Mary and Operation Whistle

By Jude Ensaff

Mary, the scholarship girl, teams up with Alex and Layla in a bid to solve the mystery behind several strange incidents at Pemberley School, all of which threaten Mary's future.

 

United in their shared enmity with Emma, the school bully, they try to uncover the truth. Will they succeed?

 

• A middle grade novel
• Suitable for ages 8-12

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chatten House
• Release date: Jul 27, 2022
• ISBN: 9798224353293

Jude Ensaff

Jude Ensaff is a prolific writer and educational leader. She has worked in education for over twenty years. She has won awards and been shortlisted in numerous writing competitions. Jude completed a Masters degree at distinction level in 2011 and continues to write and work in education to this day. She publishes material under Jude Ensaff and her full name of Najoud Ensaff.

Book preview

Prologue

It is twelve thirty.  Lunchtime.  September fifth.  She enters the buzzing room.  It is dizzy with children grouped in clusters.  Their voices shriek through the air as mouths chatter and  hands dance. She dodges strange faces and fumbles her way through a maze of wooden tables and plastic chairs, an orchestra of squeaks and scrapes.  Eyes pierce her back like pellets and figures blur into a mirage before her.  She tries to hide her incongruity but her face burns scarlet.

Eyebrows twitch as she scans the canteen (only here it is called a refectory) for a space.  The swishing tumbler of orange juice and plate of food balance precariously on her tray, a tacit threat that at any minute will become real and cause a commotion.  Sweat starts to form on her forehead and for a moment time stands still.  Frozen.  Her pulse beats the seconds, but at last a seat appears.

She directs herself towards it through an obstacle course of chairs and is about to breathe a sigh of relief when it happens. 

She is faced with a tall sporty girl.  Sporty because she’s wearing a gym skirt and white top.  Tall because she stands shoulders and head above everyone else. Dark haired and tall, very, very tall. Her eyes survey the new girl like a cat’s eying a mouse and then she speaks.

‘Watch it will you,’ she says, pushing into the new one.  Her voice is loud and barbs the air.  ‘Can’t you see where you’re going?’  The fork of her tongue stabs with condescension.

Before she knows it, she says it. ‘Sorry,’ the new girl mumbles.  Sorry? Why sorry? It was her fault, but this is somewhere new – don’t want to draw attention to yourself, so before she knows it out it pops again.  ‘Sorry,’ she says as she struggles to walk past.

‘Hey I’m not finished,’ the sporty one says and she grabs the orange juice and a couple of chips from the plate.  ‘Call it compensation for injuries.’

Stunned, the new girl stands motionless. There are lots of people in the room, but no-one seems to hear this exchange. Perhaps they hear but don’t care.  Perhaps they hear but can’t care.

‘Catch you later midget,’ she says.  ‘We’ll get to know one another I’m sure.’ And off she walks.

Surrounded by people, Mary stands alone.  In a school where she is to live day and night for seven years she stands and feels very alone.  This is the day she comes to understand what real power is: a person called  Emma . Horsey  Emma . Hockey  Emma . Sporty  Emma .  But mostly Haughty  Emma . 

Chapter One

The noise of children opening and closing doors, chatting and rushing echoed down the corridor.  Voices bounced off walls for the most part of an hour before Miss Turner, teacher of Science by day and dragon lady by night, was heard.  Her routine call of ‘Lights out in half an hour,’ sounded as her Clarks Best sponge soled shoes squelched their way along the Year Seven then Year Eight Wing.  The girls had timed her; from the moment her shoes could be heard it took her four and a half minutes to reach their corridor.  That meant they had four minutes to wash and change and half a minute to dash into bed and dutifully pretend they were asleep.  As usual Miss Turner moved like clock-work and at exactly nine twenty eight, she looked in on Mary and Alex to check all was well and to ensure that all lamps were switched off, all windows closed and all girls washed and ready for bed.  Alex saw Mary secretly hide her trusty bat and her emergency torch beneath the duvet as they waited.  It seemed like forever before Miss Turner’s shoes had squelched their last step in the old wing.  When they did Mary leaned across to Alex and whispered, ‘You asleep?’

‘Not much chance of that,’ Alex said.  How could anyone sleep when Mary was around?  Much as she protested now, sharing a room with Mary was a treat; it allowed for their ritual nightly gossip.  By the time ten thirty came they would have set the world to right, lamenting the fact that there were two camps at the school- those girls like Evil Emma  - nasty, rich and spoilt and those like themselves who were of course kind generous and pretty normal, but sadly in a minority.  What was the world coming to?

It was at about this time- the end of the gossip session- that a low hollow sounding noise entered the room.  Mary sat up.

The room was drenched in darkness.  Only the moon cast a beam of light through a slit in the curtain onto Mary’s pale face. If Alex hadn’t been the scientific sort, she’d have definitely been scared.  As it was she was mildly startled.

‘There it is,’ Mary declared.  She had a silly knowing look on her face and Alex sighed.  The sound got slowly louder and faster like a whirlwind in a bottle.

‘Hear it?’ she said prodding Alex’s cover.

Alex hated to admit it, but she had heard something. ‘Yes... Yes I can,’ she mumbled.  She didn’t want Mary thinking she was completely convinced because she wasn’t!

Mary slipped herself out of bed.  ‘I told you.  Now we’ll see who’s right,’ she said, as she grabbed her bat. All day she’d been going on about noises in the night and here she was revelling in her triumph. ‘Good Old Babe Ruth,’ she said energetically springing forward.  She stopped, then looked fiercely at Alex who had not moved.  ‘Come on, let’s go,’ she said, hurriedly pulling her friend’s arm.  Alex sighed.  Anyone would have thought she was a secret agent on a mission, the way Mary was charging ahead and doling out orders.  Her and her blasted Operation Whistle!  This wasn’t the first time Mary had concocted a ridiculous story.  Whistling noises? It was too Stephen King to be believed.  Okay, so there was a rumour of a ghost in the school but that didn’t mean it existed.  It was like believing in the Yellow Brick Road or the tooth fairy.  Alex, being the sensible girl that she was, saw right through the ghost story.  To her it was just a tactic used by the older years to scare the younger ones. It was a joke.  A big, fat, joke- something you might have believed in Year Seven and something you definitely grew out of in Year Eight!  Only Mary hadn’t and what’s more she insisted on dragging Alex along with her and in the middle of the night.

Mary clicked her torch on and angled it forwards.

Why didn’t she understand that normal human beings needed sleep?  A whole day of school and now this! Hesitantly Alex got out of bed and followed the blurry image ahead.  Dressed in pyjamas and barefooted, she tiptoed down the hallway.  Her feet felt cold and the ridges of the floor cut into her toes.  She pulled her dressing gown closer around her plump body.  The passage was a violet kind of dark and the floorboards creaked as the girls made their way towards the noise.  To Alex, the brick building seemed like a hollow and empty vault full of their echoing footsteps.  In her sleepy state, she felt certain that they would be caught, as each step boomed in her ears.  Creak.  One step.  Creak.  Another and another until they had walked past the link between the two wings of the school.  At this point the noise seemed to dim and Mary stopped suddenly. So suddenly that Alex bumped into her, shaken and dazed.

‘Hang on a sec,’ Mary whispered,  ‘It’s changing direction.’

Alex’s eyes drooped with fatigue and her legs weighed down like gravity.  She leaned her frame against the wall for support, as she listened for the noise.  Sure enough the sound seemed to quieten then slowly become louder and different and this time it was coming from beneath them- the Year Eleven corridor.  ‘It’s below us now...we should head down there,’ she said.  Her mouth moved but her body wished she could go back to bed.

‘Come on I know a short cut,’ Mary said as she surged ahead energetically.

Behind her, in the dark, Alex could just about see Mary’s half lit head travel towards the connecting door to the Year Eight Common Room.  Puzzled, Alex sped as fast as her sleepy feet could carry her after her friend.  The bobbing spot of light from the torch was fast drawing out of sight

As she entered the large common room her eyes squinted to catch sight of Mary and for a moment she thought she’d lost her amidst the darkness of the school. She caught her breath.  Her head felt hot as beads of sweat started to form.  Where was Mary? All was quiet and dark: very, very dark, when the scrunching noise of movement drew Alex’s attention towards the corner of the room. 

‘In here Alex,’  Mary whispered, and then Alex saw her.  She was battling her way through the brooms and vacuum cleaner in the corner of the room in the darkened cupboard.