Tall Poppies by Louise Bagshawe

envy.
    ‘Come on, we’ve only got twenty minutes,’ Penny said, and the two of them scrambled into the school uniform: ivory shirt, fitted navy blazer and skirt and knee-high black socks and shoes. Elizabeth caught her hair back in a ponytail, Penny spritzed herself with Miss Dior, and they rushed out into the corridor to join the other girls. The dining room was laid out with long tables and ‘ hand-carved, high-backed chairs, its windows looking out towards the pastureland and the dark, scented pine forests beneath. Herds of belled cattle were already grazing, .and below them the girls could see the lights of Saas Grund. After the first week, though, nobody paid attention to the view, as all the young ladies were c)nstantly gossiping about boyfriends or rock stars. Penny’s wardrobe door was covered with pictures of T Rex and The Who; it was another weird thing about Elizabeth that she seemed totally unmoved by pin-ups, and had her wardrobe tacked up with ads - a pregnant man encouraging men to think about condoms, ‘Go to Work on an Egg’, ‘Guinness Is Good for You’.
    Elizabeth rushed towards the buffet and loaded her plate: newly baked bread, warm croissants, a bowl of steaming hot chocolate and some fresh apricots. Penny took a small helping of cornflakes and a cup of black coffee and they sat down.
    ‘Hey, Elizabeth, something to interest you,’ Vanessa Chadwick announced. Vanessa was a shipping heiress, a willowy blonde and a prefect, who obeyed school rules and found the Savage girl rather shocking.
     
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    Elizabeth grunted. ‘I doubt that.’
    Mornings at the Ecole Henri Dufor were spent practising music, dancing or deportment and then attending ‘lectures’. These were supposed to broaden the mind but normally sent Elizabeth to sleep; Mademoiselle Char main, the French mistress, would blather on about Marie Antoinette, or Herr Flagen, the history tutor, would drone on about the Confederation in his dense Schweizerdeutsch accent. Occasionally they were treated to outside guests with links to the school. These ranged from the Mayor of Zermatt to some pupil’s filmstar mother. The girls still talked about the visit Yves Saint Laurent had once made.
    Vanessa sighed at this sad lack of school spirit. ‘His name is Herr Hans Wolf. He helped organise the Winter Olympics here last year.’
    ‘Not Hans Wolf the skier?’
    Vanessa flicked back her shiny blonde hair and consulted her lecture notes. ‘He coached the Swiss ski team, if that’s what you mean.’
    ‘Yes, but he was a skier long before that.’ Elizabeth tore off a piece of croissant and dipped it in her chocolate, eyes sparkling. ‘Back in the twenties, when people used wooden skis they tied on to their boots.’
    ‘That don’t sound too safe,’ remarked Chantal Miller, an American banker’s daughter.
    ‘It wasn’t. It was incredibly dangerous. Hans Wolf set
    five downhill records that way during his career.’ ‘I’ll never hear the end of this,’ Penny sighed. ‘How long is he staying?’ ‘Just to give the lecture.’
    The others started chatting about the Robert Redford film showing down in the village, but Elizabeth ate her breakfast silently. Her head was miles away in a world without safety nets, padding or crevasse warnings,
     
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    imagining a young Hans Wolf tearing down a mountainside on a pair of shaped planks, lashed to his feet with hempen rope. She found she was almost blushing with excitement. Perhaps she could talk to him after the lecture, ask him what it had been like. Maybe he would let her watch the Swiss team train …
    After breakfast the girls cleared away their plates and trooped into the music room for piano practice. Elizabeth was dreadful as usual but smiled engagingly at Madame Lyon; she wanted some new ski-boots and that meant Dad had to receive good reports. She plunked awkwardly at the keys, one eye on her watch, longing for nine o’clock. As soon as they were dismissed - all the girls