Groosham Grange Read Free Page A

longer, in fact, than the trains everyone was waiting to get on. David had to wait more than twenty minutes before he reached a window and it was almost one o’clock before he was able to run for his train. A seat had been reserved for him – the school had arranged that – and he just had time to heave his case on to the luggage rack and sit down before the whistle went and the train began to move. Pressing his face against the glass, he stared out. Slowly the train picked up speed and London shuddered and rattled away. It had begun to rain. The scene could hardly have been more gloomy if he had been sitting in a hearse on the way to his own funeral.
    Half an hour later they had travelled through the suburbs and the train was speeding past a number of dreary fields – all fields look much the same when they’re seen through a train window, especially when the window is covered with half an inch of dust. David hadn’t time to buy himself a book or a comic, and anyway his parents hadn’t given him any money. Dejectedly, he slumped back in his seat and prepared to sit out the three hour journey to King’s Lynn.
    For the first time he noticed that there were two other people in the compartment, both the same age as him, both looking as fed up as he felt. One was a boy, plump, with circular wire-framed glasses. His trousers might have been the bottom of a school uniform. On top he was wearing a thick jersey made of so much wool that it looked as if the sheep might still be somewhere inside. He had long black hair that had been blown all over the place, as if he had just taken his head out of the washing machine. He was holding a half-eaten Mars bar, the toffee trailing over his fingers.
    The other traveller was a girl. She had a round, rather boyish face with short brown hair and blue eyes. She was quite pretty in a way, David thought, or would have been if her clothes weren’t quite so peculiar. The cardigan she was wearing could have belonged to her grandmother. Her trousers could have come from her brother. And wherever her coat had come from it should have gone back immediately, as it was several sizes too big for her. She was reading a magazine. David glanced at the cover and was surprised to see that it was
Cosmopolitan
. His mother wouldn’t even allow
Cosmopolitan
in the house. She said she didn’t approve of “these modern women”, but then, of course, his mother was virtually prehistoric.
    It was the girl who broke the silence. “I’m Jill,” she said.
    “I’m David.”
    “I’m J-J-Jeffrey.” It was somehow not surprising that the fat boy had a stutter.
    “I suppose you’re off to this Ghastly Grange?” Jill asked, folding up the magazine.
    “I think it’s Groosham,” David told her.
    “I’m sure it will be gruesome,” Jill agreed. “It’s my fourth school in three years and it’s the only one that doesn’t have any holidays.”
    “W-w-one day a year,” Jeffrey stammered.
    “W-w-one day’s going to be enough for me,” Jill said. “The moment I arrive I’m heading out again.”
    “You’ll swim away?” David asked. “It’s on an island, remember.”
    “I’ll swim all the way back to London if I have to,” Jill declared.
    Now that the ice had been broken, the three of them began to talk, each telling their own story to explain how they had ended up on a train bound for the Norfolk coast. David was first. He told them about Beton College, how he had been expelled and how his parents had received the news.
    “I was also at p-p-public school,” Jeffrey said. “And I was expelled too. I was c-c-caught smoking behind the cricket pavilion.”
    “Smoking is stupid,” Jill said.
    “It wasn’t m-m-my fault. The school bully had just set fire to me.” Jeffrey took off his glasses and wiped them on his sleeve. “I was always being b-b-bullied because I’m fat and I wear glasses and I’ve got a s-s-stutter.”
    Jeffrey’s public school was called Godlesston. It was in the