by Helen Eve
And for once the students have been brought into line on dress code. Not one of them competes with me as Cinderella: they are mice, ladies-in-waiting and possibly unintentionally Ugly Sisters, but I am, as intended, the unequivocal star of the night. The other Starlets might be wearing pink, but my dress is surely the pinkest; the biggest; the best. And it’s matched by the pink roses which decorate every corner of the room.
‘Where did you get these?’ I ask Libby as she brings us a handful. She presses one into Jack’s hand and ignores his wince of pain.
‘We should stop dancing,’ he suggests, glaring at her.
I almost ask him why, but then accept that this is a good idea. My corset is cutting into me and my feet hurt.
We sit at opposite sides of a glass table, slightly too far away to hear each other over the pounding beat. I nod politely when he says something indecipherable; he does the same for me. Our reflection ripples in prisms, and I see us as if we’re strangers. In our rainbow likeness, we’re a couple that sits in airports, restaurants, ornate drawing rooms, watching the gap between us stretch until it’s too cavernous to mend.
Although this couple is nothing like me and Jack (aside from anything else, engagement duties and wedding preparations will give us no excuse for a moment’s silence), I’m almost relieved to be joined by Avery and Ambrose. Ambrose looks faintly horrified as he inspects a gold goblet; for a moment I wonder if he’s going to bite it.
‘I’m not sure we’ll recoup our money,’ worries Avery. ‘This seems very expensive.’
‘Memories are priceless,’ I remind her, although I wonder if they’ll like to be reminded of a dance for which they apparently dressed up as frog footmen, and at which no one noticed them for the whole night. The thought actually makes me a little sad.
Ambrose is speaking, and I shrug to notify him that I have no interest in his words.
‘I said, Where’s Romy?’ he shouts, standing up to get closer to me.
‘She couldn’t come,’ I say regretfully. ‘She sends apologies.’
Avery turns crimson. ‘You can’t be serious? She advocates spending our entire remaining budget on this and doesn’t even attend?’
Libby swoops in before I can respond. ‘It’s not the attitude one would expect from a Head Girl-elect,’ she says elatedly. ‘I’ve been left entirely in charge, and it’s not as if I don’t have enough to do. My dance card is so full that I can’t divide the songs small enough.’
Ambrose nods reluctantly. ‘I expected more commitment from Romy than this. We should liaise with her about the budget too. This décor is very decadent, and I want to check that we didn’t overshoot.’
‘I’m afraid Romy definitely overshot.’ Libby casts a rueful glance at the decorations she ordered without Romy’s knowledge. ‘Let’s hope nothing she hired gets broken.’
She trails her handbag over the table as she leaves, sending crystal goblets shattering to the floor.
Jack rolls his eyes. ‘I’m not surprised Romy’s given it a miss. I can’t imagine her getting sucked into this kind of rubbish.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ I ask.
‘Matching pink dresses and roses and champagne?’ he says. ‘I’m getting toothache just sitting near you.’
I wonder if I’ve heard him wrong. ‘Don’t you like my dress?’ I ask, because even if I don’t, strictly speaking, like my dress, it can’t be the case that he doesn’t.
‘I love it,’ he says hurriedly. ‘It’s so … pink. And big.’
Feeling subdued, I search for someone to blame my mood on. ‘Can we stop talking about Romy? Does it matter if she’s here or not?’
‘Actually, it matters a lot,’ says Ambrose heavily. ‘You know we’d planned tonight as the kick-off for next term’s Head Girl and Boy handover.’
‘You can go ahead without Romy,’ I say. ‘No one will even notice.’
‘I suppose we’ll have to.’ As Ambrose gets up to leave, he gives Jack what’s obviously supposed to be a man-to-man backslap, and the result is painful to watch. ‘We’ll start soon, Jack. Then the floor is all yours.’
‘What does he mean?’ I ask Jack, who looks nervous.
‘You’ll see in a minute – I don’t want to ruin the surprise.’
Of course. I reach for his hand in relief. He’s going to propose on stage.
The song cuts out as Avery and Ambrose take to the microphone.
‘This is my cue,’ says Jack. He kisses me and then makes his way to the front, while I push in the opposite direction towards Libby. The Starlets, like flamingos, pull me into the middle of their flock. Avery and Ambrose drone on and we all hold hands during our last moment before my life – and by extension their lives – changes forever.
‘Did you anticipate an onstage proposal?’ Cassidy asks.
‘I suppose I expected something a little more intimate,’ I admit. ‘But this will be perfect.’
Jack is his usual confident self by the time he takes the microphone. The students cheer and I bask in vicarious enthusiasm, even though half of them are dressed as vermin.
‘It’s an honour for me to stand here,’ he says. ‘This is a relatively new ambition of mine, but I know that on some level it’s what I’ve always wanted.’
‘You should get closer to the stage,’ says Libby. ‘He’ll call you up there any minute.’
I follow as she forges a path through the crowd. I’ve lost the train of Jack’s speech somewhat, because he’s talking about leadership and the life-changing effects of navigating the Stripes to their recent victory. Then he smiles directly at me. ‘Siena, I told you I had something big to announce. This is for you.’
Libby is almost hyperventilating. ‘Get on with it, Lawrence,’ she mutters. ‘Ask her.’
He flashes a huge smile. ‘Classmates, I’m proud to tell you that I’ll be your next Head Boy.’
I’m aware of cheering around me but I can’t gather my thoughts. Everyone’s jostling and for a second I’m actually grateful for the suffocating layers of fabric that cocoon me from the worst of this moment.
‘What the hell happened?’ I ask Libby, trying to maintain a smile. ‘That was his big announcement? Is he kidding me?’
‘He must be,’ she says, looking as shocked as I feel. ‘There’s no way…’
‘What happened?’ asks Cassidy. ‘When’s the proposal?’
‘Later,’ Libby reassures her, snatching Tristan’s pina colada. ‘Don’t worry, everything’s fine.’
‘Tell me what to do!’ I say urgently as Jack leaves the stage. ‘Tell me how to fix this.’
Libby looks up at the clock. ‘It’s not midnight yet. You still have time to make this right. Get to the tower room.’
‘Why?’ I say. ‘How will he know where I’ve gone?’
‘He’ll follow you anywhere,’ she says. ‘This is recoverable, as long as you act fast.’
I push through the crowds, running out of the room and across the courtyard, not stopping for breath as the clock strikes half past eleven.
Chapter Twenty-four
Romy
‘Why didn’t you follow the rules and make her a white meringue?’ I ask Madison as we sit on the floor, slotting rings back into their display boxes. We spent an hour in hopeless silence as she sobbed and tried to make calls on a phone filled with Chianti, but finally she’s calm enough – following the discovery of Cassidy’s lost Valium – to help me tidy up.
She speaks in a rush. ‘I started with a meringue, but Jack laughed at the pattern, even though he didn’t know what it was. He said … actually, he said the same as you.’
‘Toilet roll holder?’ I try not to smile.
She nods. ‘Exactly. So I tried something different. Libby never told me that Siena hated yellow. She really didn’t.’
‘I believe you.’ I take the dress off the mannequin and hold it up against myself. ‘Siena should have given this a chance.’
‘Try it on,’ Madison suggests. ‘At least one perso
n should wear it.’
She helps me into it, twisting up my hair so I can see it properly, and I turn from side to side. Even on me it’s a masterpiece. ‘This would have suited her,’ I say. ‘It’s so original; no one would have been dressed like her.’
‘As it is…’ Madison grimaces at her pink-clad reflection. ‘I should never have made this freak show. I’ve lost my integrity, and they turned on me anyway.’
I rip off her voluminous puffed sleeves and some heavy layers of skirt, which is a big improvement. She hunts the room for remaining alcohol, lining up bottles and drinking from each in turn. In the absence of any better ideas, I copy.
‘Siena always listens to Libby over everyone else,’ she says. ‘And she always gets what she wants. That’s just the way it is.’
I wonder if she’ll say something less favourable, but a bottle of wine is insufficient for her to break ranks. ‘Siena deserves to get what she wants, because she and Jack are meant to be together. Even though it was a shame for you.’
‘A shame?’ I take a mouthful of white wine and then red, even though I don’t like either. ‘That’s one way of putting it.’
‘You’re so cryptic,’ she says impatiently. ‘If you’re still angry about what she did, then say so. You never give a straight answer about how you feel.’
‘You never ask the right questions,’ I say.
‘Would you like Siena and Jack to break up?’ she asks. ‘There’s a question.’
I remain silent.
‘You can’t deny it, can you?’
‘No,’ I whisper. ‘They aren’t right for each other.’
‘Okay,’ she says. ‘Tell me what really happened between you and Libby. I mean, none of us believed that you could … but when you left without trying to explain…’
To avoid answering, I open the window and climb onto the balcony. ‘We should get out of here, don’t you think?’
‘How?’ she says moodily. ‘We’re going to be shut in for ages yet. Siena won’t even come back tonight if things go well.’
‘Siena doesn’t always use the door. You weren’t planning to stay until someone remembered to let us out?’
‘You know another way?’ she asks. ‘We’ve been in here for hours! Why didn’t you say something before we missed the entire ball?’
‘I forgot,’ I say. ‘Or perhaps I didn’t think you’d be too upset about missing it, all things considered.’
She looks irritated, but then shrugs. ‘You’re right. An evening dressed like a begonia, drinking from gold goblets and hiding from Libby, probably isn’t that much fun.’
‘It’s much less fun than spending the evening with you,’ I tell her.
‘I agree,’ she says, sounding surprised. Then she looks over the balcony edge and shudders. ‘It’s high. I can’t imagine Siena doing anything like this.’
‘Then you have a lot to learn about Siena.’ I grab the trellis and haul myself over the edge.
She lays her hand on mine before I start to climb down. ‘Does it still hurt?’ she asks. ‘That Jack and Siena…’
I think of the day four years ago when I missed football practice because of a twisted ankle, to watch Siena take my place as the only girl in the Shells’ First Eleven. You campaigned so hard for girls to be allowed on the team, she told me as she borrowed my kit and kissed me on the cheek. I’ll bridge the gap so no one forgets you.
Having expressed nothing but disgust at the concept of co-ed sports and mud and shorts and kneepads, Siena played with ruthless efficiency, weaving and shooting and scoring in my centre forward place as she deceived both teams into giving her everything she wanted.
Watch the ball, not the girl, screamed the coach, turning purple as he blew a whistle that didn’t even penetrate the boys’ ears. Smiling, Siena lifted her shirt to wipe imaginary sweat from her forehead, exposing her midriff as Harry scored an own goal. The boys were devoted to their game, but that day no one even remembered the score.
At twelve, Jack was more interested in football than girls, except for girls like me who wore black and carried The Catcher in the Rye in a battered backpack and made sarcastic comments about the Starlets, despite being one of their number. But that day, as I watched Jack and Siena leave the pitch together without a backward glance, her hip touching his and their hands twisted like vines, I learned that all boys follow the same rules. He didn’t contest her as she steered and tagged him lightly; he only laughed as they ran until he was out of sight and out of range and beyond reason and blind to everything but the glow of the autumn sun on her golden hair.
‘Does it hurt?’ I ask Madison in disbelief. Shaking off her hand, I climb down the trellis, speaking my answer to branches instead of her. ‘It hurts every single day.’
Chapter Twenty-five
Siena
As soon as I push through the trapdoor, I understand why Libby has sent me here. The tower room has never looked like this, transformed from its usual mess into something like a fairy tale. Candles cover every surface, flames dancing in the breeze that blows through the open window and casts unearthly shadows against the silky drapes. And besides candles, there are flowers. Pink roses – the roses my father named for me – scatter the creaking floorboards, while loose petals are a coral drift around my feet. Thank you for doing this, I text Libby.
A back-up location is crucial, she texts back. So is a second chance.
Jack arrives as I put away my phone, staring me up and down in a way I don’t understand. Crossing the room, he picks up a fallen long-stemmed rose to save it from being crushed underfoot and hands it to me.
‘I have something else to tell you,’ he says.
I wait, decorously holding my rose, just as my mother told me. Let it unfold, she always said regarding the protocol of this moment. Let him unfold.
‘I’m not going to work for my dad next year,’ he announces.
I’m thrown off-course; too much to respond.
‘I’m going to apply to university instead.’
‘But … why?’ I say stupidly.
He begins an enthusiastic explanation of his Economics syllabus, which is an overshare too far and includes something called Game Theory, which sounds as if it should be interesting but definitely isn’t. I’ve no choice but to engage with this unexpected subject matter before it descends any further into farce.
‘University is for people who need an education to become marriageable,’ I tell him. ‘The poor. The uncomely. Not people like you. You already have a job and good looks. There’s nothing for you there.’
‘It’s for people who want opportunities, and to offer something to the world,’ he says emphatically.
I laugh. ‘Your dad owns a global company. In a few years it’ll be yours. How many opportunities do you want?’
‘I don’t want to follow my dad.’ He sounds stubborn. ‘I want to make my own way.’
‘Won’t that be harder?’
‘Of course it’ll be harder,’ he says. ‘That’s what will make it worth having.’
I try to process this change in our fortunes; a relationship with Jack based not on company profits and bonuses and corporate events, but student loans and microwaved carbohydrates and diluted beer in plastic glasses.
‘Maybe you should think about university too,’ he suggests. ‘You’d be clever if you ever paid attention in lessons.’
‘Of course I would. That’s not the point. We’re supposed to be together.’
‘We’ve still got one more year here,’ he says as if this is the most natural thing in the world. ‘And after that we can see each other during the holidays.’
‘What will become of us?’ I ask.
‘No one knows the future,’ he says. ‘Ours or anyone else’s. You don’t know what might happen, or what we might achieve.’
‘You already have me! Why isn’t that enough?’
‘You don’t listen to me, Siena,’ he says. ‘You don’t hear my point of view.’
‘I hear our
point of view,’ I say. ‘Everything I do is for us.’
I have a dim memory of hearing these lines on one of Cassidy’s soap operas – the one set in a burns unit in Buenos Aires – but that doesn’t make them less sincere. ‘I’m working towards our future. A future that was supposed to start tonight.’
Involuntarily I clench my left hand, manicured and cleared of rings for this purpose. Jack looks at it before staring around bemusedly.
‘That’s why the room is decorated like this.’ He closes his eyes in disbelief. ‘That’s what the ball was for. You thought I was going to propose.’
His inflection suggests that the concept is absurd.
‘You said this term would be the most important of our lives,’ I remind him. ‘You said this term would change everything. I thought…’
‘We’re seventeen!’
‘Almost eighteen,’ I persist. ‘Our parents were both married by that age.’
‘Look at the mess they made!’ he says. ‘Their marriages were – are, in my parents’ case – cataclysmic. Why would I make the same disaster of my own life? And yours?’
The Starlets – minus Romy, who would probably have set fire to it – have worked for hours to make this room perfect; this room that should mean something to him. But looking around, I see it through his eyes, and it becomes ridiculous. Some of the candles have burned out and others spatter wax onto the floorboards. Drapes of silk and lace hung to conceal cobwebs and dust (the Starlets have drawn the line at actual cleaning) are not gauzy and romantic, but portentous and haunting.
And, at the centre of this tableau, Jack and I are as spectral as our surroundings, inhabiting a space relevant only to times past.
He takes a deep breath. ‘Siena, I don’t want to be engaged to you or anyone else. I don’t even want to think about marriage yet.’
‘You had an engagement ring. Libby told me that Tristan told her that—’
‘My dad gave me the ring when my mum was in hospital. He wanted me to have it in case…’ His expression flits between confusion and pain. ‘It’s a reminder of the way our lives could turn out if we don’t guard against it. My dad told me not to repeat his mistakes.’