LITMIR.BIZ

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countries and different backgrounds – are always hungry. Everyone hankers after home comforts, yearns for things familiar. Some make new friends, while others stay lonely and alone. Some girls – like me – drift through the days detached and disconnected, while others, clustered happily together in this overheated, seething sisterhood, blossom and thrive.

      Minute Steaks and Meatballs

      At the end of my first day in the hostel, I stand behind Ramsey’s solid pear shape in a line of girls all leaning against a grubby wall in front of the closed doors of the dining room. The hungry boarders grumble and shuffle their feet, impatient for the doors to open. The air heaves with hairspray and fruit-flavoured lip-ice. A dozen deodorants mingle with the reek of sweaty armpits, compete with the overpowering scents of feminine hygiene sprays – Fresh Island Breeze, Baby Powder Fresh! Summer’s Eve – EXTRA STRENGTH – Ideal for Sensitive Areas – and the sour odour of unwashed hair. I can hear the maids laughing and shouting in the kitchen, the cook’s curses slipping out through the kitchen’s swing doors. In a sudden silence, footsteps hurry towards us across the linoleum floor. The dining-room doors swing open, and a nauseating gust of stale food and grease surges out. Undeterred, the girls push inside, elbowing and shoving one another, treading on heels and toes.

      In the middle of the dining room, four tables have been laid for dinner. Piles of unused furniture stand stacked up against a far wall.

      “Why’re all those chairs and tables over there?” I ask the girl behind me.

      “I don’t know,” she says. “I know there used to be more boarders here …” She shrugs and looks around at the noisy crowd. “I suppose they keep them for spares now, or something.”

      “Like all those beds in the empty rooms and dormitories?”

      But she’s already pushed past me, and she doesn’t answer.

      A single table, set with three places, stands on a raised platform in front of the kitchen’s swing doors. I tap Ramsey on her shoulder.

      “Who sits up on the stage?” I ask, pointing at it.

      “What?” She looks in the direction of my finger. “Oh, that’s where Mrs P and the hostel prefects sit,” she says. “Mrs P sits at the head of the table with the prefects on either side.”

      I follow Ramsey to our table, take my place between her and a girl called Fanny. I pull my chair away from the table.

      “Wait – you can’t sit down yet!” Ramsey hisses. “Quick! Push it back!” She looks up. The places on the platform are still empty. “We have to remain standing behind our chairs until Mrs P and the prefects have taken their places.”

      “Why? What for?”

      Ramsey snorts. “Why?” She rolls her eyes. “To show our respect, that’s why.”

      Ramsey elbows me in my side. Mrs P lurches into the dining room, and the noise dies away. One of the prefects pulls her chair out for her and waits for Mrs P to totter unsteadily onto the platform. She sits down heavily, and as I watch, I see her thrust one shoulder forward, as if hoping it might propel her chair closer to the table. Her hands scrabble weakly against the sides of her seat, and she manages to drag herself halfway across the small distance towards her place at the head of the table. It proves too much for her, and she suddenly stops dead. The prefect grimaces and braces herself against the back of the chair. She leans forward and, with a grunt, pushes Mrs P up to the edge of the table.

      The noise level rises again. Girls shout to one another across the tables, laugh and joke, their shrill voices penetrating the furthest corners of the echoing dining room. One of the prefects raps her knife against an empty glass. Quiet, the boarders look down at the patch of tablecloth in front of them. I shift about on the hard chair, fidget with my cutlery. Ramsey leans back and mumbles something out of the corner of her mouth.

      “Sorry,” I say. “What was that?”

      I turn towards her.

      She stares down at her lap.

      “Ramsey? Sorry, I couldn’t hear what you said.”

      She glances around, quick and furtive, and drops her head again.

      “No, I just wanted to say, seeing as this is your first Friday night here …” She raises her voice slightly. “It’s only fair to warn you …” Ramsey’s smile doesn’t reach her eyes.

      “Warn me? What about?”

      My stomach rumbles. I can’t decide whether I want to laugh or cry. I blink my eyes, cross my arms and press them hard against my stomach.

      “You’ll see,” she says. “Once you’ve been here a while, you’ll realise we always get steak for dinner on Friday nights.”

      “So?” I frown. “What’s wrong with steak? I like it – don’t you?”

      “It’s not a matter of liking,” she snorts. “It’s more a matter of what kind of steak we’re talking about. Just listen, okay? I’m telling you this because forewarned is forearmed – don’t let tonight’s steak get your hopes up about what you’ll be getting to eat for the rest of the week.”

      “I don’t understand …”

      Ramsey rolls her eyes. “You’ll see,” she says, irritably.

      Up on the podium, one of the prefects jumps up from her chair. “Quiet!” she shouts. “Shut up down there!”

      A brief lull descends in the conversations around us. Knives and forks stop in mid-air. Girls glance at one another, turn around, whisper and point. I look down at the table. Ramsey hitches her shoulder and shifts back in her seat. Communications resume, interspersed with loud guffaws and titters, calls for the water jug, the salt- and peppershakers to be passed down the table.

      “Look,” Ramsey snaps, “we’re not talking thick and juicy here!” She bares her teeth and hisses. “These are minute steaks, okay?”

      “Minute steaks? What’s a minute steak?”

      Ramsey shakes her head. “Are you kidding? Haven’t you ever eaten a minute steak?”

      “No.”

      “A minute steak,” she explains, “is so small and thin, it takes only a minute to fry, and then the cook here fries them until they’re rock hard, and so dry, they look – and taste – like bits of cardboard. And they’re as tough as old shoe leather.”

      My stomach rumbles again.

      The kitchen doors swing open, and two maids carrying trays laden with plates of food push their way into the dining room. Everyone cranes their necks to get a better view. Their hopes subside rapidly into groans of disappointment when the plates are handed down the length of the tables. I prod the tip of my knife against the grey, desiccated disc on my plate.

      “What’s this supposed to be?” My voice carries across the room.

      Ramsey inclines her head and gestures with the knife in her hand. “See?” she says. “This is what I’ve been telling you about – this is a minute steak, and these are the steaks we’ll be having for dinner every Friday night for the rest of the year!” She chews laboriously. “They make a point of giving us steak for dinner on Friday nights, you see?” She grins. I can see some­thing stringy caught between her teeth. “So, if you’re lucky enough to have a weekend pass, and your hostess happens to ask you what you had for dinner in the hostel last night …” Around the table, Ramsey’s audience nods in agreement. She shrugs her shoulders. “You can honestly tell them you had steak!” She saws away at the sliver on her plate. “They think it makes the school look good.”

      She stretches across the table for the greasy water jug, fills her glass, takes a gulp, and chokes down her mouthful of steak.

      “It’s the only way you can get it down,” she advises. “Swallow it with lots of water – and, by the way, if you’re not going to eat that

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