The Girl Who Wasn't There (2 page)

She'd have a point. I shouldn't have done it – it's just that I'd really wanted Mum to “know” how I felt leaving our family home, of losing the view of the blue of the sky out of my bedroom window, of missing the flowery wallpaper Mum had chosen for me, of letting go of the feeling that she was somehow still in the walls…

My fingers have found the page I was looking for, and before I read the words, I glance up to see how blue the sky looks out of my
new
bedroom window.

Hmm … I can't see that much of it; the view of Nightingale School is in the way.

All I can make out are clouds scudding over the top of the building, which towers three storeys high – four, if you count the tiny windows of the turrets at either end.

I let my gaze drop slightly and lazily notice that above the grand front entrance with its double doors is a sort of terrace, though it must just be ornamental; the low brickwork along the edge is pretty (in a gothic way) rather than practical.

Then again, the three windows overlooking the terrace are extra long, as if you could step out there and escape the classroom if you felt like it.

Wonder which classroom that is? Will it be one I use when I start school on Monday?

My tummy twists itself into a squidgy knot of excitement and nerves at the very thought. What will the other girls be like, I won—

That thought stops dead.

The knot suddenly tightens, like iron.

It's Saturday.

The school is all locked up and empty.

But there is someone standing in the left-hand window of the three overlooking the terrace.

The person is dressed in white.

Their hand is on the glass.

They are looking straight at me…

 

“But what was it?” I say, staring at the big, blank window to the left, directly above the terrace.

We've been staring at it for ages now – there's no one and nothing there.

“Sunlight hitting the window … or maybe the reflection of a cloud, or a plane?” Dad suggests.

“Maybe,” I agree, feeling calm and common sense creeping over me, banishing the freak-out.

“Or maybe not,” says Clem from the doorway. “It's probably the ghost of the old guy who lived here, wandering the corridors.”

“Clem, honey – that's not helping!” Dad chides her gently.

“Hey, it's not MY fault we've come to live in some haunted dump,” she grumbles, turning away and disappearing into her room with a thwack of the door.

“She'll get used it,” Dad says to me with a hopeful smile.

Or we'll just have to get used to her moaning about this place 24-7
, I think to myself.

“So, are we all good?” Dad asks, jokily bumping me with his elbow.

“We're all good,” I say with a grin, bumping him right back.

I'm always all good with whatever Dad says and does. It's like Mum wrote in her notebook (which I picked up off the floor and tucked under my pillow): he's worth listening to, 'cause he always has our best interests at heart. So if Dad says there're no spooks lurking in Nightingale School, then there're no spooks lurking in Nightingale School.

Anyway, I know for sure it wasn't some old bloke ghost like Clem is trying to get me to believe.

That trick of the light or reflection of a cloud or a plane or whatever; it looked more like a woman. Or a girl…

“Fancy an explore, then?”

Dad suddenly holds up a bunch of keys so huge it's a joke. There must be forty, fifty of them.

“Come on … let's do it!” he says with a wide grin.

I'm
up for it.

Clem isn't.

“Uh-uh. I'm staying here,” she says, arms folded across her chest, when Dad tries to entice her out of her room.

“Come on, my little Clementine. Don't you want to investigate your new home?” Dad asks her, jangling the keys in front of her face.

“Dad, out there is the
school.
That is not my home.
This
dump is my new home. I know it has three bedrooms, a bathroom from the Dark Ages, a weird smell – 'cause some old person
died
in here – and generally sucks. That's as much as I need to know.”

“Honey, no one died here,” says Dad, sounding like me earlier. “Anyway, aren't you the tiniest bit curious to know more about the school and the grounds?”

“Not even
that
much,” Clem replies, squidging her finger and thumb tightly together.

“But what about when Bea and your other friends ask you about the place?”

“Dad, no one except you – and Maisie – are
remotely
interested in the fact that we've moved here.”

I'm not totally sure about that. I have a memory of Clem's mates Bea, Marcus and Alima huddled round the computer, checking out the street view of the cottage on Google Maps. Dad was pointing out the front garden and front door through the railings, and telling them that as well as a back garden and back door, we
also
had a side door that opened out directly on to the playground. The whole time, Clem had stood apart, clutching her mug of coffee so her knuckles went white, quietly seething at her friends' enthusiasm.

“Well, I'm not taking no for an answer,” Dad says cheerily now, steamrollering over my sister's flat refusals. “Come on my guided tour just this once, Clem, and I promise you I'll never expect you to step a toe on to school property again!”

Clem sighs.

Clem rolls her eyes.

Clem mutters something under her breath that I suspect might be a swear word.

Dad pulls a puppy-dog face at her, his hands up in begging mode.

It works; Clem gives in and grudgingly follows us out of the side door for a mooch around the grounds.

“It's beautiful!” I gasp, gazing at the vast lawn of the bottom playground. I'd peeked at it out of Dad's bedroom, noticed it beyond our tangled back garden and tatty, pointy-roofed summerhouse. But close up it's so lovely, the sheet of green dotted with pink-petalled bundles dropped from the cherry blossom trees.

“It's going to take a lot of cutting,” says Dad, eyeing up the sea of grass where girls like me must spend their lunchtimes lounging.

(The thought of starting school on Monday makes that knot in my tummy go
squidge
all over again.)

Clem keeps her eyes firmly averted from the view, her fingers flying over her mobile as she texts her grievances to Bea or one of the others.

She's barely aware of us moving on.

“It looks new!” I say in surprise as we wander into the top playground and see a purpose-built multi-sports court.

“Just because Nightingale School is a-hundred-and-something years old, it doesn't mean the place is full of out-of-date equipment!” Dad laughs. “Wait till you see the ICT Suite…”

The school I used to go to was only as old as the housing estate we lived on. The classrooms were big and bright; the playground was small and crowded.

Nightingale is like a different world.

“Welcome to your new home-from-home,” Dad says, leading the way over to a dark blue door at the side of the building, jangling his keys at me.

“It's not MY home-from-home,” mumbles Clem, diverting away from us, arms crossed, heading back towards the cottage. “Have fun!”

With a sarky wiggle of her fingers, she's gone.

Which is a relief, actually. When she's in one of her moods (which is most of the time), having Clem around can be as much fun as swimming in cement.

Stepping alone into the cool cream corridor with Dad, I'm instantly lighter, allowed to be excited without my sister's scorn spoiling things.

Straightaway, Dad has something to show me.

“Here's my office,” he says, unlocking a door that leads to a small, functional room.

“Great!” I say, though there's not much to see. “So, do I have to call you
this
now?”

I'm smiling as I point at a sign on the door he's relocking. It reads
Site Manager
in a large, bold font, with
Mr J. Butterfield
underneath it.

Butterfield.

I like that name. It sounds nicely old-fashioned or slightly funny or even vaguely familiar, somehow.

“My predecessor,” says Dad, talking, of course, about the previous owner of our cottage. “I'll ask the ladies in the school office to have it updated on Monday.”

I wish that tummy knot would stop squidging whenever I'm reminded of my looming first morning at school. I just want to enjoy the newness of all this, not feel flurries of fear.

I think Dad spots the muddle I'm in.

“Hey, you can be who you want to be here, honey,” Dad says, giving my shoulders a squeeze. “You can reinvent yourself, or just get back to being the
old
Maisie Mills!”

The old Maisie Mills …
that
sounds good. Till a couple of terms ago, the old Maisie Mills was all anyone knew at school.

The old Maisie Mills was carefree and fun, someone pretty well-liked by everyone, especially the teachers, especially her for ever best friends, Lilah and Jasneet. The old Maisie Mills smiled a lot, chatted a lot, laughed a lot.

And then everything changed.

The new Maisie Mills was hurt and angry most of the time, unless she was safe at home with Dad. The new Maisie Mills confused people – especially the teachers – by crying in class, in the playground, in the loos. The new Maisie Mills was mostly silent, since no one believed her any more. The new Maisie Mills had nothing to smile or laugh about…

I give myself a sudden shake – I'm getting all pretentious and dramatic again.

“You can properly close the door on all of the stuff that went on, honey,” Dad says, reading my mind again, as we begin to open door after door to classrooms covered in projects made by girls I don't know yet, girls who might be my new best friends, better than the old best friends by a mile.

“I love it! I love it all!” I tell Dad, as we head up the grand, sweeping staircase, with its Art Nouveau flowered wall tiles and a thick wooden banister that's worn to a deep, dull shine with more than a century's worth of girls' hands gliding up and down it.

“And you haven't seen the best bit yet,” says Dad, beaming at me, happy to see
me
so happy.

We're on the first floor, outside a door that's got the most beautiful patterned frosted-glass panel. The white swirls and leaves are echoed in the windows that stretch along the corridor, screening whatever's inside.

“What's this, then?” I ask, as Dad turns a key in a chunky brass lock and grasps the matching doorknob.

“The art room,” he replies. “But the word ‘room' doesn't really do it justice!”

He's right – we step into a huge space, almost the size of the gym at my old school. It's like being in a gallery: paintings, drawings, collages cover every inch of wall, jostling for my attention. Pots, sculptures, modelling projects teeter on tables and cupboard surfaces. Some kind of suspended junk sculpture – maybe you'd call it an installation? – made out of old drinks bottles and CDs twirls gently from the hook and rope it's dangling from.

“Brilliant, isn't it?” Dad says, sounding as if he's an estate agent proudly showing off his prize property.

“Uh-huh,” I murmur, trying to take it all in. It's about a million times better than the art rooms in my old school. My teacher, Miss Stephens, would just flip through a few images of Mondrian or whoever and tells us to copy the style. Here, it looks like a wonderland of possibilities.

Please let that go for
everything
about this school…

“Hey, you know something, Maisie? I'll bet
this
is what you saw from your bedroom window!” says Dad, pointing to the junk sculpture.

Of course.

Of course we're in the room with the three long windows. I hurry over to look out of one of them – the one I thought I saw the face in – and gaze across the roof terrace just outside, across the playground to our cottage. My bedroom window is like an eye peeking up at me (the other “eye” belongs to Clem's room; I can see her now, angrily trying to put up curtains).

“Of course,” I say out loud, turning and letting my fingers linger over the plastic bottles and shiny CDs that I'd mistaken for a ghost.

“Oops – better get back,” says Dad, checking his watch. “I need to get the computer set up so we can make contact with the outside world!”

I smile a secret smile as I go to follow him out.

By outside world, I know he's really talking about Donna. They email and Facebook each other every day, and she'll be dying to hear how the move went.

Hey, maybe Dad will invite Donna to come see the place? And give me and Clem the chance to finally meet her? Surely after all these months of dating, Dad can relax enough to introduce us to each other? It's not as if either me or Clem will give her a hard time. We both know Mum's thoughts on Dad having a “new relationship”, thanks to what she wrote in the notebo—

The rustle and clunk makes me spin around, just as I reach the open doorway.

It's the plastic bottle and CD installation, dancing around like it's doing the salsa in some sudden breeze that's blown in.

“Dad, I think one of the windows must be open,” I tell him.

Then a chill settles over me, as I spot all of the windows firmly shut and locked.

“Hmm?” says Dad distractedly, checking his phone for Donna-texts.

“Nothing,” I mutter, desperate to get outside to the air and the sunshine of the playground…