Say Her Name Read Online Free PDF Page A

it’s
marvellous
, Mum, I can’t get enough. They’ll have to surgically remove me from the place when I turn eighteen!’
    ‘Don’t be sarcastic, Roberta, you’ll get wrinkles.’
    ‘I thought that was frowning?’
    ‘Don’t get smart either! You know Mummy loves you, right?’
    ‘I love you too, Mum.’ And she did. Not everyone would like a semi-famous, semi-faded actress for a mother, but Bobbie hadn’t ever had any other mums and she loved the one she had. She was insane, but always at the end of a telephone. Some of the girls at Piper’s Hall were lucky to get an annual visit from a nanny.
    ‘Extra-big transatlantic kisses please!’ her mum ordered.
    Bobbie made an enormous smacking noise down the phone, confident that no one was around to hear. She was wrong. An immaculate head snaked around the door. It was the Principal, Dr Price. ‘Mum, I have to go. Love you.’
    ‘Love you too, sweetie.’
    Bobbie replaced the receiver. Dr Price entered the room, dressed in a slick, tailored skirt suit, even on a Sunday. The Head was a beautiful woman in her late forties, if slightly angular, reminding Bobbie of the laconic, ice-cool women in the de Lempicka paintings they’d studied in Art. She had a neat strawberry-blonde bob and looked down at Bobbie through heavily hooded eyes. ‘Sorry to interrupt your phone call … er … ’
    ‘Roberta, Miss.’
    ‘Roberta, that’s it. But you’ll miss breakfast if you’re not careful.’
    ‘Sorry, Dr Price. I’ll go now – I’ll have a super-quick shower.’ Bobbie was always so shy around the teachers for some reason, even though she’d known many of them for almost five years. Her grades were FINE, her behaviour was GOOD, her attendance was PERFECT – as such, Bobbie had been able to glide under the radar all the way through her time at Piper’s Hall. She clammed up especially badly around Dr Price; not only was she in charge but she was always so poised and glamorous, whereas Bobbie was well aware that even when she was in her uniform she looked like an urchin.
    She didn’t need to ask why the Head was in school on a Sunday. Bobbie knew a workaholic when she saw one, and rumour had it she was going through a ‘bitter divorce’ too. Head down, she slipped past the Principal and awkwardly tottered back to the dorm to grab her wash-bag.
    The thought of what charred offal horrors might be left in the canteen at 9 a.m. on a Sunday spurred Bobbie into action. She’d twisted the shower to life before even remembering last night’s escapades. In the light of the day, the bathroom was a whole other room. She faced the smeared mirror, splattered in the toothpaste, zit pus and lip gloss of at least a dozen girls, and grinned at herself. What had they been thinking?
So
lame.
    Then she recalled Caine and her insides were suddenly candyfloss. Bobbie placed her glasses on the side of the sink and studied her face in the mirror, which was no longer a black tunnel of doom. She wasn’t
ugly
by anyone’s definition, but she was no Grace or Naya. Certainly not what boys like Caine were looking for anyway. Bobbie figured there were two types of girls in the world: ones who wore tights even in thirty-degree heat and ones who got their legs out. She was in the former category, the Graces and Nayas of the world were in the latter. Thank God she hadn’t told anyone about her crush; The Elites would crucify her.
    The mirror started to steam up and she pulled off her robe. Roll on the Christmas holidays when she’d be able to shower in a room without the collective DNA samples of twenty other girls. At least the water was hot. The pressure wasn’t bad either and she let the jet pummel her back for a few minutes before washing her hair. She had the shower room to herself for once – a rare luxury – and she’d have stayed longer if her stomach hadn’t been rumbling.
    She twisted the shower nozzle off and, not wanting to get soap in her eyes, blindly reached for her towel