Time in Her Hands: Part 1 of the Carrie Cartwright Series

By Sharon Boscoe

14 year old Carrie Cartwright is given the chance to spend two months in the French Alps as part of a school languages scheme. She relishes the opportunity to escape from her dull life in rural England. Before she leaves she has an odd experience with Madame Beauchamp, the new headteacher of her school. Madame Beauchamp delivers a rather strange message in assembly which bizarrely, and for reasons unknown, seems directed at Carrie.

Once in the Alps, Carrie discovers a magnificent yet long-abandoned old hotel in the village and becomes increasingly intrigued about its story. She asks around but gets no clear answers. Feeling increasingly distant from her ski trip, she can’t get the old hotel out of her head, wondering why it was abandoned, and what happened...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Boss Publishing
• Release date: Sep 27, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463787366

Book preview

Time In Her Hands

Copyright 2019 Sharon Boscoe

Published by Boss Publishing at Smashwords

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

About the Author

Other Books by this Author

Chapter One

Dad, I got my letter! yelled Carrie up the stairs as she crashed through the front door, letting it slam noisily behind her and causing the whole house to shudder. Her dad yelped as the nail he was banging into the wall shifted and he hit his finger instead. Today was the day when Carrie would be told where she was going and since he got home he had been nervously listening out for her to return from her after school club, desperately praying that she had been given what she’d been hoping for these past few weeks, and he jumped out of his skin when she finally arrived home.

That’s great love, he called down to her, shaking his left hand vigourously. So where are you going?

Carrie’s full name was Elizabeth Caroline Cartwright; well according to her birth certificate it was, although she would safely put money on the fact that no-one had called her Elizabeth since the day she was born. Carrie often wondered why parents bothered naming their children something which they had no intention of ever calling them, surely life would be easier if everyone just had one name? As a child she used to play a game where she was an undercover secret agent called Lizzy, fighting crime and solving mysteries, and she secretly still thought that one day maybe she might use it as her alter ego. Either way, she was Carrie, and always would be.

Carrie Cartwright had always been an independent girl. She was easy-going and always willing to try new things. She was an only child, having lost her mum at a young age, so had developed a very close relationship with her dad. Carrie had very happy memories of her childhood, it had always been a bit like father and daughter against the world, and with her dad’s support she felt she could do anything. He had never re-married, instead focusing all his energies on his one and only daughter, his pride and joy. Roger Cartwright worked for the local council and after Carrie’s mother died he had taken on as many extra hours as he could, desperate to give his daughter the best possible life. Despite earning very little, he worked longer and harder than anyone else, often taking weekend and evening work; partly to make as much money as possible, but also because he knew that if he buried himself in work it might make it easier to move on. Roger had sacrificed a huge amount for Carrie and had made it his lifetime goal to make sure his daughter never wanted for anything. The first thing he did was enrol Carrie in the local private girls’ school, Dulvington Academy. If his only daughter was to be given the best opportunities in life, then he figured the best education was the place to start.

Carrie had now been a student at Dulvington Academy for 8 years and had a well established group of friends. She was a clever girl, consistently achieving high grades, and was in the top sets across all subjects. The town of Dulvington was sleepy and rural, and nothing much ever happened. The big story of the year so far had been when old Mr Barnes had been stopped by the police in the local country lanes for driving too slowly! Most of the young people in the town had parents and grandparents who still lived there, and Carrie was unusual in that she had no extended family there. The Cartwrights had found themselves in Dulvington 13 years previously due to Mrs Cartwright’s job, when Carrie was just a baby, and after so many years Carrie’s dad had seen no sense in leaving. It seemed that once you were born in Dulvington, you never left. There was a comprehensive school in the town as well as the private school, which most of the local children attended, but it didn’t have a great reputation and it was safe to say the two schools didn’t think fondly of one another.

Dulvington Academy had been established in the 15th Century as a convent school and was very proud of its history. Having always attended an all girls’ school, Carrie had never had any experience of boys. All her friends were girls, her teachers were all female, she socialised with girls, she had taken ballet lessons with a group of girls, all she had ever known was girls. She was fairly sure the only boy she’d ever had an actual conversation with was her friend Rebecca’s younger brother, but as he was only 10 she didn’t really think that counted. Dulvington was all Carrie knew, but she couldn’t help but think that there was more out there. Surely there was more to life than the same faces in the same town? She often dreamt about what a big city must be like, was New York really like she saw in the Hollywood movies? What about the mountains and the oceans, the jungles and the deserts? Places like Niagara Falls and the Grand Canyon existed only in books for Carrie. She spent hours poring over nature books looking at sharks and whales, elephants and eagles; would she ever see these things? Her dad had taken her on summer camping holidays each year to some lovely places like Cornwall, Wales and Yorkshire, plus she’d once flown to Spain for the weekend as a special treat with her grandparents, but that was the one and only time she had ever been on a plane; she’d never even been to London.

At the end of the previous year, Dulvington Academy had undergone a few unexplained difficulties, which had resulted in the appointment of a new head teacher. This came in the form of a wiry and curious French woman by the name of Cecile Beauchamp. With wild black hair and fierce eyes, she was not a woman the students of Dulvington Academy wished to get on the wrong side of. She had swooped in and turned the entire school upside-down, in her words ‘moving it from good to great’. This was her slogan and from the moment she had arrived she just hadn’t stopped; upgrading this, replacing that, hiring and firing, changing the timetables, to the point where the school was now almost unrecognisable. Most of the students and parents had no real idea what was going on, but as the school had been on a seemingly downwards slide, they had welcomed the changes.

One of the many things the new boss was particularly enthusiastic about was the teaching of languages within the school. Carrie didn’t know much about her, but from the rumours she had heard, Madame Beauchamp was a native of France but had spent much of her childhood moving between France and America. She therefore spoke flawless English, but with a strange Franco-American accent that was difficult to get used to. Carrie also had no idea how old she was. She marched around the school grounds with such purpose and authority and had so much presence for such a small person, that she could have been anything between 30 and 60!

As part of Madame Beauchamp’s dream to create a language empire, she had decided to offer each student in year 9 the opportunity to spend two months in either France or Germany, staying in specially adapted ‘language schools’, attending lessons and living with the local people in a bid to ‘immerse’ them, in the vague hope that they would continue with languages through to their GCSE exams. Carrie had dropped German the previous year but had been given no choice regarding compulsory French.

When will we ever need to speak French? was a line often muttered during French lessons. Carrie didn’t really believe that this trip abroad would be the great adventure it was advertised as, but to be honest she was getting bored of sleepy rural Dulvington where nothing exciting ever happened and she had only left the UK once in her life, so was intrigued about seeing another country. Why not? She thought. Plus, Carrie secretly kind of liked French, even though she would never admit it to her friends!

However despite the promise of experiences and adventures, a surprising number of students in the year group had decided against it, or more likely their parents had, which seemed especially strange as the school was subsidising it enormously and the bill for the students was relatively small for such a big trip. This was possibly because many of the students at Carrie’s school were foreign, mostly boarding students from China and Japan with rich parents who believed that a ‘British education’ was what their child needed to succeed in the World. Perhaps spending time studying somewhere else in Europe wasn’t seen as a worthwhile use of their time or their parents’ money. Luckily most of Carrie’s friends had grabbed the opportunity with both hands, relishing the thought of getting away from annoying brothers and sisters for a while, and had spent the last few months excitedly discussing options and thinking carefully about where they would most like to go.

For reasons unknown, Madame Beauchamp had taken an unusual interest in Carrie from the beginning. The day she had arrived she had addressed the whole school as a general introduction and then had spent the afternoon moving round the classes, meeting and greeting the individual students. It had been fairly standard and uninteresting, shaking hands, asking names and exchanging pleasantries about how lovely the school was, until she had come face to face with Carrie Cartwright. She had stopped in the middle of the Science lab and stared at Carrie as if she’d seen a ghost, open mouthed and momentarily forgetting where she was. Being 14 and not therefore vastly experienced in odd situations, Carrie hadn’t been sure what to do or where to look so resorted to awkwardly staring at the floor and muttering,

Pleased to meet you Madame Beauchamp, m-m-my name’s Carrie Cartwright, whilst half-heartedly extending her hand towards the tiny woman.

The new head teacher had blinked and shook her head vigorously, sending her tousled hair into a frenzy and seeming to snap her out of the curious trance.


Of course dear, a pleasure, a pleasure, she said in a brisk and commanding voice, brushing Carrie’s fingertips so lightly that Carrie wasn’t even sure it counted as a handshake. And with that she muttered something about needing to get back to meetings, turned on her heel and breezed out in to the corridor, leaving the rest of the class confused and a little bewildered.

What was that all about? whispered Carrie’s friend Rebecca as they were ushered back to their seats to continue with