Gifted and Talented by Wendy Holden Read Free Book Online

chapel had no windows and was entirely unadorned apart from a few pale wood benches and, at the cone end, a wooden table supporting a tall, thin, figureless crucifix. One’s faith would have to be strong, Isabel thought.
    Her rucksack was pressing heavily on her shoulders now and, panting under the weight of her burden, Isabel went on, only to find herself back in the foyer. She had gone round in a circle, it seemed. She could not help noticing that, in the time she had been absent, A.R.S. Piggott had received yet another bunch of flowers.
    She adjusted the straps digging hard into her shoulders and set off again, in the other direction. This time she passed a couple of perfectly globular concrete meeting rooms and the closed door of the college bar. A neat sign read, ‘Branston Bar’. Someone had written underneath, in crazed marker, ‘The Turd’.
    Isabel grinned, remembering what Olly had said about the place.
    Quite suddenly, there it was: Room twenty. Miss I.J. Murray.
    The key was in the door, a metaphor not lost on Isabel. She took a deep breath, then turned it. She opened the door and, heart racing, stepped inside.
    Her first impression was that everything was pale. The carpet and curtains were beige, the desk was of blond wood and its chair had an oatmeal padded seat. It was small, but no smaller than her own room at home. Between the desk and the small bed opposite there was just about room to edge through sideways once she had closed the door and placed the rucksack against it.
    Isabel looked round. The cream walls were a blank canvas. She realised she could put up what she liked, be who she liked in this room. Who would she be? She stooped to stare at herself in the thin mirror fixed to the tall, slim cupboard by the door. Her own eyes looked back at her uncertainly. What now? they seemed to be saying.
    She put her head outside. The corridor was quiet and empty and Isabel felt a sudden loneliness. Was no one else coming? Perhaps they were lost in the wheels and spokes of the Gesamtkunstwerk , as she had been. She paused to read the name of her next door neighbour.
    A Miss E.S.M. Grey was in twenty-one, to the left. A cool, ladylike-sounding sort of person, Isabel thought, noting the three initials and reflecting that while she had never consciously thought about it before, she had imagined one middle name only to be the rule. But it was she, plain Isabel Jane plus surname, who was the exception here. On the other side, she experienced a faint stab of recognition. The Hon. A.R.S. Piggott. That name again. Why did she feel she knew it?
    A commotion at the end of the corridor made her jump. Someone was coming. Seized with shyness, Isabel darted back inside her room and closed the door softly.
    A light, breathy, girl’s voice, sounding relieved: ‘Oh, look; here it is! Mummy! Daddy! Room twenty-one. It’s here!’
    Room twenty-one, Isabel was thinking. So this was Miss E.S.M. Grey.
    The sound of a turning key echoed in the concrete corridor.
    ‘Where do you want this box, Ellie?’ A man’s voice; the father, Isabel guessed. She suppressed a sudden wave of longing.
    As an adopted child, Isabel was not in the habit of thinking of her birth parents. It felt disloyal and, besides, there was nothing to think of, no peg to hang anything on, no picture, no sound. Only Mum was real and she hadn’t let her come. As the waves of self-criticism rose once more within, Isabel stared at the door and felt that she never did anything right.
    The door was slightly ajar and she could see movement outside. Figures. After a few assorted glimpses, Isabel could put together the following: a girl with long fair hair in a long blue cardigan, skinny jeans and Ugg boots; a man with claret cords and a blue pullover; and a woman – the mother, presumably, who seemed to have dressed up more for the occasion – in a brown-printed wrap-dress and sandals with aquamarine heels. Isabel heard her, now, exclaim, ‘The Hon. A.R.S. Piggott!