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  Gina nudged Niffy. ‘This is going to be good,’

  ‘Look, you prat,’ Llewellyn shot at Charlie, ‘I put your precious cutlery in my pocket so I could carry some for me and some for my girlfriend into the other room, OK?’ With that, he pulled the silverware out of his pocket.

  Both Niffy and Gina strained to see what was in his hands. It did indeed look like a perfectly credible two knives and two forks.

  ‘Get over yourself,’ Llewellyn added, jabbing a finger into Charlie’s chest. ‘It’s just stuff.’ He waved his hand around the room. ‘It’s all just stuff. It doesn’t make you any better or any worse than the rest of us. Property is theft, anyway.’

  Niffy rolled her eyes at Gina. ‘Blimey, I didn’t realize he was a communist as well as a comprehensive boy.’

  Llewellyn began to walk out of the room. Charlie just let him, without adding any further insult.

  It was then that Gina and Niffy first noticed the couple in the big armchair in the corner. They were wrapped round each other, his hands up her top, her hands down the front of his trousers.

  ‘Euwww . . .’ Gina was taken aback. ‘Don’t they have a home to go to?’

  Just then the faces broke apart to catch their breath, long enough for the girls hidden under the table to see who they were.

  ‘Now that’s depressing,’ was Niffy’s verdict.

  Gina nodded. ‘He’s a total creep. What did I say? And how come she’s out so late?’

  ‘Maybe she’s staying with a day girl for the weekend,’ Niffy replied.

  They watched as Jason and Sideshow Mel went back to their frantic snogathon.

  ‘Remind me not to invite Amy to Mel’s room for that talk,’ Niffy said.

  ‘Oh, look at them,’ Gina whispered. ‘I’m worried they’re going to have sex right in front of us. We do not want to see that.’

  Niffy peered out. ‘I don’t suppose there’s much point reminding him about the bet now, is there? I haven’t even been able to find Angus.’ She sounded a little down about this, which could have meant she was sorry not to see Angus . . . or, more likely, that she was sorry not to see the money.

  ‘Might have been hard to get people to pay up though,’ she concluded and took another peek at Jason and Mel from under the tablecloth. ‘We should pay more attention – we might learn something.’

  When Gina seemed to go pale at the thought of this, Niffy couldn’t help asking, ‘You don’t really seem to be as much into boys as I was expecting you to be.’

  ‘What? Because I’m American?’ Gina sounded offended.

  ‘Well . . . you go to a mixed school and all that . . . It must be a bit easier, getting to know boys.’

  Gina leaned back, sipping from the small plastic cup of wine she’d managed to bring to the under-the-table party. ‘I’m worried Squid Boy has put me off kissing for life,’ she confided. ‘I can’t tell you how horrible it was . . . like he’d put a warm frog in my mouth.’

  ‘Oh no!’ Niffy cringed. ‘Yuck! You’re putting me off my drink!’

  ‘I don’t know if I ever want to go there again . . . which probably makes me a little strange,’ Gina went on. ‘How am I going to go out with anyone if I don’t want to kiss them?’

  ‘You know, I don’t think you should worry about it,’ Niffy reassured her. ‘I’m sure if you’re kissing someone you’re totally mad about, their tongue won’t feel so warm . . . or froggy! It will probably feel’ – here her voice went into advert voiceover mode – ‘like an amazingly intimate adventure.’

  Gina began to giggle. ‘Speaking from experience, are you?’

  ‘Oh yeah. Absolutely. But aren’t Californian boys much, much better than British ones?’ Niffy asked. ‘Aren’t they all fit and tanned, with a lot less hang-ups.’

  ‘We have all kinds over there too, you know. It’s not really like they made out in Buffy.’ Gina took another sip of wine.

  ‘Do you miss home a lot?’ Niffy wondered.

  For a few moments Gina thought about home. She thought about her mother, heading off to work, car roof down, sunglasses on, hair flying in the breeze. She thought about Menzie and Mick listening to music turned up loud in the SUV as they set off in the other direction to Menzie’s school. Gina thought about her school and about Paula, Maddison and Ria. They emailed often, but she didn’t know where they were partying this weekend . . . and who else would be there? She imagined the smell of orange trees and salty beach air, suntan lotion and wet swimsuits. The taste of grape-flavoured Slush Puppies . . . or blueberry pancakes, warm, with a scoop of ice cream sliding off the top, the berries hot and mushy inside.

  Finally, feeling her eyes swim with tears, she managed to say, ‘Yeah . . . I really, really miss home. Can’t wait to go back.’

  ‘Well, that’s good,’ was Niffy’s verdict. Then came a more unexpected question: ‘When did your parents divorce?’

  ‘Oh!’ Gina was startled by this. Her parents had split up so long ago, nobody at home ever referred to it. ‘They didn’t get divorced,’ she explained to Niffy. ‘They never married. They were together for a few years, had me, my dad left, and that was kind of it. He doesn’t exactly keep in touch. Mick’s great though,’ she added. ‘I call him Mick but he is kind of my dad.’

  ‘I think my parents should get divorced,’ Niffy said in response to this, ‘but they won’t because they’d have to sell up and the Hall’s—’

  ‘Been in your family for five generations.’ Gina finished Niffy’s sentence with a smile. ‘Why don’t they open it to the public?’ she suggested. ‘Make some money that way?’

  ‘Oh God.’ Niffy let out a sigh. ‘They do! Mum shows people round our kitchen and bedrooms and stuff and it is just so totally embarrassing.’

  Gina giggled. Somehow, that wasn’t quite how she’d pictured it.

  And then their chat was interrupted by the sound of Jason exclaiming with some confusion, ‘Sorry! You know what? I have to go!’

  Niffy lifted the tablecloth so they could look out again.

  They saw Jason scrambling up from the chair and tugging his top down and his trousers up.

  ‘I don’t know what I was thinking,’ he told Mel before hurrying out of the room.

  Neither he nor the two girls under the table were prepared for the volume on Mel’s outraged screech of ‘Whaaaaat!!’

  Chapter Seventeen

  AMY AND NIFFY had pulled chairs across to the dorm window so they could watch Min running out on the track. No mention had been made of their row the night before. Amy had just shaken Niffy awake with the words: ‘Good party? Did you see Jason and Angus? Make loads of money?’

  Once Niffy had informed her, ‘No, no and definitely no’ (she wasn’t going to be the one to mention anything about Jason), Amy hadn’t mentioned the party again, or the Gina and Jason incident.

  Even making allowances for the fact that it was Sunday afternoon and she’d had an interrupted sleep the night before, Min seemed to be running very slowly.

  ‘She’s all hunched,’ said Amy. ‘She looks like she’s got the troubles of the world on her shoulders.’

  ‘She’s definitely got troubles,’ Niffy agreed.

  ‘I think she’s depressed. Depressed people get like this. All slow and anxious and obsessive.’

  ‘You read that, did you, Amy?’ Niffy teased. ‘In a magazine or something?’

  ‘Shut up!’ Amy replied. ‘We need to help Min.’

  She was already trying to help Min. Whenever she’d had a chance to get onto the boarding-house computer, she’d been searching the Internet – Googling the words ‘medicine and physics’ and looking carefully through the array of results. Somewhere in there, she was sure, she was going to find an answer for Min.

  Her eye fell on the plastic bag bundled up under Min’s bed. ‘Oh my God, Niffy!’ she exclaimed. ‘We have to get rid of the beer bottles!’

  ‘Bloody hell!’

  The two girls left Min dragging herself round the running track. They p
ulled the bag out: inside there were four empties and at least eight full bottles.

  ‘Where are we going to put these?’ Amy asked anxiously.

  They both knew that Mrs Knebworth looked carefully through the dorms during school hours, searching for contraband and secrets.

  ‘Where’s the Neb right now?’ Niffy asked.

  Amy looked at her watch. ‘Three-thirty. Hard to say. Maybe in her rooms or maybe prowling about downstairs.’

  ‘We need to get this down to the sitting room without her seeing us. You go on ahead as lookout and I’ll follow behind with the bottles.’

  ‘The sitting room?’ Amy asked.

  ‘Yeah – we stash them in the piano down there, then on Monday I leave a note for Agnes asking her to sneak them out of the building.’

  ‘The piano?’ Amy sounded incredulous. ‘Agnes?’ She had no idea the boarding house’s oldest cleaning lady could be so useful.

  ‘Sideshow Mel told me,’ Niffy explained. ‘If you ever need to get anything dodgy out of the house, you leave a note under Mel’s pillow. Apparently Agnes heads to Mel’s room before we’re even out of the door for school, so the Neb never has a chance to get in there first.’

  ‘And what does Agnes get out of it?’

  ‘Some very nice Christmas presents, apparently.’

  ‘I still can’t believe you and Gina went to Charlie’s last night,’ Amy said. ‘Was it worth it?’

  ‘Hmmm . . . well . . .’ Niffy still wasn’t sure how she was going to break the Jason news to Amy. Or if she was going to break the Jason news to Amy.

  The Year Four sitting room was unusually quiet. Only Gina was in there, reading – to the astonishment of everyone, including Gina – one of her history course books.

  ‘What on earth are you doing?’ Niffy demanded as she walked over to the piano, flipped open the lid and reached deep inside to stack beer bottles neatly along the bass end.

  ‘I think it’s me who should be asking that question,’ Gina replied.

  ‘Temporary storage, out of the Neb’s way,’ Niffy explained. ‘It’ll be off our hands by tomorrow. So what’s with the history swotting?’

  ‘In case you’ve forgotten,’ Gina began, ‘my mother and I had a deal. I only get to go back to California when all my grades are good, and lovely though you are—’

  ‘OK,’ Amy interrupted, ‘but you have to put that book down now’ – she settled herself down on the chair next to Gina’s – ‘because I’m going to need your help. I’m going to need everybody’s help.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ Niffy asked, replacing the piano lid carefully. ‘What’s the big problem today?’

  ‘Well, you know this debating competition?’ Amy began.

  Niffy gave an extravagant roll of the eyes.

  ‘Well, it’s about private schools, which I thought was fine because Penny and her second were going to be against them and Laura and I—’

  ‘Laura’s your second?’ Niffy interrupted. ‘She’s absolutely useless! About as much help as a chocolate fireguard.’

  ‘Thanks, Nif, that’s really supportive,’ Amy snapped. ‘Anyway, Miss Greig has decided she wants to stretch our debating talents . . .’

  This produced a snort from Niffy.

  ‘And’ – Amy glared at Niffy but carried on – ‘she’s decided we’re to take the opposite sides.’

  Although Amy suddenly looked close to tears as she made this revelation, Niffy burst out laughing. ‘Oh my Lord!’ she said. ‘You’re absolutely stuffed. You’re going to have to argue against Penny? Against private schools! You?! And what is your dad going to say about this?’

  ‘My dad?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Niffy nodded.

  Amy hadn’t thought about this. She’d thought maybe she’d just leave the whole subject of the debate out of her twice-weekly catch-up phone calls.

  Amy’s dad had a complicated past. He’d grown up in a rough part of Glasgow (something she hoped Penny Boswell-Hackett would never find out). He’d left school young and taken a job as a nightclub barman. A few years later he’d become a nightclub manager and now he owned four nightclubs of his own, making him very successful and very wealthy. He put his meteoric rise down to ‘working my arse off’.

  He was only thirty-six . . . er, yes – because he’d begun Amy’s life when he was just nineteen. At the time, Amy’s mum had been eighteen and totally uninterested, which meant Amy had been brought up almost entirely by her dad’s parents.

  The main reason she was at boarding school was to give her grandparents a break and to let her dad go on working almost every night of the week.

  Plus, her dad loved St Jude’s. He couldn’t get over the fact that his girl went there. Photos of her in her school uniform could be found all over his home, his office and even tucked inside his wallet. Would he like her to be arguing against the school, in front of the whole school? Er . . . no. Definitely not.

  ‘I don’t think you’re being very helpful!’ Amy told Niffy defensively. ‘Gina goes to a state school in America! I thought she might have some advice, some useful things to say about it. If you’re just going to laugh, you can get lost, Niff!’

  ‘Why did you get into this in the first place?’ Niffy asked, throwing herself down on the sitting room’s saggy sofa and showing not the slightest intention of getting lost. ‘Penny’s going to win. She always wins this kind of thing. The only place you and I have any chance of beating Penny is on the hockey pitch or the tennis court. And even that’s bloody hard work. She’s your classic St Jude’s high achiever. She’s probably bulimic; she’s probably going to cry for weeks, or at least puke her guts out, if even one of her exam results comes back just a straight rather than a starred A. Her dad will cut off her allowance if she doesn’t get into Oxford, even though she’ll have to do a Scottish law conversion course afterwards to be a judge in Edinburgh – which, let’s face it, is the career trajectory she’s on. Why take her on, Amy? Do your own thing, ignore her, don’t let her interfere with your life.’

  ‘What do you think I should do then? Just give up? Just go in tomorrow and say I’m backing out, I’m too scared to stand up to her?’

  ‘Couldn’t you just be ill on the day of the debate?’ Niffy suggested.

  ‘Yeah, that would be the Nairn-Bassett approach, wouldn’t it? Just flake out . . . why be bothered?’

  ‘Oh, shut up, Amy.’ Niffy’s face clouded over.

  ‘What’s up with you two?’

  Min had walked into the sitting room just in time to hear the last of this heated exchange. As Amy and Niffy were now glaring at each other, Min turned to Gina for an explanation.

  ‘Amy’s debate with Penny . . .’ Gina began. ‘She’s got to argue against private schools, so she wants our help and Niffy isn’t’ – her voice dropped – ‘being very helpful.’

  ‘Oh, brother.’ Min, fresh from the track, still in a sweaty T-shirt and shorts, perched herself on the piano stool. She was just about to put her fingers to the keys when Niffy told her, ‘I wouldn’t bother playing that today – well, not the bass notes anyway.’

  ‘Why not?’ Min asked, but before anyone could reply, the door swung open and Mrs Knebworth was before them.

  ‘Hello! Beautiful afternoon. Why are we all huddled in here with long faces?’

  ‘We’re gated,’ Niffy reminded her.

  ‘Oh yes, how could I forget?’ Mrs Knebworth made an adjustment to her spectacles and glared at Amy. She’d not said a word about the glasses since last night, but the girls were still concerned that some further punishment lay ahead.

  ‘Well, you could still go and sit on the lawn,’ the Neb offered, but there were just exasperated sighs in response to this.

  ‘Oh dear,’ she said. She looked at Min, perched on the piano stool. ‘They need cheering up, don’t they? Probably because they missed that party – at Charlie Fotheringham’s, wasn’t it?’

  Further exasperated sighs followed.

  ‘Dear, oh dear. There will be other p
arties, girls . . . Min, why don’t you give us a little tune? Cheer us all up. I haven’t heard you play for ages.’

  A tune? A little tune? Amy and Gina exchanged deeply worried glances, whereas Niffy seemed to be suppressing a giggle. Amy glared at her, wondering why she always seemed to find the prospect of landing in the deepest do-do absolutely hilarious. As for Min, she was frozen on the stool, terrified the piano would explode if she touched it.

  ‘Well, come on then . . . All those years of piano lessons weren’t wasted on you, surely?’ There was a frosty edge to the Neb’s voice which set alarm bells ringing for Amy. Maybe somehow the dreadful woman knew? But how could she?

  What had Niffy said? Min tried to recall the words exactly: not the bass notes? Her fingers went gingerly to the far right of the keyboard and she began a high-pitched, tinkly little song.

  ‘Nice,’ the Neb commented, and went over to stand so close to the piano that Amy was convinced she’d be able to smell the beer.

  Min fingers were flying along the top keys with more confidence now that nothing seemed to be wrong. Then, with a tinkling cadence, she descended the scale towards the grand finale. One chord, then another . . . she was in the middle of the keyboard – Amy and Gina held their breaths – then she finally reached the very end of the tune and – clump, clump, clump – hit a note which didn’t sound.

  Clump, clump – she struck at it again in confusion.

  The Neb turned to the piano and Amy shut her eyes, waiting for the sound of the lid lifting.

  Mrs Knebworth put out a finger and hit the note: clump, clump.

  ‘The hammer isn’t hitting the string,’ was her verdict.

  Her fingers were on the piano lid.

  Gina pulled herself into a ball, waiting for the axe to fall.

  The housemistress raised the lid a centimetre but then Niffy blurted out: ‘A wasps’ nest!’

  She was standing at the window, pointing. It was the only thing she’d been able to think of in the stress of the situation.

  ‘Where?’ Mrs Knebworth let the piano lid fall and hurried over to stand beside Niffy.