The Flight of Gemma Hardy by Margot Livesey Page A

was doubly glad I had not gone to her the night before. She had been kind to me when no one else had, but a small part of me counted her a coward. I tore the note into pieces, stepped to the edge of the platform, and released them into the wind.
    I was eating the apple in neat bites when a train steamed up to the platform and, with one last exuberant shriek, came to a halt. No one in uniform was nearby, so I asked a tall man in a smart green coat if this was the train to Hawick. “Indeed it is,” he said. Claiming a mysterious slipped disc, he commandeered a boy of about Will’s age to carry my suitcase. Once we were settled in a compartment and the train was under way, the three of us exchanged destinations. The man was going to Carlisle. The boy was going only one stop. He had come into the city to apply for a job at a fishmonger’s but they had said he didn’t have enough experience.
    â€œThat’s ridiculous,” said the man. “A lad your age, they should train you.”
    I regarded the boy with new interest. In profile his upper lip jutted over his lower, like the trout my uncle had occasionally caught. I asked if he liked fishing.
    â€œNot really,” he said. “Too much hanging around, but I like cleaning my dad’s fish. Everything’s very organised—bones, guts.” He wriggled his fingers. “Do you like fish?”
    â€œYes.” Over the years I had grown accustomed to my landlocked life but suddenly I longed for the sea. Why hadn’t I asked Dr. Shearer or Mr. Donaldson if there was a school on the coast? Then the man asked where I was going and I explained about Claypoole.
    â€œIsn’t this the middle of term?” he said, his voice lifting in surprise.
    â€œThey’re short-handed, and I did well on the exams.” My boasting made it sound as if I would be helping in the classroom, not the kitchen, but kindly he did not press me. He said he’d left school at fourteen and always wanted to travel; so far the only place he’d gone was Africa during the war. “I’m always suggesting to the wife that we go to Madagascar or New Zealand.”
    â€œWould you like to go to Iceland?” I asked.
    He shook his head. “Bit chilly for me.”
    â€œI wouldn’t mind it,” volunteered the boy. “I like the idea of dogs and sledges.”
    â€œI think that’s Lapland,” I said, “though they do have lots of snow.”
    After the boy got off, the man remarked, like the guard, that I was young to be travelling alone. “Couldn’t your mum come with you?”
    Living in the village, I had seldom had to deal with such questions. Now I said cheerfully that my parents were dead and I was an orphan. The man’s eyes widened, and he began to stammer out apologies. Quickly I reassured him that this had happened a long time ago. For the rest of the journey we played I-spy and I could see him pretending not to know the answers. We stopped at a town called Galashiels. Twenty minutes later we pulled into Hawick. Cautiously the man lowered my suitcase onto the platform and wished me luck. I waved as the train pulled away but he did not wave back.
    When the train was out of sight I left my case and made my way to the front of the station. A maroon van was waiting. As I approached, a door opened. “You must be Hardy,” said the man who climbed out. “I’m Mr. Milne.”
    â€œGemma Hardy,” I corrected, studying this first ambassador of the school. Mr. Milne was only a few inches taller than me and, with his large head of grey hair and his round belly, he resembled nothing so much as a garden gnome. His dungarees had many intriguing pockets and were very clean.
    â€œIs this all you have?” he said when he saw my case. “Some girls bring everything but the kitchen sink.”
    Like my aunt, he made me sit in the back; unlike her, he talked to me. The town of Hawick, he