Chapter 22: Open Skies

Headmaster Leezing is looking distinctly stressed. It had taken him a while to get just how effective a political operator Garrold Munnet was. The man came across almost technocratic, a background organiser like Leezing himself. But it was Munnet who had managed to get Cotting elected as a governor, and it was Cotting who’d got friendly old Tumper, who’d been a governor since before Leezing’s time, and sturdy Miss Fingler, that effective voter lady, ousted.

And now, not only is Munnet staring at him across his own desk, so is Cotting the new Chairman. Leezing squeaks his reply in his high-pitched, ineffective voice like a bland country parson.

“Yes I do understand it’s my school and I’m officially in charge, but this is a Saturday. As you both will be aware, a normal school week runs from Monday to Friday.”

Cotting says, “You must surely understand that you need to be present! The first day of a new phase in the school’s development - a new tradition.”

Leezing clears his throat with a sound like a sneezing child. “A tradition isn’t a tradition on its first day,” he squeaks, seeming to shrink behind his expansive administrator’s desk.

“A new school practice, shall we say?” offers Garrold Munnet. His bassy, resonant voice box sounds with all the authority that Leezing’s lacks.

Neither Munnet nor Cotting are sitting. Munnet has ignored Leezing’s request to take the plain upright chair he’s been offered - a poor man’s pew compared to Leezing’s high-backed leather swivel chair which, too big for his frame, makes the normal-sized Headmaster seem child-like in its depths.

Chairman Cotting has followed Munnet’s lead, and stands to his Munnet’s right. He says, “New practice, inaugural day. You really need to be out there on the ground, man.”

“It is not my initiative, it is yours,” says Leezing, voice rising to a pipsqueak. “And one I find, I must say, distasteful.”

“Distasteful or not, you’re still Head,” says Cotting. “Unless you’d rather not be.”

This seems to trouble Leezing. “I am nearly at full pension,” he says limply. “This year will close the circle!”

Munnet says to Cotting, with deadly calm, “Perhaps it may be time to put feelers out for a replacement, Colim.”

“Quite,” says Cotting. “A case of expedience? Get ahead of the game?”

“Now, I say,” squeaks Leezing with a high, breathy peep. “I must protest.”

“Shall we perhaps take a tour on our own account?” Cotting asks Munnet, ignoring Leezing.

“Yes, why not?” is Munnet’s answer. “You never know, there may be a candidate out there demonstrating some solid commitment.”

“Giving up his Saturday for the future of the school.”

As the two men, unburdened by seating, turn to go, Leezing is pushing up from his chair. Normally it makes him feel important, but today it has felt unusually enclosing. “I, I suppose I can see my way to attending with you,” he blusters, “if you’ll just give me a moment to put on some appropriate regalia. The master’s cape, I think.”

There’s an out-of-body feel to this for Taudren. Like a dream where you’re at school, and as you float into your class, gliding in on a flying stride, the windows are all wide open. So you follow Billy Hall out - he’s the one who’s teaching your class right now - and of course there are girls, in nearly-not-there skirts - and one of them’s Imenna.

He’s dreamed about Imenna before. She’s always been look-but-don’t touch in his dreams - and that hasn’t changed. Because Dickle just assumes that Imenna should be his girl, and Taudren should direct brand-new-in-orange Remi Breech.

“Two virgins together. Doesn’t that sound about right, eh Corkle? Then neither of you expects you to know what you’re doing.” Dickle catches Taudren’s eye and winks. “Meanwhile, me and Miss Scutter go way back, don’t we Scutter? Oh, and - here’s a little bonus, Corkle - Breech is in your sister’s class.” Taudren finds that Dickle is trying to catch his eye again. “Your dad may have insisted that your sister be out of bounds today...” Dickle lurches to one side to nudge Taudren’s elbow. “ ... But I bet one of her classmates will put chalk on your board! Eh? How does that strike you, Corkle?”

Taudren doesn’t know yet how Remi Breech strikes him. She seems pretty enough. Slim, light legs and a pert enough bum. He can see them clearly as she walks dead in front. She moves her head in short twitches like a bird. Flick-moves, like she’s frightened, trying to look at Dickle as he talks. Trying to get a look at this younger boy behind her. They’re heading away around the gym block now - both girls told to walk in front. Across the closest corner of the playground, past the near edge of the part-covered shelter alongside it.

“Left,” says Dickle once they’ve cleared the playground. Imenna and the other girl turn that way and up beside the dining hall. As they come up to its entrance, Dickle tells them, “Just keep going.” Then he tries to catch taudren’s eye again.

Twitchy Dickle seems to think that Taud is his fan-boy. He keeps looking at him, nodding and winking. But it’s jut too often - Dickle’s insistence on catching Taudren’s eyes is starting to make him feel a bit weird. Like Dickle needs assurance Taud still likes him? He can’t work it out, but it’s starting to get on his nerves a bit.

“We’re not strictly supposed to use this route from here.” Dickle taps Taudren’s shoulder and points. “At least, these ones aren’t. Eh?” Did you meet my eyes then? “We’ll get to the orchard garden in a moment - that’s where we’re headed. Strictly speaking, it’s completely out of bounds. Eh?” See me wink there? “Part of the Headmaster’s grace-and-favour residence.” Great big hand movement, like it’s Dickle who owns it. “Should afford us a whole lot more privacy, right?” See my head nod? See me looking at you? Hmm?

They get to a black iron gate in the middle of an eight foot hewn-stone wall. The shut gate is topped by a thick stone lintel. There’s no view inside. A solid, tall internal hedge blocks the view inside to any curious girls.

“Benefits of privilege, me letting us in here.” See my look over my shoulder? Then Dickle, hiding his fingers from view, taps a code into an aluminium key pad. When the gate buzzes open, they all troop in around the hedge. The spring-weighted gate squeals and clanks shut behind them, then they’re standing in a well-tended secret garden. Fruit trees, old and sturdy - some bearing growing apples and quinces - stand protected from the wind, enclosed on four sides by tall stone, climber-lined walls. Over-topping the far wall, the roof of a large white house can be seen.

“As a deputy head - I’ve got that far - and since the Head himself barely ever shows his face, this is a route I’ve used only too often!” Dickle lets a smarmy smile out beklow a nose twitch. “Headmaster Leezing likes hiding away in his big, comfy house.” Watch my eyes as I point. “Short of a trek to assembly in the mornings, I’ve never seen the man in this garden even once.”

There are two curved white stone benches facing to the middle, on either side of a raised stone-and-mortar pond. A few dappled coy carp float in between football-diameter lilly pads.

“Scutter, up on that one.” Dickle points to the far-side bench. “Hands and knees. Let’s give them a view, eh?”

He detaches his chest cam, taps in a code and rests it on one side arm of the backless stone bench.

“Hands and knees. No, not that way, face this way. Back end towards the camera, I think.” Dickle turns to Taudren and winks yet again. “Should have really brought another camera. Oops! What’s this?” Hamming a smile, he fishes one out of his jacket pocket, walks it to a fruit tree and rests it in the crook of a branch. “This should catch both sides of the pond! You can park your girl on that one.” Eyebrows flashing, he points to the closest bench to the entrance gate. “Feel free to take your own unit off and point it where you want it. Don’t care if they see your face, do you Corkle?”

Taudren shrugs. He’s watching Imenna kneel up on her bench, seeing her trying to find any kind of non-painful spot for her naked knees. She turns her face to look at him - not at Dickle. Her expression seems curious, but when he meets her eyes, she seems instantly shy and her eyes flick to her hands. She’s on her knees and hands on a bench, after all - no kind of a position to demonstrate equality. Dickle, above, leaning over the girl from the back, is acting twitchy-smug. But he’s far enough away now that his have you seen me? eyebrow flashes are not so fully in Taudren’s face. He flips Imenna’s tiny orange skirt up and over - checks yet again that Taudren is watching - then jerks the girl’s knickers tight up with his left hand. Taudren sees Imenna flinch her hips, flick startled eyes in his direction then away, and clearly blush.

He’s seen Dickle do this any number of times, and to Imenna as well. But recorded, on a screen, not a few yards away where he hears, first-hand, her shocked intake of breath, hears the reverb of her triggered squeal reverberate between outdoor walls. Sees the jump of her hand as it hits a new position.

“You’re free to get going on your own girl, Corkle! Just tell her what to do. She can’t say no!” The jolly bounce in Dickle’s voice differs markedly from his official nasal monotone. But it still strikes Taudren as false, as forced. Like Dickle is trying too hard with him. Desperate to be liked by this random boy. “Go on! Get stuck in!”

Remi Breech awkwardly, hesitantly, copies Imenna, though Taudren hasn’t told her to. She looks embarrassed as she does it. She mumbles something. Taudren bends his head and says, “What?”

“I said I thought I’d get a teacher.”

“Yeah,” says Taud, still looking over the girl’s head at Imenna.

“Did Mr Dickle call you Corkle? Are you Yarra’s brother?”

“Yeah,” he says, still not really with her.

“Her - younger brother?”

Taudren sighs. “You her friend then, or something?”

“Slap her!” calls Dickle and smacks Imenna’s legs, sharp, away across the coy carp pond.

The girl says, “Yes. No.” She shrugs. “Sort of. She’s nice to me though. I like her as well. How old are you though?”

He sniffs and says, “Fifteen. Last May.

“God I’m seventeen,” the girl says. “Last October!”

“Yeah.”

“That means you’re two and a half years younger than me!”

“Still got a hand,” says Taudren, annoyed, and smacks her right cheek sharply. It’s not the first time he’s smacked someone either. He’s walloped Lazlie quite a few times by now.

The girl has flinched. “Oh,” she says as her bottom starts to sting.

“There you go!” says Dickle, and winks. “Good meaty one, that, eh?”

“Is he your uncle or something?” Remi asks.

“Who, the teacher? No way!” he whispers. “I think he knows my dad. But I never even met him before this morning.”

Dickle calls, “No need to talk! You talk with your hands!”

Taudren drops in a couple of slaps, then says, “He thinks I’m a virgin. At this. But I’m not.” He slaps her bum sharply, left-right quick, dropping lower as he does it, like her bum’s a pair of bongos and he’s clapped them for the sound. “Nothing like my first time.”

Remi Breech’s eyes look suddenly scandalised. “Who - Yarra?” she asks.

Taudren casually slaps her closest cheek.

Remi Breech starts to giggle. “You mean Yarra Corkle lets you spank her?”

Pieter Dickle is frowning at them, starting to take offence at their back-and-forth conversation between spanks. Voice dropping back to monotone and nasal, he says, “Better stop that chattering quickly now, girl!”

Taudren calls out, “She got set off by something I said to her, sir!”

Dickle scowls. He has a doubt - was the something about him? “Need to get a hold of that! Got to let her know who’s boss, boy!”

“I will, sir, I promise!”

Taudren actually likes what he’s doing. As he takes in Remi, side-on with Dickle in the background, his eyes flick from her bum to her head and back. Then he ducks in, one knee lowering, to give Remi’s upper thighs some quick-snap slaps. The girl jerks, then hisses, “Yarra Corkle lets her little brother spank her?”

“What do you think?” asks Taud as he clips her thighs again.

“Hero Yarra Corkle?”

Taudren’s hand goes quiet. “What?”

“Your sister, Yarra?”

“What d’you mean, hero?” He’s leaned his head in close to Remi’s.

“The janitors of course,” she says.

Dickle is frowning, but Taudren doesn’t look up to catch his eyes. Remi sees his blank look.

“When her and her friends took those janitors down? For attacking the young one?”

“Are you making this up?”

“No! Course not! That video!” Remi insists.

“What video?” asks Taudren.

Dickle is now staring suspiciously at them. The girl has seen it. “Better give me some more slaps,” she says, then snorts out a giggle.

When he does it, Dickle’s attention relaxes. Taudren starts out light, left and right, then builds to some crackers, making Remi flinch and jerk a knee forward. “Ow! That hurt!” she pants out, but her torso shows she’s started giggling now.

“What video?” he asks quietly.

Under her breath, she hisses, “The one where they stuffed the girl’s knickers in that janitor’s mouth, and he was squealing like a piglet. Up by the bins!”

“My sister?”

“Yes! You know, ‘Stick that on BaseGirlies, you cowards, we dare you!’”

“For real?” His jaw has dropped.

“I’ve seen the video! Of course for real!”

Taudren is shaking his head. “Never showed it to me though.”

Remi’s voice comes out sarcastic. “What, not even when you spanked her?”

Dickle leans a heavy hand on Imenna’s back. “There’s a bit too much talking over that side!” he announces.

“Sorry, sir,” says Taudren. “Must try harder.”

Remi snorts out another giggle. She tries to suppress it, but the more she tries, the worse it gets.

Taudren’s phone vibrates in his pocket. He pulls it out, trying to hide it from Dickle’s scowls. He sees it’s from his dad - that it’s paragraphs long - and frowns. Ducking behind Remi, he texts back quickly, Having fun Dad. I’ll read later, then puts the phone away. He spanks Remi from down low when she’s not expecting it, trying to tease her to react. She snorts, shakes her head and is laughing again.

“I think we should swap now,” comes monotone, nasal from over the pond. Dickle’s humourless tone of offence is capped by some rapid-fire twitching in his nostril zone.

“Two virgins together, sir,” Taudren calls back. “Just a fumbly start, sir.”

Imenna is blinking with a look of surprise at Remi and Taudren, as Remi tries and fails to suppress her fit of giggles.

Dickle orders, “Breech? Hold it in! Or I’ll come and make you suffer!”

She can’t help it. This far gone, even that makes her laugh. Taudren aims a slap at her inner thigh, but she still can’t stop the sputters. Head down, Taudren goes again, like Dickle’s threat was just an aside.

Ignored, Dickle spanks Imenna too hard, channeling his anger and making her grunt.

“God, sorry,” hisses Remi. “Don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t the giggles! God, I shouldn’t be laughing!”

“That’s what Yarra said,” says Taudren. He clips in some more spanks.

“You mean she laughs too?”

He shrugs. “Dunno. Might do.”

Then with a start, he sees three men are watching them now. With a flinch of shock, he looks at Dickle, who’s now seen these men looming up behind his own back. One of them he even recognises - it’s Mr Munnet, his friend Laugie’s dad. Taudren knew he was something in the town, but what he didn’t know was that he was something in Yarra’s school.

It’s not him who talks first, though. It’s the one on in the master’s cape who squeaks in a high, ineffectual voice, “And just what are you doing in the orchard garden with these schoolgirls, Mr Dickle? And why, pray tell, is a boy here too?”

They stare out through the wrought iron gate-in-a-gate as Misty Lutyens, Mercy Karp and Falla Bumber step out onto Coalbrook Road and the freedom of an unburdened Saturday morning. The girls walk out three yards then turn, standing in a brief burst of sunlight to look back. Above, close-scudding clouds push quickly across the late-morning sky. The three girls’ inadequate orange skirts flutter in the wind.

The inner gate’s hinges whine as Meckle Koffa lets it close to a clunk with a click of the catch. Yarra watches as he grips the thick, old-style metal key, starts to turn it - turns it once - then seems to turn it back again. Open? But the inner gate stays shut. Mr Koffa pulls the big metal key out from the lock.

Shrimp and the others don’t seem to have noticed that he hasn’t dead-bolted the gate again. But Yarra has. Or thinks she has. Her heart starts to race. He’s left a way out.

Shrimp and Koffa usher Yarra, Carrel and Minty Ploom back towards the glass atrium. Koffa deposits the heavy metal key back inside its box, glued at hand-height to the solid glass beside the sliding atrium door.

Outside on Coalbrook Road, the three girls watch Yarra, Carrel and Minty Ploom as they’re ushered through the atrium and out the other side onto the playground.

“That was really brave of Minty,” says Mercy as she pulls a puffy jacket on over her top half, “but Shrimp is just a blimpy bitch.”

Falla Bumber is still looking vulnerable. She’s crying with relief, mixed with guilt at letting Minty Ploom take her place.

“Are you alright?” asks Misty. She’d not been in the room with Falla and Mercy, so she doesn’t really know what Falla’s just been through. But as the oldest there she feels like she ought to try to be the grown-up. She drapes an arm around the shivering girl.

Falla Bumber is silent. Then she squeezes out, “It’s Cuckles. I’m terrified of Cuckles.”

“Yeah he’s horrible,” says Mercy, who’s in his current class.

They wait for more from Falla. She looks between their faces.

“I had him all last year. He just picked on me and picked on me! Nearly every day, but then I thought I’d got away!” Tears roll from her eyes again. Between sobs, she coughs out, “Then Shrimp came in our new class and she told Mr Studdles ... I don’t know what she told him! That I’d made some young girl do something really horrible. I hadn’t though! I don’t do things like that!”

The three girls are wandering slowly from the gate. One step - two steps. Till Mercy Karp says, out of the blue, “Shall we get the forty four?”

“What?” asks Misty.

“It’s coming!” says Mercy.

Falla Bumber squints at the oncoming bus. “But I live the other way,” she says.

“Yeah but,” says Mercy, “who’s going to know you got out this early?”She sticks out her hand, then the bus is slowing down. “Come on,” she adds, “let’s just get on and go!”

“Where though?” asks Misty Lutyens, as the bendy bus stops and its middle doors hiss open.

“Doesn’t matter. Let’s just go!” The year eight Mercy Karp hops up first.

Misty and Falla climb up too - Falla seeming puzzled, surprised - then it’s the three of them - one year eight, one year nine, one year ten, running to the back and watching their school recede into the distance.

“God, I wonder what’ll happen to them?” the year eight Mercy Karp says. “What was yours like then?”

She’s asking this of Misty. The girl blinks back. “Dunno. It could have been worse I suppose. It was just Mr Koffa from year eight minus, upstairs in the teachers’ common room. Turd was about to start in on us as well, and Eccar too, but this crack came from outside. They said it was two girls! Dressed in hoodies or something.”

“Who?” asks Mercy.

Misty shrugs. “Don’t really know.”

“Bet it’s Farthing and Keet.” Mercy is grinning.

Year ten Misty suddenly blinks and her mouth drops open. “Bet that’s why Yarra did that stupid thing!”

“What thing?” asks Mercy.

“We were in the atrium,” Misty tells them breathlessly. “You know, with all those men. Me and Yarra, and Carrel, my friend from my class. And Turd grabbed her elbow. And Yarra jerked her elbow, shouted at him, she even called him Turd out loud! I mean, right in front of everyone! She got two more H’s for it, but she’d been looking out the window, just before.”

“Must have done it those ones in the hoodies didn’t get seen! If it was them,” says Mercy.

“So she saved them, then?” says Falla. “Like Minty saved me?” Her voice sounds really small as she says this.

“And Carrel saved me, too,” Misty says. “Sort of. She told Koffa she’d take another H but he had to let me go!”

“And they’re all three together,” Mercy says. “Minty and Yarra and Carrel.”

“And Keet and Farthing cracking windows!” Misty looks flushed as thought hits her head. “Maybe we should go back and try and help them?”

As Misty says this, Falla’s face looks like she’s just seen a ghost. She tightly shakes her head.

“No we shouldn’t,” says Mercy. “And anyway, how? There’s no way in, and we’d just get caught, then what was the point of them saving you and Falla?”

Misty doesn’t really want to go back either. Why feed yourself to the lions like that? And besides, she’s out-voted. So they stay on the bus without any real plan. Past Folder Street shops, where shoppers get on. A woman gives their tiny skirts disapproving looks, then turns away and purses her mouth. The bus winds through the run-down Riddlertown industrial bit, where no-one gets on and no-one gets off. Through the narrow one-way streets coming up to the sea front, where the bendy bus gets stuck behind an unloading white van and the driver beeps his horn a load of times.

The bus pulls up at last across the wide open seafront road. There’s a turnabout there, but the driver gets a few minutes off. He opens all the doors and the three girls get out.

The north-west-facing South Pier stands out in a burst of midday sun. Leaden grey waves pile in underneath. Mercy Karp zips up her puffy jacket and Misty buttons her school blazer tight. Falla’s is too small - a hand-me-down from an older sister. She can’t get it buttoned.

“Will the funfair be open?” Mercy asks.

Misty shakes her head. “Think it closes after summer.”

“Should we go and look anyway?”

They start heading towards the near end of the pier. The turnstiles are open and unmanned. They walk through. The small funfair, close to the shore, is battened up though, but an ice cream stall is open at its end. They stare at the prices, then walk on, glum.

A group of boys is coming back their way. They’re younger, maybe eleven or twelve. They stare and stare at the three girls’ skirts, then start following behind once the girls have gone past. Keeping their distance, but giggling, pushing each other, laughing out loud.

They’re not the only ones to stare at the girls. A man as grey as the waves below holds his hat on his head as he walks with his wife. They’re staring at the sea as the schoolgirls pass. The woman’s hat is a gaudy orange, tight-rouched, quite ugly. But unlike her husband’s, it’s not threatening to lift. Big safety pins attach it to the woman’s perm. The couple are drifting in the same direction as the girls, on the left edge of the pier, while the giggling boys follow on over on the right hand side. A westerly wind blows in snatches of the couple’s speech.

“Disgusting skirts those young things wear.”

“Aye I’d noticed, Jenice. Short as they come.”

Misty glances back to see the woman wrinkling her features. Jenice tells her husband, “Don’t stare, Fred.”

The man says, “It’s that school. These ones must be in their bad books, luv.”

“Oh, you’d know about that then.”

“Just looking to see if there’s marks on their bums. That’s what them skirts are for, to show up any wallop and cane marks.”

It’s a long walk out. They know their tiny skirts are blowing all over. They hear Jenice the wife say, behind them, “Might as well just be wearing bloody knickers for all the cover those orange things give.”

“Aye I know,” says Fred. “I think that’s the point.”

Falla, Mercy and Misty aren’t going very fast, but nobody overtakes them from behind. It’s like they’ve got a little entourage. The boys on the right hand side keep nudging each others’ shoulders, giggling.

Right at the end, the pier swells to a circle. The octagonal Chorus Line building takes up the middle. The girls walk around. Mercy bends to see if she can see through a coin-slot stereo telescope, pointing to the right, out to sea and up along the coast.

“Have we got any money? I’ve got a bit but it isn’t in coins.”

Falla shakes her head. Misty asks, “What does it take?”

“Quarter.”

Misty fishes a quarter Dogger coin from a purse and hands it over. Mercy holds it to the coin slot. “Says five minutes,” she tells them.

“That’s a minute and forty seconds each.”

“Me first?” asks Mercy.

She slots in the coin. Moves the telescope right, then right again. “There’s a ship!” she says. She lifts her head and stares out to see. She can barely even see it. Then she crouches back down.

Misty starts looking around about her while Mercy does this. There are people at a table in the café behind. Two men are staring out. They look away when they see she’s seen them and pretend they weren’t looking.

When it’s her turn, she knows they’ll be looking at her bum. She says, “Falla, stand behind me.”

“Why?”

“So those men in the café don’t stare at my knickers.” She finds the ship and says, “Oh yeah! What is it, d’you think, a fishing boat?”

Falla’s turn seems to last a bit longer, like the time the thing works is more than five minutes. She finds herself staring at the old North Pier. It’s in a much worse state than the South Pier these days. “I can see loads of birds!” she says. “All around the other pier!”

When the coin runs out, the viewer clunks back closed.

“Do you want to get a cup of tea or something?” Misty asks. “I think I’ve got enough.”

It’s warmer inside where the wind isn’t blowing. There’s a seat in the sunlight, facing south west. The clouds are still moving fast, but there are fewer now. A woman in a waitress uniform comes up.

“Hello girls,” she says. “What’s the occasion? Sorry to ask - are those tiny things school skirts?”

The waitress must be in her late twenties. Her own skirt is white - semi-tight - and only comes half way down her thighs.

Misty nods her head. “We had to - go to school today.”

“What, sports or something? Hockey skirts?”

Mercy Karp says, “Kennigwort Orange. They’re sort of like punishment skirts.”

“Oh, my! Kennigwort Orange? That sounds actually quite chic. Not the Kennigwort bit, but ... they’re punishment skirts?”

“They’ve got three colours now. Just this year,” Misty tells her. “Blue’s the old one, that’s not been changed at all.”

“And those girls don’t get targeted,” Mercy Karp adds.

“Nice for some, eh?” says the woman.

Misty says, “Yellow are next. They come half way to the knees.”

“So, what - yellow’s like a slap on the wrist, or something?”

“More or less,” says Misty. “Cause there weren’t any yellows at the punishment today.”

“And they don’t have to do pervert gym like us,” says Mercy.

The woman does a double blink and quietly repeats the phrase, “Pervert gym. And you’ve just come from this punishment?”

“Not pervert gym,” says Mercy, “an H.”

“An H?” repeats the woman blankly.

Falla Bumber speaks up for the first time in the Café. “An H is a humiliation punishment,” she says.

The woman just stands there with her mouth half way open. She breathes in, sighs out. And asks, “What can I get you?”

“Think I’ve got enough for three cups of tea,” says Misty.

The woman shuts her mouth and slowly nods. “We do a nice cream tea. Thick scones, jam and cream. Whole pot of tea each.”

Misty’s already shaking her head. “We haven’t got enough for that.”

“You have today,” the waitress says. “Are there any more of you coming in?”

Misty is frowning. “Just us. They haven’t let anyone else out yet, just us three.”

“But we haven’t told anyone we’ve come here,” says Mercy.

“Good. Makes it cheaper. Three cream teas then? On the house. My dad owns this place, and I think he’s had a finger in yonder pie.” With a little finger flick, she indicates their skirts.

The girls don’t understand this, but their eyes are open wide. “Really?” Mercy asks.

“Just the one each,” the woman says, “but they’re nice. Maybe don’t tell your friends. Might be a one-off offer.”

“Yes, please!” says Mercy, then Misty, then Falla.