Gifted and Talented by Wendy Holden Read Free Book Online Page A

She’s got the room next-door-but-one to you, Ells. You don’t think it could be the Amber Piggott, do you?’
    ‘Amber Piggott? Never heard of her,’ the father said.
    ‘She’s been in the papers all summer. She’s an heiress, got an incredibly rich father; he owns department stores, I think. She’s a sort of “it girl”, very glamorous, kind of the new Tara Palmer-Tomkinson, but even more so, if you see what I mean.’
    ‘How awful,’ said the father uncharitably. ‘The old one was bad enough.’
    Ellie’s door closed now, and Isabel was unable to hear anything else. She sat back on the bed and stared at the creamy blankness of the opposite wall.
    So that was who the Hon. A.R.S. Piggott was. She remembered the woman’s tabloid on the train, the picture of the glamorous blonde laughing in the limo and something about her starting a degree in literature somewhere. She would never have imagined it was here, Isabel thought. But being spectacularly rich and glamorous didn’t mean you couldn’t be clever too.
    Voices out in the corridor broke into her thoughts. Ellie’s parents could be heard saying goodbye, but Isabel did not look through the hole again; goodbyes really were private.
    She busied herself with unpacking. She could hear the faint thumping of music through the walls. She thought she could hear Ellie’s voice too, singing along, and there were busy scraping and thudding sounds as if she were arranging her belongings as well.
    Isabel’s rucksack contained mostly clothes and once they been put away the room looked similar to how it had when she had started. She decided to strike out, find the kitchen and explore the bathrooms. The bathrooms were at the end of the corridor; she remembered passing them on her way down.
    Opening her door again, she set off along the soundless corridor. It was odd how dead and strange concrete felt beneath one’s feet, even concrete under a carpet.
    The kitchen was at the end, as seventies as the rest of the décor, with rather battered off-white units containing water glasses, plain white plates and mugs. There was a large steel sink with a ridged draining area and a white metal stove with round black electric rings scuffed and faded in the middle as if they had seen a great deal of use over the years. There was a window with a view over the college gardens; they looked rather scrubby and unloved, Isabel was thinking. Someone was working out there, though: a woman in a funny-looking purple hat . . .
    Someone entering the kitchen from behind made her turn round suddenly. A girl in skinny jeans, Ugg boots and with one hand plunged deeply into the pockets of a long, baggy pale blue cardigan: Ellie, obviously.
    She swished her long fair hair and smiled. ‘Hi,’ she said in the light, rather insubstantial voice that Isabel already knew. ‘I’m Ellie.’
    ‘Isabel.’
    ‘Oh, you’re the girl next door,’ Ellie smiled. ‘Fancy a coffee in my room?’
    Ellie was reading history. Her room was a revelation; she seemed to have eradicated all institutional touches. The bare bones were the same as Isabel’s, but it could not have looked more different.
    ‘Oh, I’ve had years of practice; horrid girls’-school bedrooms and all that,’ Ellie said breezily, as Isabel, clutching a steaming mug with the BBC logo admired the colourful embroidered cotton throw on the bed and the fringed, sequinned and patchworked Indian cushions piled on top amid a couple of teddies, evidently worn by love and time. One had an eye missing, the other lacked an ear but they were, Ellie had rather touchingly confided, her absolute favourite possessions.
    She had strung pink fairy lights along the top of the wardrobe and customised the biscuit-coloured shade fixed to the centre of the ceiling with magenta tissue paper. The general restful, souk-like atmosphere was completed by a thick, white, scented candle glowing on the desk and emitting a delicious citrus smell. Inhaling it, drawing in the