She was surprised to find Mr Morris standing by Jo’s desk, in almost the exact same woebegone position she’d vacated those few minutes earlier. She really did like the dude a great deal. ‘Hey, Sir!’ Jinx exclaimed. ‘How are you? Seeing Mrs B? Is it about the new girl?’
‘Ah, if it’s not my favourite pupil,’ Mr Morris grinned, although the wide smile did not seem to reach his wrinkly eyes. ‘Sadly, Jinx, Mrs B and I must discuss some rather boring issues regarding the new geography curriculum. Nothing likely to interest you, I’m afraid. You’re not in trouble yourself I hope? I’ve got quite enough grey hairs to be going on with thank you very much!’
‘Nah, Sir, Mrs B just wants me to extend the warm hand of friendship to the new girl – Stella Fox her name is – coming from Bedales, of all places. I, of course, said I’d be delighted to help so everything’s sweet. She’ll be in our house I guess? How come you didn’t say anything?’
‘Mrs Bennett wanted to tell you herself, and yes, Stella will be in our house.’ Mr Morris looked suddenly uncomfortable again, causing Jinx to reflect that the teachers sure were being weird today. ‘And I didn’t say anything because I am a professional and have my reputation to consider.’ He smiled another sad smile and looked positively relieved when Mrs Bennett popped her head out and motioned him inside. He wiggled his fingers at Jinx and disappeared through the oak door.
Jo was on the phone to the man from the Guardian, telling him that no, he couldn’t attend his appointment two hours late, and rescheduling him for five weeks down the line. Jinx could hear him begging in a squawky voice for an earlier appointment, but Jo was firm. Mrs Bennett, didn’t he know, was a very busy woman. She put him on hold, started cackling to herself at celebrity fashion disasters, and didn’t look up as Jinx turned left and began walking, slowly, thoughtfully, down the deserted corridor in the direction of double English.
*
Jinx slunk into her back-row seat in classroom 4b and elbowed Liberty – hard – in the ribs, before leaning over and hissing, ‘New girl coming tomoz – into our year, called Stella Fox, from Bedales!’
‘Nooo! Why so late in the term, Jin?’
‘Dunno, Mrs B wasn’t very forthcoming. She seemed a bit off if you ask me.’
‘What do you mean “off”?’ Liberty was a strict black and white girl; she never could grasp subtleties or grey areas.
‘You know – not like normal. Bit distant. Nice enough but seemed to have something on her mind.’ Jinx glanced at Liberty scratching her head, ‘Christ, there’s only so many ways I can say it!’
‘Right,’ nodded Liberty, clearly none the wiser. ‘But,’ she whispered, looking for all the world as if she was seriously thinking about how, exactly, the atom was split, ‘there must have been some kind of problem with her, right? If she’s leaving Bedales to come somewhere new, two weeks into term?’
‘Bingo. My thoughts exactamundo, Mademoiselle Marple.’
Liberty frowned, a clear sign she was engaging brain, but Jinx stepped in before she could open her mouth, ‘And don’t, please don’t, ask me who Miss Marple is. I’ll tell you later.’
Jinx rolled her eyes and turned her attention to the blackboard, which was covered in Dr Brown’s scrawling handwriting. Gender, space and identity in early eighteenth-century literature she read, and smiled beatifically as she stretched her legs in front of her and shuffled down into her seat. The eighteenth century was easily her favourite period and Dr Brown was easily her favourite teacher – such an inspiring man, but Jinx resisted the temptation to punch the air. After all, she did have a reputation to uphold.
The lower school dining room was teeming with girls of all shapes and sizes by the time the sixth form gang made it down from the art room for lunch.
A disgusting smell of beans and cabbage rent the air, and in clear preparation for her daily speech about the extortionate fees and the disproportionately terrible food, Chastity wrinkled her rather large nose.
‘Fuck’s sake, Chas,’ said Fiona, a geeky-looking girl in their art class who’d been in Friedan House before she joined Tanner with all the others, and was turning out to be surprisingly, pleasingly chippy. ‘Don’t start on them,’ she said gesturing towards the dinner ladies who’d been there at least as long as they had and long before that probably. ‘It’s not their fault, they just serve the food.’
‘All right,’ said Chastity, clearly in a huff. ‘It’s just that my mum says …’
‘We all know what your bloody mum says, and thinks, and does – about everything, and frankly we don’t care!’ shrieked Fiona, frustration making her more vociferous than usual. ‘You don’t hear us quoting our mothers every five minutes, and if your mum’s so bloody marvellous why don’t you just fuck off home.’
Chastity stared at Fiona, furious. ‘If you ever speak about my mother like that again I’ll fucking have you.’ The telltale red spots high on her cheeks proved Chastity meant it. ‘And you’ll wish you’d never been born. End of.’
Jinx and Liberty watched this fear and loathing in the canteen, amused. Fiona looked downright scared.
With her long blonde hair extensions and jangling Tiffany bracelets, Chastity might look fluffy, but once riled she took no prisoners. She also adored her mother above all else, especially since her media-mogul father fell – missing, presumed dead – off the side of his yacht.
Chastity never talked about him; there was some mystery surrounding his death that Jinx’s dad had once explained to her that was now long forgotten, but Jinx and Liberty knew enough never to question Mrs M’s pearls of vicarious, and slightly skewed wisdom.
‘Best leave it, yeah,’ Jinx sniggered into Fiona’s ear as they piled their plates high with tired-looking tomato salad and soggy quiche Lorraine and headed away from the service stations into the dining room proper. ‘You don’t want your face ending up on the wrong side of Chas’s fist.’
Chastity paused by the end of a long table and flicked her hair. A group of second years immediately squeezed themselves as far down the end as they could whilst the sixth formers arranged themselves around Liberty at the head of the table.
The younger girls’ chatter became hushed and self-conscious as Jinx pointed at them, pretended to slit her throat with her pathetically blunt knife – Mrs Bennett was intent on having no self-harming slasher clubs at her school – and gestured for the others to lean in close as she prepared to spill all about her meeting with the head.
Jinx groaned and pressed her face into her pillow as the radio-alarm went off, but opened her eyes when she recognised Bonnie Tyler’s husky voice. God, she loved BT passionately, shamelessly: her very own not-guilty-at-all pleasure. If ever there were a sound more conducive to getting a girl up and about of a morning, then Jinx hadn’t heard it.
Jinx sprang out of bed and shouted along at the top of what Stagmount’s choirmaster termed her ‘musically retarded’ voice.
Good radio, she thought, would be playing this twice in a row. Three times even. No such luck – she grimaced as the opening strains of Madonna’s sexed-up take on ‘American Pie’ came on. She’d never understood all the fuss about the dreary original, and had gone right off her erstwhile heroine since she embraced tweed and chickens and became what Jinx, rather often and loftily, referred to as ‘yet another casualty of marriage’.
She grinned as she imagined Her Majesty sitting in her countryside pile fighting with her mockney bloody husband over the remote control – nature programme or documentary? – yes, it must be tricky trying to be down with the kidz when your most pressing concern is your actual kids.
Jinx wasn’t against marriage per se, her own parents had been together for a mostly happy twenty-five years after all, and she’d be properly gutted if they split up like so many of her friends’ parents. In fact, she had a sneaking suspicion that Caroline and Martin’s regular furious rows were what kept them together.
She’d long learned not to pay any attention as one or the other yelled about divorce before
screeching off in a cloud of burning rubber. It never came to anything and they were usually all smiles in the morning. Far worse was the studied indifference she’d noticed in other people’s parents. The ones that didn’t seem to give a shit what the other one was doing or saying were inevitably the ones who ended up splitting the proceeds from the sale of the family home.
But thinking about getting married herself made her feel all trapped and claustrophobic. Caroline always laughed and said she’d been exactly the same and that Jinx would grow out of it. We’ll see, Jinx always replied snidely, before flouncing off upstairs, flinging her bedroom windows open and shocking the ponies outside into sudden gallops with a burst of top-volume DJ Sammy.
She’d rather eat Mrs Gunn’s stinking old shoe than change her name, and she never could understand why otherwise right-thinking people got all hot under the collar about a load of bitter bureaucracy. ‘Officer, I’d like to report a theft,’ Jinx yawned. ‘An identity theft.’
Jinx sighed as she thought about her cousin’s wedding last summer. An entire, perfectly good hot summer weekend wasted on bridezilla and mind-numbingly dull small talk with people she didn’t know, didn’t want to know, and hoped never to see again. Thank God for Jinx’s brother George, who’d produced two amazingly strong ready-rolled spliffs from the inside pocket of his grey morning-suit jacket. The two of them had hefted themselves on to the top of the cricket pavilion on the village green near the church and passed a pleasurable hour or two shrieking with laughter and giving the unwitting lady guests marks out of ten in the Most Horrendous Hat competition as they tripped past on their way to the reception.
It’s fair to say Jinx’s dad wasn’t wildly delighted when he caught them clambering down. He was even less impressed when he clocked the grass stains on the back of Jinx’s pale-lemon shot-silk bridesmaid’s dress – at least she’d done the church bit unscathed – and George’s glazed eyes, but if there was one thing Martin Slater hated more than a scene it was his brother’s egotistical nightmare of a daughter. And if he were really honest, he’d not have been averse to the odd toke to get him through it himself. He wasn’t telling the bloody kids that though; they got the silent treatment for an hour in the hope they’d see the error of their ways.
Anyway, thought Jinx, as she scraped her hair back from her face, pulled on her ratty pink dressing gown and grabbed her palest blue Anya Hindmarch wash bag with a black and white photograph of Marilyn Monroe on the side, is it even possible to be a feminist and have a big white wedding?
As she wandered towards the bathroom at the end of her corridor, Jinx realised she was still thinking about weddings and scowling. She smiled at Fanny Ho, a boyish Chinese girl given to wearing sharply tailored Paul Smith suits who’d been in the year above but had to stay down due to a nasty bout of glandular fever, and who was on her way to the library where she read the trickiest business pages of the FT every day before breakfast, looking fabulous in a lilac trouser-suit with a bright-pink tie and white open-necked shirt, and got a shy wave and hello in return.
‘Get a grip, girlfriend,’ Jinx said to herself in her best comedy Californian accent when Fanny had run up the stairs. ‘Where’s Ms School Is Useless But For Pranks this morning?’
‘Jinxy baby, are you talking to yourself?’ Liberty breezed out of her room followed by a sharp gust of freezing cold air. She’d beaten up her radiator to stop it working, permanently, and slept with the window wide open summer and – weirdly according to Jinx – winter. ‘It’s the first sign of madness!’
‘Actually, Lib, euphoria, delirium and wanting to be freezing cold all the time are the first signs of madness,’ Jinx said, flicking her towel. ‘And I should know, cos you exhibit all three. Oooh look – if it isn’t Miss hoity toity herself, our esteemed head girl.’ Jinx made a mock bow as Daisy Finnegan exited her room three doors up, wearing pale-pink pyjamas and her despicable pair of Garfield fluffy slippers.
‘Just our luck having that sneaky suck-up on our corridor,’ Jinx said loudly, making sure Daisy could hear. ‘Yeah,’ agreed Liberty, ‘she’s so far up Mrs Gunn’s butt I’m surprised she hasn’t disappeared up there.’
They giggled as Daisy stuck her nose in the air and swung round, giving them the full benefit of her ‘shocked’ face.
‘I simply will not hear a bad word against Mrs Gunn,’ Daisy intoned, her squeaky yet strangely monotonal voice raised in anger. ‘She is a pillar of Stagmount’s society!’
‘Salt more like,’ smirked Jinx, always delighted by any opportunity to wind up her old nemesis from Wollstonecraft House. ‘Lot’s wife had nothing on that lying old bitch.’
‘Mmm, nice slippers, Daisy,’ said Liberty, always horrified by what she saw as Daisy’s crimes against good taste. ‘Where did you get those … the pound shop?’
Daisy sneered, flicked her mousy rats’ tails in a poor imitation of the beauty ads, spun on her yellow and black stripy heel and flounced off to a chorus of peals of laughter.
‘Lib,’ Jinx grabbed Liberty’s free hand, ‘that new girl’s arriving today. I’m going to have to take her about a bit, you’ll help won’t you?’
‘Course I will – you’re my best friend, aren’t you? It’s quite exciting actually, someone new coming in,’ Liberty winked at Jinx. ‘I’ve been feeling a bit bored lately: same old faces, same old chat.’
Jinx frowned slightly and let go of Liberty’s hand as they shoved through the swing door into the bathroom at the end of their corridor. Liberty never could resist a bloody gimmick.
They were the only ones in there as all the others were down at breakfast. It was sauna hot from an hour’s solid showering, and the windows and mirrors were all steamed up.
Jinx had once been into George’s school bathroom at the end of the boys’ shower time and it had stunk. Thankfully, being a girls’ school, this place smelt wonderful – mint shower gel, lemon shampoo, Aveda rosemary conditioner and Vera Wang body lotion jostled for prominence in the hot air.
Liberty could be naff as hell quite a lot of the time, and was obsessed with musical theatre. They’d sung ‘Copacabana’ in the showers early on in their first term and made a tradition of it – Chastity’s mum always told them, the truest thing she’d ever said, that a show tune a day keeps the doctor away, and these two were in possession of positively rude constitutions.
Liberty’s Christina Aguilera-toned ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ rang out over the dividing wall. Jinx, who couldn’t stand having change foisted upon her and much preferred Rodgers and Hammerstein to weirdo Lloyd Webber, didn’t join in as loudly as usual.
Jinx, Chastity, Liberty and Fiona exited the side door of Tanner House clutching toast and Marmite triangles, and began the trek up the winding drive to the main school building and the classroom where they had their daily tutor group meeting.
Fanny Ho dashed past them, in the direction of the library. Jinx waved at her again and wondered – not for the first time – how anyone could spend so much time in there. ‘I saw her wearing something totally different earlier on,’ whispered Liberty, who kept a close eye on everyone’s wardrobes. Fanny’s lilac trouser-suit had been ditched in favour of a bright orange tulip skirt, white T-shirt and cowboy boots. ‘That girl’s got more clothes than me!’ Liberty sounded incredulous. ‘And she’s changed her hair.’
Despite having always studied together, the sixth form had been split amongst the four main school houses for their first three years at Stagmount, and this was the first term they’d all spent sleeping under the same roof.
Each of the junior school houses was named after a famous feminist: Wollstonecraft, where Jinx, Liberty and the dreaded Daisy had lived – somewhat paradoxically they’d always said, given the great Mary’s arguments against the subjugation of women – under Mrs Gunn’s oppressive thumb; Pankhurst, where Chastity had been kept in line by Hammerhead, of whom she was actually very fond; Steinem – where all the sporty, so-called ‘red-stocking’ – due to their bright-red hockey socks – gi
rls had lived and which had won practically every single house match in the history of the school; and Friedan, where Fiona had lived, and which was considered ‘creative’.
The lower sixth, on the whole, consisted of girls who were more interested in having fun than anything else. Bullying was considered very non-U, and the girls who didn’t get on pretty much ignored each other. The girls were always astounded by tales of eating disorders at other schools; they loved their food, ate huge meals and often entire packets of custard creams in front of their beloved EastEnders and Richard and Judy.
None of them cared much about what they looked like running about the school either – there was no one to see apart from the teachers and each other. They didn’t have to wear uniforms in the sixth form, so mostly slobbed about in an infinite variety of pastel-coloured Juicy Couture tracksuits – with ubiquitous Ugg boots in winter and cool Asics trainers in neon green or yellow in the summer.
Sure, they dressed themselves up to the nines when they went out in town, but it made it more fun, somehow, that they weren’t doing it every day.
It was nice walking up the drive. Despite it being the fourth week in September the sun was shining and the sea was calm. The girls meandered along, their faces turned to the sky, thinking there was no greater place on earth than Stagmount in the sun.
As they swung through the arched porch built of heavy, rough-cut stone and through the huge Romanesque door at the sanatorium end of the corridor, Daisy Finnegan caught up with them.
‘Hello, girls,’ she said, sounding exactly like one of the freaking teachers, and with a sideways warning glance at Jinx, who had really savaged her on occasion. ‘Just to let you know, there’s a new girl starting today and she’ll be in your tutor group.’
‘We know,’ said Jinx, wishing the bloody bitch would leave them alone. The sneaky, suck-up part she could deal with no probs – worse was the fact she never seemed to brush her teeth. They always looked furry and yellow, and Jinx could hardly stand to breathe the same air as her. ‘I spoke to Mrs B about it yesterday. So thanks, and so long.’
High Jinx Page 5