Dear Miss Blake,

We are very pleased to write to you following your interview last Wednesday. We feel that your personality and qualifications make you a perfect fit here at Allerdale Institute and we are delighted to offer you the position of a teacher of science with Biology speciality.

On receiving a reply from you that confirms that you are indeed still interested in joining our faculty, we will send you more information regarding your contract and a calendar consisting of the dates of staff training prior to our commencement of the 1975/1976 term.

If you would be interested in taking up our offer of free accommodation in the staff quarters, please fill out the attached document and return it also.

Many congratulations and I hope to hear from you soon,

Warm Regards,

Ms Wilma Hall,
Vice-Principal and Head of Music Department.
Allerdale Institue for Gifted Girls.

I threw down my book and pushed my feet into my sheepskin lined slippers. On reflection, I picked up the battered copy of Wuthering Heights and pocketed it in my oversized cardigan. Lastly, I lifted the clunky silver torch that lived on the edge of my bedside table.

The corridor beyond my door was an empty expanse of black. The large art deco windows that overlook the tennis courts were of no help when the sun had passed below the horizon. I shone the beam of light down the hall following the direction that the footsteps had passed only moments ago. In the peripheral light of the beam I could see my breath rising in small puffs from my mouth. They didn't bother to put radiators in the corridors when this place was built after the Great War. I closed the door quietly behind me, though in the silence the click sounded deafening. As I made my way down the hall there was nothing but the sound of my feet as the soles of my slippers slapped with regularity against the wood. Too noisy, they would definitely be able to hear my approach. Reluctantly, I took my feet out and picked up the slippers in my free hand.

The corridor was longer than I remembered as I slowly made my way down it. The cold felt like tiny pins pricking the bottoms of my feet. Just then, I caught a few small whispers. I rounded the corner, making sure to keep the beam of light pointed behind me. The three small bodies looked almost ghostly in their floor length night dresses. They were peering over the banister, discussing under their breath the quickest route to the kitchens. I raised the beam of my torch and pointed it straight at them.

The girls, three of them, whirled around and froze in the light like a startled deer in the headlights of my Ford Anglia. They're small, with rounded faces. Year 7's. I recognised only one, Amy, who was in one of my science groups.

"What are you girls doing out of bed?" I hissed, lowering the beam of light out of their faces so as not to blind them.

"We were looking for the bathroom and got lost," the girl to the right of Amy piped up. Too confident. Too rehearsed.

"You've been here long enough to at least know where the bathrooms are. I want a proper answer and I want it now, before I fetch Ms Hall." I mentally reprimanded myself on two counts. One; I should have been confident in my own authority. Two; I didn't particularly want to be the one to get Wilma Hall out of her bedroom. Forget what the girls thought of her, she terrified me.

"It was a game," Amy said almost immediately. Her accomplices looked at her with traitorous glares. "The year 11 girls said that we couldn't borrow this month's copy of Tiger Beat until we'd snuck into the kitchens and brought back something to give to them."

Relief washed over me. With a full confession I could put the matter to rest myself, without having to drag another staff member from their bed. I transfered the slippers to my torch hand and produced the copy of Wuthering Heights from my pocket and handed it to Amy. She took it from me without raising her eyes to meet mine.

"I want the first two chapters, handwritten, by all three of you on my desk, Wednesday morning."

The confident one opened her mouth and out followed the sound of a potest.

"You want three?" I rounded. Her mouth snapped shut and she shook her head furiously. "Have you anything else to say to me?"

"Sorry, Miss Blake," they all muttered out of sync with each other. I dragged out the moment as long as I could, feeling the tension growing around them.

Finally, I relented. "Back to bed." They took off back down the corridor at a half run. I followed after them, determined to make sure that they actually got back into their rooms before returning to my own. Somewhere down the hall, a door opened and their silhouettes disappeared, followed by a gentle click as the door closed on it's snib.

My shoulders slackened as I let out a long sigh. Even after three months, telling students off still gave me an incredible sense of dread. I didn't want them to kick off in a hormone fueled fury but neither did I want them to crumble into sobbing wrecks.

Behind me, the wood creaked and I whirled around. Down the stairwell that I caught the girls on only moments ago, I was almost certain that I saw another shadow, just out of view. Spurred on by my earlier conquest, I fixed the torch back down the hall and followed. I padded down the stairs, careful not to make too much noise. Whoever it was that escaped the first reprimand was certainly not going to escape a second. I paused on the second floor, the senior girls dormitory, debating whether to continue down the stairs or search this floor. I peered over the banister and smiled. A dark figure slid just out of view.

"Got you," I breathed.

"No."

I whirled around to the voice behind me. The torch slipped from my grip. It clattered to the floor, turning off on impact. "Who is there?" I hissed into the darkness. I tried to regain a sense of calm as quickly as possible. I didn't want to be tomorrow mornings entertainment.

"You'll never guess what we did to Miss Blake last night! You should have seen how she jumped!"

"Hello?" another voice, this one felt decidedly different. More solid, if you can make sense of that. A weaker beam of light found me groping around wildly for my torch.

"Miss Blake?" The speaker turned the light to her face so that I could see who belonged to the voice. Lucy Church, a senior prefect and student in my Biology class smiled at me before turning the beam back to the floor. "Are you okay?"

"Yes, thank you Lucy. Dropped my torch is all." I flicked the switch a few times, with no luck. The fall must have dislodged one of the batteries. I gave it a quick thump against my palm but it was well and truly dead. "I'm on the hunt for some escaped year seven girls."

"I thought you got them?" In the dimness, I could see the questioning frown on her face. "The three girls on the stairs?"

"It appears there was four."

"Can't have been," she replied with certainty, "I heard them earlier and was standing down on this level waiting to surprise them when you caught them. If one slipped away I would have seen her."

"Oh, thank you." I force a smile, despite the sense of unease that has settled in around my shoulders, "Guess I was chasing my own shadow. Back to bed for the both of us then!"

"Good night, Miss."

I climbed the stairs, shaking my head. In my hand, the torch flickered into life. I almost dropped it again in surprise. I paused and took stock. The blood, being forced up with increased speed from my pounding heart, roared in my ears. "You're being stupid." I scolded myself. There was no reason to be afraid. I was not alone, far from it. There were several hundred girls ranging from the ages of 11-18 sleeping only a few feet away from me. Despite the logic and reasoning that I tried to instill into my students, there was still a prickling that ran along my skin.

I tramped up the last few stairs and back along the corridor to my room. I reached my hand forward just as the door clicked gently open and began to make a slow arch inward. The light from my reading lamp spilled out onto the corridor. "You didn't close it, idiot." I stepped in and locked it behind me.

The torch flickered rapidly again in my hand. I rolled my eyes and clicked it off again. I slipped off my shoes and climbed back into my bed, devoid of warmth from my absence. I reached up to turn my bedside light off. I had no further use for it tonight seeing as my book was with some scolded students and I had no desire to begin another. I paused. Some innate part of my told me not to turn off the light. That something bad was sure to happen if I did.

"Catch a grip, Beth!"

With a determined effort, the synapses flared into life in my fingers and I flicked the light off.