Lady in Waiting

by Lady Victoria Hervey

  Another bang on the door had me jumping up in fright. “Frederica! I don’t hear you moving around in there!”

  I pulled a face at the door, quickly smoothing it out into an innocent smile as the door was wrenched open and Matron popped her angry little face into the room.

  “I’m awake!”

  Matron narrowed her shrewd eyes at me. “See that it stays that way.”

  I gave her a jaunty salute once her back was turned, and finally crawled out of bed. Grabbing my wash things, I dashed down the hall to the communal bathroom. It was near deserted and I bit back a groan. An empty bathroom could only mean one thing—everyone else had already used it.

  No hot water.

  After a lightning quick and freezing cold shower, I raced back to my room. I dressed in the traditional Mapleton Manor uniform of navy cords, white blouse, blue jumper and the orange tie unique to Crosby House.

  Fenella and Annie were already in the kitchen when I arrived, both looking as bleary-eyed as I felt. We mumbled our good mornings as we moved around each other, making rounds of toast with Nutella.

  “We need to figure out a way to sneak a few minutes extra in bed,” Fenella said as she scrubbed her eyes.

  Annie and I nodded our agreement.

  We finished off our quick breakfasts and headed outside before Matron came to chase us again.

  It was like taking a trip back in time as I got onto my bicycle. Every Mapleton Manor girl had her own as the grounds were so big and some of the buildings so far apart that it was an everyday necessity. I dreaded to think just how late we would all be if we didn’t have them.

  “Matron makes it near enough impossible,” Annie grumbled as we set off for the chapel. “It’s easy enough to stuff a bed to make it look as though there’s a body in it, but how do you fake an empty bed and still be in it?”

  My friends and I spent half our lives devising new ways to get extra sleep, along with also trying to perfect sneaking out of the school grounds. We would need a serious plan in a few months for Polly Pearl night. Nothing could go wrong and everything had to be executed to the letter.

  Athena and Harriet had saved us seats beside them on the pew and we took our spots mere moments before the chapel doors closed and the chaplain began. For the most part, I mumbled my way through the hymns and nearly dropped off to sleep again as I dipped my head in prayer at the end.

  Once chapel was finished, it was time for the back to school assembly in the main hall before lessons began.

  “What’s your timetable like, Freddie?” Athena asked as she pushed her bicycle alongside me and mine.

  I handed her the printed out sheet of paper that would dictate my life this term.

  “French, history of art, English lit, history, physics… Ugh, you’re mad.” Athena screwed up her face and passed me the timetable back. “I’m in your physics class but that’s it. Why did you choose those subjects?”

  I tucked the timetable back into my bag so I didn’t lose it. Again. “Most of them have class trips. And I promised Daddy I would take physics.” My A-Level timetable was loaded with as many subjects that would take me abroad as possible. Secretly, history of art was the class I was really looking forward to as it had the best trips, but also because I was genuinely interested in art. I mean, our home in Monaco, and the family estate, were full to the gunnels with artwork.

  History was also a keen favourite of mine. I adored learning new nuggets of information from the past. It probably came from my parents’ rich family history. My mother’s father was Russian and his past was a great mystery. He had had to flee his home when he was only seven, and was separated from his parents for safety. He had lived with a family in Switzerland but had kept in touch with a few people from his past. Mummy thought he must have been close to the royal family, as the Tsar Nicholas had gifted him many things including some hunting dogs.

  My father’s father was an ambassador and had travelled all over the world. He’d been very clever, and at only sixteen he’d passed the Oxford-Cambridge examination.

  I had promised myself to one day explore the vast history of my family, as I suspected there would be quite a few interesting surprises to discover.

  Athena tipped her head back and laughed. “Anything for a holiday, eh, Freddie?”

  “A girl has to have her priorities right,” I said, flashing Athena a wink.

  The assembly didn’t take too long, only about half an hour. It ate into first lessons, so none of us minded. The main objective was for the older girls to meet the new girls who would be shadowing us.

  We arranged into our Houses, and the housemistresses went around with their clipboards and a gaggle of frightened looking girls. It was strange to think that that had once been me—once upon a time I’d been a young First Former following my Housemistress around, waiting to be introduced to the older girl who would show me around Mapleton Manor and watch over me.

  I’d been a lucky one. My shadow had been a lovely girl called Sophia. She had taken me under her wing and had seemed to genuinely care about me. Even after the first term was over, and shadowing had ended, I knew I could go to her about anything. When I’d struggled with a girl in my form who had teased me mercilessly, it was Sophia who’d listened to me as my young heart had broken and given me a bar of chocolate and a pep talk.

  Athena had shadowed a girl who loved to break the rules and had taught Athena most of the tricks she still used to this day. Maybe the girl we shadowed determined the kind of Mapleton Manor girl we would turn into.

  “Frederica, this is Jessica,” Housemistress said as she stopped in front of me and interrupted my reverie. At her side was a gangly blonde girl who wore her long shiny hair in braided pigtails. Her uniform was too big—it wasn’t uncommon for mothers to buy them a size or two too big just in case a girl had a growth spurt during term time and they wanted the uniforms to last.

  “Hi, Jessica,” I said, opting to pull the girl into a hug instead of a more formal handshake.

  “Hi…”

  Giving her a wide, reassuring smile, I said, “Frederica. But everyone calls me Freddie.”

  “Freddie,” Jessica said with a breath of relief.

  I wondered if she thought I’d be a terrifying older girl who wanted to do nothing but torture her and make her first term hell on earth.

  “It’s nice to meet you.”

  “And you. How are enjoying Mapleton Manor so far?” I asked, nodding to Housemistress as she moved on to the next pair of girls.

  Jessica’s face took on a pink tinge. “It’s okay.”

  I just melted. Was she struggling with boarding school? “Is this the first boarding school you’ve gone to?”

  She nodded and dropped her eyes to her sensible Mary-Jane flat shoes her mother must have insisted on.

  I squeezed her arm. “It gets easier, I promise. Are you missing your family?”

  When Jessica lifted her big blue eyes to meet mine, they were swimming with tears. Her chin dimpled and her lip quivered.

  Oh, well done, Freddie! She’s only known you two minutes and you’ve already made the poor girl cry! Fenella and Athena would love this… I gestured to a few seats and Jessica followed me over. We sat down and I fished a tissue out of my pocket to hand to her. “I know it’s hard when you first get here. I was eight, you know, when I went to my first boarding school.”

  “Eight?” Jessica exclaimed, her eyes widening.

  “Yep,” I said. “And it was a little scary at first. But do you know what I realised pretty quickly?”

  She shook her head.

  Gesturing to the room, and all the girls it held, I said, “These girls become your family. I promise you, you will make lifelong friends here. My best friend was with me at prep school and I expect she’ll be my best friend for the rest of my life.”

  “I don’t really know anyone yet,” Jessica admitted in a quiet voice.

  Gosh, she must be painfully shy. “Maybe not yet, but you will. Before you know it,
you’ll be part of the mischief in the dorms. You’ll be up half the night talking and giggling, and won’t be able to get out of bed in the morning!”

  At this Jessica cracked a smile. “That does sound like fun.”

  “It’s the best fun.” I patted Jessica’s arm. “Give it time. It really will get easier. And there are always tons of things to do at the weekends. Mapleton Manor is really good for organising lots of trips and things. Just wait and see. In one month you’ll think you were silly for even feeling like this.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “I know so.”

  Jessica dabbed the last of her tears away and gave me a shy smile. “Thanks, Freddie.”

  “Any time, Jessica. It’s what I’m here for.”

  I was going to enjoy shadowing. I felt like an agony aunt in one of my magazines.

  Most of the day passed by in a blur. My lessons were good and the teachers weren’t horrific. I had at least one of my close friends with me in each class, so that was good. It was dinnertime before I knew it, and I found Fenella and Jemima halfway down a long bench at one of the tables that ran almost the full length of the great hall.

  Fenella scooted over to make room for me, but Jemima made no effort to move at all. Maybe she was still grumpy from having to get up early this morning.

  “How was your day?” Fenella asked me.

  I shrugged as I climbed in beside them, placing the salad I’d served myself from the bar onto the table in front of me. “Can’t complain. You?”

  Fenella screwed up her face. “Mr Pennington was his usual grumpy-arse self in physics.”

  “Oh, don’t,” I groaned. “I have him tomorrow.”

  “Well, he’s even worse than last year. Maybe he got dumped over the summer or something.”

  Jemima laughed. “Mr Pennington? Dumped? Are you mad, Fenella? I bet the man hasn’t seen anything close to resembling a naked woman in decades!”

  Our physics teacher was so old he was practically part of the foundations of Mapleton Manor. Each summer that we’d returned back to school he’d seemed to have become even grumpier.

  “Freddie!”

  I turned at the sound of my name to see a Third Former rush down the hall towards me. I couldn’t remember her name, but I knew exactly what she was after.

  The girl practically shoved Jemima out of her way as she squeezed herself between us. “Freddie,” she said breathlessly.

  “God, Amy, will you watch what you’re doing?” Jemima said, giving the girl a hard glare.

  Amy! That was it.

  The girl threw Jemima a filthy look. “It’s Xanthe,” she said.

  Ah…perhaps not Amy then… “What’s up, Xanthe?” I asked her before Jemima could respond.

  “Am I too late for the first round of shopping lists?” Xanthe asked, her eyes searching mine.

  I laughed, my eyes widening in shock. “We’ve only been back a few days, give a girl a chance!”

  “Sorry, sorry. I just know that once term gets going properly that you’ll be busy and the lists will be too full,” Xanthe said. She pulled a piece of notebook paper out of her pocket. “Can you get me these?”

  Giving her list a quick scan, it looked as though everything would be easy enough to obtain. I gave Xanthe a wink. “Leave it with me. I’ll be in touch.”

  Xanthe grinned. “Thanks, Freddie!” She whipped around to leave, smacking Jemima in the face with her ponytail in the process. I wasn’t entirely sure it was an accident.

  “At it already, Freddie?” Fenella asked with a smile.

  I gave my friend a gentle nudge with my elbow. “Oh, like you haven’t thought of a few things that you want.”

  She sighed. “I’m sorry. I just can’t survive without my supply of Hubba Bubba.”

  “Forget Hubba Bubba!” Jemima exclaimed. “When are you getting the good stuff?”

  I rolled my eyes at Jemima. “I’ll pop into the Ville at the weekend, okay?” The local village, or the Ville to us girls, was our little shopping hotspot to pick up the things that would surely be confiscated if found in our tuckboxes.

  At this Jemima softened, probably since she had got what she wanted. “Great stuff, Freddie. It pays to have a friend like you.”

  Her words made me wonder if that was the only reason she was my friend. There had always been something about Jemima that made me give pause, but I could never put my finger on what it was. I had to be getting paranoid in my old age. She had never been outwardly rude to me, never deliberately cruel. It was my imagination, that was all, seeing things that weren’t really there.

  I blamed Fenella, and her mention of Polly Pearl the night before. It was messing with my head.

  Somehow, over the summer I had completely forgotten how utterly exhausting the first day back at school was.

  I’d had lessons until six o’clock then homework that took me a further two hours to complete. After I’d tidied away all my homework things, I started writing the letters to the sweetie companies. Some were innocent complaints, others were childish and bordered on pleading.

  I discovered early on that playing on people’s heartstrings worked like a treat, and asking big companies for a donation to supply us with sweets for an upcoming camping trip was one of my more genius ideas. As were the whimsical ‘please can we have sweeties for midnight feasts’ letters, they usually worked wonders.

  When my wrists started aching, I finished up the letter I was writing and promised myself I’d finish the rest I still had to do tomorrow. There were still the magazines to write to, and the video shops. Sometimes people were all too willing to send girls in boarding schools free stuff. And you got sick pretty quickly of watching the same films that were in the common room.

  After getting myself a spoonful of Nutella as a pre-bedtime snack, I settled in the common room to chill out with the girls for a while before Matron shooed us out. We chatted about our day and what the new girls were like.

  “Mine is super annoying, just like I thought,” Athena said, rolling her eyes. “But she has the promise to be an expert mischief-maker, so there’s still hope.”

  “One thing is for sure, Freddie’s girl has the biggest crush,” Fenella said with a laugh. “She’s already told my girl how fantastic you are.”

  It sounded like Jessica had listened to my words of wisdom and was starting to make friends. I was pleased for her, and couldn’t wait until she told me how happy she was at Mapleton Manor, and how wonderful her newfound friends were. “She’s a sweet girl.”

  “Do you just like having someone worship the ground you walk on, Freddie?” Jemima asked.

  I frowned. “No. Why?”

  Jemima smiled and shrugged. “It must feel nice, that’s all. Having someone look up to you like that.”

  “I just want her to enjoy her time here. I’m hardly going to torture the poor girl, am I?” I shook my head and gave a short laugh. “I think she was struggling a bit.”

  “Just wait until the eleventh day of the eleventh month,” Athena said, waggling her eyebrows. “They won’t know what hit them!”

  And so that sparked the great Polly Pearl debate, and how to do it bigger and better than all the other girls before us.

  I was utterly spent when I finally fell into my bed that night. There would be no room hopping for me and I could only hope that the other girls were just as tired and didn’t come knocking on my door. Athena could find a different way of sneaking her cigarettes.

  There was no better feeling than knowing I only had half a day of school that day. I stretched out in my narrow bed, my feet almost poking out of the end, and snuggled deeper into my duvet.

  It was Saturday. We only had lessons for a few hours then the rest of the day was mine…ah, it was heaven.

  When I finally finished my lessons a few hours later, most of the girls were in the group room. Fenella had a textbook open on her lap, Athena flicked through a magazine and Jemima was filing her nails.

  “Ah, and she rises!” Fenel
la said with a laugh when she spotted me.

  I waved away her teasing with my hand and dropped down beside her on one of the couches.

  “All set for today, Freddie?” Athena asked. There was a twinkle in her eyes and I knew exactly what she meant.

  “Of course,” I said, flashing her a grin. “Would you expect anything less?”

  Annie rounded the couch and sat on the floor at my feet. “What are we talking about?” she asked.

  “It’s Freddie’s first trip to the Ville today,” Fenella supplied. “We need the supplies for the weekend.”

  Annie’s eyes widened in excitement. “Of course! I’d completely forgotten.”

  “You’re going to get the good stuff, right, Freddie?” Jemima asked.

  I snorted a laugh. “I’ll get what I’m able to.”

  “I would get—”

  “You would get nothing, because you can’t get served yet,” Athena said, throwing Jemima a pointed look. “Freddie can. So save your cheek and be bloody grateful.”

  Ah, Athena.

  She and Fenella had always been my champions. Out of all of us, I think we three were the closest. It wasn’t uncommon to have cliques inside of cliques, and our group was no different. We were an odd formation of friends. If someone were to examine us all, they would find us wildly different.

  Fenella was the clever one—the one who actually studied and worked for her good grades, whereas it was usually Annie and I who stayed up into the wee hours the night before an exam to cram like mad because we’d barely revised at all.

  Athena was the rebel of our group. If there was any mischief, you could almost guarantee that she would somehow be at the centre of it. Athena convinced us to do daring things, to sneak out onto the roof for a cigarette.

  Jemima was boy mad. She was all about her looks and what other people thought about her. When we went to the Ville, Jemima would be dressed to impress with her hair done and makeup perfect.