Jinx smiled at Chastity and pulled a second spliff from the inside pocket of her furry hooded parka. She passed it to Chastity to light – God, she was in a good mood tonight – and squeezed Liberty’s hand. She tipped her head back against the extremely comfortable cushions behind her and gazed at the millions of stars lighting up the cold, dark night, thinking that really, whenever things looked bad they always got better soon enough.
They didn’t see Stella again until it was time to leave. She’d holed herself up in one of the two bathrooms with one of Jamie’s dreadlocked artist friends. George got Chastity to describe him and laughed. ‘That’s Rupert,’ he said. ‘He’s an absolute prick.’ George was so rarely rude about anyone the girls listened up and begged him to tell them why.
‘Yeah,’ he continued, ‘he was going out with this great girl at school – we all got on really well with her. She even used to come to Southampton matches with us.’ George sounded incredulous. This was major praise – all the men in Jinx’s family were manic about football and fanatical about Southampton.
At the mention of his beloved team, George bowed his head and clasped his hands together in a highly pretentious moment’s silence. All the Slater boys did it – even if you mentioned going shopping or to the cinema in the bloody place, and it was so incredibly irritating Jinx punched him really hard at the top of his arm as punishment.
‘Ouch!’ he yelled, ‘that was a proper dead arm. Well done, Jinxy! Anyway,’ he went on, rotating his painful shoulder, ‘he totally fucked her over and we all thought it was a shitty thing to do.’
‘But what exactly did he do, George?’ queried Jinx, raising her fist as a warning. ‘And if you don’t tell us right now I’m doing your other arm.’
‘The usual,’ sighed George, shaking his head sadly. ‘Fucked around all over town and eventually gave her a really nasty bout of syphilis. She was gutted.’
‘God,’ said Liberty, wide-eyed, ‘I didn’t know you could even get that in the twenty-first century. I thought it was what Henry the Eighth and people had when they lived in, like, the Middle Ages and stuff.’
‘Ha,’ whispered Jinx in an undertone to Chastity as she banged slightly too aggressively on the bathroom door, ‘imagine if he’s given it to Stella – a particularly virulent strain! That would make my freaking day!’
They were still giggling as a somewhat dishevelled Stella swanned out of the bathroom, closely followed by an admiring Rupert. ‘Don’t call me, I’ll call you,’ she said patronisingly over her shoulder, looking very pleased with herself as she carelessly shoved the crumpled piece of paper he’d given her with his number on it into her back pocket. As the others said their goodbyes and grabbed their coats ready for the waiting taxis outside, Liberty was staring admiringly at Stella.
When they slipped back into school, pretty wrecked but through the front door this time since dear old Mr Morris – also a massive Southampton fan who’d grown up in the area and was very taken with the Slater boys – had fully sanctioned their outing, even going so far as to tell them airily he couldn’t care less what time they returned, they spotted Fanny Ho sitting on the sofa in the cosy hall area.
She was wearing her favourite Hello Kitty pyjamas underneath a long pale-green woollen wraparound cardigan with pink Ugg boots. She waved shyly at the girls, asked them if they’d had a good time and said she was going to bed.
Jinx, Liberty and Stella collapsed on to the sofas whilst Chastity dashed off to her room to get them all a nightcap. Her closet was better stocked than the bar behind the bloody purple door.
Just after Chastity had gone Fanny reappeared. She was now wearing an ‘I heart NY’ T-shirt with black velvet Miss Sixty tracksuit bottoms above bare feet.
‘Bloody hell, Fanny,’ slurred an admiring Liberty, ‘you really do have more clothes than me. I’ve not seen you in the same outfit twice this term!’
‘Ha ha, thanks, Lib!’ said Fanny, more loquacious than she’d been a minute ago, ‘has anyone seen my new Hong Kong Vogue?’
‘Yep,’ Jinx pointed at the coffee table. ‘It’s right there – you had it a second ago. You really are doing too much maths, Fan.’
‘You’re right, Jinx,’ Fanny said looking amused. ‘It’s exhausting. Those, um, mechanics are keeping me up all night. I’m planning an extra long lie-in tomorrow. Can’t wait!’
‘Night, girls,’ she said, grabbing her magazine, and waved at them before heading back to her room.
‘Christ,’ Liberty was still thinking about Fanny’s apparently limitless wardrobe. ‘Anyone fancy shopping tomorrow? I refuse to be beaten in the clothes stakes by her.’
‘I will,’ Stella jumped in before Jinx could say anything. ‘There’s an amazing new shop called Simultane in the Lanes, I read about it in Marie Claire last month. Fancy it, Lib?’
Liberty nodded and offered up her hand for a high five. ‘You coming, Jin?’ she asked.
‘Thanks, Lib, but I’ve got a pile of work to get through and if I don’t do it tomorrow I never will.’ She smiled at them as she scooped up her bag and got up. ‘You two have fun.’
Jinx lay in bed and wondered if she was being stupid. OK, Stella was fucking irritating but there was nothing concrete that Jinx could definitively pin the finger of hatred on. But before she could think about it any further she was asleep, dreaming about Fanny Ho sailing across the sea to Hong Kong in a giant wardrobe using a Missoni dress as a sail.
Jinx woke up and stretched, feeling remarkably clear headed despite the previous evening’s excesses. She yawned as she reached over to push the switch on her pink DAB radio. REM’s ‘Losing My Religion’ was playing and she suddenly felt like going to the Sunday chapel service.
Unless exempt on religious grounds they were all expected to attend the daily service but Jinx, who’d taken every opportunity to get up Gunn’s nose, had usually not bothered. Now she rarely went in the week since she mostly had to use the time to dash off a piece of homework – she always worked best right on deadline. On Sundays, however, chapel was optional. She looked at her watch, realised she had thirty minutes before kick-off and decided to go.
She jumped out of bed and kicked the pile of clothes blocking her cupboard door closed across the floor. At the same time as she made a mental note to spend the afternoon cleaning up her tip of a room she reached for the Sunday-best uniform hanging right at the back of the wardrobe. This consisted of a navy-blue blazer with green trim, pleated navy skirt and white shirt with a green-and-blue-striped tie.
Every lower-school girl had to wear this uniform every day, but in the sixth form they could wear what they liked unless attending chapel on a Sunday, speech days – where they wheeled in some tedious old girl to bore them rigid discussing her glittering career and all the parents wore sunglasses inside so no one could see them catching a surreptitious forty winks – school photos and prize-giving.
Jinx didn’t mind the uniform at all. Navy looked great against her blonde hair and lightly tanned skin, and it was actually a relief not to have to think about coordinating separates. Juicy tracksuit or jeans? Jumper or hoodie? Trainers or Uggs? Getting dressed in the sixth form took at least ten minutes longer than it had in the fourth and fifth. Today though, she was out of her room and up the drive with fifteen minutes to spare.
She hoped the Reverend Martin McCloud was taking the service – he was ultra cool for a vicar and an old guy and he’d taught theology down the road at Sussex University when it was still radical, and always had something interesting to say. He’d run a ‘sceptics anonymous’ course at the school every Thursday evening in her third year and the debates had been amazing. Being one of the youngest she’d been too shy to get involved in front of the sixth formers but she’d been dead impressed nonetheless.
As she walked through the cloisters filled with rose-bushes and past the ornamental koi-carp pond she marvelled, as she always did, at what a stunning place the chapel was. Rumour had it that one of the largest fish – donated by a Russian bil
lionaire, delighted with his daughter’s GCSE results and which had sadly died a terrible death after it had a hole pecked in its back by a visiting heron – had cost over a hundred thousand pounds. The pond was now covered with a stiff netting made of wire mesh.
Mrs Stanwell, Stagmount’s popular RE teacher who was in charge of all church matters, was standing at the top of the wide grey stone steps at the entrance and handing out sheets containing the order of service.
‘Jinx Slater, how lovely to see you,’ Mrs Stanwell said. She was a very feminine woman who adored Jinx almost as much as she despised the Dick and Gunn. She was also highly impressed by the Chanel suits and Jimmy Choo shoes Caroline Slater sported at parents’ evenings and sports days.
‘How’s life in the sixth?’ Mrs Stanwell just loved to gossip with the girls and spoke mostly in italics. ‘Isn’t Mr Morris an absolute darling?’
Jinx was about to reply in the affirmative when a suddenly skittish Mrs Stanwell cut her off to greet Martin McCloud, ‘Reverend, you look divine in that suit. How are you?’
Jinx smiled at McCloud and waved at Mrs S as she strolled past the vestry doorway into the cool arched nave. It was so big it could seat the entire school, all the staff and at least three hundred parents.
It was really more of a church than a chapel, but today only the front four rows were filled. Jinx recognised them as mostly juniors from Wollstonecraft – she smirked to herself, sending a silent prayer heavenwards for Tanner House and Mr Morris – forcing her youngest year to attend the Sunday service en masse was obviously one of Gunn’s new punishments.
Gunn herself was glowering down at the poor girls from her customary vantage point to the left of the organ so Jinx gave her wave and a jaunty grin. An enraged Gunn stared at Jinx appalled, before glaring fixedly in front of her.
Jinx found a seat at the end of a free pew near the back and leaned back to gaze at the absolutely stunning stained-glass window behind the pulpit. She’d painted a huge copy of it for an art project in the summer term of her fourth year and had loved spending hours at a time on her own in the cool chapel. A blinding shaft of light shone through the window, illuminating the order of service in her hand and she glanced down at it.
Sanity and Subversion, she read at the top, The Theology and Politics of Laughter. Brilliant. She’d always thought church should be more fun. She smirked over the top of her sheet at the still glowering Gunn. And they wonder why people don’t seem more interested.
Everyone stood up as one when the organ started pumping out its intro and McCloud strode down the central aisle followed by a team of robed choristers holding candles.
He clambered up the steps to the pulpit and smiled genially around the room. He loved doing the Stagmount Sunday service as he loved to see so many pretty girls staring up at him so appreciatively; he also particularly enjoyed his coffee and cakes with Mrs Bennett afterwards. He admired her greatly, and thought her sense of humour fantastic. The two of them often laughed for hours afterwards in her charming study.
‘Hello, girls!’ his booming voice rang out around the chapel. He loved saying that – it made him feel a bit like that gorgeous girl Ursula Andress walking out of the sea in her white bikini in the Bond film, but in reverse obviously.
‘Firstly, Mrs Bennett has asked me to remind you of the fete being held at the beginning of next term,’ he paused and winked jovially.
‘Your parents have all been sent a letter, but please do remind them because if no one turns up it will surely be – boom boom – a fete worse than death.’ They all laughed delightedly and he looked incredibly pleased with himself and their reaction. He puffed his chest – there was little danger of any member of his congregation dropping off when he was in full-flow.
They segued into a rousing chorus of ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ and Jinx sang along at the very top of her tuneless voice. The terrible ‘happy clappy’ hymns they sang in most other churches were a real turn-off as far as she was concerned. And really, how on earth could anyone think that the awful Alpha course was going to be the key to the modernisation of the Church of England? She couldn’t understand why anyone but an absolute cretin would want to be informed in words of less than one syllable why they should believe.
McCloud was not interested in any of that patronising rubbish, she thought. And as if to prove Jinx’s point he launched into an excellent sermon about why he loved laughter in church.
‘To me,’ he said, beaming at the girls in front of him, ‘laughter is a form of prayer. A way of opening ourselves to life and God, a way of expressing the inexpressible delight we feel at being alive.
‘Many people,’ he continued, a slightly more serious expression on his face now, ‘think of church as being a place for the pious and holy veneration of God. They think that in church you must be serious and respectful and even regretful. They will try to tell you that you must never reveal a sense of humour about religion or see any funny side of God.
‘These same people will consider laughter superfluous, distracting and possibly even sinful. I,’ here he smiled again, ‘would tell these people to get a life.’
The girls were in fits. They loved it when McCloud purposefully used their parlance to hammer home his point.
‘In this church we love to laugh,’ he said, his wide smile lending his words an easy veracity, ‘because we believe that humour may very well be the saving grace of religion, possibly even humanity itself.’
Jinx leaned back in her seat, folded her arms and thought about what he was saying. She thought about the cultures of guilt, shame and penitence that seemed intrinsic to so many modern religions and about how the world would surely be a nicer, better and safer place if more people had a good old giggle about things rather than get so offended by them. She thought about Liberty’s dad.
‘You might like to think about Sara, wife of Abraham, in this light.’ Jinx loved the way McCloud shored up his arguments with the Old Testament – even the most humourless old crone couldn’t argue with incontrovertible evidence like this. He was like God’s own lawyer or something.
‘Fantastically, this Old Testament giggler,’ he paused for the girls’ own giggles to ring out around the chapel, ‘couldn’t stop herself from sniggering when the Lord told her she was about to have a baby.
‘Because,’ he said, ‘she was ninety-eight years old at the time.’ The entire room erupted. This was as much to do with McCloud’s delivery as with his words. He should have been on stage. In fact, Jinx was sure she’d heard a rumour last term that he was in talks to write and present a new reality TV show called Get Thee Behind Me Satanist; something to do with the satanist the News of the World found on that navy ship, involving teams comprised of all the main religions and a judging panel made up of Buddhists.
Although she’d been confirmed at her prep school (and been pretty disappointed with the presents, truth be told) Jinx stayed firmly in her seat during the actual communion. She couldn’t help but feel there was something faintly weird and cannibalistic about drinking the blood and eating the body of Christ. Anyway, she was more than happy to stare in amazement at how far Mrs Gunn’s vast arse spread out over either side of her thighs as she knelt down in front of McCloud.
As the last of the procession took to their seats, Jinx gasped in delight as she clocked McCloud swigging down the rest of the communion wine in a huge gulp. She emitted an involuntary giggle and clasped her hand over her mouth, just managing to keep down a bout of hysterical laughter.
‘Waste not want not,’ she hummed under her breath, grinning widely at a glaring Gunn who was lumbering past on her way back to her seat.
After a lusty rendition of ‘Immortal, Invisible’, she shook Reverend McCloud’s hand and thanked him for the service before filing out of the cloisters, strolling through the main school front door and into an icy breeze coming off the sea. The wind picked up as she walked back to Tanner House and twice she nearly lost the scarf from around her neck.
At the s
ame time as she shoved the house door open with her hip the heavens opened. Jinx pressed her face against the glass and watched huge raindrops lashing down the other side. She thanked her lucky stars she’d said no to the shopping trip, grabbed her favourite You and Style magazines from the huge pile of communal Sunday papers on the coffee table in the hallway, shoved them under her arm without a single thought for anyone else who might want to read them and decided to tackle her disgrace of a bedroom.
As she stuffed twenty-pence pieces into the soft drinks vending machine just outside the common-room door, Jinx looked at her watch. A silver TAG Heuer that her dad had given her for her sixteenth birthday, it was one of her most favourite and precious things. She wasn’t too fussed about designer clothes or flash handbags, but the one item she’d never be seen dead with was a cheap watch.
She also loved it because she’d wanted one for such a long time and her dad had chosen it himself. It wasn’t the exact one she’d thought she wanted, the one she’d pointed out to her mum – it was better. And since everyone knows it’s rare for dads to get matters of fashion right she loved it all the more because of that.
It was twelve o’clock. Jinx leaned down to grab her Diet Coke before it got trapped in the temperamental tray at the bottom – she was addicted to the stuff and could never contemplate finishing an essay, tidying her room or making an important phone call without an icy can in her hand – and realised she had at least another six or so hours before Stella and Liberty got back from Brighton.
She flipped back the ring pull and took a long swig of the stuff she called brain fuel. Forget fish oil, DC was the business. She pushed in three more twenties and a back-up can released itself with a loud bang.
Muttering an apology to Lulu whose room was also next door to the common room and who was – given the anguished moans she let out every time the noisy machine was used – obviously trying to have a lie-in, Jinx turned left instead of right and started up the small flight of stairs that led to the third floor.
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