‘Is she?’ Mr Wilkins raised his eyebrows and looked at his wife. ‘This was our daughter’s idea, you know,’ Mr Wilkins said. ‘She insisted on applying for a place here. We tried to discourage it.’
‘You did?’
‘She said she needed boundaries.’ Mrs Wilkins shook her head. ‘That she didn’t think the freedom I gave her was entirely good for her.’
‘She did?’ It was hard for Natalie to imagine Margaret Wilkins desperate for any sort of regulation.
Framed by the playing field’s two sprawling monkey puzzle trees, the four long lines of girls – spaced at arm’s length from one another – were lined up like an army organised for battle. Identical from the neck downwards in the same navy blue box-pleat gymslips, white shirts and dark woollen stockings. While Miss Hollands faced the rows with her whistle gripped between her teeth.
‘Rebellion is a good thing. Or that’s what I think anyway.’ Mrs Wilkins’s exhaled smoke hit the windowpane. ‘So we gave her the freedom to come here and see how much she’d hate discipline.’
‘Oh.’
The wind did tend to gather force as it travelled along the open field and outside the girls were under attack. Their hair whipped up in tendrils about their faces and into their eyes, their shirtsleeves billowed, while their tunic skirts were tugged this way and that, periodically lifting to expose their gym bloomers. But these weren’t the sort of girls to be ruffled by something as trivial as the weather.
‘So do you want us to take her home today?’ Mr Wilkins asked.
‘No!’ she said, and they both turned away from the window to face her. ‘That would be a terrible shame, for all concerned.’
‘Then why are we here?’ Mr Wilkins asked.
The girls finished their lunges and stood with arms pinned to their sides while Miss Hollands raised her hands into a perpendicular spire above her head and arched her back. The girls followed. Margaret watched the wind passing through the trees behind her and lifted her arms as if they too were branches, before jumping at the report of Miss Hollands’s whistle.
‘I bet Lord Lacey wants her gone, doesn’t he?’ Mrs Wilkins answered her husband. ‘He’s still sulking after we gave him the chorus in our last production.’
‘He had something to do with you being here…’ she gestured them back towards their seats ‘…but your daughter has talent and lots of potential and I wanted to talk to you about how we might coax her into playing along. Rigour and discipline are as important as anything else here and I can’t justify her place to the Board, and Lord Lacey, if she has no respect for the rules.’
She hadn’t at all expected this lack of discipline from the family. Parents always fought for their daughters, even if they weren’t worthy of it, but Margaret was worthy and yet… Her bravery, her devil-may-care attitude is just what it’s going to take to change things around here in the future, but she is going to have to play along, just a little. She’d never yet had to persuade any parents that they needed to encourage their daughter to stay at the college.
‘We won’t ask our daughter to change – no.’ Mrs Wilkins stubbed out her cigarette on the fireplace. ‘And neither should you.’
‘But something drove her here…’ What a waste. Natalie had a thought. ‘We have a diving display tonight. Can you stay? You can see for yourself what a talent she is. You might see what potential we’d be letting go.’
‘Oh look, there’s his car…’ Mr Wilkins broke off. He rose to his feet, pointing at the driveway off to the side of the playing field.
She recognised the car too.
‘Is that Lord Lacey’s Rolls?’ Mrs Wilkins pointed.
The study door opened without a knock coming first.
‘Lord Lacey.’ She moved across the hearthrug, hand outstretched, towards the white-haired, pink-skinned, diminutive college trustee. But Mr Wilkins shot over, beating her to it, stooping to shake the Lord’s hand and thank him for coming. Mrs Wilkins toyed with one of the curls that sprung out from her headscarf and flashed him a gritted smile.
‘Lord Lacey. It’s good of you to take an interest, but I have the matter with Wilkins in hand,’ Natalie interrupted. She didn’t need him to hear the parents’ recalcitrance.
‘What?’ He looked again at the Wilkinses as if only just registering who they were. ‘I’m here on another matter altogether. Excuse us, won’t you.’ He nodded to Mr and Mrs Wilkins. ‘Miss Flacker. Follow me.’
The gainer
The diver faces the end of the board. After a forward approach and hurdle she somersaults back towards the diving board while moving forward.
She followed Lord Lacey into the office. He strutted over to the fireplace and turned to face her. Miss Lott, dressed now, though her hair was still untamed, sat with her hands clasped in front of her on the desk. She shook her head at Natalie and coiled her lips.
Frozen to the spot just inside the doorway, Natalie had not even made it to the hearthrug. She just stood there, her feet rooting her to the wooden floorboards, waiting for whatever it was to strike.
‘Have you seen this?’ Lord Lacey said eventually, unfolding a newspaper from under his short arm. She stepped closer. It was the Sunday Times, the front-page headline:
Stresa Conference Heralded a Success
MacDonald Secures Continued Contribution to European Peace
Britain, France and Italy Pledged to Maintain Peace
Lord Lacey turned the pages with a rustle, thumbing through until he set the paper down on Miss Lott’s desk. Correspondingly the Principal leant away from it.
Out of the corner of her eye she could see that Lord Lacey was watching her, not reading the newspaper. So was Miss Lott.
Saturday Night Robberies
She scanned the story, her eyes travelling quickly – in search of what, she wasn’t sure. She just had a feeling she’d better find it double quick. Then she saw it.
Record attendance at the Women’s League of Health and Beauty’s annual rally
Beneath the columns of text were two black and white photographs. The first was an aerial shot of the women seated in the Grand Hall, row upon row, indistinguishable in their white blouses and dark shorts. The second was of Prunella Stack, a shot taken from low down to capture the full length of her bare legs, as she shook hands with someone.
Natalie snatched the page closer. Surely not.
The photograph had been taken in Prunella’s changing room. Delphi was just a blur in the background, but her blond hair and petite figure were distinctive enough if you knew who you were looking for. But Natalie’s own image was so clear she practically jumped from the page: her heavy nose, the swept back hair,
