Child's Play Read Online Free PDF Page B

Sukie’s portrait. He handed Janet the school prospectus. ‘You’ll have to make do with this for now.’
    As soon as he had gone, Janet sat down with the glossy book and fast became enthralled by a kaleidoscope of images that seemed to come straight from the school stories she had devoured as a child. She gazed longingly at the many photographs of fresh-faced girls against various backdrops: the main building, the new teaching block, the music rooms, the sports hall, the playing fields, the stables, the competition-sized riding arena, the boathouse at the Strait’s edge, even the Swiss Alps. Most impressive of all, she thought, was the enormous swimming pool, an untouched relic of the Hermitage’s early days.
    Each of the school’s four houses was named after an English royal dynasty, each had a captain elected by her peers, each was identified by an item of uniform and a sash tied round the waist for sports. Tudor was green, York pillar-box red, Lancaster bright golden yellow and Windsor a deep, rich blue.
    So like those pictured in her old story books were these girls that Janet began to search their faces, looking for the villainness always defined in fiction by ginger hair and mean eyes. Blondes, she recalled, would be glamorous but unreliable, brunettes mysterious, with their potential for good or ill only discovered in the denouement. It was the ordinary, mousy-haired girls who proved themselves heroic. Then she laughed at herself and was still laughing when Dewi returned.
    ‘ What’s so funny?’ he asked.
    ‘ Is this place for real?’
    ‘ It is, believe me. Right down to the battleaxe of a matron.’
    ‘ Elspeth Hardie, she’s called, and she’s a fully fledged nurse.’
    ‘ I gathered that from the way she dresses.’
    ‘ What’s Dr Scott like?’
    He took his time replying. ‘On the surface, a classy blonde with impeccable manners and sexy perfume. Underneath she’s probably hard as nails. She certainly doesn’t like criticism, implied or otherwise.’
    ‘ She wouldn’t be much use in a job like that if she weren’t tough. According to the prospectus, she’s ex-army and, I quote, “attained the rank of Captain before resigning her commission to follow a long-cherished ambition to enter teaching”.’
    ‘ What else does the prospectus say?’
    ‘ Not much. It’s primarily designed to persuade parents to part with money.’
    ‘ It obviously works, then. They’ve got two hundred and twenty-eight girls currently on the books and at fifteen thousand a throw, that’s roughly three and half million a year in basic fees alone, plus extra for music lessons, art classes, dancing lessons, riding, livery costs, fencing, sailing and winter sports.’
    ‘ Aside from the running costs, staff salaries must be enormous.’
    ‘ That depends on whether Scott employs the best, or people with little chance of getting a job elsewhere. If I’m not mistaken, she’s already got one convicted offender on the books. I think the groundsman is Sean O’Connor. He and his mates got community service for trashing a pub after a drinking binge, and while it was ages ago and he’s a sort of mate of mine and he’s kept out of trouble since, he’s still got a record.’
    ‘ And that just goes to prove there are records and records,’ Janet observed. ‘Anyway, even if half the staff belong behind bars, I still can’t wait to see the place. I always wanted to go to boarding school.’
    ‘ Did you?’ He was surprised. ‘Why?’
    ‘ Because when I was young, I read a lot of books by the likes of Angela Brazil and Elinor M. Brent-Dyer about the wonderful adventures of boarding-school life.’
    ‘ Absolute rubbish, most probably.’
    ‘ So my father used to say. That’s why I ended up with the hoi polloi at Ysgol Tryfan.’ Her dark eyes glinted with mischief. ‘Like you.’
    ‘ Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t show. Everyone at the Hermitage will think you’re one of their