Clementine had to agree, reluctantly. ‘She’s right. We could use it as an excuse to hire a minibus to take us to the Feather’s Ball. We could raffle places on the bus.’ So typical of Clemmie, who was the most boy-mad girl in our year. She rarely spoke unless there were boys around and even then she mostly only ogled and giggled.
‘Whatever,’ Star said dismissively. ‘Personally I think the Feather’s Ball is the lamest thing out. The bands they have … pah-lease!’
‘Didn’t stop you pulling that gross boy from Worth Abby at the Valentine’s Ball, as I remember,’ Honey riposted.
Star curled her upper lip and looked Honey up and down. ‘I’m surprised you can remember, after all the vodka you drank. As I remember, you were staggering around cutting in on everyone. In fact, hang on, I remember you cut in on me, darling, and pulled him yourself. But perhaps you were having one of your blackouts and don’t recall.’
Honey was about to open her mouth when I heard someone say, ‘Oh, shut up, both of you!’ Actually in the brief silence that followed I realised that the words had come out of my mouth, but no one said anything. Instead Clemmie merely continued with her line of thought, adding, ‘We could charge some random amount like double or triple?’
The discussion went on and no one seemed to notice I was there. I felt completely invisible. Being the school freak and not having parents with a madly grand house in Chelsea, I’d never been to any of the Capital VIP balls. But I knew about them. In the weeks leading up to a ball, it was all anyone spoke of. The balls are usually held at the Hammersmith Palais or some other huge venue and they are a highlight of the boarding school calendar. Although no alcohol is allowed, only the boys are frisked, giving girls like Honey a free hand to smuggle in whatever they wanted. Absolutely everyone who matters goes to at least a few, because it’s a great place to pull. There are bands and DJs, and goodie bags at the end. Even Star had been to one, although she said the tongue of the boy she kissed felt like a small fish. But I know she only said that to make me feel better.
‘Charging more is a fab idea, darling; actually we could charge different prices depending on how rich and important you are,’ Arabella threw in. ‘Although I do think the VIP balls are getting a little tired,’ she added – for once agreeing with Star. By important, Arabella meant how many hyphens you had in your name. Her full name is Arabella Basingdom-Morgan-Heigbrewer-Tomlinson-Protvost-Smith. But she just refers to herself as Arabella Smith, knowing full well that everyone knows the portentous enormity of her name.
Arabella flicked her mane of carefully highlighted blonde hair, and a strand of it stuck to my lip-gloss. I brushed it away and started applying more lip-gloss.
Georgina said, ‘Or we could have pulling competitions!’
‘Five-quid fine if you don’t pull at least two boys at the Eades social.’
‘Make that ten for everyone who doesn’t pull a prince,’ Honey added cattily, arching one of her professionally styled eyebrows. She was always going on about her Russian eyebrow stylist, as if she were some sort of guru or something.
‘See you back at the dorms, I’m going down to check the post,’ Arabella told us before dashing down the stairs.
‘Grab mine, darling,’ everyone called back, apart from Star and me.
Obviously Star didn’t expect mail from parents who are perpetually stoned. My parents’ excuse is that they are too modern and technologically aware to send ‘snail mail,’ as they call it. They prefer to communicate with me by e-mail, which is so lame.
Honey’s mother sent her postcards of herself chatting to various celebrities, and Honey had them pinned all over her board. But you can’t pin an e-mail to your board when you are homesick, which means that everyone thinks you’re a sad loser whose parents don’t love you.
EIGHT:
The Royal Summons
As soon as we got back to Cleathorpes, Star went off to do her sweeping punishment and the rest of us slumped on Clementine’s bed to consider the task Sister had given us.
‘I suppose it could be a blessing,’ Honey conceded eventually. ‘An excuse to slack off on work.’
‘Got any of those cool sweets from LA left, Calypso darling?’ Georgina asked.
‘Sure.’
‘I think Sister totally overreacted,’ she sighed, pulling herself up from the bed. ‘I mean, even my parents have food fights!’
I tried to imagine Sarah and Bob having a food fight, but couldn’t – they are just way too Californian, and besides, they hate waste. ‘Yeah, totally,’ I agreed.
‘You know, Tobias is growing quite fond of you, darling,’ she confided as we walked off arm in arm down the corridor towards our dorm room to fetch the vodka and sweets.
‘Yes, well, the affection is a … erm … a mutual-ish thing. I mean, I adore bears – well, most soft toys, actually.’
I honestly don’t know how I let lame things like that escape from my mouth, but Georgina seemed to find this enormously funny and fell about laughing.
‘You’ve got mail,’ Arabella announced, in a bad impression of my accent, as she walked into our dorm room and tossed a FedEx package and a letter onto my lap.
Georgina looked up from her magazine. ‘Oh, fabbie! Is that from Jay, darling?’ she asked, jumping onto the bed beside me.
I turned the package over and read the sender’s address. It was my mom’s office on the Paramount lot. ‘Looks like it,’ I replied casually.
They both clambered onto the bed as I tore into the package. Inside was a DVD of a movie that wasn’t even out in the UK yet and a postcard of the Hollywood sign.
Wish you were here, babe!
L.O.L. Jay xxxxx
I wasn’t too impressed by the ‘babe’ bit, but still it had the required effect. Everyone went totally crazy about it and Clementine rushed off to show Antoinette, who had said she didn’t believe I had a real boyfriend.
I didn’t open the letter. Actually, I was so swamped with questions about Jay, I forgot all about it and then the study bell went and I had to run, leaving the letter abandoned on my bed.
Later that night, Georgina had a bubble bath that smelled all lovely and coconutty and we all sat on the side of the bath or on stools around the bathroom for a confab about our charity fund-raising ideas. (The bubbles were very high.) We made a list of possible fund-raising ideas. All of them included pulling boys, sweets and fags.
Honey continued to be quite prickly with me, but I decided to rise above it. Now that I was at the centre of things, with a fit boyfriend, I could afford to be magnanimous.
When we came out of the bathroom, Star had the pile of sweets she’d received from Sister Constance laid out in front of her on her bed. Unfortunately, our room still stank of wee so we sprayed everything with Febreze before piling our duvets on the floor for a vodka and sweet feast.
That was when Arabella came back from picking up her fags from her room. She picked up my letter.
‘You haven’t opened this yet, darling,’ she said, tossing it onto my lap.
So with my mouth bulging with chocolate I tore open the envelope. I had no idea who the letter was from; I couldn’t place the distinctive, flowing writing. Inside was a single sheet of heavy parchment paper with the royal seal on the bottom.
Hi Calypso,
Great to meet you yesterday. Hope to see you at the social –
without your sabre!
Freddie x
‘Who’s it from?’ Star enquired, passing me her mug for a sip of vodka. She always mixed hers with warm milk so it didn’t taste so yucky. We were allowed to keep milk and biscuits and other snacks in the small kitchen of Cleathorpes. We were even allowed to make ourselves toast, which Georgina did regularly – only not for herself, obviously (‘Think of the carbs, darling’). No, she fed the toast and marmalade to Tobias (‘He simply adores it, darling, and you know how he can’t bear the food they feed him in the canteen!’)
The milk was an inspired idea, though, because if Miss Cribbe
burst in, Star would just show her the milk and say something really innocent like, ‘I find it really helps me sleep, Miss Cribbe.’
Miss Cribbe just loved us when we acted babyish.
I stared at the letter for some time. My mind had gone totally blank. I reread it a few times before it all sank in and then I dropped the letter onto my lap in a daze. Prince Freddie had written to me? A mere mortal?
Star grabbed the letter and read it out loud before I could stop her.
To be fair, she knew what a horrible thing she’d done before she’d read out his name, but it was too late – the damage was done.
‘You complete and utter slut,’ Honey shouted, pulling her head back in from the window where she’d been blowing out her cigarette smoke. Then she came over and slapped me hard across the face.
Even Georgina looked horrified.
Star screamed at her, ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing? Get out, you absolute bitch!’
I started to cry. I couldn’t help it. It was all just too much. One minute I was the envy of all, with my fake boyfriend, the next minute I was being vilified because an HRH fancied me. Also, my face stung. I’d never been slapped before.
Honey was just standing there, and I was worried she wanted to have an all-out fight, so I was glad when Georgina said, ‘Look, Honey, I think you should leave.’
Honey flounced out of the room, followed by Georgina, Arabella and Clementine. Clemmie cast me a sympathetic look, but I threw myself onto my bed and sobbed.
Star was really sweet and said I should have been singing from the rooftops, having received a summons from royalty.
She was the best friend ever and suddenly I felt really guilty about ever wanting to be in with the cool girls and making her put up with Honey and the others, just to satisfy my egotistical wishes.
Actually I’d started to think that Georgina might not be so bad. And not just because she called me darling, but because she seemed to understand my humour, and she’d helped me out with my bedding when Misty had weed all over it. God, I was so stupid.
‘I’m really sorry about reading out the letter,’ Star told me.
‘It’s OK. You weren’t to know.’
She passed me some lip-gloss. ‘Wear your pain like lip-gloss…. Besides, you’ve still got me.’ We had a big cuddle. ‘And Jay!’
But that just made me start crying again.
‘Calypso, it isn’t that bad, really. Who cares about bloody Honey?’
‘It’s not that,’ I told her, trying not to cry anymore. ‘It’s Jay.’
‘What? You’re not being paranoid, are you? Seriously, he just wrote to you! He must really like you.’
‘I’m not being paranoid,’ I told her. And then it all came tumbling out. ‘He’s my mom’s gay PA.’
And then she cuddled me even harder, only it was a wobbly sort of cuddle because she was laughing so hard. ‘You are so mad! Gay?’
She was laughing so hard now that she fell on the floor. ‘Gay Jay, your mum’s PA!’
And then even I had to laugh, because I hadn’t realised how it all rhymed before. After that, I told her the whole tragic tale of my pathetic attempt to fit in with Georgina and her cool pod of friends. Star didn’t get it – well, I didn’t expect she would – but I felt better having told her, although I was now petrified that someone would walk in and hear her singing, ‘Gay Jay, my mum’s PA,’ which I couldn’t get her to stop doing for ages.
Eventually I turned the conversation around to parents generally, and Star did her impressions of her parents and their friends when they were stoned. ‘You know … like, stop crying, man, you’re freaking me out.’
It all felt so comfortable, Star and I alone and just being how we’d always been, that I almost forgot about Honey and the trouble I was going to be in. But then Star reminded me by asking what I planned to do. We both knew bad things were about to happen.
It is a law at Saint Augustine’s that you don’t pull boys that other girls have already declared their territory – especially when that girl is Honey O’Hare. In a school where bitchiness was a currency, Honey was filthy rich. I had seen her destroy girls in the past.
When we were in Year Nine, a girl from Year Seven called Josephine annoyed Honey by being disrespectful towards her. I don’t even know what she said, but Honey mounted a relentless campaign against her and pretty soon Josephine was crying herself to sleep every night. By the end of term she was self-mutilating – cutting herself with blades from the art room. The school tried to get her parents to visit her more to reassure her, but they refused, saying Josephine would just have to deal with the problem, which even the meanest teacher in the school would agree was really mean. Eventually the school suggested to her parents that Josephine might not be suited to boarding school life.
Honey went around the school with a big grin on her face for weeks after that. I was pretty sure I didn’t have the guts to self-mutilate, being as grossed out by blood as I am, but I was definitely going to be crying myself to sleep.
It wasn’t long before Honey came screaming back into the room, shrieking at the top of her voice, ‘You are so dead, bitch!’
Then she grabbed the letter from Freddie and tore it into about a million pieces. OK, maybe not a million – but only because she didn’t get the chance. Georgina managed to grab it from her, so she only managed to tear it in half.
Arabella, Star and Clementine pulled her off me, because by then she had grabbed my head and started pulling my hair out, while spitting obscenities into my face and telling me about the various painful ways I was going to be murdered.
A crowd of girls was gathering outside in the corridor, trying to catch a glimpse of what was going on. I was rubbing my head and trying to gather my thoughts together, when Misty came in and started barking. Shortly after that, Miss Cribbe came in with her knitting and threw everyone out of the room, apart from Star, Georgina and me.
Misty squatted as if about to wee, and Miss Cribbe shooed her out too and went bright red. If Misty hadn’t done that, I am pretty sure we would have been in big trouble.
My mobile started ringing, but Miss Cribbe took it from me before I could answer it, saying that it was time for lights out – even though it was only nine-thirty and lights out was officially meant to be ten! None of us argued, though.
I couldn’t get to sleep that night.
‘Are you awake?’ Georgina asked me after the lights had been out for a while.
My head was still hurting from Honey pulling my hair and I could still feel the sting of the slap on my cheek. Georgina was Honey’s best friend and I couldn’t help being a bit scared of what she might say or do. So I didn’t say anything.
Georgina went on. ‘Personally, I think Honey is overreacting, darling.’
Her words seemed to echo in my head. I thought of all the benchmark moments of the term – how she’d called me darling, stood up for me, given me her duvet when Misty weed on mine. Then I recalled all the other benchmark moments of my time at Saint Augustine’s and the way Georgina and Honey had isolated me so terribly and made me feel like the school freak.
Star was muttering in her sleep.
‘Darling?’ Georgina repeated.
I suppose I took it as a good sign that at least she was still deigning to call me darling.
‘I didn’t ask him to write to me,’ I explained. ‘It’s not my fault. Can’t you make Honey see that?’
‘Arabella told me about the whole duelling thing you had with him.’
‘But I didn’t ask him to write!’ I repeated.
For a long time she didn’t say anything and I was left hanging by a thread, afraid of being back in the freak seat again.
‘Honey has a lot of issues,’ she said, after what seemed like half an hour – I’d almost fallen asleep. ‘Seriously … a lot of issues.’
Hello, like I hadn’t noticed! The insane bitch had just tried to murder me. ‘Oh, I didn’t know,’ I replied softly.
‘Yaah, there’s all sorts of stuff going on between her mum and her latest step-dad-to-be, Lord Aginet.’
Good. A part of me was glad she was having a horrible time of it at home. ‘Oh, that’s sad,’ I said.
‘But Arabella and Clementine stood up for you, darling.’
I tried not to make too much of the fact that she hadn’t added herself to that list and just said, ‘That’s sweet of them.’ Then I thought, Well, maybe I’m overreacting. Maybe it would be all right. Maybe I wouldn’t be totally vilified by everyone in my year and be forced to hide in cupboards for the rest of term. Maybe I would go to the social, pull Freddie and be the envy of everyone. Maybe I would be accepted for who I was and judged by more important things than my accent.
‘Obviously, you still can’t go to the social, though, darling.’
‘Oh.’
‘Yaah. Also, darling, if you did go, Honey would so totally kill you.’
The fact that she’d called me darling didn’t dilute the poison in her words. ‘Oh?’
‘My advice is be sick and spend the night in the infirmary.’
Be sick or be dead is what she meant.
NINE:
The Fine Line between Pleasure and Pain
The next morning I woke up with a pounding head and it wasn’t just because Miss Cribbe had banged her wretched gong for ten minutes while I tried to hide under my duvet.
I always get the most horrendous headaches before my period’s due. Eventually Miss Cribbe decided I wasn’t faking it – or maybe her own head had started to ache from her gonging – so she sent me down to the infirmary where the much-hated Sister Dumpster (real name Sister Dempster) was no doubt waiting to torture me or poison me (depending on how sadistic she was feeling).
There are two sisters in charge of the infirmary: Sister Dumpster (not a nun, but an actual professional nurse who specialised in the demeaning and torturing of children) and dear little Sister Regina (an actual nun), who handed out the Co-codamol like there was no tomorrow.
A Royal Match Page 6