‘If I ever,’ Strumpet was gearing up for a big one, Jinx could tell, ‘hear you use language like that again, it will be straight to Mrs Bennett for you. Do I make myself clear?’
‘Well no, actually, you don’t,’ Jinx hissed, furious and worried about Liberty. ‘I know you won’t believe me, but you were down the other end and couldn’t have seen it. That,’ she pointed to where Stella was kneeling by Liberty and shuddered with impotent rage, ‘thing, did it on purpose. I saw her aim the ball at Liberty’s head.’
Strumpet cleared her throat, not at all displeased at having Jinx Slater exactly where she wanted her for once. ‘Accidents happen, Jinx,’ she intoned. ‘And I am absolutely disgusted at you trying to pin the blame for an act of God on a girl who has been at the school for less than twenty-four hours. You will apologise to me, you will apologise to Stella or you will be gated this weekend. And that will be the end of it.’
‘Miss Strimmer,’ Jinx ground her teeth, frustrated, ‘I am trying to be reasonable here. I will happily apologise to you, I’m sorry – I really am – but I will not apologise to Stella. I won’t, and that’s the end of it. I know what I saw.’ Jinx forced what she hoped was her most reasonable, adult smile, but it came out as more of a bared teeth scowl.
Golly bounced up to the pair of them as they were facing off and said, ‘Strimmer, a word please.’
The two teachers huddled to one side, no doubt gleefully plotting her demise, whilst Jinx stared straight ahead, refusing to look anyone in the eye, arms crossed, bristling with rage and indignation. Fucking teachers.
She spun round as if she’d been shot when Stella touched her arm. ‘Just don’t touch me or you’ll fucking wish you hadn’t.’ Jinx’s most menacing voice sizzled with fury.
‘Jinx, I really don’t understand why you’re,’ Stella paused and flicked her expertly dyed hair for emphasis, ‘you’re going off on one like this. I mean, I’m flattered that you think I’m so good at hockey and everything, but I certainly didn’t aim the ball at Liberty’s head. I guess she wasn’t,’ Stella looked ostentatiously at her nails for emphasis, ‘concentrating so hard.’
Strumpet and Gosh reappeared, and Stella weighed straight in before Jinx had a chance to say anything: ‘Oh there you are, Miss Strimmer and Miss Golly.’ She smiled at the two of them as if they were all the best of friends, in such a smarmy fashion that Jinx thought she would projectile puke right there and then. ‘We’ve been having a good old chat, and you just missed Jinx apologising to me. I must say,’ she simpered, ‘I’m delighted she thought I was good enough at hockey to aim the ball so well!’
‘Well done, Jinx,’ sighed Gosh, clearly disappointed by what she saw as a missed opportunity for revenge, ‘but you really must learn to control that temper of yours. It’s most unseemly.’
‘Stella, you may as well take Liberty up to the san, and you must come and do a trial for the first team this weekend. You looked great out there, you really did.’ Gosh turned to a shell-shocked-looking Jinx. ‘And you can take Liberty’s place in goal for the rest of the lesson.’
Liv and Jinx were leaning out the changing-room window, thinking and smoking furiously. Chastity – who couldn’t stand smoking but didn’t want to miss out on the post-games chat – was sitting on a nearby bench. Charlie was washing her hair at the same time as valiantly shouting out suggestions for Stella’s demise over the wall of the shower cubicle.
Liv had a wicked look in her eye. Jinx saw it and couldn’t help a tiny smile from crossing her enraged face. If Liv was going to go all out, no one would be able to stop her, least of all Jinx who was equally set upon pay-back.
‘GET LOST!’ they shouted in unison, as a scared-looking fourth former poked her head round the door.
‘Jesus Christ,’ said Charlie, emerging from the cubicle wrapped up in a huge purple towel, ‘I’m only trying to help.’
‘Not you, moron,’ said Liv, turning round and winking. ‘I’ve got it. I know what we’ve got to do.’
Three faces looked up expectantly. ‘She’s playing us for fools. She thinks by playing the new girl card she can do whatever she wants and get away with it.’ Liv smiled triumphantly, and played her trump card like the Vegas pro she would become. ‘And we’re going to let her.’
Jinx scratched her head, Chastity flicked an imaginary piece of lint from her spotless black cashmere V-neck and Charlie dropped her towel. ‘Whaaat?’ she shrieked, jumping up and down, not bothering to retrieve her sodden bathsheet. ‘Liv! This time you’ve really lost it. Are you seriously suggesting we let her get away with being, like, the biggest bitch in the world?’
‘Yes.’ Liv flicked her fag butt directly into the bottom of the air vent on the outside wall of the ballet studio directly opposite the open window, turned round to face the rest, folded her arms and smirked. ‘We’re going to sit back and give her exactly as much rope as she needs to hang herself. We know what she’s like, and I bet you all a night out at Ricky T’s it won’t be long before everyone else does. All we’re going to do is facilitate their realisation.’ Liv’s dad was a big cheese in a communications company and she loved to impress her friends by dropping his marketing speak into normal conversation.
‘Evil ge-ni-us,’ said Jinx, slowly, thoughtfully, ‘but what if you’re crediting the others with more brain cells than they’ve actually got?’
‘Stella’s not stupid,’ she continued. ‘Far from it. I know we’ve only known her a day, but look how she scammed Charlie’s seat off her – in front of Mrs Bennett – and got away with it. Look what she did to Liberty – and Jinx – just now, and got away with it.’
‘Yeah,’ Chastity leaned back and began twirling a long blonde strand of hair around her index finger, always a clear sign to the others she was thinking deeply about something. ‘What if she just gets worse and worse and no one but us sees it?’
Jinx looked sceptical too. ‘Hmmm. I see what you’re saying, Liv, I really do, but don’t you think we should do something more, like, immediate? Or violent? I don’t want her going around thinking we’re easy targets or that Stagmount’s full of pussies compared to that slagheap Bedales.’
Liv banged the window shut, jumped down off the bench and reached for her Asics. ‘Case closed. Trust me ladies, she’s going to regret fucking with us. We’ll show her who’s boss round here.’
As the foursome swung through the sports hall’s double doors they bumped straight into Stella and Liberty who were heading, arm in sycophantic arm, in the direction of Tanner House.
Liv, placing a warning arm around Jinx’s waist, smiled sickly sweetly at the high fashion twosome and enquired after Liberty’s head.
‘Oh it’s fine,’ she said, a slightly wild look about her dark eyes, the angry bump on her forehead glowing red like one of the beacons they saw shining out to sea from the Marina every night. ‘Mister Sinton gave me two paracetamol and told me to have a nice lie down.’
They all laughed, in spite of themselves. No matter what was wrong with them, whenever a girl went to the Stagmount san she was fobbed off with two painkillers and – depending on the severity of the complaint – a promise of a nice afternoon in bed.
A year earlier, Stefanie Johnson – who none of them had much liked on account of her aggressive verrucas – had been carried, weeping and wailing, into Mister Sinton’s lair with a twice broken thighbone. Dear old Mister S had prescribed her usual and Stefanie had lain in bed in terrible pain, hallucinating and slipping in and out of consciousness, until one of the cleaners had seen fit to phone for an ambulance.
Things had taken a slight upturn for a couple of weeks after that, but the san was obviously now back to business very much as usual.
‘The exact same thing happened to me in my first year,’ sniffed Stella, ‘and I was in an ambulance and on my way to Winchester hospital before you knew it. Bedales took this kind of thing very seriously you know.’
Jinx raised an involuntary sceptical eyebrow at the same time as Liv, her face a
study in solicitousness, shook her head.
‘What a terrible thing,’ she murmured, placing a conciliatory hand at Stella’s elbow. ‘It must have been awful for you. I bet all your friends were really worried.’
Chastity, who’d tried to turn a high-pitched squeal of hysterical laughter into an ill-timed cough, started choking. But before Stella had a chance to register any suspicion, Liv started again.
‘You did come out the other side OK though, didn’t you? I mean, you weren’t, like, disfigured or anything?’ Liv was peering intently at Stella’s face. ‘Is that your original nose, Stella? I didn’t like to say anything before, but now you’ve told us about your terrible accident I thought it was safe to ask …’
‘Of course it’s my original nose,’ an obviously irritated Stella cut in. ‘And the accident wasn’t terrible – I had a netball in the face, that was all. I was just making the point that Stagmount leaves a lot to be desired.’
‘I see,’ said Liv, with what the others recognised as her most dangerous smile, tightening her grip on Jinx’s arm. ‘I guess, coming from such an amazing place as Bedales, Stagmount must be a real disappointment to you.
‘If there’s anything we can do,’ she continued, ‘to make things more … bearable … for you, then you must let us know. We simply couldn’t stand to think of you miserable and not coping.’
Chastity, never known for steely control in the face of hysterics, began mumbling under her breath about saxophone lessons, grade eight exams and not enough practice and legged it towards the music school, emitting high-pitched squeals of glee as she bounded off up the hill.
Stella stared suspiciously after her, before glaring from beneath her gently curling fringe at the rest of the girls gathered around her. She rocked back and forth on a pair of this season’s must-have turquoise Emma Hope heels and, flashing a row of pearly white Hollywood-style teeth, licked her lips with a very pink and pointy tongue.
‘Well,’ she drawled, shoving one hand in the back pocket of her navy, skin-tight 7 For All Mankind jeans and placing the other on her hip, ‘that’s very kind of you all. I’m sure I’ll get used to Stagmount. Eventually.’
‘So when are you going to do your first team trial then, Stella?’ Charlie said smiling encouragingly at her, ‘you did look amazing on the pitch.’
‘Oh,’ Stella shook her head as if she were trying to communicate with a bunch of halfwits, ‘I won’t be doing that. I certainly don’t want to spend all my Saturdays sweating in the freezing cold for that pair of tossers. Of course, if I did try out I’d definitely get in – I was in all the teams at Bedales but I certainly don’t have anything to prove here.’
She smiled thinly at the group, tossed her hair and gestured for Liberty to follow her back to Tanner.
Like a parody of a little lemming, Liberty grinned weakly at her pals and trailed off in Stella’s Chantecaille-scented wake.
The girls watched them leave in spaced-out silence, until Charlie snorted magnificently and spun on her heel.
‘This is a fucking disaster area. Come on, Liv – how much longer are we going to play this game before we let her really have it?’
Jinx, who was actually leaning towards the same conclusion but wanted to give Liv’s theory a full and proper testing, swung her bag at Charlie’s turned back.
‘Come on, Charl. Liv’s never let us down in the past and we’ve got to give this a go – can’t fall at the first freaking hurdle, can we?’ Jinx grinned. ‘Surely you haven’t forgotten the deliciously delightful downfall of dreadful Tiffany Bigsworth at the end of the first year? Or cheerily waving bye-bye to Claire “in the community” Kemp at the end of the second? Our Liv has seen off far worse than that tramp.’
‘Yes,’ a self-satisfied Liv paused and smiled serenely, ‘and we’re going to get rid of Stella too. But in the meantime we’ve got to be as nice as pie to the witch. Let’s take her out for a friendly “getting to know us” dinner later in the week. We’ll invite all the others. She’s bound to fuck up somehow.’
‘And,’ she continued over her shoulder, sauntering off to the main school, ‘whilst you two have a cushty afternoon of sweet fuck all to worry about, I’m about a million hours late for maths – see ya!’
Jinx and Charlie giggled, agreed to book the table, linked arms and went off towards Tanner, thoroughly over-excited by the prospect of an afternoon spent with Richard and Judy, watching ‘You Say, We Pay’!
Eight of the lower sixth formers were sitting around a smallish square table with their knees touching in their favourite restaurant in town. Blind Lemon Alley served the best burgers, wings and ribs – their number one favourite foodstuffs – they’d had anywhere. And since it was tiny and practically invisible from the road there was little chance any of the Stagmount staff would stroll by on the prowl and catch them filling themselves to the brim with Coronas and lime.
It was such a small place there was no room for any other customers on the top floor. This suited the girls down to the ground – they could be as noisy and offensive to each other as they liked without annoying any other diners. And because they always left such fantastic tips the staff left them to their own devices up there. Since the cocktail menu featured lots of the sickly, creamy drinks they loved this was also a good thing. It was inevitable their chat would take a lewd downturn at some point in the evening, but they wouldn’t have wanted to ruin anyone else’s meals. This arrangement suited everyone.
Jinx was squashed in between Chastity and Chloe Thompson, with Liberty and Charlie opposite. Stella and Liv were at one end and Amelia ‘Mimi’ Tate had – as per bloody usual – space for both her elbows and her handbag at the other. Wherever they went, she always got the best seat. Even at really packed and scummy house parties with no beds anywhere to be seen, Mimi would skip downstairs the next morning stretching happily, looking fresh as a daisy having found a spare double complete with clean sheets and goose-down pillows.
Baskets of spicy chicken wings, mounds of deep-fried onion rings and plates piled high with sticky barbecue ribs jostled for space amongst the beer bottles and cutlery alongside a token green salad sitting in front of Stella.
In between knocking back great gulps from her bottle, Chloe was holding forth. Because she was desperate to study medicine at Cambridge, Chloe had started the Duke of Edinburgh’s gold award that term in an attempt to beef up her application. Part of it involved community service, and she had to spend every Wednesday afternoon for the rest of term working in a local care home for the elderly. She was telling them what an absolute dump the place was, and had already christened all the people who worked there the ‘granny bashers’.
‘So,’ Chloe said, giggling, ‘when I got there this incredible hulk of a woman – I swear she was butcher than Gunn – grunted, threw an overall at me and told me to put it on before helping her to clean all the bathrooms.’
Chloe picked up a rib and gnawed on it reflectively before continuing, ‘So I’m down on my hands and fucking knees scrubbing shit off the wall – no Jinx, I don’t know how it got there and I don’t bloody well want to know either – when butch woman suddenly goes “What you doin’ this for then?” So I say I’m doing community service and before you know it the overall’s been ripped off my back and I’m ensconced in a lovely little sitting room with a cup of tea helping this sweet old dear with the Telegraph crossword.’
‘No, Liv, not the fucking cryptic,’ Chloe rolled her eyes. ‘She wasn’t a day under eighty-five and probably suffering from Alzheimer’s. Anyway, it suddenly occurs to me that the butch bitch thinks I’m in there to do proper community service, and she’s obviously scared I might lose my rag and run amuck if she keeps giving me all the shitty jobs. I’m going to let her keep thinking that until the bloody thing’s finished too.’
They all laughed. With her sleek brown bob, big green eyes and flawless alabaster skin Chloe looked less like a criminal than Little Bo Peep.
Mimi was helping the waitress stack up all the
empty plates and Charlie was down at the bar ordering a round of the sickly sweet pina coladas that came in huge fishbowl-type glasses complete with parasols and sparklers when Liberty asked Stella what the magazine poking out her bag was.
The girls were allowed to place orders for newspapers and magazines with the newsagent down the road from Stagmount and Liberty’s weekly stack of deliveries was so heavy Mr Morris had to carry it inside for her. Probably as a result of all those long, boring holidays in Riyadh with no one to talk to, there wasn’t a fashion, celebrity or music magazine she wasn’t intimately acquainted with.
Stella, who was looking very pleased with herself indeed as eight pairs of eyes focused on her, pulled the glossy mag out of her oversized Balenciaga and tossed it across the table to Liberty.
‘It’s something we started at Bedales,’ she said, smug as hell. ‘One of my best friend’s parents is in publishing and sorted out the computers and printing for us. We started it a couple of years ago. In fact, I edited this issue.’
The girls craned over the table to peer at the front cover. In big letters at the top they could see the word CLASS, in smaller capitals underneath was ‘SCHOOL HOLIDAYS: WHERE TO GO AND WHERE TO AVOID’, underneath that, even smaller, was ‘WHO S WHO ‒ YOU AND YOUR PARTIEs’. The cover image was a picture of a blonde girl wearing a ball gown, lying on an England flag towel on what looked like a Cornish beach.
‘Is it a fashion thing, Stella?’ asked Mimi, who was reading the cover lines upside down, ‘I love that girl’s dress.’
‘No,’ Stella sniffed. ‘It’s about what it says – class.’
‘What,’ Mimi smiled at her, ‘actual classes? Lessons? What a great idea – was it just for Bedales? We’ve never had an in-school magazine.’
Liv winked at Jinx as Stella frowned and re-crossed her slim legs. ‘No, Mimi,’ she said, reaching for the magazine and stroking its glossy cover lovingly, ‘it’s about class. Social class. We tell our readers where to go and who to be seen with and more pertinently,’ she paused to smile evilly around the table before lingering on Chastity, ‘how to avoid coming into contact with chavs.’
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