The Following Girls by Louise Levene Read Free Book Online Page A

Well done, Eliza. I’m sure that you ’ (the tiniest telltale emphasis) ‘will be a fine example to the younger girls. So important.’
    Mrs Mostyn preferred not to read out the sports news herself: always a lowering change of tone after Gladsome Minds , she felt, and in any case it was good public speaking practice for the sixth form. Today’s results had been delegated to the school’s games captain and Julia Smith, now seventeen and darling of the Lower Sixth, was standing alongside the Mostyn, waiting to divulge. She would have scored quite high on the Bryony Scale, noted Baker: tall and slim with that wavy auburn hair and perfect white teeth – but ‘dress’ would have let her down. Ever since her triumph in the tennis tournament she seemed to be forever playing or refereeing or coaching or cheering on some game or other, tricked out in a sort of mongrel kit. This morning it was a divided skirt, leotard and hockey boots finished off with her grandmother’s old Fawcett cricket sweater, a hangover from the pioneering 1920s when all sports were fair game and the domestic science kitchen was a carpentry workshop.
    ‘She wants a cravat with that,’ hissed Stottie as she sized up the ensemble, ‘or spats.’
    Over the sweater Julia wore a fashionably junior-sized blazer, heavy with its six-year crop of enamel: tennis (natch), deportment, netball, a yellow ‘School’ badge and all four personal survival medals which proved that she could, if required, retrieve bricks from deep water or make a rudimentary float from a pair of Winceyette pyjamas – so likely. As the orderly queue for lifeboats formed on the promenade deck to the sound of ‘Nearer My God To Thee’ and the steady scrape of deckchairs being rearranged, there Julia would be in the icy North Atlantic, personally surviving on a balloon of stripy brushed cotton.
    The lower school inter-house netball semi-finals had been won by Fry and Stanhope (Curie and Nightingale being rubbish at team games). The head girl, in pride of place at Mrs Mostyn’s right, tried her best not to cheer too keenly because the head girl was also head of Fry House. This development had been unforeseen and did not, technically, contravene the Fawcett Code but it had smelled a lot like pluralism to Queenie: ‘Or do I mean nepotism?’ she asked when the double promotion was announced. ‘One of those. Greedy , either way. Head girl and house captain? She’ll be invading Poland next.’
    Fry and Stanhope. Who the hell was Stanhope, anyway? Baker had once put a motion to the School Council suggesting an update of the house names. Her cousin’s school had houses named after the conquerors of Everest said Baker, face suspiciously straight. Mrs Mostyn, who had been the presiding member of staff at the meeting, pointed out that Mildred Fawcett, who christened the original houses in 1900, wanted specifically to celebrate (Mrs Mostyn could no more split an infinitive than dangle a participle) specifically to celebrate feminine achievement. Fair enough, conceded Baker, but could they not celebrate something a bit more up-to-date: like four great women composers, say, or artists? Mrs Mostyn had looked at the girl very sharply. What a ghastly little smart-aleck she was. Was she being facetious? Surely not, but Baker’s proposal had kept her awake that night just the same. She managed the four artists eventually (just do-able if one allowed sculpture and included Kate Greenaway and Beatrix Potter) but composers ? Not possible.
    Julia still held the floor. The previous afternoon’s league match had been against St Ursula’s who had made mincemeat of the home side. Julia Smith might have finessed the odd tennis trophy but Mildred Fawcett had never really been an especially sporty school. The small suburban site had only space for three courts, hockey was a twenty-minute hike away and the results were invariably ‘disappointing’. Julia certainly looked disappointed. Stephanie Stott and