Free Moth Girls by Anne Cassidy Page B

school uniform in hers. She’d been in a group but the others had been cut out and Mandy wondered if it’d been taken on the day their class had gone on the museum trip. The photo of Tina was quite different. She was standing outside a front door, possibly her own, and she was wearing a dress and boots and a loose cardigan. Her hands were clasped as if she didn’t quite know what to do with them.
     
‘So, we’re starting with this music,’ Tommy said.
     
A snatch of music came on. It was orchestral, sombre. Mandy recognised a cello playing. The tune was familiar, something she’d heard in the past, but she couldn’t have named it.
     
‘Then we are going to have the teachers’ memories and then this.’
     
A song came on which Mandy recognised instantly. It was one of the songs that’d been very popular when they’d been friends. The girls had practised it over and over.
     
‘Tina Pointer’s mother gave me this. She said that Tina and Petra used to sing this as a girl band.’
     
Mandy heard it play and immediately pictured Petra singing and Tina backing her up. Once, just once, Mandy had suggested that maybe two back-up singers would have been better than one. Petra told her, in a firm tone, that it was a duo, a
two
-girl group.
     
‘The Red Roses, they were called,’ he said.
     
‘I know what they were called, Tommy. I was friends with them.’
     
‘Course you were. Sorry, that must have sounded completely dumb!’
     
‘Did Miss Pearce say why we’re having this now? The anniversary is on the twenty-eighth and it’s only the nineteenth.’
     
‘Yeah, course. The twenty-eighth is in half-term and she wanted to get this done so that the rest of the week was clear.’
     
‘She wanted to get it out of the way?’
     
‘No! I didn’t mean that. It’s just that there are other more upbeat things that are planned and it seemed a good idea to …’
     
‘Get it done.’
     
Tommy looked awkward. She tried to be positive.
     
‘I understand. It’s best this way,’ she said in a faux-cheerful voice. ‘Anyway, I should be off. What time does it start?’
     
‘Last period has been suspended for the lower sixth. So we’ll begin about three. In about twenty minutes?’
     
‘OK,’ Mandy said, her cheeks feeling tired from holding a smile.
     
She left the common room and walked swiftly away, not quite knowing where she was headed. She knew for sure she didn’t want to go to the memorial. She had no wish to sit through another ceremony in memory of Tina and Petra, especially one organised by Tommy. The buzzer went for the end of lesson. The noise increased as students spilt out onto the corridors, calling to each other and letting doors bang behind them. Mandy kept walking towards the reception area where it was quieter and calmer. Being a sixth former meant she didn’t have to sign out so she went straight for the doors.
     
Before she got there she heard someone call her name. She closed her eyes with annoyance. She didn’t want to go back and sit through Tommy’s ceremony. She stopped and turned round. It was Jon Wallis. He was walking towards her. He smiled and patted his pocket. He pulled something out of it.
     
‘I’ve been looking for you,’ he said.
     
He held out an envelope to her.
     
‘At lunchtime a girl gave me this. She was outside school and she asked me if I knew you and told me to give this to you.’
     
‘At lunchtime?’ she said, puzzled.
     
‘I looked for you but the common room was being used and then I had a class.’
     
She took the envelope. Her name was written on the front of it: ‘Mandy Crystal’.
     
‘Thanks,’ she said.
     
‘You’re not going to the memorial?’ Jon said.
     
She shook her head.
     
‘I don’t blame you. Pointless exercise.’
     
He walked away and she pulled the envelope open. Inside was a postcard with some handwriting on it.
     
Please don’t tell anyone that you saw me. I will contact you.
     
The handwriting was