Back at Malory Towers

1. The train

"Goodbye Mother! Goodbye JJ, Imogen! I'll miss you! See you at half-term!" Shouted a tall, thin girl with limp blonde-ish-brown hair waving from the entrance of the Malory Tower train. "I love you Immy, I love you too JJ. Goodbye!" She called to her little sister and brother who were clutching their mothers hand waving as tears pricked in their eyes.

Emily Andrea Underwood, loved her little siblings but she had to say goodbye, she was going to Malory Towers!

A wonderful school in Cornwall by the seaside. Her mother had gone to the school and so had her grandmother and her grate-grandmother. It was an unwritten tradition that the eldest girl in each generation attended Malory Towers.

The train slowly started to move and Emily stepped back closing the door with click. As the train drew out the station Emily continued to wave until her family were way out of sight.

Eventually she turned around and went to find the compartment Miss Potts, the first form mistress and house mistress of North Tower, had told her to sit.

The other new girls were going to be there with two or three of the girls that had been in first form for a while.

She found the compartment with the number 17 on a sign above it. She opened it with a smile.

"Hello."

"Oh hello." Said a slim girl with straight brown hair and lot of freckles, "Are you one of the new girls?" She asked.

Emily nodded. "I'm Emily, Emily Andrea Underwood."

The girl with straight hair gave a look with raised eyebrows to another girl, she was tall girl with dark red hair and sitting by the window.

"Well, you can take a seat." The red-haired girl said stiffly.

Emily nervously took the seat furthest from the girls.

Opposite was a small girl with rosy cheeks and crazy curly light brown hair. Her eyes were big and shiny, a sapphire blue.

"I'm Jacqueline, this is Patricia, and that's Rosa Thomas. She's a new girl too." Said the girl with straight hair.

Rosa gave a little smile to Emily that Emily she returned.

"We were supposed to have three new girls actually, but the trains already been going for quite a few minutes so I can't think where she got to." Said Patricia. She then rummaged in her bag at her feet then took out a book and began to read.

Jacqueline was bored and disappointed. She was going to be stuck with these strange boring looking new girls all ride! She'd only volunteered to sit in the carriage with them because she thought it would be fun to size them up. But if Patricia was going to block them all out with a book she'd have to do it in her head.

Emily looked at her already scuffed shoes and realised she had probably made a bad impression. Oh I really didn't want this whole journey to be done in awkward silence. She thought in exasperation.

"Umm, so what's it like a Malory Towers?" She asked.

"Nice." Jacqueline said wearily.

"Who are the girls in our form?" Emily tried again to start up a conversation.

"Well me and Pat, you and Rosa obviously. Normally there are ten girls in each dorm but because so many of us moved up last term I think there's only eight. Eva and Lillian should still be here from last term, they didn't move up, did they Pat?"

Patricia shock her head with out looking up from her book. "Nor did Becca, remember?"

"Pat don't bring her up. You know we aren't friends anymore!"

"I still don't see why." She replied with a roll of her eyes.

Emily listened intrigued, was boarding school always so drama filled? She didn't like to think that she enjoyed being a spectator on these things but it was sort of entertaining.

Suddenly the door to the compartment opened.

"Is this where the North Tower new girls are supposed to be?" Asked a girl with bushy strawberry blonde hair nervously in the door way. When Emily nodded she added, "Sorry I was looking for my cousin, my mother said it was best to say 'Hello' before finding somewhere to sit."

"Who's your cousin. Do you think we know her?" Asked Jacqueline.

"Well she's in first form so probably. Lillian?" The girl said taking a seat.

"Oh, we do... I don't think she's ever mentioned a cousin the same age as her."

"No. We're not very close."

There was a pause.

"So what's it like when we're not in lessons."

"Well, there's the common room," Jaqueline began again, "We spend most of our spare time there. But there's the tennis courts and the lacrosse pitch which we're aloud to practice on. And the pool of course."

"I've heard about the pool, it's natural made, right?" Said Rosa, speaking for the first time.

"Yeah it gets filled with sea water every time the tide come in. It's really pretty. Can any of you swim well?"

Emily nodded, Rosa shock her head and the other girl just shrugged fiddling with the buttons on her coat

Suddenly, again, there was a girl at the door. She slid it open with a scowl on her plain, pale face.

"Oh hello Eva, what do you want?"Jaqueline said smiling sarcastically.

Eva sighed, then tossed her thick black hair out her face and said. "I'm not a messenger but Becca asked if she can have her tennis shoes back."

"Back? I never took them."

"Last half term, remember Jacky." Patricia said.

"Humf thoughs ones will be to small for her now. Just tell her she should have got another pair in the hols."

"Nope. Jaqueline I am not your private messenger to your ex-best friend. If you want to say that, tell her your self." And with that Eva flonsted off.

"Ignore her, she's awfully pi sometimes."

"Pie?" Emily asked wondering what a baked good had anything to do with the conversation.

"Golly imagine not know what pi means! Well it's a boarding school term I think, it means ... hmmm religious in the wrong way. To your self, I suppose. Thinking your better then everybody."

"Oh." Emily said understanding.

"I can't imagine how anyone can be like that." Pat said.

Jaqueline lightly kicked her, "Says yourself! Pat you get awfully big-headed. You know you do."

Pat frowned, not liking having her faults spotted and said, quite plainly, out loud.

The rest of the journey went by quickly and much more smoothly. At lunch the girls took terns to go to the dinning cart, so not to lose there compartment. And after that Emily fell asleep, dreaming of her pet mouse at home.