Liberty’s eyes were flicking between Liv and Jinx as if they were tennis players batting their words back and forth in a rally. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘Stella is always asking me about Jinx and anyway, we’d had a really good day yesterday. It’s not like she could have known anything bad would happen to me last night. She was just pissed! And come on – it’s not like we’ve not done stupid things before.’
Charlie snorted loudly before jumping down off the table, saying she had to get to orchestra practice. Jinx looked at her watch, grabbed a piece of toast with one hand and Liberty with the other and followed Charlie out of the door. Liv ran her cigarette end under the tap, chucked it out the window where it joined a fetid pile of damp half-smoked fags, waved them off and turned back to studying the pages of chemical equations she’d spread out on the table in front of her.
‘Jinx’ – unusually for her, Liberty looked cross as they marched quickly up the drive – ‘Stella will be in French, I’m sure of it. And I don’t want you having a go at her. I know I was upset last night and she probably shouldn’t have dumped me like that, but she is my friend and I don’t want any aggro.’
Jinx mumbled a noncommittal response but rolled her eyes over Liberty’s head at Charlie as they swung through the main door, said their goodbyes and waved Charlie off to orchestra practice in the chapel.
As Jinx and Liberty raced up the down staircase to double French they caught an unmistakable whiff of terrible body odour mingled with Parma Violets in the air. Dammit, the Dick was obviously back. Jinx wondered if this day could possibly get any worse.
‘Jinx Slater, Liberty Latiffe’ – the Dick stood in front of the class, looking, as much as she could with her practically albino skin, bright ginger hair and horribly contrasting flushed cheeks, the picture of health – ‘how very kind of you to grace this class with your presence. I want both of you in my office at lunchtime, writing me a three-page essay on why promptness is the essence of good manners.’
Jinx glowered at her as she threw herself into her seat, but didn’t say anything – she knew full well that if she did she’d likely find herself writing pointless essays in the Dick’s cramped and airless office every bloody lunchtime this week. She craned her neck and looked round the room; Stella was nowhere to be seen.
‘So’ – the Dick turned round and tapped the board behind her with her thin silver metre rule – ‘as you will see here, the -er forms of the present subjunctive are similar to the present indicative forms. In many cases they are indistinguishable …’
As the Dick droned on and on Jinx doodled in her notebook, thinking about what Liv had said that morning. She decided it was absolute nonsense that Stella was using Liberty to get at her. Christ, she’d barely spoken a whole sentence to the girl since the hockey ball incident, didn’t know anything about her, and didn’t bloody want to either. And even if Stella hadn’t intended anything bad to happen to Liberty it was sheer fucking lunacy to leave her on her own with some unknown bloke in the middle of the night. And regardless of anything Liberty had to say about it, Jinx was going to tell her that too.
‘So, Jinx’ – the Dick always licked her bloodless lips before she pounced on an unsuspecting victim – ‘if the stem of the verb remains the same what would the subjunctive ending …’
At that moment Stella slipped through the door, thankfully throwing the Dick and her impossible question off course. Wearing a dark-grey pencil skirt and a pristine white T-shirt with muted make-up and flat shoes she looked the picture of innocence – not at all, in fact, like someone who’d been up all night drinking bourbon, smoking dope and shagging a Brighton grunger in his dirty squat.
Jinx felt a grudging admiration at what was obviously an Olympic gold feat of endurance combined with excellent make-up skills. She felt it even more when Stella informed the Dick – in freaking French for God’s sake – that she’d been unavoidably detained at a doctor’s appointment, apologised prettily for her lateness and was rewarded with the closest the Dick could come to a warm smile.
Stella smiled sweetly right back at her and took her seat at the back of the room. Jinx glared at her but couldn’t say anything from her seat in the front row right opposite the Dick’s desk. She’d been caught in the act of writing a note to Liberty – in the first year for fuck’s sake – and had been made to sit here ever since, so the Dick could ‘keep an eye’ on her. Make her life a misery more like.
The bell signalling the end of their first lesson rang, but since they were trapped here for yet another forty-five minutes none of the class packed anything away. The Dick was the only teacher who didn’t let them have a little break in between the double to stretch their legs and have a chat so they all sat there in bored and resentful silence as she ploughed on.
‘Right,’ the Dick clapped her hands together, giving the class a disgusting and entirely unnecessary view of her yellow sweat-stained armpits, ‘that’s the present subjunctive dealt with. There will be a pop quiz on the subject next week and I now want you all to take your seats at the language lab.’
A general sighing sound rang out around the room as the girls scraped back their chairs and stood up. They hated the bloody language lab. Desks with radio equipment and headphones made up three sides of a square at the very back of the room, and the Dick patrolled behind them as they listened to whatever turgid piece of French literature she’d decided to bore them rigid with that day before asking them to recall stupid details about it in one of her beloved pop quizzes.
‘Come on, we haven’t got all day. Stop dawdling, Mimi! Hurry up, Chloe!’ She really was the most irritating woman. Patronising and rude, supercilious and haughty, none of them could bear her. They’d had such a lovely time with Mademoiselle Dupont, the junior French mistress who also hated her boss, and had been subbing their lessons whilst she recovered from the bump to her head.
She twiddled the knob on the main control panel and their ears were filled with André Gide’s La Symphonie Pastorale – even read by Gérard Depardieu this was a strong contender for probably the most boring book in the whole bloody world.
Jinx looked up as the Dick lingered behind her before moving along the row. God, she thought catching a nasty whiff, the woman really did stink. Jinx was still looking after her and thinking this when she saw little Lulu Cooper, who couldn’t hear a thing due to the heavy-duty headphones encasing her small ears, absent-mindedly lean back in her chair to stretch out her legs and pull her hair back into a ponytail.
The Dick was craning her neck to peer over the backs of the girls in the opposite row at the exact same time as Lulu’s chair thrust back out of line with the others. Jinx’s eyes widened and she held her breath.
Bingo! The unseeing Dick walked straight into Lulu’s chair and flailed wildly as she caught one of her legs in it and lost her footing. Jinx had jumped up and was clasping her hands in front of her as if in prayer. Her prayers were answered.
The Dick floundered and flapped to save herself, but the only thing to hand was the corner of the small square table that sat in the middle of the three-sided square and held the bulky control panel. She grabbed hold of it as she fell forwards and – oh happy day! – it fell with her, before crashing down on top of her, pinning her to the ground. Adding final injury to insult, the hefty control panel skidded along the top before landing squarely, and with a delicious cracking thud, right on the back of her head.
As Jinx screamed with delight the others ripped off their headphones and jumped up to see the wonderful spectacle of a yet again disenfranchised Dick, delighted beyond belief at having borne witness to her second bang on the head. None of them moved a muscle to help her, of course. They laughed and pointed and exclaimed until it became apparent she was not moving.
‘Shit, guys – have I killed her?’ Although she’d laughed joyously along with the rest, true geek Lulu was now white and shaking.
‘No! Don’t be ridiculous,’ Chloe the future medic was taking charge. ‘Look,’ she n
udged the Dick’s prone form with the pointy toe of her sensible black slingback, ‘she’s definitely still breathing. She’s probably just unconscious – worst luck. Well, I’m not fucking touching the sweaty minger. I’ll go and get Mademoiselle, she can call Mister Sinton.’
Chloe practically skipped through the door as Jinx turned to Lulu. ‘Well done, Lu,’ she said and winked. ‘She looked totally fucked! I think you’ve just got rid of her for the entire rest of term – we owe you big time!’
They were all whooping and laughing, giving three cheers for Lulu when Jinx saw Stella and Liberty in a huddle in the corner. Liberty was laughing at something Stella was telling her and Jinx was furious when she heard what it was.
‘You so need to get yourself a boyfriend, Lib,’ Stella was saying as she re-applied her trademark pale-pink lipstick in a gold-backed hand mirror, ‘you’re definitely pretty enough.’
‘Actually,’ Jinx yelled as she walked over, ‘what she needs is a friend who won’t dump her on her own in the middle of the fucking night in fucking town. Someone,’ her voice was getting louder and louder, ‘who won’t leave her alone with a bloke neither of you knows who steals her fucking bag, pushes her over and tries to shag her on the beach!
‘You really are a terrible fucking bitch, Stella Fox’ – Jinx was right up close to Stella, had shoved her against the wall and was jabbing a furious finger in her face – ‘why you can’t crawl back underneath whatever stone you crawled out from under I just don’t know.’
‘Jinx,’ Liberty said looking really cross as she narrowed her eyes and glared at Jinx, grabbing her arm, ‘shut the fuck up! I told you earlier, what that bloke did is not Stella’s fault. How was she supposed to know what he’d do? I’m a big girl and I can take care of myself.’
‘Well, I think you proved last night that you can’t in fact look after yourself. Just leave it will you, Liberty, I’m talking to Stella.’
Stella, a smirk playing about her pink lips, looked positively unconcerned as she leaned against the wall and – supremely casually – examined her nails.
This drove Jinx mad. She was screaming right in Stella’s face about friendship, responsibility and basic good manners YEAH! and punching the wall beside her when Mrs Gunn shuffled her bulk through the door.
‘Jinx Slater!’ Gunn was puce and sweating, she always found struggling up those devilishly steep stairs a terrible strain. ‘What the hell are you playing at? I could hear your voice down at the main foyer!’
Gunn smiled not so secretly to herself – this was an excellent find, easily worth the trudge up all those stairs – she could definitely send the devil child to see Mrs Bennett about this. Now, she wondered, half turning to peer about the room, where was Susan? There was no way she’d allow something like this to happen if she was in the room, but she was definitely in the building somewhere. Gunn was sure of it – she’d seen her white Nissan Micra in the staff car park when she’d taken Myrtle out for her daily constitutional that morning.
Gunn gasped and went white beneath her sheen of sweat as she clocked the Dick’s prone form in the middle of the floor, half buried beneath the table.
‘Susan,’ she wailed, pushing Jinx out the way and stumbling towards her friend as the horrified girls melted away to the other end of the room, ‘Susan, please!’
She bent down and took Susan’s clammy white hand in her own huge paw, desperately feeling for a pulse – since she was groping her friend’s elbow, however, it was unlikely she’d find one, ‘Please don’t die!’
‘You lot!’ she screamed over her shoulder at the girls, her eyes almost popping out of her head as they swivelled round desperately seeking the guilty party. ‘What the hell is going on in here? Who did this? Who did this?’
A trembling Lulu, tears shining bright in her eyes, was about to step forward and claim responsibility when Mister Sinton bustled into the room wearing her starched white nurse’s outfit. She’d been changing out of her bathing suit when Mademoiselle Dupont had phoned and there was a solitary pink roller still affixed to the back of her head.
‘Right then’ – Mister S was equally horrified by the sight that greeted her but assessed the situation with one glance and her obvious capability acted as a balm to the onlookers – ‘give me some space. Space please, Mrs Gunn! Chloe and Mimi, I want you two – gently, mind – to come here and lift the table off Mrs Dickinson.’
‘That’s it, girls,’ Mister S was an oasis of calm, ‘well done.’ She leaned over the Dick and hefted her into the recovery position, before examining the nasty bump on the back of her ginger head.
‘Right, girls, there’s nothing to worry about here, Mrs Dickinson …’ she paused to glare at Gunn who was snuffling in the corner in the most pathetic fashion, ‘has taken a direct hit to the head and passed out, the poor thing. The ambulance will be here soon and – apart from a nasty headache when she wakes up – she’ll be absolutely fine, I promise.’
‘Damn it,’muttered Chloe almost inaudibly to Mimi, who put her hand over her mouth to pre-empt any hysterical giggles.
‘Girls,’ Mister S continued, beaming at the girls – the nurse loved them all indiscriminately, as if they were her own daughters – little treasures, each and every one, ‘I’m perfectly capable of dealing with this myself, so I suggest you go back to your house and have some tea and toast. You’ve had a nasty shock and I think you should all have a little break before lunch. That’s it,’ she smiled as they began to gather their books together and file out of the room, ‘off you go.’
Once the girls had left, Sister Minton turned to Gunn, who was still snuffling and wringing her hands in the corner. ‘And as for you, Patricia,’ an unprecedented steely look lit her usually warm eyes, ‘I was absolutely appalled to find you screaming on the floor like that. No,’ she held up a hand as Gunn attempted a protest, ‘I won’t hear it.’
‘You – a housemistress of all people – should have taken charge of the situation.’ Sister Minton glared at Gunn. ‘I suggest, Patricia, that you return to your house and sort yourself out.’
Gunn, the inevitable dull headache beginning to throb in her temples, took one last, lingering look at the horizontal Dick on the floor, hung her head and shuffled out the door, hoping to reach the sanctuary of her flat before the inevitable migraine properly managed to take hold.
The only good thing about this sorry fiasco, she reflected as she slowly and carefully hefted her huge bulk down the stairs gripping tightly on to the handrail all the way, was that she’d finally caught that frightful Jinx Slater doing something wrong. She would – as sure as eggs is eggs – be reporting the matter to Mrs Bennett at the earliest available opportunity.
The lower sixth were having a stand-off in Tanner House kitchen. Stella had disappeared to God knows where after the precipitous end of double French and Liberty had refused to speak to Jinx all the way back. Trailing behind and whispering about the row, Lulu, Mimi and Chloe had bumped into Chastity on her way back from a piano lesson, and she’d filled them in on the events of the previous evening. Liv was still seated in front of her homework at one of the long tables but had pushed her papers aside and was joining in with gusto.
‘Come on, Liberty,’ she was yelling, ‘you’ve got to admit Stella should never have just dumped you like that – Jinx is totally right!’
‘I don’t care what you think’ – in direct proportion to her mood Liberty’s hair was becoming wilder by the second – ‘and it’s none of your fucking business anyway. Or yours for that matter.’ She spun round to point at Jinx. ‘I can do whatever I fucking like and with whom I like. And I don’t like any of you lot at the moment so why don’t you all just piss off and leave me alone.’
‘Come on, Lib.’ Lulu was fiddling with a pencil and quaking more than when she thought she’d murdered the Dick, but she never failed to step in and play the peacemaker. ‘They don’t mean it, they’re just worried about you.’
‘Yes, we fucking do mean it,’ Jinx was pacing as s
he always did when in the middle of a massive strop, ‘your problem, Latiffe, is that you’re just too fucking stupid to realise what she’s like. She doesn’t give a shit about you and you’re so moronic you haven’t noticed.’
‘Well,’ an obviously stung Liberty had stopped stock still in front of the open door, ‘if that’s what you really think then fuck you, Jinx Slater. FUCK YOU!’
She slammed the door so hard behind her as she flounced out that the framed house photograph of them all on the wall next to the cooker came off its fixings, fell to the ground and smashed.
The ensuing heavy silence was broken when Daisy Finnegan, her mouth so pursed she looked like she’d been sucking on a lemon all morning, gingerly stuck her head through the door. ‘Some of us are trying to work,’ she intoned, glaring round at them with the most infuriatingly self-satisfied expression plastered across her smug face. ‘If you can’t be civilised, could you at least please keep the noise down in here.’
‘FUCK OFF, YOU CREEP!’ they yelled in unison until the head girl spun on her silly Garfield slipper and slammed the door once more. The corkboard appeared to teeter on its fixing but remained stuck to the wall.
Jinx sank into a chair and put her head in her hands. ‘Shit. I shouldn’t have said she was stupid. When I’m cross I just want to hurt the other person by saying the worst, most below-the-belt thing I can think of.’
‘Oh come off it, Jinx …’ Chloe was kneeling on the floor and picking up tiny shards of glass. ‘It’s not that bad is it? I can think of worse things to be called.’
‘It’s what her dad always says to her, Chlo,’ Liv said also with her head in her hands. ‘Whenever they have a row he says she’s stupid and that her marks prove it and that he might as well stop paying for her to be at Stagmount and bring her home to Saudi.’
High Jinx Page 14