Beswitched by Kate Saunders Read Free Book Online Page B

stomped royally to the center of the top table. She said something that Flora thought might be Latin.Everyone murmured, “Amen.” Then Miss Powers-Prout said something that sounded like “
Bonjour memzel, assayer voo
.” There was an explosion of chairs scraping as everyone sat down.
    A bit of talking broke out round the table, but Flora, despite several years of French lessons and two holidays in France, couldn’t remember a word of French, except “
Coca-Cola, s’il vous plaît
” (and “
Pas devant les enfants
,” which was what Dad said to Granny when she started on about her husbands). She looked down at her breakfast. There was a pale, scummy cup of tea, a slice of white bread and butter and a bowl of slimy porridge.
    “Yuck,” she said, “what a carb-fest! Don’t they know anything about healthy eating? At home I have mangoes and nectarines, and sometimes a croissant—” She broke off. The whole table had gone quiet, and they were all staring at her. Consuela Carver sat opposite. She giggled nastily. Flora’s face burned.
    “Flora,” Virginia Denning said, from the end of the table, “
eel fo parlay fransay
.”
    “
Elle ay tray stoopeed, nez par
?” sneered the yellow-haired girl.
    Flora understood “stoopeed.” She decided she hated the Carver, and she absolutely knew it after breakfast, when everyone was surging out into the hall, and the cow brushed past her, saying loudly, “At home I have mangoes and nectarines—and a nice hot curry!”
    “Beast!” muttered Pete. “Take no notice.”
    Flora was still stinging from the “stoopeed” crack. “Youthree are supposed to be looking after me,” she snapped. “So you’d better keep her out of my way. ”
    The three girls looked at each other uneasily.
    Pogo said, “That might be tricky.”
    “I don’t care how tricky it is! Let me remind you, I didn’t ask to come here, and I refuse to spend my time being bullied by someone from the past who isn’t even real!”
    “Of course this is real!” cried Pete. “You’re the one who’s not real!”
    “I am real! I belong in the twenty-first century and you three are just—just—shadows!”
    “Shadows?” Pete scowled. Her gaze locked with Flora’s, and the two girls glared at each other. Pete was revving up for an argument. “You’re the shadowy one—when you appeared at the summoning, we could see right through you!”
    Flora was annoyed. “I’m sorry if you don’t like it, but the fact is that everything that happens to you has happened already—what you think of as now is really then—so you are sort of shadows, aren’t you?”
    “This is a shadow, is it?” Pete pinched Flora’s arm.
    “Ow!” Flora gasped. “That really hurt!”
    “So I’m real after all, am I?”
    “Don’t!” Dulcie blurted out.
    “Stow it, Pete,” Pogo said quietly. “You can’t fight with Flora. We got her into this mess, and we’re honor-bound to get her out of it. That’s all there is to it.”
    Pete lifted her head proudly and pressed her lips together. After a short silence, she muttered, “Sorry.”
    She was not sorry. Flora rubbed her arm angrily. Her chestfelt tight, and she was afraid she might cry. Pete could be horrible. Why didn’t Dulcie and Pogo stand up to her more?
    Dulcie took her hand again. “We have to go back upstairs now. We have fifteen minutes to make our beds and then it’s assembly. Come on.”
    Despite having all these servants, the school expected them to make their own beds. This wasn’t easy, with all the sheets and blankets, and the slippery “eiderdown” that looked like a duvet but wasn’t. Flora could not make it all look tidy. She gave up halfway through, and waited for Dulcie and Pogo to finish the job. Pete did not lift a finger to help—but she was struggling with her own bed, which was like a heap of washing. In the end, Dulcie and Pogo did all the work.
    After this, Flora was taken down to assembly, which happened in a huge room across