The Glass Bird Girl (6 page)

‘You shouldn't brush so hard or you'll have no hair left,' Sally said teasingly. Phoebe scowled. Anastasia, meanwhile, seemed altogether elsewhere. When the others had all got into bed she was still standing by her chest of drawers, quietly rearranging her little ornaments and hairclips into a painted wooden box. Edie thought about what Sally had said. She could see exactly why Anastasia might be described as dreamy, but as for wanting to whip up the action – she had seen no sign of that. She was still standing there when Miss Winifred appeared.

‘What are we up to, Anastasia?' she asked, smiling. ‘Rearranging the family jewels?' The other girls laughed but Anastasia looked embarrassed. Miss Winifred waited until they were all in bed. Then, ‘Goodnight girls,' she said in her sweet, fluting voice, and left them in darkness.

The dormitory soon fell quiet but Edie couldn't sleep. The school seemed so big and confusing – if there really was an intrigue going on around Anastasia, she wondered how she would ever get to the bottom of it. And she was worried about her mobile. She knew it had been foolish to leave it in her tuck box when there was a threat it might be searched. If it was confiscated she would have failed Cousin Charles's first test. She heard the school clock strike nine and wondered if she should risk creeping along to the common room to fetch it. Would the feather-like Miss Winifred still be breezing
about in the corridor?

There was only one way to find out . . .

The dormitory door squealed as Edie opened it. She flashed her torch along the corridor, and saw a glint of glass from the common-room door at the other end. She tiptoed towards it, and crept inside. She shone her torch over the tuck boxes and soon found her own. She had hidden the phone in a tattered blue shoe box along with some photographs and other little treasures. Edie decided to take them all, and as she returned to the dormitory with the box tucked under her arm she felt a new confidence in her ability to carry out her secret role.

But then the corridor lights came on.

Edie stood like a startled rabbit as a hawk-like figure loomed towards her. She looked up, expecting to see Miss Winifred. But it was the Man. ‘Edith Wilson! What
on earth
are you doing?' she demanded.

Edie clutched the shoe box to her stomach. She remembered what Sally had said – ‘
she's more bark than bite
' – but at that moment the Man looked as if she might swallow her whole.

‘Well?'

‘I . . . I went to get something from my tuck box,' Edie stammered.

‘
You went to get something from your tuck box?
' Miss Mannering sounded incredulous, as if Edith had admitted to breaking into the school safe. ‘
At nine o'clock at night?
'

‘Y-yes.'

Miss Mannering let out a loud breath. ‘You have a lot
to learn, Edith Wilson, if you wish to stay on the right side of me.'

Edie thought with longing of her bed, wishing she could dive inside it and hide under the covers. She realised suddenly that she was shining her torch onto Miss Mannering's boots, and made to hide it in her pocket.

‘Give that to me please, Edith,' Miss Mannering said, stretching out a hand.

Edie gave it to her.

‘And that, whatever it is.'

Edie shook her head, holding the shoe box tight. She felt a rising panic. She didn't care what else happened – she couldn't let the Man have it.

‘Give it to me, Edith.
At once!
'

‘No!' Edie choked, making no effort to fight her tears.

A door banged down the corridor, and Edie turned and saw Miss Fotheringay appear.

‘Ah, it's you, Miss Mannering,' the headmistress said in a calm voice. ‘I saw a light and wondered what was going on. Is everything all right?'

‘No,' Miss Mannering replied shortly. ‘I have found this child emerging from the common room. She tells me she
went to get something from her tuck box
.'

‘Is this right, Edith?' Miss Fotheringay asked, looking at her kindly.

‘Yes,' Edie whispered.

‘What was it you needed so badly?'

Edie could not say.

‘She has refused to hand it over,' Miss Mannering said. ‘If this weren't her first night at school, I'd—'

Miss Fotheringay cleared her throat meaningfully, and Miss Mannering stopped. ‘Give it to me, Edith,' Miss Fotheringay said.

Edith looked at her hesitantly; but something in her expression made her relinquish the box without further protest.

‘Thank you,' Miss Fotheringay said quietly. ‘I can assure you I shall take good care of it.' She gently steered Edie back into the dormitory and stood over her while she got into bed.

When she had gone Edie lay on her back, watching the shadows from the window slip across the grey ceiling. As she drifted off to sleep it was not Babka but Miss Fotheringay whom she saw, gazing down at her with searching eyes.

First Impressions

A
lone in her study Miss Fotheringay's face took on a look of frowning concentration very different from the kindly vision which Edie had seen on her way to sleep.

She made first to close the curtains then, seeing the moon, changed her mind and went instead to her bookcase, running her hand over a small, perfectly disguised section of fake leather spines. The shelf sprang open to reveal a secret chamber containing a leather notebook, a square brown bottle of fiery orange liquor and two delicate crystal glasses.

She poured herself a drink, then picked up the notebook and slid back the chamber door. At her desk she opened the book at the section titled
Register of Staff and Pupils; D&P (Diagnosis & Prescription)
and made an entry about her newest pupil:

The years of keeping watch for her grandmother have left her with a habit of defiant reserve . . . a slow introduction to school life would in this case be a mistake . . . let the child be stripped free of time to think and she will have a chance of flourishing
.

Miss Fotheringay put down her pen and gazed out of the window at the disc of white in the black October sky, mocking her attempts at clarity. The headmistress of her first school had taught her to record her first impressions of new pupils. ‘
It will be a record, for the most part, of your own mistakes
,' Mother Bridget had said.

Miss Fotheringay put her impressions of Edith straight to the test with a glimpse inside the shoe box which lay on the desk in front of her. The headmistress of Knight's Haddon did not believe that the girls in her charge had any right to privacy.

The mobile phone did not surprise her. It always amused her how many parents said they supported the school's ban but failed to prevent their daughters trying to smuggle one in. It was as though even that bit of discipline was too much for them.

Miss Fotheringay switched the phone on and checked the contacts. There were only two – Babka and Charles. She noted with relief that it was not the instrument of a regular user – there were no text messages, no stored voicemails.

She looked to see what else the box contained. There were two photographs in frames and a curious-looking rag doll about ten centimetres tall in black velvet fancy dress. Miss Fotheringay had a horror of dolls and was
careful not to touch this one, but she put the framed photographs on the desk in front of her and studied them closely.

One was of an elderly woman dressed in a fashionless pale wool coat sitting on a balcony with mountains behind her. Her eyes were closed against the sun, but there was something shrewd in the knot of hands that lay in her lap and something determined in the tilt of her head. The other photograph was of a baby in a christening gown, sitting on a woman's knee. The woman's face was bent towards the baby, and the focus was blurred. Miss Fotheringay stared at this picture for some time.

She was about to replace the contents in the box when she saw the small brown envelope she had missed. She paused briefly, before dipping her long fingers inside. She drew out first a list of what looked like commandments, hand-written in a language she recognised as Slavic, and then another photograph – in colour, of two schoolgirls standing next to one another, holding tennis racquets.

Miss Fotheringay gave a start. It was the uniform which held her attention – distinctive pale blue blazers with a red cross on the breast pocket. The colours were faded, but present. She held the photograph up to her eyes and nodded slowly as her memory released the faces to match. Then she turned it round and read ‘Anna & Sophia Carter' in the same lettering as the list of commandments. Underneath this was written
my mother and my arnt
in a looping, childish hand.

Miss Fotheringay continued to stare at the photograph for a long time. ‘Oh, Anna! Why did I ever think you would
not
come back to haunt me?' she said at last, in a low, trembling voice.

Acting Up

E
die rose to a day of great confusion. Every event was announced by a loud bell, which would be followed by a rush of girls marching up and down the stairs and corridors. Edie was quite bewildered by so much clanging, and soon she was hearing bells echoing in her head even when there were none ringing.

‘You're in my form, York,' Sally explained as everyone made their way to the classrooms after breakfast. ‘It used to be known as One-B, until Fothy read us
Richard III
and discovered none of us knew about the Wars of the Roses. Anastasia's with us too, and Phoebe, but Alice is in Lancaster, so we won't have any lessons with her except games. It suits me. Alice has become a bit of a prig since she was made a form prefect. And, of course, we're lucky having Miss Winifred. And we're even
luckier that we haven't got Fothy for Latin like the other class do.'

‘Don't you like her?' Edie wondered, not mentioning that she was to have her own private tutorials.

‘Oh, I don't know, she's just – just
weird
,' Sally said. ‘All those funny clothes, and not brushing her hair and everything. And you should see her when she goes for walks – she's got a filthy old tweed jacket she always wears, just like a tramp. And sometimes she turns up to assembly wearing walking boots! Anyway, you've met her. Didn't you think she was a bit weird?'

Edie wondered if Sally ever got fed up of using that word.

‘She makes me really nervous,' Sally went on emphatically. ‘She always appears out of nowhere, just when you're doing something you shouldn't.' Sally tossed back her head and gave a poor imitation of Miss Fotheringay's low, lilting voice: ‘
What's that you have there, Sally? Ah, a letter! How interesting, Sally. Who's it from?
She's always poking her nose into things. She wants us to tell her
everything
.'

Edie frowned, thinking of her shoe box. ‘
Do
you tell her things?'

‘No way!' Sally replied. ‘But she finds out all the same. Did she give you the
in loco parentis
speech? It's her excuse for giving us no privacy at all. Fothy sends the Man snooping around the dormitories when we're not there. She even does it herself sometimes. I went back to our dorm a couple of weeks ago at break time because I'd forgotten something and Fothy was coming out!'

‘What had she been doing?'

Sally shrugged. ‘A drawer search, I suppose.'

Edie tried to imagine Miss Fotheringay alone in the dormitory, searching through the bedside tables, but instead she kept seeing Miss Fotheringay's black cat, the tea laid out by the fire in her study, and her calm, inscrutable face.

‘And best friends are
strictly
against the rules,' Sally went on, in a mocking voice. ‘Fothy
hates
it when anyone gets too close to anyone else.'

‘But there can't be a rule against friendship!'

Sally made a face. ‘Fothy can have rules against anything – you'll learn. Anyway, she doesn't have a rule against friendship, just a general suspicion of best-friendship. Have you met Belinda and Rose yet?' she asked excitedly. ‘They're both in our class, and they're totally inseparable. They knew each other from out of school and neither of them bothers much with anyone else. Fothy's furious about it – she tried to put them in different dormitories after half-term but their mothers complained. They didn't see anything wrong with their daughters being best friends, so Fothy had to climb down for once.'

‘This is us,' Sally announced then, and pushed open a door bearing a picture of a white rose. It led into a lofty classroom with a sloping ceiling and a tall, arched window with panes of coloured glass. There were rows of wooden desks with opening lids and a large, old-fashioned blackboard specked with green light from the window. Edie thought how different it looked from the
classrooms at her last school, with their shared plastic tables and whiteboards.

The room was full of girls, all talking and clattering their desk lids.

‘You're here,' Sally said, pointing Edie to a desk between hers and Anastasia's in the front row. ‘It's the worst place, of course, right under the mistress's nose. Anastasia and I used to be in the back row but Miss Winifred wanted to keep a closer eye on us.'

Edie could see why Miss Winifred might want to keep a closer eye on Sally, who never stopped talking. But why had she had moved Anastasia, who seemed so quiet?

‘Hello, are you the new girl? I'm Belinda,' came a voice from behind them, and Edie turned round to see a fat, friendly-looking girl with thick blonde bunches sprouting from a smiling face. ‘And this is Rose,' she added, turning to a slight, but striking girl at the desk next to her, with curly black hair and wide, slightly startled-looking green eyes. It struck Edie there was something protective in Belinda's manner.

Rose smiled at Edie shyly.

‘You should watch out with Sally in charge of you,' Belinda went on teasingly. ‘She managed to get herself gated before the rest of us had even unpacked.'

‘Oh, shut up!' Sally replied good-naturedly. ‘I haven't been in trouble for
at least
two weeks. And you should have seen my half-term report. Miss Winifred said—'

Before she could finish, a bell clanged and everyone fell into their seats like a game of musical bumps. Then
the door opened and Miss Winifred made her entrance. She wore a long, swirling red skirt which seemed to float her to the front of the class where she dropped a pile of exercise books on her desk.

‘Good morning, girls.'

‘Good morning, Miss Winifred,' the class replied, rising to its feet. But Anastasia remained seated, searching for something in her desk.

‘Good morning, girls,' Miss Winifred repeated in a playful tone; but Anastasia went on scrabbling among her books. Her head was ducked behind her desk lid, and she seemed unaware the mistress had entered the room. Edie wondered why Phoebe, who was on the other side of Anastasia, didn't prod her, and wondered if she should.

An expectant giggle rippled round the class.

‘You must be hiding something very interesting, Anastasia,' Miss Winifred said, smiling down at her over the desk lid. ‘Perhaps you might show us.'

Anastasia looked up with a fright. ‘No . . . I'm not hiding anything. I've . . .
I've lost something!
'

The girls laughed again, as if sharing a private joke. But Miss Winifred seemed concerned. ‘Lost something? Not your watch again, I hope.'

‘No. It's Birdy. Someone must have taken— I . . . I mean— I didn't mean . . .' Anastasia faltered, as if suddenly wishing she could take the words back.

‘
Your glass bird?
' Miss Winifred repeated, her voice shocked.

‘Y-yes,' said Anastasia, with a startled look. ‘I put Birdy
in my desk before breakfast this morning – I always bring it in when we've got a test, for good luck, you see, and – and we've got a spelling test this afternoon, so—'

‘Of course, I quite see,' Miss Winifred said softly, but the class rocked with laughter, as if it saw something quite different. ‘Girls!' Miss Winifred said sternly. ‘Please, this is an extremely serious matter. Has anyone seen Birdy?'

There was tittering, but no one spoke.

‘But – but someone must have taken it – moved it—' Anastasia protested, turning crimson. ‘It was here, I swear it was, and now it's gone!'

‘Like the homework you thought had been stolen before half-term, and the watch that disappeared during lacrosse?' Phoebe said gleefully, prompting another burst of laughter from the class. Everyone seemed to be enjoying a familiar joke. Even Miss Winifred's face betrayed the briefest flicker of a smile.

‘Please!' she said, raising a hand for quiet. ‘Anastasia, dear, the bird was a piece of Stolonov crystal, I believe? I am sure Miss Fotheringay would take something of this nature very seriously indeed. Would you like to go and report it to her now?'

‘No,' Anastasia whispered.

‘Good. In that case we shall salvage what remains of our maths lesson. Sit down girls, and open your books at page twenty-two.'

Everyone sat down and the maths lesson began, but Edie did not even try to concentrate on the complicated-looking sums being scrawled across the blackboard. She
was watching Anastasia out of the corner of her eye, thinking how wretched she looked. Then she glanced again at Phoebe, whose face had worn a look of spiteful scorn throughout Miss Winifred's interrogation.

It was clear that Anastasia's accusations of thieving had become a well-rehearsed joke among the first-years, and the evidence pointed to her being very absentminded. But Edie recalled her tidiness in the dormitory and felt puzzled. It didn't make sense that she should lose things so often.

‘How are you getting on, Edith?'

Edie looked up to see Miss Winifred peering at her. She expected a telling-off, but when the mistress saw she had completed none of her sums she stayed by her desk and patiently explained everything all over again. Edie forced herself to listen and after a few minutes she picked up a dim idea of what she was meant to do.

‘I think you have the makings of a perfectly respectable mathematician, Edith,' the teacher said at last, and Edie felt a glow of pleasure.

‘See what I mean about Miss Winifred?' Sally whispered as they filed out to their next lesson. ‘She's lovely, isn't she? I do like her clothes, don't you? And imagine being that tall and thin. I'd give up cake and sweets right now if I thought I could grow up to be as tall and thin as that, but my mother says I'll never be thin because I'm not that build.'

‘It was strange about Anastasia's bird,' Edie said.

‘Oh, that! It will just be another false alarm. Whenever she loses something she complains it's been stolen.
Sometimes I think she does it on purpose, to try and get us into trouble. You can see that's what Miss Winifred thinks. She tries to be nice about it but I reckon her patience is running out. Everyone's fed up with Anastasia.'

The rest of the day passed in a blur of lessons and bells and Edie found it took all her concentration just to be in the right place at the right time. At her primary school all the classes had taken place in the same room, but at Knight's Haddon every subject was taught in a different part of the school, miles from the last. Edie was glad to be able to tag along after Sally.

After supper she returned to the dormitory to write to Cousin Charles. She knew she had to tell him about her mobile being confiscated. By the time he got her letter he'd have had no word from her for three days. She wondered if he had tried to ring her, and imagined the phone vibrating impatiently on Miss Fotheringay's desk.

But as she was beginning her letter Alice and Anastasia walked in.

‘There you are, Edie, we've been looking for you,' Alice said excitedly. ‘It's time for the play auditions. They're starting now, in the lower-school common room.'

‘All right,' Edie said, slipping the letter into the drawer of her bedside table.

‘Wait for me,' said Anastasia, arranging her hair in the mirror. Edie watched her, intrigued, noticing for the first time the little emerald beads in her hairband, and
the initials A.S. beautifully engraved on her silver-backed brush. There was something strangely childlike about the way Anastasia pulled the brush through her hair, as if she were playing with a doll.

‘Oh, come on, Anastasia,' Alice teased. ‘You don't need to get all spruced up – you're not trying out for Hollywood!'

Anastasia smiled, but Edie could see she had been crying. She supposed it was about the glass bird. But then, ‘Oh!' Anastasia said suddenly. ‘Look!' She turned, holding it up for them to see. ‘It . . . it was here . . . behind the photograph of Papa. But I don't understand – I was sure I left it in my desk before assembly. And now – oh, Alice, what will everyone say?'

‘You are an idiot, Anastasia, accusing people of stealing things before you've even looked for them properly,' said Alice, who had heard all about the incident in the classroom from Sally. ‘I bet you'd lose your own mother on Speech Day given half a chance!'

‘But I was
sure
I left it in my desk . . . I've never been so sure. I—'

‘Oh, never mind,' Alice said sensibly. ‘You'll have to own up to Miss Winifred in the morning and then it will all be forgotten. Now come on, or we'll miss the auditions.'

‘I don't think I'll come,' Anastasia said dejectedly.

‘Don't be stupid,' Alice replied. ‘You know how much you want a part in the play.'

‘Do you like acting?' Edie asked Anastasia.

‘Does she just!' Alice answered for her. ‘We read a play
of
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
before half-term and you should have heard her Mad Hatter!'