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CHAPTER ONE
TO THE nervous girl hovering in the darkened doorway, the woman sitting at the long, scuffed dining table looked discouragingly absorbed, her slender body propped over a lecture pad as her pen danced across the ruled page. An untidy array of loose-leaf pages and open books fanned across the table-top in front of her and a half-drunk cup of tea sat forgotten at her elbow. The standard lamp which she had dragged over from the corner of the room to supplement the feeble naked bulb dangling from the ceiling poured yellow light down onto her bent head, refining the neat knot of fine, straight hair at the nape of her neck from its usual dishwater-blonde to burnished gold. Even in a boxy white shirt and fawn cargo pants she still managed to look enviously feminine.
Miss Adams had always seemed kind and approachable; she’d never shouted, or played favourites or picked on kids for things about themselves that they couldn’t help, as some of the other teachers at Eastbrook did. Right now, however, her delicately etched features looked aloof in their intentness and the girl’s misgivings overwhelmed her dwindling store of courage.
After all, Miss Adams was no longer teaching at Eastbrook Academy for Girls. She had left at the end of the previous year and moved out to the sticks to teach history at Hunua College, the local state high school. The fact that she was helping out on this special fifth-formers’ camp during the holiday break between the first and second terms didn’t mean she was ever coming back to Eastbrook. She was only here because Old Bag Carmichael had got sick and none of the other teachers from school were available to come and take her place. Miss Marshall would have had to cancel the rest of the camp if she hadn’t remembered that her friend and former colleague lived in the nearby town of Riverview. Luckily Miss Adams had been free to donate a few days of her time, but she certainly wasn’t going to be around to help cope with any fallout from tonight’s escapade—and there was bound to be heaps of aggro back at school if the other girls found out who had tattled, no matter that it had been out of worry rather than malice.
Clutching her loose pyjamas against her hollow stomach, the girl began to edge backwards into the gloom of the hallway, but it was too late.
As Anya turned her head to look up another reference she caught sight of a pale flutter out of the corner of her eye and was wrenched from her absorption, her heart pumping in alarm at the prospect of an intruder.
She didn’t usually jump at shadows, but Anya was conscious that the regional park’s accommodation was sited in a relatively isolated part of the shoreline reserve, and that she was currently the sole protector of four teenage girls. Cathy Marshall, the camp’s supervising teacher, had taken the rest of the girls out with the park ranger to count and record the number of nocturnal bird-calls in the surrounding bush, part of an ongoing park survey on behalf of the Conservation Department.
Her pulse slowed in relief as she recognised the tall, gawky figure of one of her temporary charges.
‘Hello, Jessica, what are you doing up?’
Glancing at her slim gold watch, Anya saw that it was well past midnight. She had been taking advantage of the quiet to catch up on some of the research which she had planned to do during these holidays and the time had passed more swiftly than she had realised.
‘I…uh…’ Jessica swallowed audibly, shifting her weight from one pyjama-clad leg to the other.
‘Can’t you sleep?’ Anya asked, pitching her cool, clear voice low in deference to the night. ‘Is your stomach hurting again?’
Jessica and her bunkmate had suffered a mild case of the collywobbles after gorging themselves on guava berries which they had picked off a bush hanging over a roadside fence.
Jessica blinked rapidly. ‘No…uh…I just came down to…to…’ She trailed off, gnawing her lower lip as her dark eyes skated around the room, searching for inspiration, ‘…to get a drink of water,’ she finished lamely.
Anya decided to overlook the rather obvious invention.
‘I see. Well, what are you waiting for?’ She tilted her head towards the open kitchen door behind her. ‘Help yourself.’
Returning her attention to her books, she listened as the kitchen light clicked on, and after an extended pause there came the squeak of a cupboard door, a clink of china and a gush of water. There was another long silence before the light snapped off and Jessica trailed slowly back, to linger once more in the doorway.
Anya raised her eyebrows above abstracted grey eyes, set wide apart in her delicate face. ‘Was there something else?’ she murmured, her mind still half on the open page in front of her.
Her impatience caused an agonised pinkening of Jessica’s freckled complexion as she hurriedly shook her curly head, but her fingers continued to anxiously twist and tug at the hem of her pyjama jacket.
Anya suppressed an inward sigh and put her pen down.
‘Are you sure?’ she coaxed, her mouth curving in a sympathetic smile that banished the former impression of cool reserve. ‘If you can’t sleep, maybe you’d like to stay down here and chat for a while?’ she probed gently.
An expression of yearning flitted across Jessica’s uncertain face. ‘Well…’
‘Is there a problem with some of the other girls?’
‘No!’ Her guess had Jessica almost tripping over her tongue with an over-hasty denial. ‘I mean, n-no, thanks—it’s OK…really! I—I feel quite sleepy now…’ She punctuated her stammered words with an unconvincing yawn. ‘Uh—goodnight, Miss Adams…’ She turned tail and scampered up the stairs.
Anya took up her pen again and tried to return to her research, but the memory of Jessica’s anxious expression nagged at her conscience. She regretted the initial dismissive-ness which had cost her the girl’s confidence. Anya’s ability to gain and hold the trust of her students was mentioned in her reference as one of her major strengths as a teacher. It was largely thanks to that glowing reference from Eastbrook’s headmistress that
she had gained her challenging new post and, after allowing herself to be persuaded to sacrifice a few days of her precious holiday to help run this camp, the least she owed her former school was to fulfil her responsibilities with good grace.
Anya had been a boarding pupil herself at Eastbrook, and was aware of the bitter feuds, petty cruelties and reckless dares that were carried out behind the house mistresses’ backs. Remembering some of those escapades, she felt her guilt deepen to active unease and she pushed back her chair, gathering her books and papers up into a neat pile which she stowed in her zipped backpack. It was past time she packed up anyway. Tomorrow was the final day of the camp and the schedule was crammed full of activities, right up until the time that the bus was due to ferry the girls back to school. Then Anya would be at liberty to return to the peace and quiet of her cosy cottage. After years of sharing various accommodations she was revelling in the freedom of total independence, and these past few days of communal living had reconfirmed her belief that she had done the right thing in finally striking out on her own.
Friends and family had thought her crazy for moving to rural South Auckland and taking on a hefty mortgage at the same time as a new job, but at twenty-six Anya had felt it was time for her to take control of her life. It had been a childhood dream to live here in the countryside, and as an adult she now had the power to turn her dream into a permanent reality.
She carried her bag up to the cramped cubicle in which she and Cathy were quartered before walking quietly down the gloomy corridor towards the twin rooms the girls were sharing. She paused outside the first door, eyeing the square of pasteboard slotted into the metal holder which announced the room assignment.
Cheryl and Emma.
Her intuition hummed.
Cheryl Marko and Emma Johnson were a tiresome duo of spoiled little madams who had made it starkly plain that they were only here because the conservation camp was a compulsory part of the syllabus for boarding pupils. They had been due to go out on tonight’s bird survey with the others, but Cathy had allowed them to stay behind when, coincidentally, both had complained at the last minute of severe period cramps.
Rather too coincidentally, Anya had thought, doling out mild analgesics to the pair as they had languished smugly in their sleeping bags while the rest of the girls clattered out on their mission.
She eased the door ajar and ducked her head inside the darkened room. A full moon pierced the gaps in the uneven curtains, casting pale bars of light over the narrow bunk beds, striping two motionless lumps in the bunched sleeping bags.
Reassured, Anya was about to withdraw when she hesitated, her grey eyes narrowing. For a couple of fashion-obsessed teenagers who constantly preened over their rake-thin bodies, they were displaying suspiciously voluptuous outlines!
