CHAPTER TWO The Visitor
They were seriously late for breakfast. The smell of damp toast rose to greet them as they made their way down the back stairs, their shoes squeaking on the linoleum floor.
Just as they reached the bottom, they heard a heavier tread ahead of them and saw the corduroy-suited figure of their deputy headmaster.
He turned as they tried to slip past him.
“Good morning, girls,” he said brightly, checking the time on his watch. “You’d better hurry.” His gaze rested on Delphine. “I would think about finding a less time-consuming hairstyle in the future, Delphine, if I were you.”
Sophie put her head down, stared hard at the floor, and tried to make herself invisible. She knew she could get past most teachers without them really noticing she was there. It was one of her most useful skills.
But not this morning.
Mr. Tweedie cleared his throat. “Sophie?” he said, just at the very moment when she thought she had escaped. “A word?”
“But I’ll be late for breakfast, sir,” Sophie said. “You said so yourself.”
“It won’t take long. I’m sure the others can get you something.”
Delphine and Marianne took the hint and made a dash for the refectory, Delphine mouthing “sorry” as she went.
Sophie tried to avoid Mr. Tweedie’s concerned gaze. He didn’t so much frown as crumple up his face when there was a problem. “It’s the sweater, Sophie,” he sighed.
Sophie tried to rearrange the offending knitwear so that the holes weren’t so apparent.
“And your shoes,” he continued. “Ballet shoes — the sort tied to your feet with ribbons — aren’t on the uniform list, are they?”
She shook her head.
“I wonder, Sophie, if you’ve written to your guardian yet about your clothes? We did agree you were going to do that, didn’t we?”
At the word guardian, an image of Rosemary — a middle-aged woman with blonde-gray hair cut in a boyish crop, sitting poker-straight on a stool in her small, neat kitchen — flashed in front of Sophie’s eyes.
She and Rosemary had nothing in common with each other, were not related in any way.
But rain, a borrowed car, her widowed father’s tiredness, and an unexpected turn on a dark country road had all combined one night in a fatal cocktail to make Rosemary and Sophie lifelong companions.
As the only friend of the family the authorities could reach after the accident, Rosemary had taken Sophie in as a temporary measure, until a relative of the newly orphaned child could be found.
But Sophie’s father had not lived what Rosemary called a “settled life.” Sophie’s mother had died when Sophie was a baby, and her father had taken her to live in many different places.
He’d talk about magical journeys, about the next place they would go.
Friends were scarce and, it became apparent, relatives were nonexistent.
“Rosemary is very busy,” Sophie said, putting a finger into one of the smaller holes in the sleeve of her sweater and hooking it over her fingernail in an attempt to hide it.
She looked up at Mr. Tweedie’s crumpled, kind face and smiled with more confidence than she felt.
“She really does have a lot on her plate at the moment, and I don’t like to bother her …
” Sophie didn’t want to add, when she is away.
Better that the school didn’t know just how much time Rosemary spent out of the country. It would only cause problems.
“But it’s not just the sweater or the shoes, Sophie, it’s all your clothes.
” Mr. Tweedie sounded strained. “Everything you wear is just so …” He stopped.
“You must understand that it’s not that I mind, but it’s better for you if you blend in.
Look in the Lost and Found.” Mr. Tweedie gave her one of his I-mean-it faces. “Before Mrs. Sharman sees you.”
In the refectory, Sophie took a thick white plate out of the plastic box stacked next to the counter, chose the least bruised banana and a glass of watered-down orange juice, and put it all on a tray.
Then she joined Delphine and Marianne at the long trestle table.
They were the last, and already the kitchen staff were moving around and clearing things away.
“What did Tweedie want?” Marianne had propped her physics textbook up against her bag on the table. Sophie remembered there was a test today. She’d completely forgotten.
“Sweater alert.”
“He does go on,” Delphine said. “You should just agree with everything he says. That usually stops him.”
“He’s got to do his job,” Marianne said, her eyes still scanning the page. “Did you know that the angle of incidence is equal to the angle of reflection?”
Delphine rolled her eyes.
“And did you know it’s the first of March?” Sophie said quickly, trying to distract Marianne. “That means the list should go up this morning.”
“What list?” Delphine took a small piece of butter and placed it on the edge of her plate.
From this she put an even tinier piece on her knife and spread it on a minuscule fraction of toast. She then bit into the buttered toast, before repeating the procedure.
Sophie calculated that at her current speed, it could take Delphine up to ten minutes to finish one slice.
(Marianne, no doubt, would be able to calculate it to the second.)
“Where we’re going in the last week of term,” Sophie said, peeling the banana. “The class trip.”
Delphine shrugged. “You know we won’t get to go anywhere interesting or exciting. They save those for year twelve.”
“We’ll probably get Cooking Country-Style in Thomas Hardy’s England,” Sophie sighed.
“Or Franco-Belgian Battlefields,” added Marianne, raising her gaze from the textbook. “If we’re really, really lucky.”
“Well, that’s all right if you’ve only ever been to the coast of Cornwall,” Delphine said.
“But I love Cornwall!” Marianne protested.
“It’s just not very chic, is it?” Delphine went on. “Not like the ?le de Ré, where you can wear tailored shorts and nice little canvas shoes.”
“I want to get on the Saint Petersburg trip,” said Sophie.
There. She’d said it. And she’d promised herself that she wouldn’t. She knew from experience with Rosemary that asking for anything was the surest way of not getting it. She bit her lip. There’d be no chance now. If only she’d kept her mouth shut for just a while longer.
“Dream on!” Marianne laughed, stuffing the textbook into her bag. “You know there’s no hope of that.” Deep down, Sophie knew she was right. Only those taking Russian for A-level exams had any chance of going.
“Anyway, why would anyone in their right mind want to go to Saint Petersburg before the summer?” Delphine shivered. “It will be far too cold in March.”
“But snow in Russia! That’s the whole point!” Sophie hugged her arms to her chest. “Anyway, I’m used to the cold. Rosemary’s flat is freezing. She thinks central heating is immoral.”
“It is very bad for the planet,” Marianne said primly. “But how do you keep warm without any proper clothes?”
“Rosemary gave me an old mink jacket to wear in bed.”
“So, central heating is immoral, but killing innocent animals for their fur is fine?” Marianne said.
“Well, they’re very old furs. The animals would be dead by now anyway. And it feels like wearing something from a different world …”
“That’s not the point!”
“But don’t you ever lie in bed at night and think about being someone else?” Sophie continued.
Delphine raised one perfect eyebrow. “Someone other than me?”
“When I wear that coat,” Sophie rattled on, “I’m not plain old Sophie Smith …
I feel like I’m some beautiful countess, running away from an empty life of parties and balls to find my destiny …
with the Cossacks … and I am traveling across Russia wrapped in furs on a night train …
and under my pillow” — she knew she sounded crazy, but she couldn’t stop — “are a box of sugar mice and foil-wrapped chocolate cats with red sequins for eyes … and … a … p-pistol.” She reached the end of the sentence because she hadn’t known how to stop before saying “pistol.” By the expression on Marianne’s face, she might as well have said “penguin.”
“A pistol?” Delphine’s face creased in incomprehension. “What do you … ?”
Sophie decided to brave her friends’ incredulity. She would just say it. “I need the pistol to shoot the bears and the wolves.”
“Do you really think a bullet from a pistol would stop a bear?” Marianne snorted. “They are seriously vicious creatures when they’re angry. Think Sharman in one of her moods … and then some!”
Delphine went back to applying butter to her toast as if she were giving it a manicure. “I need a pool and blazing sunshine.” She looked thoughtful. “Of course, a yacht is always a bonus.”
“Too much outdoors!” Marianne laughed, heaving her overstuffed rucksack onto her shoulder and draining her glass of water. “Just give me a library and a fire.”
“But shall we go and check the bulletin board anyway? Do we have time?” Sophie said.
Maybe it wouldn’t be Saint Petersburg, but she wanted to know where she would be spending Easter.
Rosemary would probably make some excuse about not being at home, as usual.
When Sophie was young, Rosemary had made the best of it by hiring a series of au pairs and doing the best to ignore the disturbance to her ordered, career-focused life.
Boarding school, the minute Sophie was old enough, came as a blessed relief to both of them, but holidays were not on Rosemary’s radar.
“Yes, but we can’t be late for physics. I’ll test you on the anthropic principle on the way, if you like,” Marianne offered.
Delphine and Sophie made a face at each other as they made their way out of the refectory, taking the prohibited shortcut through the library. Neither of them had a clue what Marianne was talking about. That didn’t bode well for the physics test.