The Safekeepers

Chapter Three

HEREFORDSHIRE, ENGLAND SEPTEMBER 2012

Machiavelli house had its own extensive grounds to the West of the main school building. Claire, the Registrar, marched ahead with a clipboard, waving in the direction of all the buildings they passed on their way. Kaylee strode quickly to catch up, regretting her decision to wear her new heels. It was her first time in an actual school and she was finding the whole thing fascinating.

“The boarding houses on this side of main building are girl’s ones, on the other side are the boy’s ones. As you will have seen in our prospectus, all of the houses are of different styles and have very unique characters,” Claire informed briskly, supporting her statements with wide gesticulations.

“There’s the boating lake, and that’s the poetry pavilion”, she stated with a wave to the huge, decorative pond that lay directly opposite main building and which separated the two sides of the campus. “On the slope below the lake lie the two cricket fields, Subordinate and Major, the gymnasium, sports ground, Combined Cadet Force centre, Medical centre and stables. The art and technology centres, music school, languages department and classics court are all behind the boy’s houses, as is the old monastery. Behind the girl’s houses you will find the science buildings and the geography block.” Her breath came out in shorter pants as they climbed a steep slope leading to Machiavelli house. “Oh” she added as an afterthought, “please tell your family that if they would like to visit you during term time that’s more than all right only they need to give notice beforehand if they want to land any helicopters on school property. One chopper steered too sharply to the left and took a good few metres off the top of a very ancient, and rather spectacular oak tree.”

They had stopped by a wooden gate cut into a thick, reddish-brown Herefordshire stonewall. Claire pressed a plastic keypad up against it and the gate swung open, revealing the façade of an impressive fifteenth century boarding house with castellated walls and a black and white Tudor extension.

“Wow” Kaylee uttered earnestly, gazing at the property in awe. It was very charming, though in a more subtle way than her Guardian’s chateaux in France.

“Yes, it is rather lovely isn’t it?” Claire reflected, shielding her eyes from the sun. “Come inside and see the house. It’s one of the grandest and has some very rich patrons so all the teachers want to be affiliated with this girl’s house. I think you’ll find there are quite a lot of hierarchies and power struggles among the girls themselves though, it can get quite tedious so pop into my office if you feel like you need to escape for an hour.”

“Does the house have a motto?” Kaylee asked as they made their way up the gravel drive.

“It does, though I’m not at all sure how it was seen as acceptable to the past Headmaster. It is, ‘I’m not interested in preserving the status quo; I want to overthrow it.”

“Can’t wait to meet everyone”, Kaylee forced herself to enthuse as they approached the front porch with its shiny, lacquered green door. She pictured the girls of Machiavelli House as a cast of falcons with manicured, razor-sharp nails. Here goes. She crossed her fingers behind her back for luck.

***

“Kay, Kay. Come in if you can hear me.” Stefan’s voice shivered its way through the different electronic tubes with their security locks, and up into Kaylee’s ear.

“I can hear you”, she murmured quietly, wrapping her shrug more closely round her and placing a hand on the roof tiles to cement herself in place. In Year Eleven (Third Form), rooms were shared between three or four girls. Kaylee and her two roommates, Emily and Violet, shared a room at the top of one of the towers. The location was remarkably convenient. Kaylee had waited until they’d drifted to sleep then, taking a deep breath in, managed to squeeze out of the window above her desk. She was sitting up on the roof now, balancing her ipad and the different gadgets she’d attached it to so that no one could overhear her conversation, and had slunk into one of the hollow spaces in the roof where she didn’t think that anyone coming up the drive could spot her shadow.