The Good Girl Read Free

time.
    It was such an innocent gesture. Ailsa felt her stomach heave and thought she might be sick. She swallowed a couple of times and took tiny sips from a glass of water. The girl wouldn’t be revising anatomy if she knew. She would be nervously flicking through the pages of one of the magazines strategically placed on the table beside her. Or biting her nails. Or crying. Most likely crying.
    It didn’t surprise her that she was revising. In contrast to everything else that had happened, it was what she would have predicted. Ailsa skim-read the reports from staff for a second time to steady herself. Apart from a recent blip in a Biology exam, Romy was a straight-A student. She was taking four science A levels; she wanted to apply for medical school. ‘Both parents are professionals,’ the director of studies had noted, as though this gave her ambition credibility. Outside of class, there were no issues flagged. Her parents weren’t divorced; there was no recent history of alcoholism, sexual abuse or drug addiction in the family. No involvement in gangs; no history of bullying or being bullied; no symptoms of depression. She was what Ailsa called a blank canvas.
    The only hint that something might be wrong came from Matt, who said that over the past few months Romy had spoken back to him a couple of times in class and been sent out once. Ailsa put this to the back of her mind. There was nothing here that came close to offering an easy explanation.
    Ailsa glanced out of the window again. She was dis
composed to discover the girl was staring straight back at her, although of course she couldn’t see through the venetian blind. Romy wasn’t one of those girls coated in thick layers of foundation, lipstick and mascara. If Ailsa had been pressed to identify which girls might be vulnerable to this type of situation, Romy would have been close to the bottom of the list.
    She was curious-looking. Pale-skinned and dark-eyed. Inherited from her father. Striking rather than beautiful. In her first term at the school a small group of children had mocked her for being albino. ‘Why would I want to look like you?’ Ailsa had heard her retort.
    She looked nothing like her dark-haired older sibling, thought Ailsa. Ailsa’s stomach clenched as she realized that perhaps Romy’s older brother was already aware but didn’t know how to deal with the situation. In which case she had failed him too. He sometimes hung out with Stuart, the boy who had the video on his phone. Perhaps he should see Mrs Arnold? Ailsa wrote this down in a new notebook specially dedicated to the scandal and underlined it several times.
    Stuart swaggered along the corridor. Ailsa didn’t know the name of every pupil in her school. She had decided early on that the effort of memorizing every student would be at the cost of something more strategically important. So she knew the names of the kids that came to her notice, either the clever ones or the naughty ones. Stuart fell into both categories.
    He stopped beside Romy, which surprised Ailsa
because she couldn’t imagine they were friends. Romy looked up. He had a striking profile. A long aquiline nose and big dark eyes. He had gone from boy to adult without the awkward transition through spotty adolescence. His body was ridiculously muscular; his school uniform barely contained his thick thighs and overworked shoulders. Steroid abuse was to boys what anorexia was to girls, thought Ailsa, remembering something she had read in the paper.
    Stuart smiled at Romy. The smile turned into a lip curl and then suddenly he stuck his middle finger in his mouth and simulated the motions of oral sex. Romy looked taken aback. She frowned and shook her head. Stuart threw back his head, laughed and slouched off. When he passed her window, his lip turned into a half smile and he blew Ailsa a kiss as though he realized that she was watching.
    Ailsa gripped the edge of her desk. Her hands were shaking. It was ten past three in