“Such weather is only perfect on thepiste,” Delphine said firmly. “With skis attached to your feet.” She stretched again and yawned prettily, like a cat. “Shall we wake Marianne?” She swung her long legs over the edge of her bed and wiggled her toes. The nails were painted metallic green. “If we don’t, she’ll miss breakfast again.”
“What is this fascination with breakfast?” A girl with thin dark hair emerged from under a brown quilt cover, her face bleary and puffed with sleep.
“Hey! It speaks!”
The girl blinked like a mole and felt around on her bedside cabinet for a pair of slightly bent wire glasses, then pushed them onto her face. “Why are you walking around on tiptoe, Delphine?” she said.
“To improve circulation,” Delphine responded, then stopped and threw her head between her knees to brush her hair. “And this is to prevent wrinkles.”
“That’s ridiculous,” sniffed Marianne. “There’s absolutely no scientific evidence for that.”
“And you haven’t got any wrinkles,” Sophie pointed out. “You’re much too young.”
“It is the French way,” Delphine shrugged, as if that were answer enough. She flicked her head back up, then twisted her hair into a bun on the side of her head and pierced it with a hairpin. Being half French seemed an awful lot of work, Sophie thought. And took an awful lot of time.
“Oh, but thereissomething to wake up for today!” Marianne kicked back her quilt with an unexpected burst of energy. “It’s Thursday. We get the results of our geography test!”
Sophie groaned. It was always such an effort not to feel squashed between Marianne’s high academic standards and Delphine’s equally high grooming standards. Mostly Sophie couldn’t be bothered to resist the pressure; she’d got used to the feeling of being squashed by now, anyway.
She checked her watch. “We’d better get dressed.”
“Give me twenty minutes,” Delphine said, pulling on a pale pink silk robe and heading for the bathroom.
“Twentyminutes?”Marianne made a face.
“I couldn’t take that long even if I did everything twice,” Sophie said.
“Which is why I look like me … and you look like …” But whatever Sophie looked like, Delphine couldn’t find the word for it. She stopped suddenly and stared, as if something had just occurred to her.
“What?” Sophie said.
“You’re actually quite pretty,” Delphine said. “Good eyebrows. Perfect skin. But no one notices because you always forget to brush your hair. And don’t even get me started on that school sweater you wear — it’s full of holes.”
“Well, it’s the only one I’ve got. And stop staring at me like that!”
Delphine shrugged. “You should think about these things.”
“But why?” Sophie said. “No one ever takes any notice of me.”
“There’s no point saying anything to her, Delphine,” Marianne said, putting on her robe. “She’s happy the way she is.”
Delphine wagged her finger. “Trust me, one day you will want to make a good impression.”
“Well, I’m never going to meet anyone important,” Sophie said. “So it won’t make any difference if I have holes in my sweater or not.”
“You wait!” Delphine said. “Someone important could turn up today!”
“That’s about as likely as snowflakes in summer,” Sophie laughed.
They were seriously late for breakfast. The smell of damp toast rose to greet them as they made their way down the back stairs, their shoes squeaking on the linoleum floor. Just as they reached the bottom, they heard a heavier tread ahead of them and saw the corduroy-suited figure of their deputy headmaster. He turned as they tried to slip past him.
“Good morning, girls,” he said brightly, checking the time on his watch. “You’d better hurry.” His gaze rested on Delphine. “I would think about finding a less time-consuming hairstyle in the future, Delphine, if I were you.”
Sophie put her head down, stared hard at the floor, and tried to make herself invisible. She knew she could get past most teachers without them really noticing she was there. It was one of her most useful skills.
But not this morning.
Mr. Tweedie cleared his throat. “Sophie?” he said, just at the very moment when she thought she had escaped. “A word?”
