To order your copy of Fifth Year Friendships at Trebizon see our online shop, visit our Edinburgh bookshop or one of our Stockists.

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‘Please can you have my what?’ asked Rebecca Mason over the noise of the speeding coach. She stopped sucking the end of her biro and glanced up. She was in the middle of composing a letter to her French pen-friend. ‘My scarf? What’s the matter, Naomi? Cold?’

‘Your autograph,’ repeated the First Year girl, slightly embarrassed now but refusing to be put off. A piece of paper appeared under Rebecca’s nose. ‘Please can you write something for me? I saw you on TV on Boxing Day. You were really good! It was like watching Wimbledon. You’re famous now.’

‘Oh, the school film!’ laughed Rebecca, startled. No one had ever asked her for an autograph before; well, not on this basis. Was this how it felt, feeling famous? (Was this how it might be one day, people asking for your autograph?)

‘I wish I were, Naomi!’ she said. ‘You should have seen how horribly I played in the Midland Indoor last week.’

I was pathetic, she thought. And to think I won it last year! I got knocked out in the quarter finals. Call that famous?

All the same, her scalp tingled quite pleasurably.

‘You’ll soon be famous now your arm’s better, now you’ve been on TV and people see how brilliant you really are,’ said the younger girl confidently. ‘I could tell you were good even with your other arm slung up in that sling. Last term. When Miss Willis made you play in those foursomes. That must have been difficult.’

‘I’ll say,’ agreed Rebecca. ‘It was nice of you juniors to ball-girl for me sometimes.’

‘Miss Willis made us do it.’

Rebecca laughed again. ‘Well, that’s honest!’ She took the piece of paper from Naomi. She rested it on the pad on her knee and sucked the biro again, planning what to write. She thought of a little poem:

HONESTLY SPEAKING
I said ‘thanks’, expecting you
To say: ‘Oh, nothing to it.’
I nearly died when you replied:
Miss Willis made us do it. ‘

Best wishes to Naomi
Rebecca Mason [V Alpha]

Naomi took it back eagerly and read it. It was the first time Rebecca had seen her smile! ‘That’s really good. I’ll cut it out and paste it in my autograph book.’

Rebecca’s eyes strayed back to her writing pad.

‘OK, then? Got to get on with this letter now.’

They were on the long-distance coach, returning to their boarding school, Trebizon, for the spring term. Rebecca’s parents were in Saudi Arabia as usual, and she’d spent the Christmas holidays in Gloucestershire with her grandmother. Nobody else from Trebizon used this coach as a rule. Most of the girls returned to school via the train from London, or else were brought by car. Some of the girls in the Upper Sixth drove back themselves in their own cars.

Earlier, Rebecca had grabbed a seat to herself and sprawled in luxury, text books and writing paper spread around her, as well as some GCSE history coursework that she hoped to complete on the journey. It was supposed to be handed in to Miss Maggs tomorrow morning, the first day of term. Maggy would kill them if it weren’t finished! But first she was going to revise some French vocabulary and then try to write a brilliant letter to Emmanuelle, her French pen-friend. Trebizon was twinned with a school in Paris. There was going to be a French exchange this year!

Sometime in the Easter holidays, the dates weren’t quite fixed yet, a group of them from Trebizon’s Fifth would be going to Paris. Rebecca would be staying with Emmanuelle, who looked very nice in her photo and sounded even nicer in her letters. Paris in the springtime. Everybody said it would be beautiful. The river . . . the chestnut trees out in blossom . . . and delicious things to eat and drink at pavement cafés. And she’d have to speak French all the time — that was the rule. Just as well, with her GCSE orals in May! She must get an A for French. It would be pathetic if she couldn’t get an A for French, when she was supposed to be good at languages. It was fun learning languages. Perhaps she’d learn some more in the Sixth!

In the summer, when her parents were home on leave and they were able to use their London house again, Emmanuelle would come and stay with her. It’d be like having a sister for a while. She’d show her Harrods and Buckingham Palace and Oxford Street and all the other things she said she wanted to see. And they’d try to get into the House of Commons and watch all the Members of Parliament shouting at each other! Why did they shout so much? They’d get into trouble at Trebizon if they behaved like that!

Some of these thoughts Rebecca translated into fairly fluent French in her letter to Emmanuelle and was deeply engrossed when the coach pulled in somewhere to pick up more passengers. She glanced dreamily out of the window, unsure where they were, even. Somewhere off the motorway; somewhere around Bristol. Amongst the people waiting in parked cars, she recognized a familiar face pressed to the rear window of a rusted van, the expression on the face uncharacteristically sullen. She certainly remembered the new girl’s face from last term as being rather withdrawn, but not sullen. Nevertheless —

‘Yes, it’s Naomi Cook all right,’ she decided when a diminutive girl in Trebizon blue cape, with fairish hair and pale freckled face, came into her line of vision. She was walking behind a blue-faced couple, the hoods of their shabby anoraks up against the biting January wind, who humped between them a newish-looking school trunk. The trio disappeared round the back of the coach with the rest of the throng to meet the coach driver, who was now supervising the loading on of luggage.

Naomi was almost the last person to board the coach — she seemed to forget something and had to run back to the van — but when she did, Rebecca stood up to greet her:

‘Hello! Good! We can share the taxi at the other end!’

‘Rebecca!’

They both knelt on Rebecca’s seat, noses pressed to the window, to wave to Naomi’s parents.

Mr and Mrs Cook stood in front of their van, chilly-looking, blank-faced, staring uncompre-hendingly. The coach was already pulling away. Slowly it dawned on them that there was another Trebizon girl on the coach with Naomi, an older girl, and they waved back in relief.

‘I didn’t think there’d be anyone else from school!’ said Naomi with obvious pleasure, as she settled down in the seat across the gangway from Rebecca’s. ‘There wasn’t last time.’

‘I came down by train from London,’ Rebecca explained. ‘That’s where I go when my parents are home on leave. I use this coach the rest of the time.’

She glanced at the girl, remembering the one time they’d spoken last term. It was after one of those tennis sessions, when Naomi had been a ball-girl. She knew that the new First Year was very clever and had won the top scholarship to Trebizon. But she’d looked homesick to Rebecca.

‘D’you like it here?’ she’d asked.

‘It’s all right, except everybody seems to have pots of money. Or at least their parents do.’

‘Mine don’t. Lots don’t, you’d be surprised. My dad’s company has to pay all my school fees.’

‘I just wonder sometimes if I’m going to fit in,’ Naomi had said in a rush.

‘That’s just how I felt at first. It doesn’t last.’

Or at least, it hadn’t lasted for Rebecca. But seeing Naomi around at the end of last term, the sweet, slightly withdrawn expression had still been there. As though she were still ill at ease, being at Trebizon.

However, studying the girl’s face now, on the coach, Rebecca decided that the sullen expression earlier must have been a figment of her imagination: she was definitely looking more peaceful.

‘I shan’t be coming on this coach any more!’ she blurted out.

‘You won’t?’

‘Mum’s managed to get an exchange!’

‘How do you mean?’

‘A council house exchange. They’re moving next week! Near Trebizon.’

‘Oh, you mean you won’t be boarding any more? You’ll be a day-girl?’

‘Oh, no! I’ll still be boarding. It’s too far to walk. And Dad’s van’s about to pack up any minute. Besides, they’ve bought the night-clothes and the trunk and that now and everything else is, well, free. It’s just that . . . well, it’ll be better, won’t it?’

Rebecca wasn’t too sure about that. Would it really help someone to settle down, having their family so close? Did she think she’d see a lot of them now? Juniors had to stay strictly within bounds! They weren’t allowed downtown. She certainly wouldn’t be allowed to pop home when she felt like it; she’d have to stick to the rules like all the other young boarders in Juniper House. It didn’t really solve the problem of whether Naomi was going to like being at Trebizon or not.

But of course she said none of this.

She returned to writing her letter until, a few minutes later, back on the motorway again, Naomi leaned across and asked for that autograph.

And Rebecca had her taste of feeling famous.

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To order your copy of Fifth Year Friendships at Trebizon see our online shop, visit our Edinburgh bookshop or one of our Stockists.