Spying on Miss Muller Read Online Free

responsibilities and some privileges, too. But Snow White was so small we didn’t need a prefect, which made it nice.
    Bengie looked now as if she might argue, but even with bombs falling, nobody argued with Miss Hardcastle.
    â€œMove along, girls. March.”
    We cringed forward, waiting for the next bang that might be right here, right where we were walking, right on top of us. Lizzie Mag clung to my hand. “I want my ayah,” she whispered. The clips had come out of her pin curls, and little loops of hair stuck up all over her head. She could have been four years old.
    â€œIt’s okay, Lizard,” I soothed, and soothing her made me feel better too.
    We were halfway along the corridor when Bengie caught up with us. She ran to Miss Hardcastle.
    â€œMiss Müller’s not in her room,” she said solemnly. I squeezed Lizzie Mag’s hand.
    â€œShould we say?” she whispered.
    I shook my head. “Not now.”
    Miss Hardcastle was frowning. “Very well, Bengie. You go to the back of the line and bring up the rear.”
    I could tell Bengie didn’t want to do that either. She wanted to run and be the first one to get into those shelters. I didn’t blame her. But she did as Miss Hardcastle said.
    Another stream of girls from the fifth-form dorm straggled ahead of us, and on the right-hand side was a column of little second formers, crying hard, calling for their mummies. Another bomb fell, but it was closer, louder. The whole of Alveara seemed to shake.
    â€œIt’s all right, girls, just keep moving.” Miss Hardcastle’s voice was steady, but I knew the steadiness was fake. She was like the captain when the ship’s going down, trying to be brave so everyone else would be brave too.
    We were tripping over one another to get to those shelters. The locks on someone’s case burst open and clothing fell out.
    â€œLeave it, leave it,” Miss Hardcastle shouted.
    I could see the dining-room door and the basement steps that stretched down beside it. Coming in the other direction from the boys’ wing were the boy boarders, their pajama legs wrinkled under their Burberry raincoats, their gas masks in cases just like ours. I’d never thought of them as like us in any way. It took my mind off my stomach. Boy boarders in the middle of the night? It was almost as incredible as an air raid.
    The girls’ lines and the boys’ lines met at the basement steps, and there was Old Rose herself in her tatty fur coat, her hair rolled in metal curlers, shouting directions.
    â€œMr. Atkinson, hold your boys back,” she called. Mr. Atkinson was headmaster of the boys’ school.
    â€œLittle girls first, down the stairs now. Nobody push. We are in no danger.” Old Rose waved her arms like a traffic policeman.
    â€œWhat does she mean, ‘no danger’? Is the woman mad altogether?” Maureen hadn’t penciled in her eyebrows and she looked like a fish. I felt like one.
    Miss Gaynor was waiting at the bottom of the steps. “Each of you put your case on a bunk. Sit quietly beside it. Be orderly.” Miss Gaynor was our domestic economy teacher. She was famous for making the worst scones. Bombs, we called them, as we tossed them into the wastebasket. We’d never joke about bombs again. Never.
    Canvas bunks lined the basement walls. Lizzie Mag and I took two that were side by side. Everything smelled musty. The gray blankets folded on the bunks were damp—wet, even. It was dim as a cave with only two hanging yellow bulbs strung on two wires. Voices echoed.
    â€œAre you okay, Lizard?” I asked softly.
    She nodded. Strange how she’d wanted her ayah and not her mum. Once she’d whispered to me that she loved her ayah more than anybody in the world. “Except you, Jessie. And my mother and father, of course,” she’d added.
    Big bottles of water stood between the rows of bunks. Shovels and picks leaned in