The Good-For-Nothing Society | Completed

Chapter Three

Three weeks after the funeral, I've had to say goodbye to my childhood friends, my home, the last place I lived with my dad. I've been packed into a limo and sent deep into the British countryside. I had no choice. Mum was pretty insistent, and when I wouldn't listen to her she roped in dads lawyers. When I was still holding my ground, she got the bloody priest to insist upon it.

In the end she told me I either went or I had no place in her home. I asked her if she was prepared to lose her husband and daughter in the same year, but she said all she was doing was fulfilling dads last wishes. That was the bleakest guilt trip of it all. It's pretty hard to say no to someone who can no longer hear you.

I googled it, the school, not how to communicate with the dead. There isn't much information about it.

It sits in the middle of some woods on the border of Scotland and England, surrounded by ninety acres of land. Their tagline is; "an exceptional school for the exceptional young." It seems like a brattish school, for the rich, you know the sort. There's plenty of schools like it in London too. I don't see why I have to be sent nine hours away from everything I know. But every time I question it I'm met with the same shrug and "it's what your dad wanted."

Yet dad had never mentioned it, so how much could he really have wanted it? And if he only wanted it in his death, was he always planning to get ploughed down by a lorry on the A3 at the age of forty-one? It's an oddly specific thing to want for your sixteen-year-old daughter. It's not like I can go to sixth form twice.

There is a stark comparison to how I felt about sixth form seven weeks ago to now. I was so excited to be going up a year; to be treated like an adult. That's what dad kept saying, that from now until I finish uni everything is so much more fun, that I'm becoming a young woman.

Now, everything is shrouded in mystery and unfamiliarity. Isn't it funny how life can change overnight; in an hour even. Everything you know is suddenly no more. In some cases, your dad dies and a limo arrives on your front door at the start of term to take you all the way to the very north of England.

I've spent the drive reading, watching Netflix, listening to podcasts - trying to distract myself. Nine hours alone, that's a lot of time to think. But I can't help it, any quiet moment and my mind wonders. I think about dad. I think about him constantly. I wonder if this school was ever going to come up in conversation? Was this really what he wanted?

I think about how he wouldn't have shoved me in a car alone, with a random driver to take me; not like mum has. No. Dad would have marched me to the front door himself, filling me up with all kinds of compliments and confidence on our way up there.

He wouldn't let me read books and watch TV on the drive, instead he would tell me to look at the cars; pay attention to them. How many are in front of us? How many are behind? How many have been on the same journey as us; what colour is the one who has been on the motorway with us the longest?

It's a game we use to play. Sitting here now, I know that the car behind us is a black Toyota Prius, being driven by an Uber driver, and joined us on the M1 just outside Watford. I know that the little red Fiat 500 in front of us is a group of teenage girls. I don't have to think about it; I just know.

Mum wouldn't play games like that with me if she was here, mum wouldn't be here in the first place. Mum isn't here.

"We've almost arrived, Miss," the driver informs me, as he turns off the A1 and down a little slip road.

I gaze out at the greenery, we drive for exactly four minutes and twenty seconds before we come to a halt. I look out the drivers window and tut.

It's hardly a surprise  there's a long line of limousines waiting to get into the school. All of us must have been told to arrive at the exact same time. I imagine the heiresses and kids of the fortune-five-hundred waiting impatiently to us be let in. A bit like me as I sit and wait, my foot tapping on the floor of the car.