room. Dust motes fall on the smooth black of Ma’s hair.
A movement catches my eye as Aunt Rosalind’s disembodied head peers around the doorframe. “Come on, sweetie, it’s time to go,” she says briskly. “Say goodbye, Naomi – we don’t want to hit the rush-hour traffic, do we?”
Ma frowns. “I’m coming, Ros.”
She steps forward and rests her hand lightly on my shoulder again. I feel the cool breath of her butterfly kiss pass by my cheek. “Goodbye, love.”
I want her to put her arms around me and hold me tight.
“Ma, I want to go home with you.”
She turns away.
“Please,” I beg. “Please, Ma.”
She tilts her chin, and smiles at Denise.
“Goodbye, Denise,” she says. “Goodbye.”
She walks across the floor, and out of the door. The rhythm of Ma and Aunt Rosalind’s footsteps, the crack of their heels walking fast together down the wide passage, echo and ring. Ramsey looks away and stares down at her feet.
There are rules, regulations for everything. The smallest transgression is summarily dealt with, privileges revoked, weekends and Sunday passes cancelled. Prep times pass in complete silence. At night, after the prefects have called the last lights-out order, I turn my face to the wall, switch on my torch and read The Catcher in the Rye.
I never look at the title page.
8.
The Hostel of Perpetual Hunger
In the small, airless rooms and empty dormitories of the Hostel of Perpetual Hunger – attached to the School of No Hope for Girls – the boarders, burdened with loneliness and boredom, bicker and sulk. Preoccupied, obsessed with their own misery, they furtively count and conceal the contents of their tuckboxes, devour their stocks of chocolate bars in secret, unwrap and wolf them down under their bedclothes, or behind the bolted doors of bathrooms – around any quiet, private corner. At night, they dream of food and home-cooked meals, and in the dark hours between their winter-damp sheets, they