Wilkinson First Term at Fernside

1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-78849-540-0
Verlag: The O'Brien Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 288 Seiten

Reihe: Fernside

It's a new term at Fernside boarding school, and Robin can't wait for fun in the dorm, playing games and maybe even winning the coveted Form Shield. But for new girl Linnet, Robin's younger cousin, there are just too many new faces and strict rules. Luckily, she has Robin for help and her very own hideaway. And when the adorable puppy Rudy disappears, it is Linnet who is determined to find him. Even if it means dragging Robin and all her new friends headfirst into danger. There may be daring rescues, secret missions and adventures galore, but best of all are the true friendships to be made at Fernside.

Described in the Irish Times as 'one of our foremost writers for young people', Sheena Wilkinson is the author of eight novels for children and young adults, and one for adults. Her books have won numerous awards, including the CBI Book of the Year in 2013 for Grounded, and she has been shortlisted three times for the Astrid Lindgren Award, the world's biggest children's literature award. Sheena lives in County Derry with her husband, stepson and two dogs. Sheena has been a lifelong fan of girls' school stories ever since reading the Malory Towers and Chalet School books - she even has a PhD on the subject! Find out more about Sheena on her website, sheenawilkinson.com.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Wilkinson, Sheena

Leseproben

Chapter 2

You Can’t Cry

Linnet had expected school to be scary. But not this scary.

From the moment Daddy said goodbye at the steps of the forbidding grey, ivy-covered house that she was somehow expected to live in with dozens of other girls, it was nothing but bustle and noise and orders, and scampering, scampering, scampering to keep up – and all the time a painful refrain throbbed in her heart.

You can’t cry. You can’t cry. You can’t cry, it beat out as she scurried to unpack her things into the top two drawers of the scuffed chest beside her bed – her cousin Robin was to have the neighbouring bed and the bottom two drawers.

You can’t cry, it warned when Matron, all starch and disapproval, said that she had never met a girl so clumsy and to pick up her underclothes from the floor this instant.

You can’t cry, it reminded her when an older girl called Lucy helped her to carry her trunk out to the door of the dormitory to be picked up and taken to the trunk room. Lucy was obviously being kind when she said how exciting for Linnet’s parents to be going abroad; she couldn’t have known how the words would stab and gouge. Only a year, Daddy said. Not long, Mummy had added.

A year was forever. She had been at Fernside House for – she checked her new wristwatch – forty-seven minutes, and already she longed to leave with an ache so fierce that she couldn’t even think the word home without tears pushing at the backs of her eyes.

Home! The quiet house with everything familiar and cosy, where she knew how to be without even thinking. Lessons with kind Miss Devlin, and her own books and best of all, her garden. She couldn’t bear to think of what would happen to it without her – her roses unloved, her strawberries uneaten – well, the birds would enjoy them, that wasn’t so bad. You can’t cry. You can’t cry. She looked round the bedroom – dormitory, she must remember to say – and wondered if it would feel friendlier or scarier when full of girls. She counted the beds: six. How could she sleep with five other girls? The only one she knew was Robin, but she hadn’t seen her for ages.

‘What on earth are you doing still in the dormitory?’ Matron filled the doorway, arms full of towels, apron crackling. ‘Did I or did I not tell you to go to the junior common room to wait for the train girls?’

‘You did, but I couldn’t remember …’

‘Bottom of the stairs, third door on the left. Opposite the portrait of Miss Burn. You can’t possibly miss it.’

Linnet wasn’t so sure, but she trailed out of the room and tried to remember how to get to the stairs. She frowned. Right, she thought, past some doors, and then …

‘Back stairs!’ called Matron, as if she had eyes in the back of her head, and Linnet turned and scuttled on – anywhere, just to escape. Maybe there would be a bathroom she could hide in until she calmed down. Oh, all these doors! They all looked the same! She flung one open at random, but it was only another dormitory, empty and silent, lace curtains fluttering in the open window. Little whines were starting at the back of her throat; she despised herself, but she was powerless against them, and her cheeks were already damp. Another second and she’d be properly sobbing, and in what Mummy called one of Linnet’s states.

A commotion somewhere below. A stern shout: ‘Girls! I know you’re excited to be back, but there’s no need to sound like harridans. Up to the dorms straight away. You all know where to go. Evangeline, look after Fran.’

‘Of course, Miss Taylor.’

‘Back stairs, Barbara Wylie.’

All the names! All the noise! And now a ferocious clatter of shoes and giggles and the corridor gushed with girls – not the trickle who, like her, had arrived in ones and twos by car, but dozens, more girls than she had seen in her whole life, all chattering at the tops of their voices.

‘Bags the bed by the window!’

‘We’re in Rose again! Bags not the bed with the saggy mattress.’

Linnet pressed herself against the wall and let them stream past. Most of them glanced at her, some smiled, but all were too excited to stop for a tear-stained new girl. And then, into the sea of bright unknown faces, the brown and red and fair bobbed heads, swam a face she knew, a face surrounded by the same straight mousey hair as her own, and with the same green-flecked eyes.

‘Robin!’ She flung grateful, drowning arms round her cousin.

Robin stiffened and did not hug her back, and behind her she heard a scornful giggle.

‘I assume this is your cousin,’ said a cool, amused voice. ‘You didn’t say she was so – exuberant.’

Linnet gulped. ‘Oh – I’m not,’ she tried to explain. She had been so close to crying that her voice came out strangled and high. She took a deep, calming breath. ‘I’m usually very quiet. I was just relieved to see Robin.’

‘Clearly.’ A fair-haired girl with glasses, the owner of that cool voice, emerged from the crowd and looked Linnet up and down. ‘We don’t go in for that kind of thing at Fernside House.’

‘Babs!’ A girl with long brown plaits shook her head. ‘Don’t be horrible.’ She smiled at Linnet. ‘I’m Evangeline,’ she said. ‘This is Fran – she’s new too.’ Fran had red hair and a distracted air.

‘Let’s go, before Matron lectures us on loitering.’ Robin extricated herself from Linnet’s embrace and stalked off to Lilac dorm.

Linnet hovered. What should she do? Matron had sent her to the junior common room, but now that the others had arrived, was she meant to stay with them instead? Evangeline looked back and said, ‘Come with us, Linnet. Meet everyone properly.’ She took this as her cue and, dashing at her eyes to rub away those treacherous tears, scurried after the others.

So this was how the dorm felt with all the girls! Noisy and bouncing. Like living in an ant colony. Except ants were more businesslike. Also, if you lived in an ant colony you would be the same as everyone else; you would all be ants. Linnet looked from girl to girl as they unpacked, firing open drawers, banging wardrobe doors, all the time chattering, chattering, chattering, and she didn’t feel like one of them at all. Fran was unpacking with glum competence, not dropping anything. Robin was saying she would die without hockey, and Evangeline was saying it would be all right, and Robin was saying she didn’t see how, and Babs was saying good riddance to hockey as far as she was concerned.

It was a foreign language.

Linnet dared not think about her silent room at home, the window seat where she would sit for hours listening for birdsong and watching the bees and butterflies in the buddleia beneath.

It felt as if all the rush and chatter was inside her, and if she didn’t escape she would burst. But outside the dorm was even scarier. Swallowing panic, she dashed to the open window and yanked it up further so at least she could breathe fresh air. For a moment she only breathed, and then she looked.

The back garden: flowerbeds, a small shrubbery, vegetable patches, a tennis court. Then a high wooden fence and beyond it …

Green, green, green – a little wood of gnarled old trees, and thick shrubs and wildflowers, nothing but foliage sloping down to a dark line that she knew must be the River Lagan. And beyond that, the far bank was lined with hedgerows and then thickly wooded slopes.

Linnet closed her eyes, and when she opened them again the view was still there.

‘Oh!’ she couldn’t help crying out. ‘It’s wonderful!’

Robin joined her at the window. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘It’s one of the best things about school.’

‘But that’s not all Fernside House, is it? There’s a fence and a hedge …’

‘It’s not the school grounds, no,’ Robin explained, ‘but it’s right next door. It’s called Rowanbank. There’s a house – you can’t see it through the trees – and lots of old sheds and stables. Nobody lives there – it’s been empty for ages.’

‘And are we allowed to go there?’ Linnet hardly dared ask the question.

‘Not exactly allowed. But we do – there’s a gap in the fence. I’ll show you if you like.’

‘It looks like an enchanted wilderness,’ said Linnet.

‘I don’t know about enchanted wilderness,’ Robin said, ‘but it’s brilliant for hide-and-seek. Some of those trees are just begging to be climbed.’

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