Night School

The car journey was excruciating. Normally she would have been happy to leave the city on a sunny summer day, but as London’s crowded streets gave way to rolling green fields dotted with white sheep dozing in the warmth, she felt a wave of loneliness. The mood in the car didn’t help. Her parents barely acknowledged her presence. Her mother held the map, and offered occasional directions.

Huddled in the back seat, Allie stared resentfully at the backs of their heads. Why couldn’t they get a GPS like everybody else?

She’d asked them this same question many times, but her father just said they were happy to be ‘Luddites’ and that ‘everyone should know how to read a map’.

Whatever.

Without access to the map, Allie was left trying to figure out precisely where she was going.

She’d never been told where the school was, and the town names whizzed by (Guildford, Camberley, Farnham …). Then they left the A-roads and began to wind their way up and down hills on tiny country lanes surrounded by high hedges that blocked any view, through villages (Crondall, Dippenhall, Frensham …). Finally, after two hours, they turned down a narrow dirt track. Her father slowed the car to a crawl. The road passed into thick forest where it was cooler and quieter. After a few minutes of jostling and bumping as her father swerved to avoid deep holes in the road they arrived at a tall iron gate.

They stopped. The rumble of the car engine was the only sound.

Nothing happened for a long minute.

‘Do you need to beep the horn or push a buzzer or something?’ Allie whispered, taking in the forbidding black fence, which extended into the trees as far as she could see.

‘No.’ Her father’s voice was also hushed. ‘They must have CCTV or something. They know when someone’s here. Last time we only waited a few …’

The gates shivered and then, with a clanging metallic sound, swung slowly inward. Inside, the forest continued, and the sun barely filtered through the thick branches.

Allie stared into the shadows ahead.

Welcome to your new school, Allie. Welcome to your new life.

While the gates swung open, she counted her heartbeats. Boom-boom-boom … Thirteen beats and she could see the road ahead. Now her heart sounded so loud that she checked surreptitiously to see if her parents had noticed. They were waiting patiently. Her father drummed his fingers on the steering wheel.

Twenty-five beats and the gates had locked into place with a shudder.

Her father put the car into first gear.

They were on the move.

Feeling her throat closing Allie focused on breathing. She really didn’t want to have another panic attack right now. But she couldn’t shake an overwhelming sense of dread.

Stop freaking out, she told herself. This is just another school, Allie. Stay focused.

It worked; her breathing steadied a little.

Her father pulled the car forward onto a smooth gravel drive that rolled through thick trees. After the rutted dirt road outside the gates, the drive was so smooth and well maintained that the car seemed to float.

Allie continued to monitor her heartbeat; for one hundred and twenty-three beats nothing but trees and shadows, then a coronary drum roll as they emerged into the light and she saw a building ahead.

She lost count.

It was worse than she’d feared. Looking out of place in the bright sunlight at the foot of a steep forested hill sprawled an enormous Gothic mansion of dark red bricks. The three-storey structure looked as if it had been ripped from another time and place to be dropped here in … wherever they were. Its jagged roof jutted sharply in peaks and turrets, topped with what looked like daggers of wrought iron stabbing the sky.

Holy shit.

‘It is such an impressive building,’ her father said.

Her mother snorted. ‘Impressively ghastly.’

Terrifying. The word they are looking for is ‘terrifying’.

In contrast to the intimidating structure, the gravel road ahead was transformed by the sun into a piece of ivory, curving towards a big, mahogany door in the dark brick wall. As they entered the shadow cast by the school, her father slowed the car.

The second the car stopped moving, the door swung open and a slim, smiling woman slipped out and ran lightly down the stairs. Her thick, dark blonde hair was held back loosely with a clip, and it curled up at the ends as if it were happy to be there. Allie was relieved to see how normal she looked: her glasses were pushed up on top of her head, and she wore a creamy cotton cardigan atop her pale blue dress.

Allie’s parents climbed out and walked over to meet her. Lagging behind unnoticed, Allie reluctantly opened her door and left the back seat of the Ford, which suddenly seemed so friendly and familiar. She didn’t close the door.

Rather than joining the group ahead, she leaned against the car and warily watched the scene in front of her. Waiting. Twenty-seven heartbeats.