High Jinx

by Sara Lawrence

  She rarely ventured up here as most of her friends lived on the first and second floor and she much preferred seeing people in Chastity’s room anyway as Chas always had the best booze in her cupboard.

  She walked down the dimly lit corridor peering at the names on the doors. Gosh, Chloe lived up here too – Jinx had no idea. As she approached the bathroom at the end she saw Stella’s name badge stuck to the fourth door on the right and looked around before pushing it open.

  Not that anyone would question her. And, anyway, if anyone did ask what she was doing in there she could say she was returning something … or borrowing something … or leaving Stella a note. Anything really. There was very little stealing at Stagmount in general and there’d been none whatsoever in her year since they’d caught Tiffany Bigsworth with her hand – literally – in Liberty’s knicker drawer at the end of the first year.

  Liberty’s dad was fond of giving her large wads of cash with which to pay her school fees and keep herself in shoes and pizzas at the beginning of term and once she’d paid her visit to the bursar Liberty just used to stuff the rest of it at the back of her jumbled-up pants.

  Liberty never had any idea how much money she had and certainly never bothered to count it, but even she realised something was up when the cupboard was bare after only ten days. And they weren’t even allowed out unaccompanied past the Marina in the first year, and there’s only so many bottles of shampoo and packets of Tampax a girl can buy in Asda after all.

  They all thought it odd but assumed that scatty Liberty had somehow mislaid the cash … until her replacement wad also disappeared. Amir Latiffe agreed to replace it once more but said – and in fairness you can hardly blame the man – that this was the third and final time he’d bail her out. Terrified at the prospect of no more unlimited shopping trips Liberty finally listened to the others, who’d insisted all along that people don’t just lose thousands of pounds’ worth of cash out of their knicker drawers, and let them set about masterminding the catching of the thief.

  They’d tried hanging surreptitiously around outside the room but since they all had lessons at the same time in the first year and precious little free time in between their spying had come to nothing. It had been Liv who’d finally come up with the master plan. Mulling the situation over in a quiet corner of the old reference library on an afternoon so miserable they’d been let off games – a very rare occurrence – she’d suddenly jumped to her feet and screamed ‘Eureka!’ earning them a sharp ticking off from both the librarian and the prefect on duty.

  They scuttled out and into the corridor and whisperingly agreed to mark a cross on a fifty-pound note and leave it right at the top of Liberty’s cash pile. When – as expected – the wad went missing again, the girls had sent Daisy to see their housemistress.

  Since Mrs Gunn fancied herself as some kind of girl detective anyway, and sneaky Daisy was easily her favourite pupil, the old goat had immediately galvanised herself into action. Calling all of their year to wait in Wollstonecraft’s drawing room, Gunn had set a crack team of her older favourites to search systematically the first-year rooms and bags and go through all the notes they’d unearth, checking them for Liv’s distinctive red cross.

  She’d finally found the offending fifty hidden in Tiffany Bigsworth’s make-up bag, and a lot of other fifties scattered amongst her possessions. Mrs Gunn, delighted by the success of this plan, had rushed to Mrs Bennett and taken full credit for the bright idea. Stealing was so abhorrent to Mrs Bennett and so against everything she wanted Stagmountians to be that she’d sadly agreed the only course of action must be expulsion. Tiffany had left the same day and no one had missed so much as a pound coin since.

  As Jinx quietly pushed Stella’s door open she decided that although she knew snoopers normally always only find out bad things about themselves, there was no law against it and, anyway, she needed to familiarise herself with her enemy.

  Jinx stood in the dim light in Stella’s doorway and looked around. She pushed the door closed behind her and switched on the light. Unlike Jinx’s, and in fact pretty much everyone else’s, Stella’s room was very neat.

  Her bed was perfectly made with crisp white sheets and there was not a make-up brush out of place on her chest of drawers. Next to the crystal lamp on her bedside table was a large silver photo frame. Jinx assumed it was Stella’s mother inside and moved closer to bend down and peer at the picture. She snorted as she realised the black-and-white photograph was a blow-up of a stunning-looking Stella. It had obviously been taken professionally and was admittedly gorgeous but really – what kind of person has a photo of just themselves by their bed, however attractive?

  Smiling to herself, Jinx turned round to inspect the photos Blu-tacked to the corkboard by the bed. Her smile grew wider as she realised they all showed Stella, invariably looking fantastic, and that pictures where she’d obviously been standing next to someone else had been covered with ones of just her. It was like Stella Fox’s wall of freaking fame in here.

  She turned round to face the opposing wall and laughed as she clocked all the designer carrier bags hanging from pins around the wardrobe. Chanel, D&G, Emporio Armani, Moschino – they were all there plus many more. Jinx imagined Stella staring at the wall in a trance. It was set up like a shrine to high-end capitalism.

  Liberty had all that stuff too, but Jinx had never seen her hang the bloody bags on the wall. And in marked contrast to all the other boarding-school rooms she’d ever been in, there was not one note from a friend, not one photograph of a dog or cat and nothing in here to suggest the girl had any friends or family whatsoever.

  Although Stella was obviously far more in love with herself than even Jinx had thought possible, there was nothing incriminating in here. Jinx wasn’t sure what she thought she would have found anyway, she’d just fancied a snoop. She switched off the light and left. She’d seen enough.

  Jinx flopped on to her bed and looked round her own room. The only neat thing in here was the huge American flag she had hanging over her bed. She was obsessed with America, and hated hated hated people who said Americans were stupid. Jinx genuinely believed that all the best living writers in English were American. Philip Roth or Martin Amis? John Updike or Tony Parsons? She knew who she’d choose. And what about their incredible movies, their fantastic music? She sighed, took a final gulp of Diet Coke and thought that maybe she’d clear up her room tomorrow.

  As she reached over to stick her current favourite, ‘In The Mix’, into her CD player she smiled and picked up the rather dusty photo of the Slater family in its dirty silver frame that sat next to her bed.

  She plumped her pillow behind her head, crossed her legs and studied the photograph. It had been taken at Martin and Caroline’s twenty-fifth wedding anniversary party last summer and all the Slaters were grinning like mad. In fact, Jinx herself, although she was wearing a stunning outfit, had her eyes shut – it was a recent development that she couldn’t seem to stop herself from blinking whenever a flash went off and as a consequence there were precious few photos of her with her eyes open.

  She didn’t care. All the others looked gorgeous and it had been such a happy day and a wonderful party that she loved the photo more than any other. It even had their beloved boxer dog Flash in it, lying at Damian’s feet with his trademark big slobbery grin all over his beautiful squashy face. It had been such a hot day too, she thought, looking miserably out of the window at the wild sea and massive raindrops still lashing down. This terrible weather was enough to drive a girl to drink.

  As she wondered whether it might be timely to pay Chastity and her well-stocked wardrobe next door a little visit, her mobile phone started playing its slightly tinny rendition of Queen’s ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’, her other favourite song. Jinx replaced the photo on her nightstand and grabbed her phone from where she’d chucked it on the floor, scrutinising the screen. She didn’t recognise the number.

  ‘Hello,’ she said, sitting up and automatically reachin
g for her second Diet Coke.

  ‘Jennifer!’ she half-squealed when she recognised the voice on the other end, surprise causing her to sit up straighter and spill sticky Coke all over her white pillowcase. She righted the can, stuck the phone between her ear and shoulder and absent-mindedly brushed at the drops with her free hand. ‘How are you? I thought you were …’ she paused, how the hell were you supposed to ask someone you hadn’t spoken to in about three years whether they were calling you from the nuthouse?

  ‘Hi, Jinx,’ said Jennifer, ‘I’m fine, you know.’

  Well, no, Jinx didn’t know, but Jennifer sounded pretty normal – especially for someone who’d only very recently been let out of a mental institution anyway.

  ‘Mum said you rang the other day about wanting me to go to your brother’s party or something. I cannot tell you,’ Jennifer paused to laugh in a rather self-consciously bitter fashion, ‘how much I would have loved to be at one of your Slater parties rather than stuck in Clouds with that bunch of freaks.’

  ‘Ahem,’ Jinx coughed, unsure of how to proceed from here. Christ, she could barely stand dealing with people who had colds, let alone a certified mentalist.

  ‘Don’t worry, Jinx,’ Jennifer said letting out another bitter laugh. ‘I’m totally fine – it’s my mum who’s gone totally stark fucking raving mad. Just because I broke up with Harry and lost a few pounds she convinced Dad I was a looner and had me banged up in that Berkshire hellhole before I had time to realise what was going on.’

  ‘God, Jen …’ Jinx was appalled but not sure what she thought about the whole thing. I mean: would a clinic like that even accept a girl as a patient if she weren’t clearly an anorexic? It’s surely not the kind of thing you can hide … is it?

  ‘I’m really sorry,’ she continued, trying to push any hint of scepticism out of her voice – Jinx had known Mrs Lewis for a long time and had always thought she was a fruitloop and capable of pretty much anything, ‘how awful for you.’

  ‘Yah,’ Jennifer laughed again, a lot less resentfully this time, ‘but it wasn’t all bad. There were a few lead singers and a gorgeous Hugo Boss model – Jorge. Him and I managed to keep each other entertained!’

  ‘But what about your mum …’ Jinx tailed off, wondering whether the amnesty on never ever slagging off any of your friends’ parents or siblings no matter what they’d done could be broken given the unprecedented evilness of Mrs Lewis’s actions this time.

  ‘Oh fuck her,’ Jennifer spat out. ‘You know what she’s like. So fucking bored she’s always tried to live her life through me. I think she wanted an anorexic daughter. They’re all the rage amongst stay-at-home Home Counties mums who claim it’s the worst thing in the world but are secretly delighted at having girls who can fit into the latest Missoni bikini and look like they might be model spotted at Victoria Station.’

  ‘Right,’ Jinx agreed to keep the peace and because she thought Jennifer was indeed beginning to sound a bit mad but she was shocked. True, she’d never liked Mrs Lewis much, but she would no more speak about her own mum like this than she would take any of her brothers’ friends’ sides against them. It just wasn’t done.

  ‘Anyway, Jinx,’ Jennifer carried on, ‘I’m at home for the next week – supposedly “recovering” but in reality bored out of my fucking mind – and Dad’s driving me back to school next Sunday. I’d love to see you … it’s been ages. Are you around at the weekend?’

  ‘Yes, I am.’ Jinx was delighted. With the shock of hearing Jennifer’s story and the venom she’d reserved for her mother, Jinx had clean forgotten the reason she’d tried to get in touch with Jennifer in the first place. Yes! She was finally going to find out about Stella. ‘I’m back on Friday, although probably quite late. Do you want to come round on Saturday – about lunchtime? You can spend the day at my place if you fancy it – sounds like you might need a break.’

  ‘Brilliant …’ Jennifer paused and Jinx could hear a muffled banging from Jennifer’s end of the line and then a loud ‘JUST FUCK OFF, WILL YOU? I’M ON THE FUCKING PHONE! ‘See you then, yah. Must go – looks like the bloody woman’s set up a vigil outside my bedroom door.’

  Just as she was about to say goodbye Jinx realised the line had gone dead. Gosh, Jennifer did sound different. Jinx could never remember her sounding so harsh, or brusque.

  She lay back on her bed and made a mental note to ask her mum to give them some kind of small salad for lunch on Saturday. Jinx still wasn’t entirely convinced that Jennifer’s mum could have had her daughter sectioned in an institution if there really was no problem and she didn’t fancy making Jennifer uncomfortable if Caroline laid on one of her usual massive meals.

  Christ, thought Jinx as someone tapped quietly at her door. Most of her friends never bothered to knock, and nor did she. What now?

  A faintly grimacing Fanny Ho slipped through the door and sat herself delicately down on top of the pile of clothes on Jinx’s desk chair.

  ‘Hi, Fanny,’ Jinx grinned at her and gestured around the room, ‘sorry about the mess. I’m supposed to be having a cleaning binge today but things keep conspiring to put me off. How’s tricks?’

  ‘Fine,’ Fanny smiled, although Jinx thought she looked a bit put out. ‘I’m just wondering if you’ve got any Vaseline I can borrow?’

  ‘Vaseline?’ Jinx looked confused and thought she detected a hint of a squirm as Fanny made her request, but jumped off her bed and started rummaging through the wicker basket beneath her window she kept full-to-bursting with every beauty product known to man, woman and beast.

  ‘Got a cold sore or something? Tell you what,’ she said chucking the pot at her and shuddering involuntarily – she really couldn’t bear any suggestion of less than perfect health, ‘you can keep it and get me a new one!’

  ‘Thanks, Jinx.’ Fanny looked positively relieved and then smirked. ‘I’ll definitely get you a new one. You’re right - you probably won’t want this pot back once I’ve finished with it.’

  Jinx squinted up at Fanny’s face as she thanked her – very profusely for such a small favour – and left the room, but couldn’t see any sign of a cold sore. Ah well, it could be for anything, she supposed before finally deciding to give the cleaning up as a bad job and seek out Chastity for a nice glass of wine and a spot of MTV Dance.

  Mrs Gunn was sitting behind the desk in Wollstonecraft House’s study, her bloated face almost as red as the pen she was holding in her hand and using to slash thick red lines through much of the first year’s history essays stacked up in front of her. She was furious that she’d been asked to mark them due to the junior history mistress Theodora Thomas’s week off to attend a conference on the teaching of the First World War in Albuquerque.

  Albuquerque? Bah! She’d never even been on so much as an awayday to Bognor bloody Regis, let alone anywhere overseas. When it became apparent that she’d never make head of department, Gunn had given up teaching twenty years ago and had immediately learned to love the much less stressful post of housemistress. Yes, she had to work within the boundaries of the school day and deal with endless issues and paperwork relating to the girls under her care – which she dealt with cursorily at her most efficient – but this post made her feel very much the mistress of her own destiny. She’d also always hated deadlines and setting aside sufficient time for marking had been her absolute weakness.

  Today was no different. She’d lugged the groaning pile of prep around with her for most of the week but in between doling out detentions, supervising thousands of lines – I must not tell lies, especially to Mrs Gunn; I must not tell lies, especially to Mrs Gunn – and stuffing her face with a large tin of sugared pineapple confiscated from a fifth year for no reason whatsoever other than she could, she’d simply not seemed to find the time to get round to it.

  She slashed a line right across the first page of one poor girl’s paper from top to bottom so vigorously that the pen nib tore straight through to the page underneath. Gunn growled and looked out of the w
indow at the rain lashing down outside; it was so heavy she couldn’t even see the sea beyond, let alone the games pitches where she’d sent five fuming fourth years to pick up litter as penance for giggling after lights out.

  Mrs Gunn really was furious about the weather. Normally she didn’t give two hoots whether it rained or shone; in fact, she often preferred the former since it meant there were fewer demands on her precious time and she could hole up inside shoving vast quantities of food into herself with impunity. But today she felt bitterly about it, as if even God himself was against her – and she could hardly put him in detention could she, much as she might have liked to.

  During one of her unnervingly solicitous phone calls asking after Susan Dickinson’s slowly returning health, Mrs Gunn had tentatively suggested to her friend that the two of them might enjoy a health-giving ramble on Devil’s Dyke – oooh, she just loved it up there – with Myrtle that afternoon. Since Mrs Gunn was not in the habit of issuing invitations, largely because she had no friends, she’d been delighted when Mrs Dickinson had accepted and had been looking forward to it for the last two days.

  Gunn growled furiously again at her misfortune and turned back to her marking. She gave each paper only the most cursory glance before running riot across it with her red pen and was gratified to see that the ‘marked’ pile to her left was growing steadily higher than the ‘unmarked’ one in front of her. As she slashed she consoled herself with the thought that at least Susan was due to return to teaching at Stagmount next week.

  Gunn’s small smile turned quickly back into her customary screwed up frown as she recalled Jinx Slater giving her that cheeky wave in chapel this morning. Really, who did that devil child think she was? Cheeking a senior mistress like that was unforgivable, especially in chapel. Gunn felt a familiar prickling in her palms as she thought about how dearly she would like to bend that particular reprobate over her knee and give her the kind of beating she’d never forget.