“Don’t try and pull the innocent act on me, Scarlet Grey. We all know what you did.”
“We … we do?” I asked.
“Ugh. You make me sick,” she spat.
“What’s your name?” piped up Ariadne.
The girl blinked at her. “What? Oh. Penny, short for Penelope.”
“My name’s Ariadne. It’s not short for anything. It’s Greek. She helped Theseus defeat the Minotaur!” She stabbed the air with her arm. “Pleased to meet you!”
Ariadne was clearly trying to make up for her earlier shyness. I wasn’t sure that this was quite the way to do it.
“I’m sure you are.” Penny narrowed her freckle-rimmed eyes. “Anyway. Some of us have friends to go and talk to.” She turned on her heel and started to stalk out of the room.
“If they’re friends with you, I probably don’t want to talk to them,” I said without thinking.
Ariadne was staring at me, open-mouthed.
That was not a very Ivy thing to say. In fact, it was a very Scarlet thing to say. A strange mix of unease and pride crept over me.
Penny leant back into the room. “You’d better be careful around her, Ariadne,” she hissed. “You never know how you might end up …” She slid a finger across her throat ominously and then stalked away.
“What was that about?” asked Ariadne.
“I wish I knew,” I said.
But, to be honest, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know at all.
I left the room with Ariadne chattering away behind me. There was no need to worry about where the dining hall was – all I had to do was follow the stream of girls flowing down the stairs. I tried to disappear, to not to think about their staring eyes.
“… and we’ve got this huge duck pond full of fish, you know, really really huge. It even has a bridge across it.”
“Do you have any brothers and sisters?” I asked, turning to look at her as we walked.
Ariadne blinked, her train of conversation derailed. “No. It’s just me and Mummy. And Daddy, sometimes. I wish I did, though. What about you?”
“Um, yes. I have a sister. But she … goes to another school. And some brothers, I suppose. Stepbrothers, really.”
Ariadne sighed. “How lovely.”
“You haven’t met them,” I said.
The dining hall was an enormous noisy room with rows of tables, all filled with girls. There was a long hatch in the wall that looked into the kitchen, and through it the cooks were spooning steaming food on to plates. Whatever the food was, the whole room smelt strongly of stew. Ariadne and I joined the back of the dinner queue. I’d never seen so many people in one place.
Everyone was talking at once, and the air was filled with the sounds of knives scraping and glasses clinking. I wanted to clamp my hands over my ears to block it all out.
Then I spotted Miss Fox, who looked very much like she wanted to do the same. She was standing at the far end of the hall, tapping a wooden cane against the side of her leg. I swallowed, uneasily.
I took a tray and a cheap-looking china plate from the pile. One of the cooks, her hair messily poking out of a white cap, lifted her ladle and spooned a large pile of gloopy brown stuff on to the plate.
“Sorry, what is it, please?” I asked.
“Stew,” she replied, flatly.
“What kind of stew, Miss?”
The cook just stared at me and then turned to serve Ariadne.
As I headed into the middle of the room, I stopped and froze, realising I didn’t have a clue where I was supposed to sit. But then, out of the corner of my eye, I swore Miss Fox pointed with a barely noticeable flick of the cane. Empty seats.
Ariadne followed me to the table and we sat down. She poked her food around the plate with a fork, apparently trying to make sure it was dead.
“Welcome back, Scarlet!”
I looked up. I was being addressed by a woman with greying hair and big grey eyes to match.
“Um, thank you, Miss,” I responded. I scooped up some of the stew with my fork. It wasn’t as bad as it looked, but ow, it was hot. I swallowed it quickly.
“Decided we like the stew now, have we?” said the teacher sitting opposite us.
I stared down at my plate. “Oh. I guess it’s not that bad … really?”
She smiled archly. “Indeed. Well, I always like to see a healthy appetite.”
Ariadne came to my rescue. “What’s your name, Miss?” she asked.
“Ah, you must be the new student! I’m Mrs Knight. I’m the head of Richmond House.”
“I’m Ariadne, Miss. Pleased to meet you.” She held out her hand. It still had a fork in it.
Mrs Knight ignored it, but I heard giggles rippling away from us along the table. I felt my cheeks turn red.
It wasn’t long before they faded, but I noticed that one person laughed for a little longer than anyone else. I peered down the length of the table, and wasn’t surprised to see Penny looking back. She gave me a fake smile, and waved her fork in my direction. Then she pretended to stab herself with it, and started making gagging noises. Her friends were in fits.
I flushed even harder. Scarlet would’ve done something. Perhaps she would have tipped the stew down the front of Penny’s black dress. The threat of Miss Fox’s cane would mean nothing to her.
But I wasn’t Scarlet. I was still Ivy. I finished my dinner in silence.
It was lights out. I lay in my nightgown, feeling strange in my new surroundings. I waited in vain for Ariadne to go to sleep. She had been whispering excitedly for the past half an hour, while I occasionally replied with ‘mmmhmm’ as loudly as I dared.
Once
