Secrets at St Jude's: New Girl (23 page)

Gina smacked his arm.

‘Oh no, I’ve upset the vicious one!’ he teased, smiling.

When she smiled back at him, he held her look and flushed slightly, which gave Gina an unexpectedly strange, nervy feeling.

‘OK.’ Amy opened up her notebook and took the lid off her pen in preparation. ‘We want you to tell us why you think private schools are a really bad idea and why comprehensives are much better.’

‘What? Why?’ Dermot exclaimed. ‘That’s just a wee 260

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bit heavy, isn’t it, for a sunny Friday evening? And who says that’s what I think, anyway?’

‘Oh, come on!’ Amy fired back. ‘You hate the boys we meet in here – you just called them posh nobs and I’ve seen you try to pour coffee into their laps.’

‘That’s because they’re tossers,’ Dermot insisted.

‘Nothing to do with the school they go to.’

‘Oh really?’ Amy teased.

‘Why are you asking me about this anyway?’

Dermot wanted to know.

‘C’mon, sit down beside us,’ Gina urged. ‘The boss isn’t looking!’

Once they had explained all about the debate and the loathsome Penny and how she had to be defeated, no matter what, Dermot was much more sympathetic.

‘Right then,’ he began, rolling up his sleeves for emphasis. ‘Where do I begin?’

Prompted only by the odd question here and there, Dermot was soon letting rip full throttle: unfairness, elitism, snobbery . . . money buying good exam results.

Amy and Gina couldn’t help but be impressed.

They’d hoped for a few little pointers, not for the full speech.

‘And then,’ Dermot added, hardly pausing for 261

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breath, ‘let’s not forget about how much pressure you’re under to perform. Do either of you study subjects you enjoy? Or get any enjoyment out of your studies?’

When they looked at him as if he’d finally lost the plot, he said, ‘I didn’t think so. At your school it’s just about exam results, league tables and a nice long row of As. I mean, don’t get me wrong, my school’s no picnic. In fact, I’d say it’s pretty rubbish, but at least I’m not going to be taken out the back and shot if I don’t get starred As in my Highers.’

This made the girls laugh, but it also made Gina think of her mom, who had O-level results she’d not even been able to confess to her own daughter. Gina knew she had to have a conversation with her mother about this, but she still didn’t know how to start it.

‘But if we suddenly turned up at your school, we’d get our heads kicked in,’ Amy insisted.

‘Nah! Well . . . you’d get teased for a bit, but you’d soon learn how to blend in,’ Dermot said. ‘And don’t you think that would be a good skill? Their lordships could certainly learn a bit about how to fit in and rub along. And you know what? I don’t think it’s right that there’s no one rich and no one really clever at my 262

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school – apart from me, obviously’ – he smiled –

‘because it would be better for us if there was. We’re all under the impression that everyone at private school is a spoiled, swotty tosser.’

Amy laughed.

‘You know my dad owns this café,’ Dermot told them. ‘Well, he was always on at me to try for a scholarship to St Lennox or somewhere like that. “We can just about scrape enough together for it,” he’d tell me. But I didn’t think it was fair. There are a couple of decent teachers at my school and they need my good results to make sure the headmaster knows they can actually teach. If I’d left to go somewhere else like loads of smart kids did for the sixth form, those teachers would have been left with the dregs and a long list of Ds, Es and Fs.

‘I study on my own,’ he added. ‘No one comes at me with a big stick like at your place. I’m an independent thinker. So there! If my grades are good enough, I’m going to go to Edinburgh University. But I’ll have to work here for a year first to get the money together.’

Gina looked at Dermot with fresh admiration after this speech. Meanwhile Amy was scribbling hard in her notebook.

‘Look at you! It’s Friday and you’re still swotting –

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that’s why I’d never go out with a St Jude’s girl!’ he teased.

Amy looked up from her notes and couldn’t resist asking him, ‘Have you got a girlfriend, Dermot?’

At this, Gina found herself staring at the ice cubes floating in her glass of Coke, but she realized she was listening very hard. She was much more intensely interested in Dermot’s answer than she would like to have admitted to anyone. Including herself.

‘Nah,’ he said casually.

Gina suddenly felt light-headed.

‘Not really . . .’ he added.

And now Gina felt as heavy as a lump of stone.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Amy asked him straight back.

‘Oh, you know . . .’ Dermot got up from the sofa he’d perched on, suddenly keen to escape this line of questioning. ‘There’s this girl and . . .’

‘She doesn’t like you?’ Amy persevered.

‘Who knows?’ He gave a small smile and held his tray protectively up over his chest. ‘Female of the species . . .’

‘You should ask her!’ Amy encouraged him.

‘Yeah, right . . . thanks! I hadn’t thought of that!’

Before he turned to head back to the bar, Dermot’s 264

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eyes met Gina’s briefly, and once again that feeling shot through her. This time she could feel the warm prickling of a blush starting up at her collarbone. She took a gulp of Coke to cool herself down.

Gagged. Choked. Spluttered. Coughed dramatically. Turned a dangerous shade of red.

‘You should have had a coffee,’ Amy told her.

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Chapter Twenty-One

‘
Min!
’ Amy burst into the study room (where else would Min be at five on a Saturday?) and announced,

‘There’s someone here to see you!’

‘What? Me?’ Min was astonished. ‘But I’m not expecting anyone! I can’t even think who it could be!’

‘Come on!’ Amy insisted. ‘This is someone I’ve invited for you. Don’t worry,’ she added, seeing the anxious look on Min’s face. ‘You’re going to be just as pleased to see her as she will be to see you. And I’ve told her all about the biology thing and your parents and the doctor business and we’ve had a few ideas. But come on, Min, for goodness’ sake. She’s already waiting for you in the Year Four sitting room.’

‘What?’ Min repeated, totally mystified, but getting up from her seat. ‘The biology thing?’

As Amy held open the sitting-room door, she 266

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watched with pleasure as Min’s face turned from confused to surprised to utterly delighted.

‘Mrs Wilson!’ she cried. ‘What are
you
doing here?’

‘Come to sort you out, my dear,’ replied the physics teacher, who’d been happy to be summoned from her leave of absence, nursing her husband, to come to the aid of her most promising pupil. ‘I think you owe your friend Amy a big thank you. She’s been worrying herself silly about you,’ she went on, smoothing out her tweedy skirt and settling herself down on one of the sitting-room chairs. ‘Sit,’ she instructed, patting at the seat next to hers.

‘Now what is all this fuss and fret I’ve been hearing about? Of course you’re not going to sit a biology A-level, Asimina!’ Mrs Wilson said briskly. ‘What a waste of your precious, God-given talents that would be. I think it’s obvious you should be considering physics, mathematics and chemistry.’

‘But—’Min began.

‘Shh!’ her teacher insisted. ‘I’ve not finished yet!’

Although she sounded stern, there was a cheerful smile on her ruddy, forty-something face. ‘All these subjects can have a wonderful medical application.

Amy and I have been doing some research. There’s oncology, the study of cancer – it’s full of chemo-267

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therapists and radiologists. You could become one of our top medical researchers, Asimina. A biology Higher, rather than an A-level, might be something to tuck under your belt while you’re en route to your A-levels. But it’s not even strictly necessary.’

Min was finding it hard to keep her mouth from falling open at these words: medical research!

Why hadn’t she thought about that? Radiology?

Chemotherapy? Chemists made medicines . . .

physicists developed MRI scanners. If she was a medical researcher, she could be in a lab, not having to deal with live, bleeding patients. She would just need a C, maybe a respectable B in her biology Higher. And she could manage that, even though her mind would be on the higher plains of A-level physics and maths.

‘Now, just as soon as you’ve taken that astonished look off your face, we’ll talk it through a little, then why don’t I help you make the call and explain it to your parents?’ Mrs Wilson asked. ‘I thought that might be of use to you.’

Now Min looked close to fainting with surprise.

‘Tea!’ Amy insisted, holding out a mug to Min.

‘There’s loads of sugar in it – good for shock.’

‘No wallowing like this again, Asimina!’ Mrs Wilson scolded, taking the tea offered to her by Amy. ‘It’s not 268

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good for the system. And do your parents know about the fainting and vomiting?’

‘Well . . . a bit. But I’ve not really explained it to them.’

‘Well, you must!’ Mrs Wilson insisted. ‘What use is a doctor who passes out at the sight of blood?’

‘Wake up, Nif !’ Amy hissed. ‘Come on, wakey, wakey.

We have work to do!’

Amy was already up, her alarm clock having beeped at 3.30 a.m. Now she just had to wake her accomplices.

‘What is it now?’ Gina wanted to know.

‘We’re going down to the kitchen. It’s time to get the Neb back.’

When the plan had been explained, Niffy and Gina couldn’t help feeling that it was vicious and twisted, but nevertheless a stroke of genius.

The three (because Min would never have agreed to take part in this) crept down the stairs in the dark and headed for the boarding-house kitchen.

In the enormous fridge, they located the items for sabotage. There were five large pots of double cream and six packets of butter.

Mrs Knebworth always laid on a sensational cream tea after Sports Day for the parents of the boarders.

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This and the Christmas party were her big show-off moments. She would bake like a demon all day long and be ready by late afternoon, with cream cakes, scones and her legendary strawberry tarts in the summer, chocolate and fruit cakes in the winter.

Because the Neb was always on some sort of diet, she claimed that she never so much as licked a spoon when she was baking, and allowed herself just one sliver of cake at the teas.

‘Fingers crossed she’s not feeling too greedy tomorrow,’ Niffy said as Amy brought out the instruments of cake torture.

In a small plastic bag, she had a tube of extra-strong garlic paste, an onion and a large tub of salt.

‘Right, I need teaspoons, a plate, a sharp knife and someone to find the flour and the baking powder,’ she instructed.

‘Oh! This is bad.’ Gina was worried. ‘This is
so
bad . . .’

‘So bad, it’s good!’ Niffy giggled mischievously.

The five pots of double cream were carefully part-opened, just enough to allow a teaspoon of garlic paste to be vigorously stirred around inside and removed, so that no trace of the crime remained.

The paper around the butter was opened at the top 270

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so that half an onion could be rubbed across them, then carefully refolded.

Just as Niffy and Gina were bringing out the flour to be liberally dosed with salt, they thought they heard a noise in the corridor and all ducked down under the kitchen table, praying the Neb didn’t come in – a table didn’t exactly make for a great hiding place.

But whatever the noise had been, it didn’t bring anyone into the kitchen.

‘Come on, quickly!’ Gina instructed, holding open the flour bags so that Amy could tip in the salt, then stir it through.

When everything had been tidied away as carefully and noiselessly as possible, they tiptoed back through the house and upstairs to bed, Amy tucking the paste, onion and salt into her school bag so she could drop them into a bin at school the next day.

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Chapter Twenty-Two

St Jude’s looked ‘glorious’ on Sports Day, just as Banshee Bannerman’s memo to pupils, staff and groundsmen had instructed.

The freshly cut grass gleamed in the bright July sunshine, the newly painted white windows dazzled, little red and white bunting flags fluttered in the breeze and the table laden with sporting silverware sparkled.

Even the girls, who’d been able to ditch the sludge-green sweatshirts in favour of white shirts or athletics vests because of the warmth, looked much prettier than usual.

As soon as the start of the 800 metres was announced over the crackly tannoy system, Gina, Niffy and Amy joined the other Year Four girls and jostled their way towards the front of the crowd at the finishing line for a good view of Min’s race.

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‘Is she going to be OK?’ Gina worried. ‘She said her times have been bad for weeks.’

‘She’s feeling better,’ Amy replied confidently.

‘I don’t know,’ Niffy chipped in. ‘She’s pulled out of the four hundred metres because she wasn’t sure if she could manage both races.’

‘Trust me’ – Amy smiled – ‘she’s feeling much better now. Mrs Wilson was brilliant – helped to phone her parents and settled the whole doctor problem once and for all. Min will run like the wind.’