Winter Wood by Steve Augarde Page A

Ihave said in my previous correspondence, your daughter’s disgusting and abominable behaviour has been quite inexcusable. If I hadn’t the school’s reputation to consider, I should have certainly pressed for serious charges in this matter. Indeed I have only been able to persuade others not to insist upon my doing so by pointing out that it would not benefit their own daughters to have the school’s reputation for high standards compromised. I have also asked them to take into consideration the recent loss of your son to the War, and that you should thus be spared the embarrassment of a legal suit at such a time.
    Naturally there can be no question of Miss Howard returning to continue her education at Mount Pleasant.
    I trust that you will settle the enclosed account immediately in order that the school can reimburse those parents affected for the considerable trouble and costs that they have incurred.
    Yours sincerely,
    A. Craven (Headmistress)
    Wow! Midge rested the letter in her lap and gawped at the TV screen. What on earth could Celandine have done that was so terrible?
    â€˜Find anything?’ Katie yawned as the programme came to an end and the credits began to roll.
    Midge handed the letter over. ‘Yeah. This.’
    Katie yawned again and looked at the letter – then sat up straight as she began to read through it.
    â€˜Yipes! I can’t believe this! Sounds like she was a right little madam. Wonder what she did, though? “Disgusting and abominable behaviour . . .” Maybeshe was round the back of the gym with one of the gardeners.’
    â€˜No. Read it again. It’s actual damage. There’s a bill here – forty-five quid.’
    â€˜Doesn’t seem
that
much.’ Katie looked at the bill.
    â€˜Yeah, but that would probably have been like hundreds in today’s money.’
    â€˜Suppose so. Well, well, well. Great-aunt Celandine – nothing but a hooligan! A vandal! What are you going to do now?’
    â€˜Well, I
was
going to see whether the school still existed, and whether there was like a reunion site or something for old pupils. Doesn’t seem much point now, though.’
    â€˜Noooo. Sounds like she might have blotted the jolly old copybook. Eh what, me old sport, me old spiffy?’
    â€˜Ha! Just a bit.’
    Yes, and that was a blow. It seemed unlikely that Celandine would ever have been a welcome member of any kind of Old Girl’s club after what she’d done . . . whatever it was that she
had
done.
    Midge picked up the ledger and the bits of paper, and put them back in the envelope. So. That was that.
    Saturday rolled round again, and Midge was getting nowhere. She’d gone on a computer search, just for the lack of any better idea, typed in ‘Mount Pleasant School for Girls’, and found to her astonishment that there were loads of them. Or at least there were loads of schools with Mount Pleasant in the name, but theywere all much too far away to have been possible candidates: Switzerland, Auckland, Delaware . . . even the one in Hampshire would surely have been a non-starter.
    The local paper had responded to her email kindly, but regretfully, saying that they had nothing in their files on the Tone Valley Clinic that she hadn’t already seen. It was all beginning to get her down a bit. And now she had to waste her whole Saturday afternoon doing something she did
not
want to do: meeting Barry.
    They were going on a shopping trip to this Almbury Mills place, to look at shrubs, of all things. Barry knew a lot about
shrubs
, apparently, and so he would be coming along to advise her mum and Uncle Brian on what to choose. Also it would be a chance to say hallo, and get to know one another. Great.
    Normally she could have just said no to such a boring excursion, and stayed at home, but of course that wasn’t an option in this case. Because of
Barry
.
    â€˜Come on, Midge,’ her