Night School

He walked away before she could ask him how he knew what classes she was taking, but he turned in the doorway for a second and when their eyes met Allie felt as if somebody had draped a warm blanket across her shoulders. When he was gone she smiled at her apple juice.

‘Sylvain’s lovely isn’t he?’ Katie’s crisp west London accent cut into her reverie. Allie looked up to find her watching her knowingly. ‘Those dreamy eyes and that melty accent. His girlfriend’s lovely, too, isn’t she?’ She turned to the brunette beside her who nodded and giggled.

‘She lives in Paris now I hear.’ Katie delicately consumed a segment of grapefruit as Allie felt her emotional balloon burst.

Ah. Girlfriend. Right. So much for that, then.

She was not surprised to find the inevitable crushing blow of early romantic disappointment following hard on the heels of hope. Frankly, that was how things usually went for her. When she’d first met Mark there’d been something there. For two weeks it had been obvious to everybody that they’d get together. Until one night he’d shown up with a perky, diminutive blonde named Charlotte who had a penchant for miniskirts and hot pink nail polish.

After that he was just her mate.

‘How nice for him,’ Allie said resignedly. ‘Well … I have to go too.’

She stood up and walked away quickly, stopping herself at the last minute from looking for a place to take her plate and glass. Hearing giggles behind her, she straightened her spine and did not look back.

Outside the dining hall Allie joined other students walking down the wide hallway with oak wainscoting towards the classrooms in the east wing. The walls were lined with oil paintings – most were huge portraits of nineteenth century men and women in formal attire staring down at her haughtily. A few portrayed Cimmeria Hall from different perspectives, most from the hill outside with thick forest in the foreground. In one, the building was much smaller than it was now – before the expansion Isabelle had talked about.

Her first class was biology, in room 112, so she climbed the staircase to the first floor and found the room near the top of the stairs.

The handful of students who’d arrived early were sitting in pairs at tables arranged in long rows, as a tall, distracted-looking man with wire-framed glasses and unruly brown hair flipped through papers at the front of the room.

Allie walked over to him. ‘Hi. I’m Alyson Sheridan. I’m new.’

He peered at her over the top of his glasses and shuffled his papers again at length, finally emerging with one, which he waved triumphantly.

‘Of course you are. A transfer student, how lovely. But I have you down as ‘Allie’. Which do you prefer?’

‘Allie,’ she said, surprised. Schools always had her down as Alyson. But everybody at Cimmeria knew her as Allie before she met them.

‘Then Allie it is.’ He was shuffling papers again distractedly. ‘I’m Jeremiah Cole. The students usually call me Jerry. Please take the second seat on the right there, next to Jo.’

She glanced in the direction he pointed to see the blonde girl from dinner last night waving vigorously.

‘I’m so glad it’s you. I do hope you’re good at biology,’ she said as soon as Allie walked up. ‘I think all the sciences are diabolical – dead baby animals and parasites – what are they trying to tell us? Crikey we got into trouble last night, didn’t we? Does that always happen to you?’

She had a contagious smile – white, even teeth, deep endearing dimples and little crinkles around her tiny nose – and a lead crystal accent. Allie smiled back at her before her brain realised she wanted to do it.

‘It does always happen to me. If you hang around with me, it will definitely happen again,’ Allie said, with a wicked smile.

Jo beamed at her. ‘Brilliant! This is going to be amazing.’

As Allie pulled out her notebook, Jo whispered, ‘Isn’t Jerry snoggable for an old guy? I had a crush on him my whole first year here.’

Allie studied the teacher. He looked like somebody’s dad. A nice dad. But a dad nonetheless.

‘I like that you can call teachers by their first names here,’ she said noncommittally. ‘My last school was so strict we practically had to call them “Officer”.’

Laughing, Jo looked like she wasn’t sure whether or not to believe her.

‘You’re going to have to tell me more about your life,’ she said. ‘It sounds much better than mine.’

Don’t count on it, Allie thought. But she just smiled.

Jo showed her where the class had reached in the book. ‘It’s disgusting,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Today, I think we’re dissecting.’

As if on cue, Jerry called for quiet.

‘Today we’ll be looking at the general internal construction of amphibians, thanks to the sacrifice of this little fellow.’

Reaching under his desk he pulled out a dissection tray containing a dead frog, spreadeagled and pinioned, its pale belly curving at them vulnerably.

‘Oh bollocks.’ Jo grimaced.