The Pact Read Online Free

to ask directions once she’d made it that far.
    By the time she had left the motorway and was heading north on what claimed to be an A road, but seemed to be in imminent danger of narrowing to a single-track country lane, the weather was worsening. Black clouds had been looming in the heavens since she had crossed the Severn Bridge and now, as the overhanging trees seemed to be conspiring to obliterate what little of the grey daylight was left, there was an almighty crack of thunder.
    Thank God she’d filled up the car in Llandeilo, Parva thought. It would have been the worst thing to be stuck out here waiting for someone to bring a can of petrol. Not that she would have been able to contact anyone - her mobile phone had resolutely refused to display any signal bars for the last five miles.
    Lightning lit up the sky at the same time that the rain came - great sheets of water that the Mini’s windscreen wipers were just about able to cope with. Parva had considered pulling onto the side of the road to wait the storm out, but that would have meant the risk of getting stuck in one of the already waterlogged ditches on the side of the road.
    Every time the road curved, Parva hoped the school would be round the next corner, but she just found herself faced with high hedgerows, threatening trees and more and more rain.
    And a sign.
    It was on the right hand side of the road and was almost impossible to make out. Parva braked and rolled down her window. Heavy raindrops spattered her face as she read:
    St Miranda’s College of Higher Education
    Headmistress: Miss H Arbuthnot, BA (Hons)
    Private Property: Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted
    If trespassers were capable of finding the school in the first place, Parva thought with a sniff as she rolled the window up and drove on, but more slowly now. Presumably the entrance would be on the same side of the road as the sign, and hopefully it would be obvious - some big iron gates or a majestic-looking driveway.
    A girl ran in front of the car.
    Parva slammed the brakes on. Even though she had been going at a snail’s pace she almost hit her. Through the windscreen the girl was a rain-drenched blur, her dress a shimmer of white behind the water cascading down the glass, her long hair clinging to a face Parva could hardly make out as the girl lifted her palms from the Mini’s bonnet.
    Then she was gone; possibly back through whatever gap in the hedge she must have squeezed herself through, possibly in the other direction. By the time Parva had opened the door and was considering jumping out to call her back, the girl had vanished.
    There was nothing else to do other than keep going towards the school. As she moved the car on, even more slowly this time, Parva wondered who the girl might have been. Her immediate assumption was that she must be a pupil, but what would cause her to be out here in this weather? And why run off when Parva could have offered her warmth, shelter, and a free ride back to where she had come from?
    The other possibility was that she had come from elsewhere. Perhaps she was one of the ‘trespassers’ the sign seemed to be so worried about. But again, the girl had hardly seemed dressed for a spot of illegal wandering.
    Up ahead on the right loomed a pair of heavy wrought-iron gates crowned with spikes. Even from this distance they looked uncomfortably sharp. Parva turned into the driveway only to discover they were locked.
    A small silver box on a post nearby turned out to be an intercom. By the time she had managed to get a response from it Parva’s right arm was soaked.
    “Hello?”
    “Hello, it’s Miss Corcoran,” Parva said, for the first time in years. “I’m the new biology teacher? I was told to report here today.”
    The pause on the other end of the line was so prolonged that for a moment Parva wondered if the storm had broken the line.
    “I’m sorry but we have no record of that.”
    Oh good grief.
    “I think you’ll find that, if you check,