A yawn made me stretch. I’d been sound asleep until the wind and rain had woken me. I scrubbed a hand down my face. I felt dirty, travel tired, and all out exhausted. What I needed was a hot shower and some kick-ass coffee of the nuclear variety.
“Are you ready?” A loud bang landed on the door, shaking it on its hinges. Scurrying over the cold floor, I opened the door to find Philomena slouching on the other side against the doorframe, munching on an apple in her hand. If possible, her hair was wilder, the curls having multiplied as if she’d been out in the rain for a morning run. I wasn’t one to judge, but she didn’t seem the jogging type.
“Philomena?” I groaned and slumped my shoulders. “It’s so early, what are you doing?”
“Please call me Phil, I can’t stand Philomena.” Her face scrunched with distaste. “It makes me think of my gran, and those awful teas I used to have to sit through around her kitchen table. She’d tell us stories of the war.”
I smiled and opened the door wider for her to slip through. “Sounds kind of nice.” The thought of sitting around a kitchen table participating in friendly banter wasn’t an alien concept to me. Not all my homes over the years had been devoid of childhood cornerstones. However, they had been few and far between. The older I got, the more I’d been left to my own devices. The care system at the age of seventeen largely became a roof over your head and a half-stocked fridge.
As if she could read my mind she shook her head. “Don’t think it was all some rose-tinted moment of family bonding. She repeated the same story every time we went.”
“Maybe she was muddled.”
Phil snorted. “Or batshit crazy. I asked mum once why she always told the same tale. Apparently, she was born at the end of the war. She didn’t even see any of it.” She chuckled. “I believed her for years.”
She sat on my bed and watched me expectantly through thick black-rimmed glasses. It took me a moment to work out why she looked so different. “Did you have glasses on yesterday?” I asked.
“Nah.” She frowned and shook her curls. “I hate contact lenses. So, I try them and then remember I hate them. Tomorrow I shall try them again.”
I chuckled and searched out my wash bag from my duffel. Philomena had pointed out the bathroom on my tour the previous day. I wasn’t unused to sharing bathrooms with near strangers. What I wasn’t excited about was the dash in the cold to get to it. “Are you going to sit here while I wash-up?” I asked. It was oddly comforting. Phil and I seemed to have clicked so quickly. It didn’t seem odd to leave her in my room while I left to use the bathroom.
She looked at me expectantly and glanced around the room. My lips twitched as she lifted the duvet and peered underneath. “What are you washing up? Have you been having a midnight feast without inviting anyone?”
We stared at one another for a long pause before I gave up with a sigh and shrugged my shoulders helplessly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Washing up? It’s what one does to the dishes after eating?”
I took a moment to process and then it made sense. “Okay. Uh, no. I’m going to go and wash myself.” I sniggered, and my cold nose dripped. I was definitely going to end up dying in this place, malnourished and freezing. “Is that better?” I grinned and wiped my nose with my towel.
She nodded, satisfied, and with a smile I slipped out the room. I was right, it was freezing. I shivered the whole way there, the whole time I was in the shower, and the whole way back again. By the time I closed my bedroom door and found Philomena flicking through my stuff, my teeth were chattering. “What are you doing?” was more of a “wha-wha-wha- oin.” Which was all my teeth would allow.
“Unpacking for you. Seriously, Mae, you need to become more proactive.”
I grimaced and picked up the uniform hanging on the outside of the cupboard, eyeing it with intense displeasure. “I’ve been asleep. I’ve only just woken up.”
“You’ve been asleep the whole time, since yesterday lunch? Wow, no wonder your skin is so good, if you’re getting sixteen hours of sleep a night.”
I turned for the mirror. My skin wasn’t that good. Pale and translucent, I’d rather have owned her earthy colouring, than my own. I dropped my towel onto the floor. My underwear was already in place after I’d squeezed into it while soaking wet and freezing in the bathroom, and then pulled the shirt over my shoulders. One thing I could be grateful for was that it seemed to fit. How my aunt had known what size to order was a mystery.
I yawned as I zipped up the skirt.
“How can you be yawning?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” I yawned again around my words. “But I’m so tired. I don’t feel rested at all.” I glanced in the mirror as I tucked my shirt in. “Maybe it’s jet lag?” I’d never flown out of time zones before so had no idea what jet lag was supposed to feel like. If it meant feeling like death and like I wanted to crawl into a hole and never surface again—I had it.
“You need to get a wiggle on. We will miss breakfast, and I know how much you’re going to love a nice hearty bowl of porridge.”
I pulled a face which made her laugh. “Cabbage and porridge, this place is a delight for the taste buds.”
“I know, and you haven’t even met the teachers yet.”
“Will we be in class together?” I asked with some optimism, not overly excited at walking around the creepy school by myself. I had no
