Monster: The perfect boarding school thriller to keep you up all night

‘Look, the parents are starting to arrive.’

Cars were trickling through the top gate at the far end of the driveway. There was the lightest fluttering of snow on the gelid air as a succession of Rolls-Royces, Mercedes, Porsches and Volvos rolled up the drive and parked up, their occupants following the signs through the formal gardens towards the stalls. I stopped scrubbing and walked to the West Turret roof to look down on the Orangery lawn. Stallholders had been at the school all morning, setting up their Christmas glögg, hickory smoked nuts, handmade crafts, wicker baskets, pomanders and tree ornaments. A ginger girl, Rosanna Keats, was standing at the arched entrance to the formal gardens, with a tray of glögg in little tumblers and a plate of sugared plums. Two girls standing next to her—I think it was the twins Hannah and Heather Bolan-Wood—bore fat chunks of stollen and gingerbread on little red and white napkins.

My mum and dad would have loved to see all this. They’d enjoyed it last year. Dad had gone on about his eggnog for months afterwards and Mum had bought these Hansel and Gretel tree ornaments which she said reminded her of me and Seb. Seb’d taken the piss, as he usually did at my school events, about our indoor and outdoor shoes, our ‘no whistling’ and ‘no TV except on Saturdays’ rules. He’d laughed all through the school concert, at the Pups forgetting their words and Regan Matsumoto’s tuneless trumpet recital. All the girls in my dorm kept going on about how hot Seb was. I’d just found him annoying. I’d have given anything to be annoyed by him again today.

‘Have you seen Regan recently?’ I asked, hugging the chimney pot on the Weather Station turret as the eerily distant sounds of the choir singing ‘Once in Royal David’s City’ came floating upwards.

‘Huh?’

I sighed and hopped down off the turret roof to rejoin Maggie in the middle. ‘Regan Matsumoto. You know. Weird girl? Plaits?’

‘Best friend is a spine in the woods? Yeah, what about her?’

‘I haven’t seen her about this afternoon. Have her parents come to pick her up then? I didn’t see her go. She said she was staying here for Christmas.’

Maggie was clearly distracted. ‘Ssh,’ she said, not taking her eyes from whatever she was looking at on the west side of the school. ‘Come and look.’

I moved across to the Observatory turret, where she was hiding behind the chimney, and she pointed towards Edward’s Pond. A figure was walking by herself, carrying a white bag, towards the Birdcage. She looked round. It was Dianna.

‘What’s she doing?’ I said.

‘Dunno,’ said Maggie. ‘She keeps looking round, to see if anyone’s following her.’

‘She looks very furtive,’ I whispered.

‘What does that mean?’

‘Secretive. Like she’s doing something she shouldn’t. Maybe she is.’

‘Oh, she so is,’ said Maggie, her eyebrows going into suggestiveness overdrive. Dianna looked around again and disappeared into the trees.

‘Oh, come on,’ I said. ‘This is Dianna Pfaff we’re talking about.’

‘Yeah, I know. The Kate Middleton of Bathory School. Wouldn’t swear if her fanny hair caught fire. But what’s it about then? And what’s in that bag?’

I shrugged. ‘Candles for the procession or something? The route goes that way.’

‘The route’s already marked,’ said Maggie. ‘I watched Amy Sudbury and Helena Freemantle doing it this morning with white paint and gaffer tape.’

‘Okay well—’

‘Look, there she is again,’ said Maggie as Dianna’s blonde head appeared in the gap between the trees and the path from the Birdcage up to the Temple. She still had the bag. Then we lost her. ‘Damn.’

‘What is she doing up there?’ I said aloud.

‘I’ve got to know,’ said Maggie. ‘I’m gonna go and catch her red-handed.’

‘No, wait,’ I said, holding her arm. ‘Wait until she comes back down and then go and ask her.’

Maggie was just about persuaded. I went back to scrubbing the roof while she watched and waited for signs of movement in the gardens. Pretty soon, the gorgeous sugary smell of roasting chestnuts and the sweet notes of ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’ came floating up to greet us from the scene below.

‘That bleeding caterwauling,’ Maggie muttered. ‘Seriously, I’ve heard better noises coming out of abattoirs.’

‘How many abattoirs have you visited then?’ I said, swilling off the last white remnants into the guttering.

‘Nash, Nash, she’s coming back, look!’

I put down the bucket and raced back over to the Observatory turret roof again, hiding behind Maggie as we watched Dianna coming back down the hill. She disappeared into the trees. When she reappeared, we saw that the white bag she had been carrying had gone.

I looked at Maggie. ‘Where’s the bag?’

‘Oh, we have sooooo got something on Princess Di.’

‘Like what?’ I asked. ‘We saw her walking into the valley with a bag. Big deal.’

‘Maybe she’s the dreaded Beast of Bathory, and in the bag are some more severed limbs! MWAH ahh AH!’

I laughed. ‘Come on, seriously.’

‘Let’s go and ask her about it now,’ said Maggie.

‘Not yet. We don’t want her to know we’re on to her. Don’t you know anything about espionage?’

‘Eh?’

‘Espionage. Spying. Look, we’re in the driving seat here—we’ve got something on her. If we go down there and let her know what we know—not that we know much—she’ll make up some feeble excuse, and next time she’ll be even more careful about covering it up.’

‘Covering what up?’

‘Whatever it is that she’s just done,’ I said. ‘No, we have to play it really cool, don’t let her suspect we know anything. Come on. Let’s go and put these back in the yard. I need to get my libretto.’

* * *

Later, as the others squealed off to the dorms to collect luggage and leave with their parents, Maggie helped me put the signs up in the Landscape Gardens saying ‘Keep Out’ and ‘Unsafe: Frozen Water’ and then we got two hot chocolates from one of the stalls and played cards in the bay window of the common room. Girl by girl, trunk by trunk, car by car, the school emptied, the Christmas smells disappearing and the chatter evaporating on the polar white air. A Pup called Tabitha Bonham, who was also staying behind until her army parents picked her up some time before Christmas Eve, had latched on to me and was sitting by my feet with a floppy toy rabbit, the ear of which was in her mouth.

‘SNAP,’ Maggie shouted and banged her hand down on the coffee table between us. I stared out of the window as she shuffled the stack. I longed to see my dad’s blue Volvo Estate beetling down the driveway, sweeping round the turning circle at the front of school. To see Mum and Dad get out of the front. To see my brother Seb leap out of the back seat and come running up to hug me. But it was so far away. They were so far away. The night grew darker and emptier.

The door to the common room burst open and Dianna Pfaff stormed in, mumbling and cursing under her breath.

‘Bloody stupid do this do that. Hateful …’

‘Hi, Dianna,’ I said. She did a double take.

‘Natasha,’ she said. ‘Margaret. Pup.’

‘Princess,’ said Maggie, slamming down a jack on top of my jack. ‘SNAP!’

‘Dammit!’

Maggie smiled, collecting up her cards. I had seven left. It was the third game in a row that I’d lost, but I didn’t mind. I’d seen a bright side—me, Maggie and a fairly sweet Pup on our own with Matron over Christmas. We could make the best of it.

I looked over at Dianna, who was removing a plastic container of Rice Krispie cakes from her locker. ‘Everything okay, Dianna?’

She closed her locker. ‘No, not really. I just got off the phone to my mother. Looks as though I’ll be staying for Christmas as well.’

Then again …

Maggie groaned. ‘Oh you are fu—’

‘SNAP!’ I shouted as Maggie took her eye off the stack. Then the door opened again and the one person I wished had been oven-roasted with our reconstituted turkey strode in and removed her coat.

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