1. The First Day

I’m kneeling on the wooden floor of The Schoolroom, next to my silver packing trunk. It looks very new and shiny compared to the old, battered ones that the other girls are busy unpacking. The large wood-panelled room, lined with trunks, cases and lacrosse sticks is buzzing with activity. Girls rush in and out carrying armfuls of clothes and bedding, exchanging excited greetings as they bump into each other. Matron, standing in the doorway in her starched blue nurse’s uniform, lacy white cap pinned tightly to her large round head, is booming out instructions to the whole room in her loud, authoritative bark.

“Nicola, don’t run, walk!”

“Amanda put that down this instant or you’ll poke someone’s eye out”

“Kim you can’t possibly carry all that, don’t be ridiculous girl”.

My parents have just said goodbye, they are on their way back to the airport now, heading home to Paris. I am eleven years old and this is my first day at Oakdene School for Girls, a small boarding school in the home counties. I feel a bit excited, very nervous and suddenly completely alone, lost, and determined not to show it. I have left home today. I don’t know it yet, but I will never go back. I will go back for the holidays of course, but I will never live at home with my parents and sister again, ever.

I look down at the duvet we packed into my trunk last night and I feel my cheeks flush. It’s all wrong and I can’t bear to think that someone might notice. We bought it on Saturday at Marks and Spencer. I’ve never had a duvet before. I’ve grown up with sheets and blankets. It feels exotic somehow and looks so new, crisp and bright with its geometrical pattern in bold shades of blue, nothing like the soft, worn, homely bedding the other girls are pulling out of their trunks, all delicate flower prints and ponies in muted pastel colours. I am so embarrassed, I desperately want to fit in. I hurriedly pull the cover off my duvet and bundle it up at the bottom of my trunk. I will spend the whole term pretending I forgot to bring one, anything to spare me the shame of being different and getting it so wrong. My mother will receive a dissaproving letter from Matron about the missing duvet cover, which she will no doubt ignore. We won’t talk about it.

“Hello” says an earnest looking girl with a long glossy ponytail of thick dark hair. Like all of us, she is wearing school uniform, a sage green woollen polo neck sweater which doesn’t seem to quite match the pine green and black houndstooth wool skirt. Her long fawn socks are pulled right up to her knees making her look even younger than she is. She looks sad, her dark eyes searching mine for something, reassurance maybe? I like the look of her. She seems sweet and kind, I have a feeling we’re going to be friends.

“I’m Emma” she says shyly. “What dorm are you in?”

I hesitate for a moment. Now that I’m here I can’t quite believe just how like Malory Towers this all feels. It’s as if I’ve stepped right into one of Enid Blyton’s books. That is after all what I had longed for when I pleaded mercilessly with my parents to let me come to boarding school. Living in an elegant apartment in the heart of Paris, the only English girl at an American convent school, I felt so lonely. My mother doesn't approve of Americans, “So brash and loud” she complains, so I'm not allowed to have friends to play.

“Um… I’m in Barry” I say, the words sound strange coming out of my mouth, as if I’m speaking a foreign language in a land I have only ever read about in books.

“Have you bagsied a bed yet?”

“I don’t think so” I say tentatively. Bagsied? The word swirls around in my head.

“Shall we go up, maybe you can have the bed next to mine”

I follow her up the creaky, wide wooden staircase with its thick green carpet runner and large carved acorn topping the bottom post. We slide our hands up the polished dark mahogany bannister as we race up to the landing.

“These are the Main Stairs you know” Emma tells me, “We are only allowed to use them on the first and last days of term”.

I wonder how she knows and I listen, fascinated as she explains that only prefects and teachers use this staircase, as we make our way up. For the next four years, we will have to use the narrow back stairs with their worn blue carpet and ugly metal stair treads. I’ll soon get used to the endless rules and the myriad of ways that the firmly established hierarchy ensures that we girls know our place.

Pushing open a door marked Kennedy, we step into a long dormitory with Georgian sash windows down one side and two rows of black iron beds, each separated by a narrow wooden bedside unit. The counterpanes are all identical; thin cotton in orange, red and yellow check. We push through another door at the end of this room into Barrie. Slightly smaller, I will share this dorm with seven other Upper Fourth girls. The room looks cold and bare. It doesn’t feel anything like a bedroom. There are no pictures on the walls, no rugs on the floor. Some of the beds have one teddy bear lying at the pillow end and sitting on the bedside table next to these beds is one framed photograph. That’s what the school regulations booklet said we were allowed to bring; one teddy bear and one photograph each. This is the limit of homeliness that we are entitled to.

I look around the dorm, wondering which bed will be mine. Emma’s bed is in the middle of a row of four and the one next to her clearly hasn’t been bagsied yet. We look at each other and grin.

A bold looking girl with a wispy golden blonde bob and a freckly face is sitting on a bed at the end of the room, by the wall. She looks up as we come in, confident and at ease sitting cross-legged, her baggy fawn socks rolled down to her ankles.

“I’m Caz” says the blonde girl. There’s a certainty to her tone of voice which makes me feel uneasy. She looks at us with a cheeky, almost daring grin. Before we have time to tell her our names, she’s talking eagerly, telling us that she has a pony at home, DD, Double Diamond. He’s her best friend and she hates that she had to leave him behind, she’ll die if she can’t ride him she declares dramatically.

I’ve never met anyone who has a pony. I look at her curiously, I’m not sure I like her and yet she’s attractive and energetic and I can’t stop staring at her. I don’t know what to say or do, it’s a bit like being in a dream, like I’m not really here and I’ll wake up in a minute at home, in my bedroom in Paris with my sister and my parents.

She’s still talking “What did your parents put in your tuck box?” she’s asking.

I feel frozen. A tuck box, what’s that? I wrack my brains, thinking back to Malory Towers, did they have tuck boxes, I don’t remember. What are they? What am I supposed to say?

Before I can muster a reply Emma is opening her bedside table and taking out a large metal tin. As she lifts the lid I can see that it’s full of sweets, chocolate bars and crisps. Suddenly it clicks, I remember now, tuck is food like snacks and treats. My mother hasn’t given me a tuck box. She never said anything about a tuck box. She’s French, she doesn’t know anything about boarding school, she probably didn’t even know what tuck meant and just ignored that bit in the booklet. I’m mortified, and there’s no way I’m letting on. I think fast and mutter something about it being in my trunk as Emma starts laying out the contents of her box on the bed and she and Caz busily compare goodies. I watch them uneasily, I don’t feel that I belong here. I turn to look out of the window at the long driveway lined with tall Oak trees all the way to the towering, ornate, iron gate. It’s almost dusk and I feel a pang of loneliness as I stand there by the window, Emma and Caz are chatting animatedly about their tuck. I want to run down the drive, I want to run and run all the way home. I don’t think I want to go to boarding school after all.

From the bottom and left to right: Me, Sarah Jane, Nikki, Emma, Kim, Charlotte, Caz, ?, Pam, Sarah, ?, Amanda

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Today when I am in an unfamiliar environment I am lightening fast at assessing the situation and working out how to fit in or how to keep out of the way. I am a chameleon. I can shape shift in an instant. So fast that I forget who I am, I lose my true colours, if indeed I have any at all. My true colours stop mattering, what really matters is fitting in, is knowing and saying the right things, is not looking or sounding foolish.

This was not the first time I had been thrust into the unknown. Before Oakdene I was sent to an American school in Paris. I was the only English girl until another one joined. Ruthie and I became inseparable. I have learned how to find safety and stick with it. And when I am alone, I stay in the background and avoid attracting attention. Or in professioanl settings I take the lead. When I am the leader I set the tone, I choose the colours, so I know I will not feel lost. Socially I am shy. I am still more likely to be the observer, working out how to shape shift to fit in.

I am not sure I ever feel truly at home, even in the spaces I create. I don’t know what that would feel like. Ultimately I am permemnetly seraching, I always have one foot in another land. Home is a place I still long for.

Go to the next story - 2. Wakey Wakey