Welcome to St Darlstone!

It’s the summer of 1935 and holidaymakers are flocking to St Darlstone’s magnificent lido on the British coast!

With little hope of finding a husband, no-nonsense Natalie lives for teaching, until she finds herself out of a job courtesy of her best friend Delphi. But if she can bring her rigorous physical fitness programme to the people of St Darlstone, maybe there’s a chance she can start again?

So Natalie takes on the Lido Girls. With Delphi’s handsome brother, Jack, on the scene, and Delphi’s desperate struggle to defy her overbearing parents and follow her dreams, Natalie must find the courage to face up to her own fears, and realise what she truly wants in life…

The Lido Girls

Allie Burns

ONE PLACE. MANY STORIES

Contents

Cover

Blurb

Title Page

Author Bio

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Acknowledgements

Author’s Note

Reader Questions

Copyright

ALLIE BURNS

grew up by the seaside and now lives in Kent with her husband and two children. The Lido Girls is her first novel.

For photos and research that inspired the story go to Pinterest @Allie_Burns1. To find out about upcoming projects visit www.allie-burns.com or follow her on Twitter @Allie_Burns1.

To Alan Ashwell

Chapter One

The naughty boy

After gambolling to the edge of the board, the diver bounces from it in a seated position, using her behind to propel her into the air.

Natalie turned the key in her bedroom door, once for the latch, twice for the deadbolt. She tugged at the depressed handle, and only when the door was clearly locked tight did she drop to her knees and pull out a package from beneath her narrow bed.

Inside the cardboard box, cradled in crinkly tissue paper, was a white V-necked blouse adorned with the black silhouette of a lady mid leap, and beneath it a pair of black satin shorts. The uniform of the Women’s League of Health and Beauty. This morning’s special delivery.

She held the shorts in front of her. Gosh, there’s nothing of them, but… She smoothed her fingertips across the fabric and in one swift movement she was standing and unfastening the buttons on the shoulder of her gymslip. Her navy pleated one-piece, a uniform she wore every day, made her who she was and had done for more than ten years as both student, teacher and now Vice Principal. She couldn’t help but see her gymslip as a relic of the past compared to these glossy upstarts, harbingers of a new era, masquerading as a pair of shorts.

Is that what she was becoming herself: a relic?

The curtains! Before undressing any further, she reached across her bed to pull them shut and as she did she saw Margaret Wilkins cutting through the fir trees at the edge of the empty playing field. She had a book under her arm. Now there was a young lady who wasn’t living in the past.

In Natalie’s many years of physical training she’d not yet come across a young lady so dedicated to following her own fancies, wherever they may take her. Margaret Wilkins was a dreamer who thought nothing of skipping anatomy class because it was irrelevant, in her eyes, choosing instead to sit by the river and read a good romance novel. She was a girl who obfuscated her sporting talent with devilry.

But it wouldn’t end well. The college didn’t reward individuality; the system didn’t want change. You either met the expected standard or you were sent packing, and when it happened to Margaret Wilkins, which seemed more and more likely, Natalie feared that she wouldn’t be able to save her.

Natalie considered the gymslip hanging around her waist. She was one to talk about breaking the rules. She should be in her office dictating her weekly letters to parents. But how could she be expected to concentrate on her work when the insistent call of that package had been whispering, no yelling, to her from under her bed since it had been delivered that morning? You’d better be quick then, before someone notices you’re gone.

In the muted daylight she let the heavy tunic drop to her ankles, peeled off her thick woollen stockings, slipped on the blouse and then stepped, barefoot, into the shorts.

She splayed her hands over her exposed legs, redeployed her fingertips to read the zigzagged Braille of the elasticated seams that pinched against the tops of her thighs. Then she twisted her torso to get a good view of the shorts across her behind. She smoothed them again and then lifted her knees to skip lightly on the spot. The fabric glided across her skin with an elegance that spread to her state of mind, her movements, and she added a light bounce at the top of each skip.

Wonderful. But not meant for the likes of her, not really. They were as likely to introduce a uniform like this here at Linshatch College of Physical Education as they were to have a beauty contest; and if she got caught wearing these clothes, well she’d be in more trouble than Margaret Wilkins.

Angling her hand mirror this way and that, she inspected her legs in the shorts. Athletic, sturdy and of course, dove white. She hadn’t embraced the new fad for sunbathing; she much preferred to be on the move.

There was a knock at the door and the hand mirror fell to the linoleum floor with a clatter, but she hadn’t the time to flip it over and see if it had survived. She dived into bed instead, eyeing the keyhole, with nowhere to hide in her room but under the bedclothes.

‘Miss Flacker, are you there?’ It was her secretary, Miss Bull. ‘Miss Lott wants to see you in her office.’

‘Very good. I’ll be there right away,’ she called back, hoping Miss Bull wouldn’t think it odd that she hadn’t opened the door to her. ‘I was just er…’ There was no explanation to be had. ‘I’ll be with Miss Lott right away.’

*

The sight of Olympia in tram-sized lettering made the hairs on Natalie’s arms stand on end. She’d seen pictures in the newspaper last year; Mosley’s British Fascist party rally had filled every inch under that hall’s giant glass roof. Now it was the turn of the Women’s League of Health and Beauty.

Tributaries of the League’s members jostled into her as they left the station in one giggling river, and were lured across the busy London street to the exhibition hall.

She paused at the top of the underground station’s steps. It’s not too late to make a run for it. She wasn’t sure what she feared the most: Miss Lott finding out she’d come here today or her friend Delphi’s disappointment if she let her down. She curled her hand into her satchel, felt around for the satin shorts and rubbed them between her thumb and forefinger.

Delphi waited for her by the station entrance. She faced the imposing red-bricked Olympia across the road. Keen to make a good impression today, her friend wore an asymmetrical red felt hat and the feathery tendrils of her hatpin danced in the breeze. Natalie watched as she blotted the bridge of her nose with a puff, then lowered her hand to steady herself on the wall.

Natalie shook her head. Perhaps she should have done more to discourage Delphi from pursuing her idea of becoming a teacher for this increasingly popular movement. Delphi’s health made training for a career in physical education difficult, but many years ago they’d made a pact to support one another in their professional life, and she’d be true to her word. Today she would see just what this group was really like, and whether they were a suitable target for her friend’s ambitions.

The compact clicked shut. Delphi turned her head; her poppy-red lips spread to a smile.

‘There you are, Natty.’ She untangled herself from a group of younger girls in her path. ‘You look as though you’ve just arrived at your own funeral.’

‘Well, there is a risk that you bringing me here has murdered my career.’ As she saw Delphi bite her bottom lip, she winked to let her know that she’d been teasing. They linked arms, and joined the stream of women to cross the road.

‘This is going to be an education for you. The old establishment is being shaken up, Natty. Imagine if you led that change.’

‘I don’t think the Board of Education would listen to my ideas.’ Natalie sighed as they reached a standstill at the back of the queue. ‘They’ll argue that their way of doing things has worked very nicely for decades, and it will continue to do so for many more. And they’re probably right.’

‘Well, today you’ll see a different way of doing things.’ Delphi steadied her hat as she tilted her head around the older ladies in front of them, searching for acquaintances further up the queue.

They would see and experience enough today to feed the volley of correspondence between the two of them for at least a month.

‘And,’ Delphi continued, ‘I think you’ll be impressed. You’ve always been bothered by the way the Phys Ed colleges exclude girls like the ones here today. The League is for everyone.’

It was true; they were in the main privileged girls who trained at her physical education college, and with only five establishments in the whole country places were in demand.

‘Do you know what else, Natty?’ Delphi poked her in the ribs. ‘You’re going to see how much fun exercise can be.’

‘But we get enjoyment from playing lacrosse or cricket, or diving, and you know that.’ Natalie thought of the students’ ruddy faces out on the playing field on a frosty February morning. How could Delphi say that they didn’t have fun? She wrote to her often enough to report on the exhilaration she’d felt in the heat of competition, how the bond between the team became as present in the air as the steam from their mouths.

‘You did promise to give this a go today.’ Delphi looked at her closely.

‘Of course, if you’re serious about training with these people then I want to see what they’re all about.’ But Natalie’s approval was the least of Delphi’s worries. Her ill health put her under her mother’s control, and Natalie couldn’t imagine Delphi’s mother would ever agree to her latest idea. ‘I just hope it isn’t frivolous.’ She’d been taught that exercise developed good character in testing circumstances in the words of Madame Forsberg, her college’s founder. ‘I am worried about the lack of science in their work.’

‘Yes, I was a little as well, but times are changing, Natty. You said it yourself, the Board is too wedded to its way of doing things.’

‘I didn’t exactly say that.’ Natalie back-tracked on whatever she might have said in her letters after a bad day at Linshatch. The Board thought the Women’s League a bunch of cranks, and called their work unscientific and dangerous. It would take an event as major as another war to persuade them to consider another approach. ‘Let’s just see whether I think this is right for you.’

‘Just don’t be too sensible.’ She waved, spotting a friend from her training class, and left Natalie alone in the queue.

‘There’s nothing wrong with being sensible,’ Natalie called after her. The woman in front, a good deal older than Natalie, but with curls as luscious as Ginger Rogers’, turned to look her up and down.

Natalie was glad she had a moment alone to let the sting of Delphi’s remark fade. Yes, she had been prudent when she’d invested her father’s inheritance in her teacher training. It had meant she could support herself, but being responsible wasn’t always easy, or much fun.

‘Quick! The hall is nearly full,’ Delphi said as she returned. ‘They’re expecting two and a half thousand. That’s double last year’s rally.’

Delphi hooked her by the arm and swept her past the snaking queue. ‘My friend Francine is saving us a place near the front.’

Adorned with black kohl, stem-thin eyebrows, Francine took Natalie by surprise with a forceful hug more appropriate for a long-lost friend. Just as they passed through the arched doorway, a man edged by with a sign: house full; then his arm formed a barrier just behind Natalie. The whines and tuts of disappointed women faded behind them. Francine’s affections, Natalie realised, were short-lived. She’d already run on ahead, leaving the two of them to descend into the bowels of Olympia together.

The open hall teemed with women changing into their Women’s League of Health and Beauty uniform. Too late, she realised if she’d put the shorts on under her clothes she wouldn’t have needed to reveal her underwear.

‘Did you remember to shave your armpits?’ Delphi asked.

Natalie nodded.

‘Did you apply deodorant?’

‘Could you be a little more discreet?’ she hissed. But there was such a din that only those changing right next to them would hear anyway. She could hardly make out her own voice. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, regretting the tone she’d taken and seeing the funny side to it now. ‘My armpits are in perfect order.’ The laughter at Delphi’s fastidiousness loosened her muscles. The tension she felt from stripping off in a busy room lifted.

An older woman, with flesh spilling over the top of her worn girdle, shunted away from them. Did she come home from a hard day’s work to soak flower petals with baking soda and soap flakes, too? Had her family dined on bread so she could spend her housekeeping on two and six for her annual League membership?

‘Do you think the deodorant matters?’ Natalie asked, looking about to check no one was looking at her legs in the shorts. ‘The League’s instructions for appearance could put undue pressure on the members, don’t you think?’

‘Not at all,’ the older woman butted in, ‘how often do you think I get to think about myself and how I look? Not very, I can tell you!’

None of her college students gave a hoot about how their hair was fixed, or whether their gymslip showed their legs in the right manner – well except Margaret Wilkins perhaps. The rest were focused on the victory, on building character.

She looked about her while she waited for Delphi. Compared to these ladies her reputation at the college for being concerned with her appearance was nothing. Her waved jaw-length hair, gripped back from her face at the crown, looked really as dour as a schoolmarm’s bun.

Delphi was blotting her nose again. Her hairdo seemed so impractical, with her blond locks fastened in a complicated twist at the nape of her neck. But that wasn’t what concerned Natalie. For some inexplicable reason her friend’s nose always bubbled with tiny beads of sweat just before one of her sleeping fits. Extremes of emotion, including excitement, were just the things that caused her to black out.

At the sight of the sweat on her friend’s nose, apprehension descended on Natalie. What if Delphi does have a sleeping fit in the midst of all these women?

‘Are you sure this is a good idea?’ she whispered in her ear.

‘Please don’t,’ Delphi said with her usual soft defiance, powdering her nose to blot away the perspiration. ‘I’m tired of my health holding me back.’ She had slipped off her dress and was smoothing down the white V-necked blouse beneath. ‘What about your hankie?’

‘Blast.’

Natalie had forgotten the handkerchief. The League had been very clear that it must be pressed and placed in the left leg of her elasticated satin shorts. Not that there was much room for anything inside those shorts.

‘You’ll have to borrow mine if you get upset. They’re going to pay tribute to Prunella’s mother.’

Prunella Stack, the founder’s recently bereaved daughter, was now in charge of the League.

They followed the chattering girls through to the Grand Hall. The hairs on her arms stood tall again. The sweeping latticed glass ceiling, way above them in the heavens, was both a hothouse that at once amplified the chatter of two and a half thousand excited women, while also bringing them closer to the serenity of the clouds above on this grey April day.

She threaded an arm through Delphi’s and they smiled at one another, sharing the thrill of the moment, the tingle in the air.

A troop of women brushed past them as they marched up and down behind banners from their home towns or counties; first Portsmouth went by, then Yorkshire was followed by a rowdy group from Yeovil. On either side of the central concourse – the same dimensions as a swimming pool, though broader and longer than anything she’d ever seen – were steep-sided seats for the spectators: the children, sisters, brothers and husbands of the women demonstrating today.

‘I want to be near the front,’ Delphi said, ‘as close to Prunella as possible.’

Natalie held back, noticing the flashbulbs coming from the front. Prunella had been the main topic of many of Delphi’s letters, but they had to be practical and not get too close. They’d both told lies so they could be there today. It would do neither of them any good to find themselves pictured in the press, nor would it help Delphi’s career prospects if she had a sleeping fit right at the foot of the stage.

Delphi gave up on pushing through when an instruction came for them to sit down. They noisily lowered to the cool concrete floor and sat cross-legged. Delphi and Natalie squeezed into a row in the midst of a group of Scots wearing tartan ribbons on their shoulders, about half a dozen lines from the very front. They had an excellent view of the stage and the three-piece jazz band, but were safe from the photographers, and hidden from view should Delphi take a turn.

Natalie lifted her head and looked all the way behind her at the rows and rows of ladies, all in matching white shirts and black shorts. All with their hair set in waves.

For all their uniformity, the women inside the outfits were much more of a mixture than she’d expected. At her college there was a definite sort of girl who thrived there – she’d been one herself – usually wealthy, or as in her case, with a father in a respectable profession.

These ladies weren’t of one sort at all. Some were their age – surplus women as the press liked to label them, women like she and Delphi, in their thirties, still single and not much hope of that ever changing. The loss of so many men in the war had seen to that. Not that she’d ever give up the hope of finding a husband. Others around them wore more lines about the eyes, and had rounder hips. War widows, no doubt.

All of them, whatever their age or circumstance, had come more out of the need for company than exercise and so for that reason she should fit right in, but still she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was wrong to have come.

Prunella, with glowing skin, nape-length bouncy curls and a radiant smile, welcomed them all to this special memorial rally. The rumour in the Phys Ed corridors was that first the Women’s League founder, Mary Bagot Stack, and now her daughter, Prunella, the so-called Perfect Woman, had made themselves rich on a system of exercise with no grounding in science and no discipline whatsoever. They were simply profiting from lonely women like her and Delphi.

Prunella cocked a hip and bent a long leg as if she were chatting to a friend, not addressing a packed hall. As she spoke she maintained a smile at all times. Even as she wrapped her lips around an ‘o’, the rest of her face pulled the other way.

It was the newspapers that had given her the moniker the Perfect Woman. Natalie and Delphi had discussed in their letters what constituted perfect. The journalists who’d come up with the name were undoubtedly male but even so, Natalie had expected Prunella to be much more athletic. She showed good leadership though and she had charisma too. Perfect or not, she had captivated the Grand Hall.

Wherever she moved at least one photographer crouched in front of her, the flashbulb illuminating her every few moments. Delphi swooned, her red lips stretched to their limits by her smile. She was so happy and that had to be a good thing. Her illness had a habit of ruling her life.

Prunella’s voice echoed about the hall as she told them of her mother’s dying wish. How she’d hoped her work with the Women’s League of Health and Beauty, and her aims for spreading peace and cooperation, would continue.

A bugle blew behind Prunella. The resounding cheers faded as the lights dimmed, and their collective heads bowed. Delphi had warned her this display would be sad and yet still a tingle travelled along her spine. The tribute to Prunella’s mother was to be the Representation of War that she’d helped choreograph for the previous year’s rally.

First came the deathly rattle of the drum. Next the women erupted into the shrill whistle of Tipperary. Then the drums retaliated with a rat-a-tat-tat, before the assault of the bugles and then the women won the battle with the unity of their voices. The hairs on her arms betrayed her for the third time that day as a slow procession of women criss-crossed the stage; some bandaged, one a white strip bound around her eyes, feeling the air in front of her.

The sight of one woman as she propped up another, drunk with pain, clogged her throat with a fist-sized lump. She’d imagined her two brothers had been there for each other at the end in that same way. The idea that they hadn’t died alone had been a story she’d had to believe. One small island of consolation in an ocean of grief.

She wished she’d remembered to bring that damned handkerchief to tuck in her left short leg now. Delphi stroked the back of Natalie’s arm and then opened her palm to proffer her own crumpled hankie. The two of them held hands while Natalie blotted her eyes.

‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ Delphi whispered.

*

The dance demonstration came to an end and they all began to march in formation. Each large group of them making up the spokes of a wheel. It put her in mind of the photograph she’d seen in the Times of last year’s Nazi rally in Nuremberg where they’d formed a human swastika.

‘What do you think?’ Delphi asked as they marched, knees high.

‘It’s more ordered than I expected, but it does feel rather that they’ve plucked their ideas out of the air.’

‘Just look how happy everyone is.’ They both checked along the line as they rotated.

They often came to blows on this matter. Delphi’s ideas were a little more abstract when it came to the benefits of physical exercise.

Delphi had stopped a few times to catch her breath during the dance and now as they marched she didn’t look too well. She smiled and opened her eyes wide each time Natalie caught her gaze, as if to say, there’s nothing to see here. But her nose was beading in sweat; her forget-me-not blue eyes had clouded over. All was clearly not well.

As the hall full of women sat to watch the choreographed cabaret on the stage, Natalie saw Delphi’s knees buckle. She made up her mind in that instant to take advantage of the pause.

‘What on earth are you doing?’ Delphi asked as Natalie took her hand and led her down a covered walkway that stretched from the stage area and through to a dark corridor lined with doors. ‘Peggy St Lo choreographed that routine,’ she slurred. ‘I want to see it.’

‘You don’t look well.’ Natalie swung open the first door that she came to. She had just enough time to flick the electric light switch and illuminate the drab clothes hanging from a hat stand and the horizontal mirror edged with light bulbs, before Delphi’s legs buckled again. Like a puppet with its strings cut, sleep triumphed and she piled to the floor. Natalie slowed her fall as much as she could and then crouched beside her. There was a tatty knitted polo neck on the back of the dressing table chair, which she smoothed over her.

Natalie watched and waited. She was still the same beautiful Delphi in every way except her jaw was clenched, and she was asleep on the floor. Natalie didn’t touch her. Sometimes in these fits she was actually still awake, but trapped by the paralysis of her own body. Natalie’s touch would be leaden to her.

She looked at her watch. So much for the quick escape after the rally. She’d promised Miss Lott that she’d check in the girls at the college’s ten o’clock curfew, but Delphi would be in no fit state to get the tram home by herself. The changing room had its own telephone on a stand, next to a vase of carnations. That was their first bit of luck because she was going to have to call up Delphi’s younger brother, Jack.

*

‘Oh, I’m terribly sorry.’ Prunella Stack twitched her head and backed out of the room, checking the name plaque on the door. ‘I thought I was in my changing room.’

‘No, no, it is. That’s to say…’ Natalie found herself unusually tongue-tied.

‘I was feeling a bit light-headed…’ Delphi explained. Her voice still groggy with sleep.

‘…So I brought her inside for a rest.’

Delphi had come around twenty minutes ago and she’d grown cold and was now wearing the polo-neck jumper while they waited for her brother, Jack, to arrive and drive them home.

‘Oh, you poor dear,’ Prunella cooed as Delphi and Natalie introduced themselves and shook hands. There was a kerfuffle at the door. A photographer tried to push his way in; the flashbulb went, and a woman with dark hair sent him packing.

‘These newspaper photographers become a nuisance after a while,’ Prunella explained. ‘You were taken ill during the demonstration, I recall? I saw you leave; you looked terribly pale.’

‘Oh it was nothing.’ Delphi flushed red. ‘I was giddy with excitement. I want to train with you, you see.’

Natalie made for the door. They would wait for Jack in the corridor. She regretted sneaking out of the college to come here as it was; to now be meeting Prunella Stack was one dance with the devil too many. But Delphi hadn’t even let go of the woman’s hand. She was under her spell, and at close quarters Natalie could see why.

‘Well I hope we didn’t make you overexert yourself with the demonstration.’ Prunella wore a look of concern as she asked her Aunt Norah to fetch both of the visitors a glass of water and told Natalie to sit down. ‘Our teachers are a lot fitter than they might look. It’s all too easy to expect too much of our members.’

Natalie laughed at Prunella’s suggestion; she couldn’t help herself. Delphi nudged her in the ribs and she stopped, but it was too late. She had piqued Prunella’s interest. The other woman leant against the dressing table, her long slender legs and bare feet stretching out in front of her, her face upturned and serious, inviting Natalie to explain her mirth.

‘I’m a physical training teacher, that’s all,’ Natalie explained, but the sharp gaze coming from Delphi told her that her tone was a little too heavy with pomposity. ‘Actually I’m the Vice Principal at Linshatch College of Physical Education. I suppose, I just wouldn’t say…’ She stopped herself before she said too much and offended Prunella.

‘What wouldn’t you say?’ Prunella enquired after a moment’s silence.

‘Well…no…it’s nothing.’

‘I’m interested,’ Prunella said. ‘You don’t have to worry about offending us.’

She thought of her promise to Delphi to give it a go, and keep an open mind, and she had done that. Besides, Prunella’s smile was warm and friendly and made her feel there was nothing to fear in being honest.

‘Very well then.’ She cleared her throat. ‘I was surprised at what you said about your instructors, that’s all. Your activities – I just didn’t find them terribly invigorating.’

‘I see,’ Prunella said with a sniff. The smile had evaporated. Delphi delivered another nudge in her side.

Aunt Norah, whose jet-black hair rose up from her forehead like the fat end of a cream horn, had returned with two glasses of water and had overheard Natalie’s credentials. ‘You probably know that we’re trying to gain national recognition for the League,’ she said, addressing Natalie, ‘but we’re finding the Board of Education is rather a closed shop and wedded to the methods employed by the colleges.’

‘I’m sure Natty could help…’

‘I’m sorry, but I really couldn’t.’ Natalie clasped her hands in front of her. Their pact to support one another’s ambitions didn’t extend to sabotaging one career for the advancement of the other.

‘Could you offer any advice?’ Norah pressed her.

Natalie looked to Delphi. She was just smiling and encouraging her to say something charming, but if these women deserved anything, then it was the truth.

‘The problem is that the establishment puts a lot of faith in science and it’s because of that scientific grounding that we know that our methods work, you see.’ She paused. Aunt Norah had folded her arms at that last remark. ‘I was curious to come along today. I must admit I have heard some suspicious rumours about you, but Delphi is quite taken with her classes and wants to train as an instructor. And I did have a lovely day out…’ She paused again, hoping the conversation might take a different turn, but they both still looked at her with expectation. ‘At the end of it all, I am left wondering whether without rigour and discipline, is this really educational?’

Prunella’s smile had grown over-ripe and was beginning to sour.

‘The ladies have had fun today.’ Prunella almost punched out the words. ‘You said it yourself. Our classes lift spirits and let women express themselves through movement…’

‘Absolutely,’ Delphi murmured.

‘Mmm.’ Natalie scratched her neck. ‘But none of that is…’ Stalled by the fear of making things worse she came back to the same word ‘…educational. I mean what has anybody actually learned today?’

‘Oh, Natty!’ Delphi shook her head. ‘You were moved to tears today.’

‘Yes but that’s not exercise as I know it… Miss Stack, in my view it’s bordering on artistic poppycock.’

She saw Prunella’s eyes widen.

‘What she means to say is…’

‘It’s all right.’ Prunella held up a hand. ‘We come from different worlds. And we’ve heard worse, much worse. Our methods are based on exercises used in India for many hundreds of years. What’s more, the number of women here today means more to us than the support of the Board of Education. Now, if you think you’re feeling quite well,’ she said to Delphi, ‘perhaps you and your friend wouldn’t mind…’

Keen to comply with Prunella’s request, and mindful that she’d spoiled what should have been Delphi’s moment to create a good impression, Natalie rushed to the door and opened it while looking behind for Delphi to follow, and in doing so she collided with the chest of a man in the corridor.

‘Steady on, Natty!’ The man held her in his arms. It took her a moment to realise it was Delphi’s brother, Jack, come to take them home. ‘Knight in shining armour at your service.’ He winked.

She pulled herself free, stepping back to take him in. This was the first time she’d seen him since he’d returned from living in America, and what a difference those seven years had made. His hair – more of a white blond than she’d remembered – flopped forwards over the side of his forehead and lightly fringed his lively eyes. She appeared to be frozen to the spot by the blue of them.

‘Hello, Jack,’ Delphi said with a sigh. ‘Are you here to take Cinderella back to her scullery?’

‘Keep the jumper.’ Prunella addressed Delphi, and then as Natalie reached the door, she said, ‘Discipline or not, we run the League on good intentions and a rather frayed shoestring. In regards to the things you’ve heard, I’d be grateful if you could quash any rumours you hear about us profiteering. We actually barely turn a profit at all.’

They walked down the corridor shrouded in an uncomfortable silence, Jack looking from one of them to the other as if trying to guess who would speak first.

‘Mother’s snake venom didn’t work then?’ he tried a joke, a reference to Mrs Mulberry’s attempt at finding a cure for Delphi’s illness with a tonic she had purchased from the reptile curator at London Zoo. Neither of them found it funny.

‘That was just the foot up my career needed,’ Delphi said eventually, once they were far enough away to be out of earshot. ‘I can’t possibly apply for a place on their instructor training course now.’

‘I’ll put it right,’ Natalie called after her as Delphi stomped on ahead and then slowed again as her tiredness caught a hold of her.

‘And how will you do that, exactly?’ Delphi shook her head in exasperation and took Jack’s arm to steady her.

Natalie had no idea, but she was going to have to think of something.

Chapter Two

The swallow dive

The diver arches her back and holds her arms out from her sides until she is close to the water.

‘It took me a moment to recognise you back there,’ Jack told her as they continued in darkness down another tree-tunnelled Kentish lane. They’d dropped Delphi – still angry – safely back home, taking her straight up to her room to avoid her parents and their guests in the drawing room. Now for this final leg it was just the two of them.

She thought about it for a moment.

‘What do you mean?’ She caught a glimpse of Woodham’s motor repair yard. They weren’t far from the college now.

‘You didn’t look how I remembered, I suppose. You looked like one of those women you were with, actually. You both did.’

‘I’m really not a part of that set.’

And nor is that likely to ever happen. Artistic poppycock! What a thing to say.

‘Your hair looks different, you’re wearing make-up, but actually…’ he nodded his head ‘…yes, that’s it. I think it was the shorts that threw me.’

She supposed she did take more care over her appearance these days.

‘What I’m really saying is that I had no idea you had such great legs.’

He laughed as he said it and lifted an arm from the steering wheel to defend himself from the blow she launched at his head. America had done nothing to quell his confidence, or his flirting.

‘And what about me?’

‘What about you?’ She turned her head away from him to feel the heat on her cheeks with the back of her hand.

‘Did you recognise me?’ he asked.

‘Of course. You haven’t changed a bit.’

‘Oh.’ He sounded disappointed and she wished she’d told him the truth – that she’d been struck by how handsome he looked, and how his shoulders had filled out, and his eyes, well he’d always had those eyes. But she didn’t trust how those words would sound coming from her mouth.

‘Delphi told me about your girl,’ she said instead. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Oh that.’ He shrugged. With no warning he pulled the steering wheel to the left, fast. She held on to the side of her seat as they took the bend far too quickly and watched the intense darkness through the windscreen for oncoming lights. ‘Mother says I rushed in.’ With a subtle twitch of her head she looked at his face. His jaw was set. ‘But she’s happy now of course. She’s got her boy home.’ She held on to her seat again as this time he forced the car to lurch to the right.

‘Do you think your mother will let Delphi train as an instructor?’

He shrugged. ‘You’re closest to her and you’ve seen how controlling Mother is. I think someone needs to be honest with my sister about her prospects.’

‘You think that should be me?’

‘Well the two of you discuss everything, don’t you? I’ve seen the letters arriving since I’ve been back. What do the two of you find to say?’

‘All sorts. Education, fitness, new teaching methods, female emancipation in sport, what is happening around the world… The thing is, Jack, she has a brilliant mind, and she can’t stay hidden at home her whole life. She needs to be allowed to work around her illness.’

‘Mother always thought Delphi was a bad influence on you before she got sent down from the college. Perhaps they had it the wrong way around.’

Had Delphi told him how Natalie had refused the idea of them sharing a flat together? Even Mrs Mulberry had hinted that she might approve of it. She trusted Natalie with her daughter it seemed. But even though Delphi had sulked, she hadn’t been swayed. Lots of women did share a home together these days, but she couldn’t be certain that she’d be comfortable as one of them.

‘We’re friends, friends with similar interests – that’s all.’ She hated to think their friendship had been subject to dissection and speculation, that they stood out simply because they understood one another. Her cheeks were hot once more.

‘It’s all right. I’m not prying.’ Jack held up his hand. ‘For what it’s worth, I agree. Delphi needs her own life and I’m working on something actually; let’s call it Jack’s escape plan.’ He brushed his lips to zip them together.

‘Are you still dreaming of becoming an Olympic diver?’ she asked.

‘Always,’ he said, ‘always.’

*

It had been raining in Kent. The air was damp and chilled for so close to May. Jack slid a packet of Navy Cut cigarettes from his back pocket. He offered one to Natalie – she shook her head – and then he slotted one between his teeth and lit it, his spare hand slouched in his baggy trouser pocket. Then came the sweet tobacco as it burnt in the night air and drifted away.

She removed her own bag from the boot, thanked him for driving her back. He took her by surprise; moving in to embrace her, his hands spread on her back, and she closed her eyes for a second or two before she jerked away and pulled herself free.

‘So what’s next for you?’ She held her satchel in front of her and backed away from him.

‘Training and trying to make the team for the Berlin games next year.’ He smoothed his fringe back with his fingers. ‘And I’m on the job hunt. The less time spent with Mother, the better.’

‘It will be good for Delphi to have you home. If you’re feeling miserable already, think what it’s like for her.’

‘Over there…’ he gestured in the dark towards America ‘…it was easy to forget what was going on at home, but now I’m back here, well…’ He trailed away.

‘It’s not so easy to ignore?’ she offered as he pulled on his cigarette.

He nodded in the darkness. ‘We’ll see if my escape plan leads us anywhere.’

A branch snapped behind a shadowy rhododendron bush at the border of the driveway. A fox or a badger perhaps. Then a rustling of leaves. She strained her eyes towards the dark mass and approached it. Then the night returned to the deep silence of the countryside.

‘You’d better be on your way, or I’ll be in trouble.’

He climbed back into the driver’s seat. ‘Let’s not leave it another seven years,’ he said as he tipped his hat and snapped the door shut.

She listened to his tyres crunching back down the gravel until the sound of the engine faded away, the residue of Olympia’s cacophony still playing faintly in her ears. It had been so nice to escape for a few hours, to feel the pulse of life beyond the grounds, but she was back where she belonged now and there was no use her being down in the dumps about it.

What does Jack have planned? She wandered back towards the house, hoping he might do a better job of helping Delphi, perhaps undo the damage she’d done tonight with Prunella Stack.

In the darkness, the mansion house felt more like a stranger than the old friend she’d left behind earlier that afternoon. There was a disconcerting feeling of not knowing where the college ended and the night began. Several rectangles of yellow light were beacons in the night. Beacons that should have been long extinguished. Lights out was hours ago. But then the Principal, Miss Lott, was unwell and so she was awake through the night more and more often. Natalie fought to ignore the sense she had here of being hemmed in, as if she lived on a tiny island that afforded no variety, no change of company.

Then movement from the bushes again. This time more rustling and another branch snapped. She yelled. Clutched her chest. A shape emerged, too big to be an animal, and then another. She realised too late it was a girl’s voice, nothing to be afraid of, and that the girl had been giggling.

‘Quick!’ the girl whispered and scampered across the gravel towards the dorm entrance. Natalie didn’t pursue them. The second figure, with a deeper voice, whispered something and then ran past Natalie in a blur back down the driveway towards the gates. The curfew was very strict: ten o’clock. The girls didn’t miss it by a minute. For a girl to be out three hours after curfew, and with a young man, was unthinkable.

But she had led a poor example herself, and who knew if the girl had seen her being dropped off by Jack. Seen the two of them in their awkward embrace. What had that been? An innocent gesture, a thank you perhaps for helping Delphi? Had she jumped to the wrong conclusion when she pulled away? He was her best friend’s brother after all, much younger than her, and he had no shortage of admirers. ‘I had no idea you had such great legs.’ But he had said that, hadn’t he?

She’d recognised the outline of the spectacles and the thick thatch of hair on the person who had just run into the dorm, though she would have guessed who it was without the physical clues. Margaret Wilkins following her own timetable again. It would wait until the morning because as it happened Miss Lott had already arranged for the girl’s mother and father to come to the college to discuss what they were to do about their wayward daughter.

*

Last night’s rain hadn’t returned and instead the sky showered them with blue. She’d heard the crunch of gravel and the girls chattering as they’d cycled to church, and then the awful Sunday silence fell on her. She didn’t have the comfort of a busy timetable to pull her through the day. There wouldn’t even be a letter from Delphi this weekend.

Aside from writing to Delphi, Sunday usually meant a few hours to herself that she had the challenge of trying to fill. She had a new pattern for a trouser suit. She’d splashed out on a length of powder-blue silk too. But when would I wear it? She could make two blouses and some embellishments out of this length, far more practical. But whatever the silk was to become, it would have to wait because the Principal, Miss Lott, had asked to see her, no doubt for a briefing before Miss Wilkins’s parents arrived for their meeting that afternoon.

She left the fabric on the narrow patch of her bedroom floor. As she stood she caught a quick glimpse of the box that once again safely stored her Women’s League of Health and Beauty uniform.

Cutting straight through the study to the adjoining private dining room, she found the Principal alone with one arm pressed against the mantelpiece, her body crooked, stooped over, while her other hand was splayed across her stomach. Her usually curled hair was in tufts, floating around her head like un-spun wool. She looked frail and vulnerable – not yet even dressed. She was still in her flannelette dressing gown and slippers.

As soon as she saw Natalie she pulled herself upright and forced a smile. Her face was pinched, pain carved into it. Her Scottie dog, Murray, wagged his tail at her ankles, looking at Natalie as if he expected her to make things better.

‘How was your brother?’

Natalie snatched a quick look at Miss Lott. Does she know I lied about my whereabouts yesterday? ‘As dull as ever…’ She left it hanging. Miss Lott knew exactly how she felt about her only surviving brother.

Miss Lott winced as she straightened up. With light, careful steps she led her out to the sheltered balcony where in contrast to the exposed playing field, the sun baked the tiled floor.

The relief of seeing the teapot on the table, its steam curling out from the spout, made tears warm her eyes. She hadn’t quite realised it before but she’d been afraid that the word had somehow got out that she’d been at Olympia yesterday with the Women’s League of Health and Beauty, and not with her brother.

The adjoining building sheltered them from the breeze and the clear skies were a hint of summer. Despite this, Miss Lott wrapped a blanket around her thin legs.

Her eyes and mouth closed tight for a second until the sudden pain had passed. Her breathing had quickened. Natalie waited.

‘My goodness, you look terrified,’ Miss Lott said once she’d harnessed her breath again, but she had to stop to cough.

She’d been thinking how much she wished she could tell Miss Lott about Olympia, about the League, Delphi’s desire to be a part of it, and how she’d spoiled a chance meeting by offending Prunella. But I can’t. Absolutely not. I won’t put her in the position of knowing that I lied or that I am desperately bored of life here.

‘You have Miss Wilkins’s family coming in today?’

Natalie nodded.

‘Tread carefully. I had Lord Lacey on the telephone last night. He has a personal connection with the family, but he disapproves of the girl, and her mother. He wants you to get rid of Miss Wilkins so he can plead the decision was out of his hands.’

Natalie waited while Miss Lott took another breath. She thought again about seeing the girl out late last night, messing about with a boy too. She couldn’t mention it, not if she wanted to save the girl’s skin – as well as preserve her own.

‘She’s very talented, you know.’

‘I do know. But she’s made no effort to play along with the rules and now she has a trustee against her. I’m afraid she’s run out of lives.’

Just then, the second-year girls dressed in their ankle-length sage hooded cloaks wobbled in along the driveway below, slowing their bicycles to a stop in the sheds to the left of the house. They unloaded their handlebars of wooden hoops and totes bulging with skittles, beanbags and canes used to take the primary school children for games after Sunday school. One of the girls frantically pumped up her old bicycle’s front tyre while the others left her to it. Chatting and laughing, they drifted off like dandelion seeds towards the new wing at the rear of the house.

The smile fell from Natalie’s face when Miss Lott let out a little exhalation as she lifted the teapot. She gently stirred up the tea leaves by swirling the pot’s fat belly, her thumb holding the lid steady. She shot a sideways glance at Natalie, letting her know she had caught her watching her and that she knew she was taking in how much weaker she’d become.

‘Wilkins wasn’t the reason I asked you here, actually.’ Miss Lott’s tone had changed, her voice tremored as her emotions plucked at her vocal cords. ‘The hard truth is that my time here is coming to a close.’

Natalie gripped the arm of her chair. Only serious ill health would drive Miss Lott from the college. She had been there so long that it was unimaginable to think of the place without her.

The Principal was careful not to look at her. Instead she spent too long setting the teapot down and adjusting the angle so that the handle sat parallel to the edge of the table. Then she tipped some pills into her mouth with a flat palm and swallowed them down dry.

‘Will you stay much longer?’ Natalie ventured.

‘It’s hard to say, but I don’t think I’ve got long.’

Natalie swallowed hard. The news stuck in her throat like molasses. Her own restlessness would grow and grow without Miss Lott around. She would become even lonelier at the college without her to talk with. It was such an awful thought that she couldn’t completely let it in.

Murray broke the awkward silence, scampering through the French doors, his paws sliding on the polished floors, taking a running jump on to his mistress’s lap.

Natalie angled up the lid to peer inside the teapot, the tea now a deep copper.

‘Shall I pour?’ she said. The thought of Miss Lott’s decline brought to the surface the mangled pain of her father’s death, her brothers’ too, anguish she supposed she’d always have to live with.

Miss Lott rhythmically stroked the dog, shifting him on her lap. His head tilted upwards. He licked the end of her nose, making Miss Lott wrinkle her face with delight.

Meanwhile the tea slipped through the strainer and purred into the floral bone-china cups, the steam unfurling into the spring morning. Once she was finished, she looked down at the playing field ahead. She had to say something to Miss Lott, but what?

‘The rose garden is shooting up,’ was the best she could do.

Below the white-spindled frontage of the balcony was the Principal’s own private garden. In two large beds, framed by shin-height box hedges, the new season’s rosebush shoots shouldered fresh burgundy leaves.

The truth about the severity of Miss Lott’s illness had been right in front of her. The soil hadn’t been dug over; the tubers hadn’t been planted out. Instead, deep-toothed dandelion leaves and a ground covering of bindweed had taken advantage of her weakness and were overrunning the beds and the bricked pathway.

Mrs Lancaster, her secretary, entered with two squat tumblers on a tray, ice cubes chinking, the soda water fizzing and the whisky staining the water a thin amber. She set the glasses down with an appraising glance at Natalie. She must have known that Miss Lott was going to break the news to her today – the whisky the medicine to help the sadness go down. Perhaps, she thought, a dull Sunday wouldn’t have been such a bad thing after all.

‘Bottoms up, ladies.’

Natalie took a large gulp.

‘I’ll be off to the village to get the newspapers then.’ Mrs Lancaster left them to it.

As comforting as cocoa, the whisky warmed her up and left her feeling alive and awake and tired and ready for a rest all at the same time. It also relaxed her tongue and mind almost instantly.

‘None of the words that I can think to say sum up my gratitude to you…and my devastation that you won’t be here.’ Still, I can’t be honest. Still, I can’t tell you how frustrated I’ve become here. If I am, you’ll think me ungrateful.

Miss Lott’s breathing came in a pattern of shallow snatches of air.

‘Words can do that, can’t they? Language is so rich and expressive and yet so insubstantial and hollow at times.’

On the playing field the girls began their Sunday bowling practice with Miss Hollands in the mid-morning sun. Murray spotted the red cricket ball as the batswoman rolled it over her shoulder. He jumped down to put his nose through the bars, yapping at the ball.

‘Murray! Murray!’ Miss Lott called. ‘Cricket isn’t for you, I’m afraid. You must know by now that you need to be a female to join in our games.’

*

Natalie wiped her nose, catching a glimpse of its red tip and her blotchy eyes in the mantelpiece mirror as she headed for her study door.

Mr Wilkins, the girl’s father, shuffled in, hat in hand. He was tall in his brown woollen suit, with salt and pepper hair smoothed down, but only in places.

He looked first at Natalie’s made-up face, no doubt noticing that the tears had streaked her powder, and then her Sunday attire of taffeta bows stitched to her shoulder seams, her silk skirt. She was used to this preliminary assessment by now. She worked hard to not fit the expected schoolmarm bill of tweeds and sensible shoes, and it often unsettled the parents.

People wondered who she thought she was making the effort for, thought that she was deluded and wasting her time, but she’d heard stories of love creeping up unexpectedly on other women of her age. Why not her? Why not someone like Jack? Don’t be silly. You know why not.

Behind him came Mrs Wilkins, a black silk scarf wound around her head with chestnut wisps creeping on to her face. Her matching black silk kaftan billowed behind her as she swept in, the fabric as iridescent as a scarab beetle. She dodged Natalie’s hand and instead kissed her on the cheek, planting the scent of patchouli beneath her nose. She curled into one of the chairs Natalie had placed on the hearthrug, her legs up from the floor, feet tucked beneath her.

She waited for Mr Wilkins to drape his folded mackintosh over the back of his chair and saw that despite the silk tie, his suit was fraying at the cuffs and was worn on the elbow and knees.

‘You know our trustee Lord Lacey, I hear?’ Natalie asked as he tossed his hat on to her desk.

‘That’s right. He’s one of our Heathfield Players.’

Natalie lifted her shoulders in question.

‘Gerry runs the local am-dram society.’ Mrs Wilkins’s shoes clattered from her feet to the rug. ‘Lacey is always trying out for the male lead.’ She rolled her eyes. Natalie suppressed her smile. She could well imagine it. ‘Can’t act for toffee…but he doesn’t let that…’

‘Now, now, Clarissa.’

‘Well…’ Her false eyelashes tickled her powdered cheek as she winked at Natalie and wedged a cigarette into a slender black holder.

‘You both act.’ Natalie said it more as a statement. It was coming back to her now: their first meeting at Miss Wilkins’s assessment. She’d been too distracted with the task in hand to really register how out of place the family were and consider whether their daughter would fit in.

‘I write too,’ Mrs Wilkins explained, ‘some of the scripts for the Heathfield Players that our dear ham Lacey murders on stage.’

‘I see,’ said Natalie, understanding now the source of Margaret’s bohemian tendencies.

‘He earned us a terrible review in the Heathfield Times.’ She lowered her head and Mr Wilkins put his hand on her arm.

‘Well, anyway, thank you for coming here today to discuss Miss Wilkins – Margaret, that is.’

Mrs Wilkins lit her cigarette and filed the smoke into the air. Natalie had previously moved her chair out from behind her desk so it was opposite the parents’ chairs. She’d liked the idea of meeting them in an open space. She’d thought it would be less confrontational for their delicate discussion, but now she wished she was tucked behind the safety of her desk.

‘Oh look.’ Mrs Wilkins stood, her cigarette cocked at her shoulder, as she walked barefooted to the window. ‘Is that our Margaret out there? Taking a class on a Sunday?’

The three of them stood and moved to the bay of the window to watch the girls line up on the fir-tree-backed playing field.

‘Just an hour of drills for the first years. It’s quite an impressive sight, isn’t it?’ Natalie said, resting her hand on the windowsill.

Margaret, their nineteen-year-old daughter, in the front row, was easily marked out by her black-rimmed glasses and chin-length thatch of hair.

Mrs Wilkins stifled her mirth behind her hand. ‘So she isn’t fitting in then?’

‘She’s a very talented sportswoman…’

‘Is she?’ Mr Wilkins raised his eyebrows and looked at his wife. ‘This was our daughter’s idea, you know,’ Mr Wilkins said. ‘She insisted on applying for a place here. We tried to discourage it.’

‘You did?’

‘She said she needed boundaries.’ Mrs Wilkins shook her head. ‘That she didn’t think the freedom I gave her was entirely good for her.’

‘She did?’ It was hard for Natalie to imagine Margaret Wilkins desperate for any sort of regulation.

Framed by the playing field’s two sprawling monkey puzzle trees, the four long lines of girls – spaced at arm’s length from one another – were lined up like an army organised for battle. Identical from the neck downwards in the same navy blue box-pleat gymslips, white shirts and dark woollen stockings. While Miss Hollands faced the rows with her whistle gripped between her teeth.

‘Rebellion is a good thing. Or that’s what I think anyway.’ Mrs Wilkins’s exhaled smoke hit the windowpane. ‘So we gave her the freedom to come here and see how much she’d hate discipline.’

‘Oh.’

The wind did tend to gather force as it travelled along the open field and outside the girls were under attack. Their hair whipped up in tendrils about their faces and into their eyes, their shirtsleeves billowed, while their tunic skirts were tugged this way and that, periodically lifting to expose their gym bloomers. But these weren’t the sort of girls to be ruffled by something as trivial as the weather.

‘So do you want us to take her home today?’ Mr Wilkins asked.

‘No!’ she said, and they both turned away from the window to face her. ‘That would be a terrible shame, for all concerned.’

‘Then why are we here?’ Mr Wilkins asked.

The girls finished their lunges and stood with arms pinned to their sides while Miss Hollands raised her hands into a perpendicular spire above her head and arched her back. The girls followed. Margaret watched the wind passing through the trees behind her and lifted her arms as if they too were branches, before jumping at the report of Miss Hollands’s whistle.

‘I bet Lord Lacey wants her gone, doesn’t he?’ Mrs Wilkins answered her husband. ‘He’s still sulking after we gave him the chorus in our last production.’

‘He had something to do with you being here…’ she gestured them back towards their seats ‘…but your daughter has talent and lots of potential and I wanted to talk to you about how we might coax her into playing along. Rigour and discipline are as important as anything else here and I can’t justify her place to the Board, and Lord Lacey, if she has no respect for the rules.’

She hadn’t at all expected this lack of discipline from the family. Parents always fought for their daughters, even if they weren’t worthy of it, but Margaret was worthy and yet… Her bravery, her devil-may-care attitude is just what it’s going to take to change things around here in the future, but she is going to have to play along, just a little. She’d never yet had to persuade any parents that they needed to encourage their daughter to stay at the college.

‘We won’t ask our daughter to change – no.’ Mrs Wilkins stubbed out her cigarette on the fireplace. ‘And neither should you.’

‘But something drove her here…’ What a waste. Natalie had a thought. ‘We have a diving display tonight. Can you stay? You can see for yourself what a talent she is. You might see what potential we’d be letting go.’

‘Oh look, there’s his car…’ Mr Wilkins broke off. He rose to his feet, pointing at the driveway off to the side of the playing field.

She recognised the car too.

‘Is that Lord Lacey’s Rolls?’ Mrs Wilkins pointed.

The study door opened without a knock coming first.

‘Lord Lacey.’ She moved across the hearthrug, hand outstretched, towards the white-haired, pink-skinned, diminutive college trustee. But Mr Wilkins shot over, beating her to it, stooping to shake the Lord’s hand and thank him for coming. Mrs Wilkins toyed with one of the curls that sprung out from her headscarf and flashed him a gritted smile.

‘Lord Lacey. It’s good of you to take an interest, but I have the matter with Wilkins in hand,’ Natalie interrupted. She didn’t need him to hear the parents’ recalcitrance.

‘What?’ He looked again at the Wilkinses as if only just registering who they were. ‘I’m here on another matter altogether. Excuse us, won’t you.’ He nodded to Mr and Mrs Wilkins. ‘Miss Flacker. Follow me.’

Chapter Three

The gainer

The diver faces the end of the board. After a forward approach and hurdle she somersaults back towards the diving board while moving forward.

She followed Lord Lacey into the office. He strutted over to the fireplace and turned to face her. Miss Lott, dressed now, though her hair was still untamed, sat with her hands clasped in front of her on the desk. She shook her head at Natalie and coiled her lips.

Frozen to the spot just inside the doorway, Natalie had not even made it to the hearthrug. She just stood there, her feet rooting her to the wooden floorboards, waiting for whatever it was to strike.

‘Have you seen this?’ Lord Lacey said eventually, unfolding a newspaper from under his short arm. She stepped closer. It was the Sunday Times, the front-page headline:

Stresa Conference Heralded a Success

MacDonald Secures Continued Contribution to European Peace

Britain, France and Italy Pledged to Maintain Peace

Lord Lacey turned the pages with a rustle, thumbing through until he set the paper down on Miss Lott’s desk. Correspondingly the Principal leant away from it.

Out of the corner of her eye she could see that Lord Lacey was watching her, not reading the newspaper. So was Miss Lott.

Saturday Night Robberies

She scanned the story, her eyes travelling quickly – in search of what, she wasn’t sure. She just had a feeling she’d better find it double quick. Then she saw it.

Record attendance at the Women’s League of Health and Beauty’s annual rally

Beneath the columns of text were two black and white photographs. The first was an aerial shot of the women seated in the Grand Hall, row upon row, indistinguishable in their white blouses and dark shorts. The second was of Prunella Stack, a shot taken from low down to capture the full length of her bare legs, as she shook hands with someone.

Natalie snatched the page closer. Surely not.

The photograph had been taken in Prunella’s changing room. Delphi was just a blur in the background, but her blond hair and petite figure were distinctive enough if you knew who you were looking for. But Natalie’s own image was so clear she practically jumped from the page: her heavy nose, the swept back hair, the wave reaching her jaw, the exposed legs Jack had been so quick to notice. In the Sunday Times.

‘Oh dear.’ Her expression made her look as though she were shaking hands with the devil, but whatever her expression, she was shaking hands with the head of the Women’s League in the Times.

As she read the caption she lost control of her jaw.

‘The Women’s League’s leader Prunella Stack has a fruitful meeting with the Vice Principal of Linshatch College of Physical Education.’

‘Oh dear.’

‘Is that all you have to say?’ Lord Lacey pounced. ‘I had a telephone call from the Chairman of the Board of Education himself today. But alas, my joy was short-lived. As was his at the sight of my staff pictured in a national newspaper having a jolly nice time with the very woman the education establishment abhors.’

She looked at Miss Lott again. Natalie was one of her staff, not his. But still Miss Lott said and did nothing. Lord Lacey waited, now holding the open page of the Sunday Times in front of him as if it were contaminated. He was directing this performance, his theatrical leanings coming to the fore. Miss Lott seemed to be present only as a witness, powerless to defend her.

‘I can explain… It was a chance meeting.’

‘You’re wearing the uniform of the Women’s League, I see.’ He held up the crumpled page. ‘How…fetching. What a chance.’

‘Well, yes, that is…’ She looked to Miss Lott but she still wouldn’t meet her eye. ‘It was research,’ she added, seeing a way to save her skin. ‘My friend, Delphi Mulberry…’ she pointed to the picture ‘…she’s considering becoming an instructor and I thought it would be useful. They say to keep your enemies close and…’

‘When you say enemy I assume you are referring to Miss Mulberry. She was a troublemaker as a student and certainly no friend of the establishment.’ He stroked his white moustache and then folded the newspaper back in half and tossed it as if forgetting that its contents were so incendiary. ‘You know the Board of Education officials have shunned these women, of course. In the last year, two of our teachers have defected to the League.’ He held up two fingers. ‘The Board is extremely twitchy. We do not want to be seen associating our highly respected teaching methods with this band of distrusted and unethical intellectual lightweights. What you’ve done is tantamount to treason to the good name of physical education.’

‘I’m very sorry. I’m entirely dedicated to the work we do here…’

Lacey closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.

‘Right after that photograph was taken I told Miss Stack that her activities were artistic poppycock.’ She widened her eyes and smirked, but neither of them joined her.

‘You’re to stay in your room until further notice…’

‘But I have the diving display tonight. The Wilkins family are here and…’ She cut herself short, but Lacey didn’t seem to notice.

‘Have you sent that Wilkins girl down yet?’

‘No, no I haven’t.’

He looked to Miss Lott and then paced up and down the hearthrug, playing his role for all it was worth. Perhaps Mrs Wilkins had been wrong about his acting potential after all.

‘Wilkins is supposed to be in the display tonight, is she?’

They both nodded.

‘Very well. Go ahead with it. If you give the girl enough rope she’ll hang herself. Then her mother can also experience humiliation on a public stage.’

‘Thank you,’ she breathed out. She needed to find Margaret right away.

‘In the meantime I’ll speak to the other trustees and decide on your fate.’

So much for supporting one another in our careers. I make a bad impression for Delphi with Prunella Stack and in return I’m going to lose my job.

As she left the room Miss Lott finally looked at her and twitched a discreet consolatory smile, but it vanished as soon as Lacey looked their way. It had been a risk on Miss Lott’s part, a small act of kindness that left Natalie scurrying back to her room before the tears could set in.

*

She found Margaret reading her book aloud, acting it out, with her legs hanging over a fallen trunk that extended across the river. She wasn’t in the least bit embarrassed when Natalie appeared from behind the upended roots and explained that her parents were at the college, that she needed Margaret to turn up to the diving display, prove her abilities publicly and show that she deserved her place at the college.

‘Could I dive to music?’ Miss Wilkins asked.

‘Music?’ She stood by the riverbank, hands on hips, facing Margaret on her pontoon. ‘Of course not. Who ever heard of such a thing? We’re trying to match the men at their own games. And the men aren’t diving to music, let me tell you.’ She shook her head. ‘Miss Wilkins, do you want to remain at the college?’ Because if you don’t, you’ll save me from fighting a near impossible battle when I should be thinking of myself.

Margaret looked up from her book.

‘Yes. Yes, I do. I think.’ She followed a robin as it hopped from one branch to another. ‘It’s just that I’m so used to thinking and acting for myself and here, well you teachers want to do my thinking for me. I mean to say, who cares if men aren’t diving to music? What’s to say women can’t do it and can’t be good at it? And if we strike out with some ideas of our own we won’t have men telling us how we should be doing it either.’

She had a point, but they’d always done the diving contests the same way. She couldn’t go changing it now.

‘You want to blow the whistle,’ Margaret continued, the wind behind her now, ‘and tell me when to dive off that board, how to dive, how to land. I want to decide for myself. And, in my lessons I want to hear a male perspective from time to time.’

Natalie gasped at this. They all knew that most parents wanted their daughters to be taught by a man, but she’d never before heard a student agree.

‘Could you compromise?’ Natalie asked.

‘Perhaps…’ Margaret shut the book, swung her legs over the trunk. ‘Could you?’

‘Not today, no. You need to show you can succeed in the system as it is now, Miss Wilkins, and then perhaps you will have the power to change it in the future.’

And I hope you do a better job of bringing about change than I have.

She checked her watch. They only had thirty minutes to go.

‘Can I count on you to be there? To dive when I blow my whistle? If you can’t, then I really think you may as well pack your bags and go home today.’ As she walked back down the pathway that led to the playing field she muttered, ‘Perhaps that’s what you really want anyway.’

Margaret didn’t answer and with her own future hanging in the balance, Natalie couldn’t help but wonder why she even still cared.

*

Tacks gripped between her front teeth, Natalie climbed the wooden stepladder barefooted and tapped a nail through the bunting’s ribbon. She tugged it to check it was fastened to the wall, while glancing at the clock at the far end of the pool.

The door opened as the first of the students came in. No one appeared to be behaving differently towards her and, thankfully, most of the staff had been out on their Sunday ramble so they would have missed the drama with Lord Lacey.

Lifting the ladder, she sidestepped further along the narrow path between the wall and the pool, then climbed again. The blasted nail wouldn’t go in. She brought the hammer forwards with such a force that the nail bent into an untidy L and tinkled to the tiled floor.

‘Damn it,’ she grunted through her tack-filled teeth, and released another between her thumb and forefinger.

The last of the diving girls filed through, making fourteen in total. They were missing just one.

‘She must still be in her room, Miss Flacker,’ Joan Mason told her.

‘Could you go and check on her for me, please? Try the riverbank if she’s not in her room.’

The preparations were completed just as the aristocratic trustees began to fill the front row, their toes just inches away from the edge of the pool. What did they know? They must have seen the Sunday Times themselves. She’d be the talk of the Phys Ed corridors. The parents of the girls who lived nearby trickled in now too. What would they think about their Vice Principal dabbling in such ill-informed teaching methods? I should have listened to my own better judgement and stayed away from Olympia.

The audience bubbled with conversation, but as she approached the podium, the voices stilled. Where is Miss Lott? She’d never missed a diving display.

The girls filled the seven tiered diving boards five deep, mirroring the shape of the pitched roof above them. They were dressed in matching white caps, fastened under the chin, and navy blue knitted bathing costumes. Focus on the job in hand. But even that’s a mess if Miss Wilkins doesn’t show up.

She avoided making eye contact with Mr and Mrs Wilkins. Why would they try and persuade their daughter to stay here after this? Behind them, leering through the dip in their shoulders, sat Lord Lacey. He would be smiling smugly. She didn’t need to look at him to know that. Everything was going just as he hoped.

‘What are we waiting for?’ a parent in the front row asked in a loud whisper. Her neighbour shrugged.

Natalie looked about her, taking it all in. The girls had been confused by her lingering smile. They furrowed their brows and looked at one another.

‘Why is she smiling at us?’ Joan whispered.

They probably think I’ve gone mad. Wilkins isn’t coming so just press on… She blew her whistle.

‘One at a time on the springboard. Only dive when the water ahead of you is clear. Please try to make a dignified exit from the water.’ Familiar instructions that she spoke without the need to think. ‘Swallow dive!’ She refused to allow herself to dwell on whether she would deliver them ever again.

Following her signal, the first seven obediently bent at the knees, swung their arms above their heads and each one of them tore through the water in just the right spot. Their feet all gulped up at exactly the same moment. The audience applauded and the next batch of girls shuffled forward and curled their toes over the edge of the boards.

She blew her whistle again. ‘Cannonball!’ And so they worked their way through the rehearsed schedule of dives until there was just one dive left to perform.

The door at the rear of the baths swung open. Mr and Mrs Wilkins’s heads turned, and everyone else followed. In sauntered Margaret, her hair tidied back, lips tinted. Apparently unaware of the stir she was causing. She slid her silk dressing gown from her shoulders and left it in a heap by the wall, and then she looked to Natalie to tell her which board to join. Natalie raised her forefinger. The high board. The pinnacle.

She raised her forefinger again.

‘Last dive, Wilkins. The gainer.’ Margaret was a nuisance, there was no doubt about it, and the other compliant girls were more deserving of her affections, but Natalie couldn’t help herself. Margaret and her fresh ideas were just what this place needed; it was her duty to encourage her.

She ran forwards three steps, sprung up from her right foot, the hurdle bounce showcasing her excellent balance, her bounce high. She landed with toes at the end of the dipping board and then sprang back high into the air, her somersault taking her towards the board. Gasps came from the audience, before she released at the last into the water.

Mrs Wilkins stood to lead the applause that broke out among the audience. Her hands clapping together like the wings of a hoverfly.

‘Bravo!’ called Mr Wilkins, his palms slapping together with force. ‘Bravo!’

Behind them, Lord Lacey’s face was stiff, his brow heavy. He broke Natalie’s gaze with a long blink. It was a small victory, and even though she knew it would be short-lived, she couldn’t help but smile to herself when she was sure he was no longer looking.

After the display the audience scattered. Once the Wilkinses had congratulated their daughter on a wonderful dive, Margaret leant into Natalie’s ear and whispered, ‘It would have been better to music.’

Then Lord Lacey appeared at her shoulder. He too leant in close, his hot breath on her ear. ‘When you’re quite ready, come straight to Miss Lott’s office.’

*

Lord Lacey threw open the door to Miss Lott’s rooms and rolled his palm sarcastically as if to suggest he was in the presence of royalty. Like a disgraced student, her head bowed, she went in.

Because the curtains were drawn, it wasn’t immediately obvious that the windows were shut. Bit by bit she sensed the change. The room was still, the usual animated breeze snuffed out, the scent of heather suffocated by soot. The fire cracked and hissed and doused her shins in its fierce heat.

Even though Miss Lott’s rooms were always bracing, Lord Lacey had taken the heat too far the other way. On the mantelpiece, the petals of Miss Lott’s roses were edged brown, the heads flopped forwards, unaccustomed to such warmth.

Lord Lacey stood in front of the fire, his arms behind his back.

‘I’ve told Miss Lott that enough is enough. She is too unwell to remain Principal,’ he said. ‘Her sister arrives in the morning to take her to Scotland to ensure she has a comfortable end.’

Natalie hoped he might point to one of the empty armchairs and invite her to sit down. She looked about her instead for something to support her, considered stepping to the mantelpiece and gripping it. She pulled her handkerchief from her tunic pocket. She didn’t care if he saw her crying. She hoped it made him feel ill at ease.

It was hard to imagine Miss Lott gone. Even her impression remained on the seat cushion of her favourite armchair.

He ran his thumbs and forefingers away from each other across his moustache as he paused for dramatic effect.

‘It’s been agreed that as Chair of the Trustees I will step into the breach until events reach a conclusion with Miss Lott. Then we can look for her permanent replacement.’

‘I see.’ She swallowed, wiping away more tears and wishing she could go and find Miss Lott.

He turned his attention to the fire, stoking it with the poker. He picked a sheaf of papers from the fireplace and tossed a handful on to the logs. She stepped back as the first sparks ignited and crumpled, black and red-edged, spitting and snapping, blue-at-heart flames stroking the bricked inners of the fireplace.

‘I’ll do whatever I can to help.’

He placed the poker back into the fire set.

‘Yes,’ he continued, ‘then we have you.’

He turned back to her, folded his arms across his narrow, suited chest.

‘You’re only here because Miss Lott saw something in you.’

He smoothed his moustache again.

‘I never saw you as the right sort for the college. Rather too outspoken for my liking. Easily distracted. I find it hard to see you with Miss Lott’s eyes. You spent your inheritance on being trained in a profession. Noble and sensible yes, but exceptional?’ He shook his head. ‘I’m not surprised it has come to this.’

‘To what?’

He kept her waiting, looked at the fire again.

‘Your dalliance with the Women’s League has sent shockwaves right to the very top of the Board of Education. There can only be one outcome. I’m sure you’ve come to much the same conclusion yourself.’

Without even trying she knew that she couldn’t speak, but he was right; she had known it would come to this.

‘How old are you?’ he pressed on.

‘How old? I’ll be thirty-five in September.’

‘Well then all is not lost. It won’t be easy at your age to find a husband. You were led off course by an unnerving display of loyalty to Miss Mulberry, but there’s still time.’

It’s not Delphi’s fault I haven’t married. They both knew that while the war had indeed left a shortage of marriageable men, it was her dedication to her teaching career that had taken her out of the husband race altogether, and the war had seen to it that it was a race. Once she’d trained as a teacher she discovered spinsterhood was part of the package. Men didn’t like to marry teachers, and if that wasn’t enough to keep her from taking the veil, there was the government’s marriage bar for teachers too. How can he say it is because of my friendship with Delphi? That is ALL I have had these past years.

But Lord Lacey was saying she needed a husband, not for love…because my teaching career is over.

‘Lord Lacey. My commitment to this college has never wavered.’

It wasn’t the truth. More and more she’d felt she was missing out on life beyond the grounds. That’s what took me to Olympia, wasn’t it? A lack of commitment. Confusion. She allowed Margaret to run amok because she wished she could do that herself. But, no matter how disillusioned she’d become, she needed this job. It was her home, her income, her pension. Even if I often wish it wasn’t the case: this job is who I am.

The room had become unpleasantly hot. Everything was to be lost over a silly mistake.

He held up his pistol-shaped hand. ‘Miss Lott has insisted we give you another opportunity to explain yourself, so go on...’

She cleared her throat and waited until she was ready to speak.

‘Lord Lacey. I am as uncomfortable about the Women’s League of Health and Beauty as you, or any official at the Board of Education.’

‘Then you’ve been irresponsible. You have allowed your views to be misrepresented.’

Shaking, she put her hands on her hips. ‘Please, Lord Lacey. I’ve made a mistake and I’m truly sorry.’

She hid her trembling hands behind her back.

‘Please.’ Whether she had said that aloud or just whispered it, she couldn’t be sure.

He took a deep breath, fondled his moustache, and then finally shook his head.

‘You know, I might have been inclined to help you if you’d done what I asked and sent down Margaret Wilkins. Instead I had to listen to her mother gloating about her daughter’s raw talent. You realise your actions have made it harder to get rid of that family now?’

That was the general idea.

‘Miss Flacker, you are dismissed from your role here.’

‘You can’t. Please,’ she said, or at least she thought she said it. She heard the words at a distance.

As soon as she’d seen that photograph and the stupid caption in the newspaper, she’d known what would happen. Yet she’d still hoped that common decency and Miss Lott’s reach would be enough to save her. That damned Stack woman was behind that caption. She must have sought out that photographer, told him Natalie’s name, position, and exaggerated about their meeting.

She realised that alongside the panic and fear of how she would survive without her job, part of her, a large part of her, was relieved that she would be leaving and free of this place after so long.

‘To keep this scandal to a minimum…’ he pushed back his suit blazer to put his hands in his pockets ‘…it would be for the best if you left quietly in the morning.’

*

Natalie jumped up so fast at the knock on her door that she banged her knee on the metal frame of her bed. It was just after midnight.

Miss Lott stood in the doorway in her flannelette nightgown, her curls drooping and her face bearing considerably less sheen than the pearls around her neck.

‘You’re still here?’ Natalie said.

Miss Lott gestured that she wanted to come in.

Natalie looked at her own bare feet, her plum-coloured satin pyjamas, and pulled the door to unhook her matching dressing gown from its peg on the door’s inside. She sat on the edge of the bed so that Miss Lott could take the desk chair.

‘I came to find you earlier, but I thought I’d missed you,’ Natalie said. ‘I’m so sad that you’re leaving.’

Miss Lott sighed and rested her hands between her open knees. ‘And I’m not the only one leaving, am I?’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m afraid Miss Flacker that Lord Lacey has always rather liked the scent of your scalp. You’ve too much gumption for a woman. He doesn’t like it. I’ve always managed to talk him around but I’m afraid this time you’ve gone too far.’ Natalie swallowed hard.

‘Perhaps it’s for the best.’ She could at last be honest about it. ‘I didn’t much fancy staying on without you.’

‘It is going to be difficult for you to teach again.’

Natalie stayed quite still as she waited for Miss Lott to continue.

‘Whatever possessed you to go to the rally? Meeting that crank, Stack. I always said you and Delphi Mulberry were too close. She leads you astray.’ She shook her head.

Miss Lott would never understand what she’d seen and experienced at Olympia. Only Delphi knew what it meant to simultaneously be part of one huge uniformed mass in a hall, while having individual freedom.

‘It was a chance meeting with Miss Stack,’ she said instead, ‘and actually I left her with a flea in her ear about her methods. It’s not what Lord Lacey or the Board think at all.’ And still I can’t bring myself to tell her that I was curious and tempted by the League.

‘They need to make an example of you now. I’ll let you rest.’ They both rose, curving their upper bodies backwards to give each other a little more space.

Miss Lott glanced about her to the pile of books on the bedside table beside the photograph of Natalie’s father and three brothers, all of them gone now, except for William. The piles of belongings she’d have to pack in the morning: Women’s Weekly for the patterns, the Gray’s Anatomy and the college curriculum on the top.

Miss Lott glanced at a pile of letters on the bed stand, fastened with string, took a sharp intake of breath and closed her eyes. Natalie watched for a clue. Was she in pain or was it just disapproval for her correspondence with Delphi and where it had led? Miss Lott pinched the bridge of her nose, then lifted her head with an all too brief smile.

‘I doubt either of us will sleep actually. Who’d have thought it – both of us to leave in the morning. Would you care for a walk?’ Miss Lott led the way around the balustrade of the grand staircase.

Outside, footsteps crunching on the gravel path, Natalie tugged her dressing-gown belt tight. Miss Lott walked carefully ahead of her down the driveway, one hand on her hip, the other holding a lantern in front of her to light their path to the Principal’s Lodge near the entrance.

‘I suppose you should have changed out of your bedclothes.’ Miss Lott looked into the darkness. ‘We look a curious sight I’ve no doubt.’

The Lodge was an old turreted gatehouse at the foot of the driveway to the mansion house, a round building, like a dislodged chimney stack. Miss Lott unlocked the door and cut across the patchwork of rugs to the side of the room that made up the small kitchen.

‘I was here earlier, when you were trying to find me.’

There were rumours about the Lodge, but she’d never before been inside the heather-scented sanctum. She waited in front of an armchair covered in a red tartan blanket, while Miss Lott made the tea. It felt magical, like the inside of a fairy’s toadstool. She never wanted to leave.

The bookshelves ran around the concentric walls, lined mainly with anatomy and physiology and college yearbooks, breaking for the rope handrail lining the stone staircase that led to what must have also been a single, cornerless bedroom. There was another door next to the kitchen area that Natalie assumed must lead to the outhouse, where there was a small fenced-off yard and a storehouse out the back, hemmed in by the woods. The gate to the yard was always locked from the path.

Miss Lott sagged with the weight of loss. She was already unwell and now Natalie was adding to her woes. Her curls had completely relaxed now, her papery skin was pale and the pouches beneath her eyes a deeper purple.

The kettle sung and Natalie brewed the tea and set the pot on the sideboard next to a framed picture of a woman who looked quite like Miss Lott, only she had a young boy on her knee and her hair was longer. This must be the sister from Scotland, on her way now to collect Miss Lott and take her away.

Miss Lott pulled the pearl earrings from her earlobes into her palm and sat back in her armchair, lifting her feet on to a small leather footrest.

‘I feel I must take some responsibility here,’ Miss Lott sighed.

‘Not at all. It’s my fault…’ Natalie cut in. ‘I shouldn’t have gone, and I shouldn’t have lied to you.’

Miss Lott raised her voice and then squeezed her eyes shut. ‘No. You should not. You were to be my legacy.’

So deceitful. So ungrateful. If only she’d had as much commitment to the college as Miss Lott. Her legacy was wasted on Natalie.

‘You were such an odd young girl when you came here, desperate not to be with your brother, longing for company. Forever looking over your shoulder for a boy to take you away from it all. You needed a home and family as well as a place of work. I sensed that from the start. And I still sense that while you’re happy here, the college isn’t enough for you. You feel too cut off.’

She didn’t need to deny it; Miss Lott had understood her all along, she reflected, while filling their cups.

‘For all its faults this is my home and I don’t want to leave.’

Her tea was too hot to drink. She set it on the floor by her feet and thought about pulling the blanket over her knees.

‘Neither do I, my dear. Neither do I. But perhaps you courted this scandal because deep down you wanted an adventure and you weren’t ever going to be bold enough to break free yourself.’ Natalie said nothing. Perhaps she had flirted with danger. It was difficult to even admit it to herself. ‘The most productive thing you can do is think about your future, how you’re going to put a roof over your head.’

They fell into a silence that was only interrupted by gentle slurps from their teacups.

After a short while Miss Lott set her cup down on the table beside her.

‘Enough of this talk. I brought you here because I want to show you something.’

In the small yard at the rear of the Lodge, Miss Lott pulled a key from her pocket to unlock the padlock, held the lantern to the lichen-mottled wooden gates and pushed them open. The yard was bricked and uneven and hard to negotiate in the dark. Behind a shadowy open barn, they came to a concrete shed with a corrugated and rusty tin roof. Miss Lott produced another key and unlocked the wooden door.

‘Look at that beauty.’ She held her lantern up in the dark to shed a pocket of light on a white dust sheet with handlebars loosely described beneath.

‘It’s a motorcycle?’

Natalie often heard an engine ratcheting down the lane at the weekend, but she never imagined that it was stored on the college grounds.

‘A beautiful machine, with its own personality. Just like the college.’ Miss Lott walked into the dank building, not much wider than the motorcycle, and peeled back the dust sheet to reveal the handlebars and then tossed the sheet further still so it travelled beyond the seat and the back wheel and fell in a heap behind it.

‘It’s mine, you know.’ She lifted the brown leather helmet and goggles from where they hung on the handlebars and put them on.

‘Yours?’

Miss Lott handed Natalie the lantern and hoisted up her nightgown. Natalie turning so as not to see anything she shouldn’t as Miss Lott sat astride the saddle.

‘Oh, Miss Lott.’ The image of her in her nightgown, helmet and goggles was too much.

‘I’m not strong enough to handle her now. Mr Lovett keeps her ticking over. He loves this motorcycle as much as I do.’ She pointed out of the door towards the main building. ‘But those Sunday afternoons you imagined me leaning over an interminably dull cross-stitch. Do you know where I’ve been? Out on the open road. I rather like angling. You didn’t know that about me, did you? I strap my equipment to my back and off I go. It’s made me feel alive to do something I love. Taking the stopper out of the bottle’s neck.’

‘It looks such fun.’

Natalie tried to reconcile this image of Miss Lott against the person she thought she’d known for so many years. How could she not know this about her? Had she been blind to seeing Miss Lott in any other way than the image of a spinster college head that she’d decided on? The perception she resented others holding about herself.

‘So I do understand, you know. How you might find the college to be stifling.’ Miss Lott dismounted, beckoned Natalie over and took the lantern.

The seat was a little hard and uncomfortable. It wobbled on the stand and needed her to hold the handlebars to keep it upright. She imagined the engine at full throttle. How had she never seen Miss Lott riding this? Perhaps she had; perhaps Miss Lott had driven past her on the lane and she’d not even noticed it was her beloved Principal beneath the helmet, because she was the last person she’d expect to be riding it.

‘I want you to have her,’ Miss Lott said. ‘When I’m gone. She’s given me such pleasure and I hope she does the same for you.’

‘Oh!’

Was that all she could think to say? She didn’t actually need anything to remember Miss Lott by; she’d shaped her life so much already.

‘Mr Lovett will take care of her until you are settled, and when you come back he will give you a lesson, show you how to set her up and kick-start the engine, and you will need to think about a licence if you want to keep her.’

What a gift! She ran her fingers across the smooth enamel of the engine’s shell, the painted red fox, and took hold of the handlebars again, picturing herself on the road. Imagining the staff’s surprise when they discovered it was her who was revving off to goodness only knows where. Wouldn’t Delphi love this? She could make them special riding outfits. That trouser suit would have a use after all.

‘Thank you,’ she remembered to say. Her sadness had flipped in the air like a pancake and had now flopped back to fill the pan. Her eyes met Miss Lott’s and she smiled back. The connection surged between them, the meeting of two kindred spirits. Natalie knew she didn’t have to say another word, because the Principal had heard and understood every thought that had just flitted through her mind.

Chapter Four

The very high plain dive

By springing out and not downward the diver keeps control in the air and avoids turning over and striking the water with her back.

Natalie walked past the gymnasium just as the local children filed in. She smiled as warmly as she could, meeting their eyes, her hands clear of their perch on her hips, clasping them instead in front of her skirt. But each child, dressed in baggy hand-me-down shorts and shirts, bowed their heads at the sight of her as they cantered past in silence to line up on the mats.

She seemed to terrify the locals, no matter how amiable she tried to be.

If they knew she’d been dismissed they mightn’t be so reverential. Having slept on it, she’d decided not to heed Lacey’s request that she leave quickly and quietly.

She glimpsed the gymnasium through the double doors to say farewell. It had been a ballroom before the building was bought and transformed by Madame Forsberg. The chandelier’s crystals dripped down from the ceiling and rose incongruously above the suede-skinned vaulting horse and its splayed wooden legs.

The equipment had been pioneered here in Britain. These children were privileged to have the chance to use it. The juxtaposition of the chandelier and the equipment gave her a sense that the old way was losing out to the new. Only she was out of touch; this wasn’t new any more.

Miss Hollands, a physical woman with strong thighs, hands clasped behind her back, looked away from Natalie as soon as she came upon her in the corridor and went straight into the gymnasium, blew her whistle and set the children to scale the ropes. So the staff already know. News travels fast. She hesitated at the glass in the door. The children pulled themselves up the rope with grimaces that revealed a mess of teeth, the yellow-hued adult ones too large in contrast to their snub noses and porcelain jaws. Miss Hollands still didn’t look her way.

Despite what she and Delphi felt about the college’s exclusivity, they did good work to improve the health of the local children. The schools could never afford equipment like this.

Down the corridor and out of the French doors, she came to the front lawn where students were setting up for Clinic.

New to the college this term, Miss Ford stood at ease at the edge of the lawn. She supervised the girls as they prepared to deliver remedial physiotherapy to unwell children from the neighbouring villages. Miss Ford didn’t acknowledge Natalie’s presence either. Her voice a deep murmur as she instructed Joan Mason on how to manipulate the lower leg of a local girl of about eight, who lay on her back on top of a white bed sheet. The empty cage of her callipers to her side, she squinted up at the sky as Joan pressed the pads of her fingers along the girl’s shin.

‘It looks like we’ll be blessed with a lovely day.’ Natalie tilted her face up towards the sun. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and it was really beginning to feel as if winter were firmly behind them and spring was finding its feet.

‘It does.’ Miss Ford’s deep voice was clipped.

‘Good work, Mason,’ Natalie added.

As Joan lowered the girl’s leg and lifted the other up straight, Natalie looked behind her at the balcony of Miss Lott’s living room. The doors were open again and the curtains flitted about in the breeze, as if nothing had changed.

Joan had set the girl’s right foot back down and Miss Ford squatted to her knees to help ease the metal cage back on. Then together they raised the girl to standing.

Joan had a gentle touch, Natalie thought. The young girl hobbled back across the lawn to her mother to calls of encouragement from Joan. That call to nurture others was something that couldn’t be taught.

Miss Ford remained silent, her head twitching to check out of the corner of her eye whether Natalie had gone. She decided that she ought to oblige her and push on.

*

‘Ahem.’ Natalie waited. She stood in Margaret’s narrow study room between the desk and bed. The room was so ordered as to be unloved. It looked nothing more than a place for the girl to rest her head. Just her pile of novels and sketchpad out on the desk, no signs of study. Nothing to suggest she had tried to make the place homely at all.

A skeleton on a stand, for anatomy studies, at the head of the bed, had its palms splayed outward as if to welcome the company.

Margaret, lying on her back, snapped her eyes shut as soon as Natalie loomed over her.

‘Shouldn’t you be helping at Clinic?’

Margaret reopened her eyes.

‘I’m resting.’ She addressed the ceiling as she spoke. ‘I heard you’d been dismissed.’ She arched an eyebrow and turned her attention to Natalie to gauge her reaction.

She didn’t want to talk about it with the girl and so she ignored her and pulled the chair out from the desk, turned it to face the bed and sat down.

‘You did very well at the display last night. Stopped Lord Lacey in his tracks and showed your parents a side to you that they didn’t know existed.’

‘They laughed at me today about Mummy’s headscarf and Daddy’s tatty old suit.’

‘The other girls?’

‘Who else?’ She shrugged. ‘I don’t just go to the river to dream and read, you know. I go to get away from them. They’re impenetrable if you don’t fit in.’

‘I know.’

‘No you don’t,’ Margaret snapped.

‘The more you hide from them, the harder it will be.’ Margaret tugged at her white sheet and pulled it close. ‘I think I’d really prefer it if you were to sit up while I spoke with you.’

‘I don’t have to do as you say any more.’ Despite saying this, Margaret still heaved herself up on her arms and propped her pillow against the bare wall. Her chin-length waves were tangled and she still wore her gymslip from the morning’s drills, Natalie noticed.

‘If you applied yourself like you did last night,’ Natalie said, leaning in to look plainly at the face that she hid behind her hair, ‘you could have your pick of friends. They’re competitive; they can’t resist a winner.’

‘But I’m not the competitive sort. I’m not their sort at all. The longer I’m here the more I see that I don’t suit boundaries and rules. The freedom Mother gave me was a gift, not a punishment. But I do so love the sport. I know I’m good at it…’

‘Miss Wilkins. The way I see it is this: you’re here, like it or not, until the end of the year, at the very least. You bring so much to the college – why not take something from it too? You’re a talented diver, swimmer, batswoman… I could go on. I think you should show them that a whimsical actor’s daughter with talent is more at home at this college than a disciplined baron’s daughter with none.’

‘Perhaps.’

Natalie smiled. She had got through to Margaret; she’d seen it in her face.

‘You ought to be worrying about yourself, not me.’

‘I’ll be all right. I have been here a long time. One might say this is just the challenge I need.’ At least I sound confident. I have no idea what I will do once I leave these grounds. ‘And I have to tell you that I know exactly how you feel. I had no parents at all when I came here, so I had to be better than everyone else too, simply so they’d overlook my second-hand uniform and lack of status. But I decided I’d rather that, and it was easy, actually, because I was better than most of them. And so are you.’

‘Well it hasn’t worked out well in the end, has it?’

She stood from the chair, hands on hips, and winced as Margaret wiped her nose on the back of her hand.

‘That’s as it may be, but times are changing and it isn’t too late for you.’

*

No sooner had she left the dormitory entrance than Natalie collided with Miss Lott’s secretary, Mrs Lancaster.

‘Lord Lacey has heard you’re still here, you know. He’s looking for you and he’s not best pleased. You ought to think of saying the last of your goodbyes.’ She thrust Murray’s lead, the dog attached to it, into her hand and suggested that she take him down to Miss Lott at the Lodge on her way out.

Murray exhausted the ground on which to piddle or sniff within the circumference that his lead would take him and looked up at the two women with his mouth open, his tongue working like a piston.

The dog tugged. He knew the way. Without turning to bid Mrs Lancaster farewell she allowed Murray to lead her out on to the path to the Lodge.

Murray paused to lift his leg, staining the trunk of a sweet chestnut tree. As she looked anywhere but down she spotted Miss Lott unsteadily propped against the Lodge’s doorway, holding on to the frame for support.

‘Ah, there you are.’ Her smile was shaky and her words ran into one another. Her dress was so big on her, flopping off the shoulders, the belt tight but meeting no resistance. She had always been slight, but now the shape of her hip bones pushed through the floral fabric.

Inside, behind Miss Lott, a lady of similar height and hair colour removed books from the shelves and stacked them into apple crates. She looked up and nodded and then returned to the books. Natalie recognised her from the photograph, now gone from the empty side table.

Miss Lott bent herself into her chair. She moved slowly as if she’d aged twenty years since she’d clambered on to the motorcycle just last night. Her hair was limp and the grease at the roots made it a darker shade of grey.

Murray clambered on to his mistress’s lap and while she stroked him, Natalie retreated to the kitchen, her jaw and throat too tight to even raise her lips to a smile.

When she came back, Miss Lott’s sister flipped an apple crate for a seat. Natalie dunked her rich-tea biscuit into her tea and watched the tan tideline turn it dark. The soft half melted to nothing on her tongue, but the sweetness couldn’t overpower the acidic taste in her mouth.

‘Mr Lovett has agreed to keep the motorcycle in the shed…’ Miss Lott’s mouth was dry and claggy, with dried spittle at the corner of her pale pink lips ‘…until you’re ready for a lesson or two and you’re settled into your new home. I think he was a bit put out that I hadn’t left it to him.’

‘Then that’s kind of him,’ Natalie said. She pushed aside the rest of the biscuit and the tea.

‘Help yourself to a book or two, if you’d like.’

Natalie daren’t look up. She focused her attention on the spines of each book, going through each of the three columns a good few times, before sliding out the yearbooks from the years she’d both joined and graduated from the college. She piled them on the rug.

Miss Lott cleared her throat. ‘Don’t be sad. I will be in good hands.’

Her sister paused to squeeze Miss Lott’s shoulder.

‘You know over the years…’ Miss Lott’s thin voice filled the silence ‘…from time to time, I’ve asked myself if the professional life was the right choice for me. But when I tried to imagine myself in a quiet and empty home…’ she paused to catch her breath, twiddling Murray’s fur ‘…dusting the sideboard and waiting for the sound of my husband’s key in the door…’ she stopped again ‘…it’s then that I knew without doubt, that I made the right choice, that my career was the only path I could have ever taken.’

Miss Lott slumped from the exertion of her speech and closed her eyes.

‘Teaching would have been poorer without you,’ Natalie replied.

After a while the sister unfolded the tartan blanket and placed it over Miss Lott’s knees. A moment later, Miss Lott’s eyelids fluttered across her grey-blue watery eyes.

‘Now you’ve lost your job,’ her frail voice began again, ‘you’ll be thinking perhaps you should have tried harder to find a man to marry, but I like to think that if you could have had a husband, you wouldn’t have taken one anyway.’

It was meant as a consolation, but Natalie had never been given the option. She’d not had to choose between her career and a man because there was never a chap who wanted her as a wife. The war had carved out a lonely existence for her, and teaching had finished her off.

‘As you say, I’ll never know,’ Natalie said, ‘but at the moment it feels as if everything I have worked for has come to nothing.’

Miss Lott was growing too weak to continue. ‘You don’t have to follow me… Don’t feel you should… Take the scythe in hand and hack your own path,’ she said, and then her eyes closed in a long blink.

Her sister raised her hands to her tweed-covered hips and sighed.

‘Hope, you should rest now.’ She had the same sharp, jerky mannerisms as Miss Lott, the same kindly manner too. ‘We’ve a long drive to Scotland ahead of us,’ she explained to Natalie.

‘Enjoy the motorcycle, my dear,’ was the last thing Miss Lott said. The hand stroking Murray’s back came to a halt and then her chin led her head’s descent, the rise and fall of her chest almost imperceptible.

After a few moments, her sister wrote her Highland address on to a piece of paper for Natalie and then sensing that she would want to say goodbye to Miss Lott alone, she shook Natalie’s hand and clopped off up the curved staircase to the room above.

Natalie crouched down by the arm of Miss Lott’s chair. Murray twisted his neck to see what she was doing. The poor dog – he’d been just a puppy when Miss Lott first got him. He was going to miss his mistress terribly when she was gone. She stroked the white wisps of fur on his head, feeling the fragility of his skull underneath, pushing his ears down. He must know. Animals don’t need language; they sense these things. She did this for a while before she turned her attention from Murray to Miss Lott.

Her jaw slack, her face gaunt and shrunken. Her illness had tightened its grip now that she had nothing left to fight for.

Natalie rubbed her own palms together and then placed one warm hand on top of the one Miss Lott still rested on Murray’s back. She held it there for a few moments, whispering her thanks and love to her old teacher.

Once she’d lifted her hand with care, she snatched up her books and ran from the Lodge, out on to the gravel path and through the woods until she reached the riverbank, where she sank to her knees and cried and half-heard her own anguish, half-noticed as her tears darkened the dried, cracked earth.

Well she wasn’t going to become a relic after all. There was nothing left for her here now. It really is time to go.

Chapter Five

The standing comeback

The diver jumps backwards off the board but then swoops forwards before facing down and entering the water.

‘Perhaps a break by the coast is what you need?’ Delphi asked as she topped up her glass. Natalie’s knife and fork hovered above her plate. ‘This could be your way of making it up to me after the Prunella debacle.’ They both laughed. They had reached a point where they could see the funny side of it, and it was such a relief to laugh: the glow in her belly, the lightness in her face.

She had run to West London, to Delphi’s family. She had avoided facing her brother William and their strained relationship, avoided having to tell him how she’d thrown it all away. Avoided the lecture, avoided his wife, and him finding her a job, any job, whether she wanted it or not.

‘But seriously,’ Delphi pressed on with the same request she’d made earlier that day. ‘A holiday would do us both the world of good and Jack has been working on Mother and Father to let me go. They’re much more likely to say yes if I’m with both of you.’

Jack’s escape plan had come together. He had got a job, as the Lido Manager in a resort on the south coast. He’d been trying hard not to look too pleased with himself, but the whistling betrayed exactly how happy he was.

‘The British diving coach will be travelling the coast this summer,’ he’d explained. ‘He will watch all of the competitions and select his team for the Berlin games next year.’

The escape plan applied to Delphi too. He had an idea she could teach keep-fit at the Lido; a more realistic option than training as an instructor with the League. Delphi had been weighed down by tiredness since their trip to Olympia, and this had made her more determined than ever to get out, keep busy and stay awake. What appeared to be standing in the way of this plan was Natalie.

‘It will be perfect. Dance halls and concerts and What the Butler Saw on the pier. And our own fitness classes too,’ Delphi pressed on.

‘I’ve told you, I don’t think I can.’

‘You’re not still holding out on that letter you wrote to the Board of Education, are you?’

She forked in a mouthful of roast potato.

‘Oh, Natty dear. They don’t understand the meaning of clemency. To hell with them, I say.’

‘It’s easy for you to say when your parents are happy to feed and clothe you and

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