The Flight of Gemma Hardy by Margot Livesey

are you doing here?”
    â€œI can’t do gym”—she gestured towards her leg—“so I have library duty. I check to make sure the books are in alphabetical order. It’s just something to keep me busy.”
    â€œHow old are you?”
    â€œThirteen, nearly fourteen. I was ill for a year, and then I did badly on arithmetic. That’s why I’m older than the other girls. How old are you?”
    When I said nearly eleven, Miriam nodded and said she thought so. “It would never do to have a working girl in Primary Six. You seem very good at sums.”
    So even my being moved up two years—how pleased I had been when Miss Bryant broke that news—was part of her scheme. But Miriam’s smile dulled my dismay. “I am good at sums,” I said, “but in other subjects I’m falling further behind every day. I’ll never catch up.”
    â€œYes, you will. The holidays are nearly here, and you’ll see, everyone slacks off. I’ll help you. Now we’d better get back to work. Mrs. B. often comes to check on me. She knows I’m easily distracted.”
    I wanted to ask more questions: Why would she be at Claypoole in the holidays? Would she really help me? But she limped away to the far corner of the room and set to work as if alone; I followed her example. I was polishing the fourth window when the door opened quietly. Mrs. Bryant liked to steal around in the hope of catching wrong-doers. Miriam and I both curtseyed.
    â€œBack to work, girls.” Smiling silently, she observed our handiwork before offering advice. “Goodall, it will go faster if you pull out all the books that are out of order first. Hardy, has no one taught you to clean windows? The edges must be done thoroughly. You’ll need a kitchen stool for the upper ones. But even with a stool,” she added, “you are too small. You should not have been given this task.”
    She uttered this last remark as if some stranger had sent me to the library. After making a note on her clipboard, she told me to finish the current window and go and clean the music room. As soon as the door closed, I whispered to Miriam, “Will you really help me catch up?”
    â€œYes, but please don’t talk now. You’ll get us both in trouble.”
    If sorrows never come singly, perhaps that is also true of acts of kindness. That evening Cook summoned me to put the food away. It was a task normally performed by older girls, and I felt additionally persecuted when she handed me a tray of eggs and led the way to the larder, a locked room at the back of the kitchen. But as I set the eggs on the shelf, I smelled a familiar fragrance. There sat a steaming bowl of stew.
    â€œLook what you found,” said Cook. “The idea of giving a girl your age nothing to eat all day. I’ll be back in five minutes.”
    She stepped out of the room. As the door closed behind her my heart began to race—the larder was no bigger than the sewing-room—but I perched on a crate of onions and tried to eat slowly. My uncle had told me that prisoners or castaways when rescued often ate too fast and became sick. The stew was a standard at the school, and the regular girls complained about the turnips and greyish meat, but I savoured every mouthful.
    M iriam’s description of the holidays proved correct. The Bryants disappeared to their house in the nearby town of Coldstream, and most of the other teachers left to visit relatives and friends. Several of the working girls, including the dreaded Findlayson, also went home. The rest of us were allowed to mingle more freely with the few regular pupils, like Miriam, who stayed at the school. Ross organised the spring-cleaning every morning. Later in the day, if it was fine, she made up teams for rounders and hockey. While these games were in progress Miriam and I would sit over our books in the common room. She was not a great scholar, but she was