C.J. Skuse - Monster

‘I’m all right now,’ I said, regrettably pulling them away and looking down to hide the flames in my cheeks.

‘Listen, you better get in and warm up before they fall off. I’ve got another twelve of these to deliver before the end of the day. Have a great Christmas, all right? And I’ll see you next term.’

‘Yeah,’ I said, as I watched him make his way back to the van. ‘Charlie?’ I called, when he was almost in.

‘Yeah?’ He looked back.

‘You have a great Christmas too.’ And we both smiled at each other. For now, that would have to be enough.

Monday night after Prep and monitoring the Pups’ bedtime, I bathed and wrapped myself in my school-approved navy dressing gown and raspberry slippers with the school crest on and went down to Mrs Saul-Hudson’s office for our usual routine of cocoa and diary. She was sitting at her desk when I knocked and went in, closing the door behind me.

‘Oh, Natasha, is it that time already?’ she said, already in her pyjamas and dressing gown herself and looking more flustered than normal. ‘Sorry, I’ve got such a lot to do before tomorrow.’

‘Good evening, ma’am.’ I placed her cocoa mug down in front of her, my tap water down in front of me, and opened the diary to tomorrow’s page so she could see it. ‘It’s all done for you to check.’

‘Wonderful. Before we go through tomorrow’s notes, have a seat. I wanted to talk to you about something.’

‘Yes, ma’am?’

She took a sip of her cocoa and I took a sip of my water. Then she settled down the mug. ‘Lovely. Just right as usual. Right, last day of term tomorrow, we’ve got lots of visitors coming. Who is supervising Pups all day?’

I opened my notebook and clicked on my pen. ‘The usual staff, ma’am, plus I’ve allocated three prefects from Tudor, Hanover and Windsor House to the three groups as well. No lessons means lots of extra hands on deck, which is great.’

‘Excellent. And how about the Tenderfoots?’

I checked my notes. ‘Two prefects, three members of staff and two TAs. That should be quite enough, ma’am. A lot of the Tenderfoots have gone home early.’

‘Good, and the Christmas Fayre?’

‘Stallholders will be arriving from ten a.m. and the Years Nine and Ten have been briefed by their form tutors about helping set up stalls and—’

‘What about the play?’

‘Years Nine and Ten will be setting out the chairs once they’ve helped with the stalls.’

Mrs Saul-Hudson smiled and sat back in her large leather chair, like a queen testing out a new throne. ‘Where would I be without you, Natasha?’

I smiled and blushed at the same time, taking a large sip of my water.

‘So how are you bearing up? It must be very hard on you and your parents with Sebastian still not found.’

She’d sucker-punched me, bringing Seb into the conversation so quickly, but in a way I was glad she’d found time to care.

‘I’m trying not to think about it really, ma’am,’ I said. ‘Not much I can do by worrying.’

‘That’s the stuff,’ she said proudly. ‘Keep busy, that’s always the best way. No sense in worrying. Worrying, I always say, does not empty tomorrow of its troubles, just empties today of its strength. You bear that in mind, won’t you?’

‘I will, ma’am,’ I said, once I’d figured it out.

‘And you’re doing a marvellous job here so it would be a shame if … well, if things started to slip.’

I didn’t know what she meant by that at that exact moment, but I didn’t have time to figure it out because the next demand came swiftly round the next corner.

‘Oh, and in the morning I want you to arrange some signage to go up once the choral procession through the woods is over. I’ve asked Mr Munday to … well, we’ve taken steps anyway, just in case anything grisly is about. I’m sure there isn’t but, well, best to be safe.’

‘Yes, ma’am. Just regulation “Keep Out” signs, was it?’

‘Yes. Nobody will be going up there over Christmas anyway, but we need signs keeping anyone out of the woods and away from the ponds in case they freeze over.’

I made a note in my book. ‘Yes, ma’am. Is this what the police suggested we do?’

‘Hmm?’ she said, looking up from her papers in alarm as if I’d just asked her what method she suggested I hang myself with.

‘Your meeting with the police this afternoon? They were here to talk about the man in the village and the … beast?’

‘Oh that!’ she said, almost shrieking with laughter. ‘Oh that, yes. Yes, the police did say we needed to take extra precautions.’

‘And … Dianna was a good help with the police?’

‘Yes, wonderful. Actually, you really have both been a constant support this year. And without any detriment to your grades. I don’t know how you and Dianna do it, I really don’t.’

I poured a mental pail of cold water over the flames that had just ignited in my mind. Dianna? A constant support? A constant thorn in my side, rather. A constant interloper on my duties, definitely. ‘Well, I can’t speak for Dianna but I enjoy it, ma’am. I like helping out.’

‘Well, you’ve both been a marvel. How is the play coming along?’

‘Oh we’re almost there, ma’am. If you’d like to come and watch the dress rehearsal, we’ll be starting just after Prayers tomorrow morning.’

‘Lovely, yes, I might do that. And talking of Prayers …’

Here it comes, I thought. This is it. This was the moment I’ve been waiting for. My heart began to pump like a clubhouse classic.

‘Would you be an absolute dear and set out the hymn books first thing tomorrow, please? I meant to ask Clarice Hoon but I never got round to it. Oh and breakfast tomorrow—’

‘I can monitor it,’ I said quickly, so as to squeeze the information, the golden information out of her just that bit quicker. ‘Sorry, ma’am, was there something else you wanted to say about Prayers?’

‘Uh, yes, erm, I’ve forgotten what it was now,’ she chuckled. ‘I’m sure it’ll come to me. I must just tidy up these last few things and show my face at the staff Christmas party. I promised I’d do a little speech and announce Employee of the Year. Any idea where that gold picture frame I got from the mother-in-law last Christmas is?’

‘Yes, it’s on your tallboy in your apartments, ma’am.’

‘Oh good, I’ll wrap that up quickly and give that as a prize. Was there anything else?’

‘Er, no, ma’am.’

She got up from her desk chair as I got up from mine, and went over to her corner armoire and took down a coat hanger from which hung her Christmas end-of-term red trouser suit. ‘Be a dear and go up and hang this in my bedroom would you?’

I looked at her. I waited for her to look at me. Any sign, any inkling, any vestige of good news, vanished from her face.

‘That’ll be all for tonight, thank you, Natasha,’ she said finally, with a knotted brow, clicking off her desk lamp and leaving me in darkness.

I spent a fitful night, worrying about Seb and angsting over Head Girl. Obsessing over why my dad hadn’t called me with news. Fixating over why Mrs Saul-Hudson hadn’t mentioned some shred of hope that that badge was mine in our meeting. If I got that badge I would be able to cope better with Seb’s disappearance, I knew I would. I’d be able to focus myself on my duties and I would stop worrying so much. If I didn’t get it, what then? What the hell would I do? Who the hell was I at this school if I wasn’t Head Girl? Just some wannabe?

That Tuesday morning, the last day of term, I had a phone call.

I was waiting to be connected to my dad on the public phone outside the school office. There was a shiny prospectus on the shelf and I was absentmindedly peeling through it while I waited. It stated that Bathory School ‘prides itself on its record of pastoral care’. I looked through the pages of all the girls, six-year-old Pups, wide-eyed Tenderfoots, spotty Pre-Pubes, proud prefects and perfect Head Girls of years gone by, action shots of athletics and gymnastics, wondrous gazes down microscopes, contented smiles while reading books on beanbags, playing cellos in the Music room, waving through coach windows on the way to Switzerland, Venice or Amsterdam. I’d done all of that. I’d had all these experiences. My parents were paying £9,000 a term for all this and it wasn’t as though they were rich, not like a lot of the other girls. My mum and dad ran a bakery, that was all. They weren’t loaded by any stretch of the imagination. But they’d sent Seb to a private school, so they sent me too. I knew it was a struggle. I knew I had to do my best.