High Jinx

by Sara Lawrence

  ‘Yep,’ Jinx nodded. ‘And then she has to back down. Every single fucking time, in case he decides to do it. Christ, I am a fucking idiot.’

  It was a small and subdued group that trudged up to the sports hall to get changed for netball with Strumpet and Gosh that afternoon. Stella was still nowhere to be seen and Liberty had barricaded herself in her room after asking Mr Morris to write her a note excusing her from games due to terrible period pains.

  He’d immediately clocked Liberty’s puffy eyes and correspondingly sad face, but was always so embarrassed by what he never failed to refer to as ‘lady problems’ that he never questioned them about these things, even when he believed that periods were the absolute last concern of those making these little requests.

  Jinx went to bed that night feeling terrible about Liberty. She’d stuck a note under her door apologising profusely and promising never to say another word to or about Stella but had been resolutely ignored.

  Jinx woke up in a black mood the next day. This was not at all helped when Mrs Carpenter handed her a note from Jo, Mrs Bennett’s secretary, in tutor group that morning. It requested that she attend a meeting with the headmistress at 4.15 p.m. that afternoon, was very formal and Jo had missed off the X she usually put at the end of her signature.

  Liberty was sitting next to her in her usual seat at the back but pointedly looked the other way when Jinx sat down. She’d gathered her stuff together and hurried off to her art lesson so quickly at the end of tutor group that Jinx had no time to try to apologise again. Jinx totally ignored Stella – wouldn’t even look at her – but was irritated beyond belief when she raced off giggling and arm in arm with Liberty. Although she was convinced it was largely put on for her benefit she pretended she hadn’t noticed.

  There was no moussaka – one of the few things the kitchen staff made that Jinx actually liked – left in the canteen at lunchtime, she spilled Diet Coke all over a nearly finished English essay and had to start again from scratch and she smashed her favourite fountain pen – a sixteenth birthday present from her favourite godmother – when she trod on it on the floor of the reference library.

  By the time Jinx was standing next to Jo’s desk waiting to see Mrs Bennett she felt like sobbing with rage and frustration. And since Jo was on the phone the entire time she waited there, Jinx couldn’t even ask her for a hint as to what the head wanted.

  When Mrs Bennett opened the door and ushered Jinx into her office it was with none of her usual bonhomie and good humour – actually, she looked pretty cross about something.

  And it wasn’t long before Jinx realised she was the target. ‘Sit down, Jane.’

  Jinx winced. Mrs Bennett hadn’t called her Jane since she’d conned Daisy Finnegan into drinking a pint of urine – admittedly not her finest hour – at their third year Christmas party and been suspended for the first three days of the Easter term.

  ‘Right,’ Mrs Bennett said and did that pyramid thing with her fingers, leaning forward in her chair, and fixing Jinx with a pair of gimlet eyes, ‘I’d like you to explain to me exactly what went on in your French lesson with Mrs Dickinson yesterday.’

  Oh, Christ, thought Jinx, she thinks I had something to do with the Dick’s injury. I could get expelled for that and it wasn’t even my fault.

  ‘Mrs Bennett,’ Jinx said earnestly, leaning forward herself, ‘I promise you – I swear, on my mother’s life! – it was an accident. Mrs Dickinson caught her foot in a chair leg and …’

  ‘Oh for God’s sake, Jinx!’ Mrs Bennett exclaimed impatiently, ‘I’m not suggesting you or anyone in your class attacked Mrs Dickinson. No, no. I know you had nothing to do with that. What I want to get to the bottom of,’ she paused to push her Prada spectacles up her nose, ‘is why you felt it necessary to shove Stella Fox up against the wall and scream abuse at her – members of staff tell me they could hear you screaming in the most unedifying manner from the main school foyer.’

  ‘Oh,’ Jinx gulped. Fucking Gunn, this had to have come from her – but at least she wasn’t being accused of attempted murder on one of the teachers. ‘Well …’ Her voice petered out as she realised she could hardly tell Mrs Bennett the real reason without totally dropping Liberty in it by revealing she’d been out in town so late at night – and worse, drinking with strange boys way after she was supposed to be tucked up in bed. Jinx stared out of the window but the weather was so bad she couldn’t see any sign of the sea beyond the games pitches.

  ‘The thing is …’ She was racking her brains to think of a decent excuse but nothing was coming to her. ‘Well …’

  ‘Yes?’ Mrs Bennett was getting crosser and crosser. ‘I’m waiting and I don’t have all day you know.’

  ‘Look, Mrs Bennett …’ She was going to have to wing it and hope for the best but she knew whatever she said was bound to sound pathetic under the circumstances.

  ‘I’m sorry, I really am. Stella and I had an argument the previous evening and I was trying to sort it out …’

  ‘You call that sorting it out? I’m very surprised at you, Jinx, I really am. Especially as I personally asked you to look after Stella this term.’ Jinx squirmed in her seat and cursed the bad fortune that had brought Stella to Stagmount. She wished she’d never even heard of her.

  ‘What was the argument about? Well?’ Mrs Bennett’s glasses had slid back down her nose and she was peering over the half-moons at Jinx, clearly waiting for a reasonable response to her question.

  ‘I, um, I’m sorry but I’d really rather not say, Mrs Bennett.’ Jinx flushed a deep red as she said this.

  ‘I’m very disappointed in you, Jinx, I really am.’ Jinx couldn’t look her headmistress in the eye, but she bleakly decided she’d choose hot fury any time over this cold disenchantment.

  ‘Very well.’ Mrs Bennett made a note on the pad in front of her and turned to the computer screen of her desktop. ‘You give me no choice but to suspend you for a day. I’ll phone your mother this evening and tell her to expect you at home on Thursday night. This will be on your file, Jinx.’

  Jinx gulped. She was gutted that Mrs Bennett was taking this so seriously, but pleased she wasn’t going to be gated for the weekend – she was desperate to go home and this would give her a nice long weekend. She rearranged her features into a suitably despondent expression and said sorry again.

  ‘I’m sorry it’s come to this, Jinx, I really am.’ Mrs Bennett stood up to open the door. ‘But I cannot be seen to condone brawling and bullying – especially during a lesson, and if you can’t give me a straight answer or any kind of explanation then I have to assume there was no root cause for it.’ She paused. ‘And of course, even if there was a rational reason for your fury there is never any excuse for violence.’

  ‘Right,’ Jinx hung her head, ‘I do understand. You’re only doing your job, and I am sorry.’

  Jinx walked back to Tanner House through the pouring rain and lost her scarf to a particularly strong gust of wind. She couldn’t even be bothered to chase after it as she normally did and so walked through the door looking like a drowned rat. She put the gold Do Not Disturb sign she’d stolen from a lovely hotel when skiing in Canada on her door, got into bed, pulled the duvet over her head and didn’t leave her room until the next morning.

  The rain did not stop for the rest of the week, and despite Jinx’s best efforts Liberty did not say a word to her. The only good result was that Jinx did more homework over the next two days than she could remember – but this was a very poor trade-off as far as she was concerned.

  So it was with a spring in her step that Jinx packed her weekend bag – stuffed full of dirty washing that she knew Caroline would sort out for her – on Thursday afternoon after games, and called a taxi to take her to Brighton station.

  ‘Mum!’ Jinx pressed her nose against the glass window at the end of Brockenhurst’s railway bridge that looked over the car park, waved like a maniac and sprinted down the steps, narrowly missing a collision with the ticket inspector
standing officiously at the bottom.

  She threw open the passenger door of Caroline Slater’s E-class Mercedes, chucked her bag full of dirty laundry on the back seat and enveloped her mum in a huge hug.

  ‘Sorry I got suspended again, Ma,’ she muttered into her mother’s Miller Harris-scented neck, ‘but jeez, am I happy to be home!’

  ‘Don’t worry about it, darling.’ Caroline missed her kids with a ferocious intensity when they were away and was always delighted to have any of them back at home, for whatever reason. ‘Daddy and I are thrilled to have you back – you know that. Let me have a look at you.’ She held Jinx at arm’s length and was less than thrilled when she saw how baggy her jeans were around the waist and noticed the mauve shadows under her eyes. ‘Dad and I have been talking about pizza all day – do you fancy El Palio this evening?

  ‘Is Liberty coming down too this weekend?’ asked Caroline as they turned left out of the station road, ‘we haven’t seen her for ages.’ Jinx fiddled with the radio, narrowed her eyes and mumbled a no before turning to stare out of the window at the New Forest rushing by and Caroline didn’t press her daughter for a reason.

  Jinx woke up in her own bed to a shaft of winter sunlight piercing through her supposedly black-out curtains and illuminating a framed photograph of her and Liberty sitting by the edge of the Slaters’ pool, swinging their legs in the water with their backs to Caroline, the obsessive documenter of Slater life.

  They were exactly the same height, wearing matching pink swimsuits and tanned deep brown. The only thing that told them apart was their hair – with Jinx’s curly blonde mop next to Liberty’s long dark tresses it could have been a picture perfect postcard advertising the pleasures of the English pastoral idyll.

  Jinx groaned as she rolled over. She’d absolutely stuffed herself with cheesy garlic bread, tomato and mozzarella salad and a massive ham and mushroom pizza, before shovelling in a huge bowl of strawberry ice cream in the restaurant last night, and felt distinctly, uncomfortably bloated.

  Thank God the is-she-or-isn’t-she-anorexic Jennifer was coming for lunch today. Jinx could pretend she was on a diet too, in solidarity. As she lay in bed Jinx could hear the ponies snorting and thundering around the paddocks outside and decided to go for a ride. Liberty hated riding – and horses, actually – so Jinx normally got up criminally early or didn’t bother at all when she was staying for the weekend.

  Always one for looking on the bright side, she decided being able to get out in the forest in daylight hours would be a major positive if she and Liberty actually weren’t going to be friends any more. Not that she really believed they wouldn’t make up – they’d always got over their rows in the past.

  None of the boys were at home but standing in the courtyard giving Gaymian’s old hunter Pepsi – or Pansy, as they all started calling her when Damian came out – a very cursory brushing, she breathed in the familiar smell of hay, damp horsehair and saddle soap and felt a zillion times better.

  Cantering along a track in one of the forest enclosures, Jinx laughed out loud for the first time since the Dick had come a cropper under the table. Pansy was kicking up her heels and snorting through her flared nostrils at the forest ponies they passed, enjoying being out for the first time in a month too.

  Mud-splattered, tired but happy, Jinx turned down the road to home, slouching back in the saddle, her reins long against Pansy’s sweaty neck. She was humming Leo Sayer’s revamped ‘Thunder In My Heart’ under her breath as Pansy leapt sideways – Jinx lost both her stirrups and nearly fell off.

  ‘Fucking stupid idiot!’ she shouted, as she regained her seat and gathered up her reins, turning round to glare at the car that had tooted its horn so loudly behind her, startling the horse practically into the ditch, ‘don’t you know anything about horses?’

  Jinx peered into the half-open blacked-out window of the silver Range Rover Vogue as it crept past her, exaggeratedly slowly, and was appalled to see Mrs Lewis at the wheel. ‘Hello, Jinx,’ smarmed Jennifer’s mum as she stuck a slim wrist out of the window and waved, jangling her many gold bracelets and causing Pansy to shy away from her again, ‘sorry about that! Didn’t realise the old nag had so much life in it.’

  Jinx stared at her open-mouthed – how dare she insult Pansy like that – and was about to respond with something very rude about morons in blingtastic Chelsea tractors driving them off the road when she heard screaming from the passenger side. ‘FUCKING HELL, MUM, WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU? NOT CONTENT WITH NEARLY KILLING ME, YOU COULD HAVE KILLED HER TOO.’

  ‘Er, hi, Jen.’ Jinx bent down and waved at her prep-school pal through the half-open window. ‘Everything OK?’

  Jennifer lifted her hand and gave a desultory waggle of her fingers as Mrs Lewis revved the engine – nearly sending Pansy flying into the ditch once more – and made a sharp left turn into the Slater’s drive, spraying gravel behind her in the kind of impressive arc the boy racers from down the road spent hours trying to master.

  By the time Jinx had hosed Pansy’s legs down, dumped her filthy saddle and bridle in a very untidy heap on the table in the tack room, put the horse back in her box with a fragrant hay net and raced around the back of the house to the kitchen door, Jennifer was lounging on one of the overstuffed sofas, clutching a mug of steaming tea and chatting to Caroline Slater.

  ‘Jinx!’ Jennifer was a lot thinner than she had been at prep school, but then so was Jinx. In fact, they’d all been positively chubby back then – a combination of puppy fat and the excellent cook they’d had at school who’d not only dished up huge meals, but also home-made cakes and biscuits twice a day.

  Jennifer looked great in skinny black jeans tucked into black biker boots, and her green T-shirt made her violet eyes sparkle. She jumped up and gave Jinx a very pretentious air kiss on each cheek. ‘How great to see you! I am so sorry about my fucking – oops, sorry, Mrs Slater – mother trying to run you off the road like that.’

  Caroline Slater raised her eyebrows but winked at Jinx as she made her excuses and disappeared out the back door in the direction of the stables, where she’d no doubt shake her head over the mess Jinx had left in the yard but clear it up all the same.

  ‘Yah,’ Jennifer continued through great puffs of the Marlboro Red she’d lit up as soon as Caroline had left, ‘fucking woman’s been doing my head in ever since I got back from Clouds. What a fucking name. Clouds! Not much chance of any silver linings in there either.’ She paused to pat Flash the boxer’s brown head and dropped ash all over his brindled back.

  Jinx giggled nervously before jumping up to get them an ashtray and a couple of wine glasses. She’d need a bloody drink to get through this, she thought as she rummaged in the fridge for the remains of the Chablis they’d started on as soon as they got back from the restaurant the night before.

  ‘So Jen,’ Jinx smiled triumphantly as she brandished the bottle in front of her and put another one in the freezer compartment to speed-cool, ‘how are you? I mean – I know you’ve been in … um … Clouds and everything, but you look great. Really great, in fact …’ Jinx paused.

  How the hell was she supposed to know what kind of events led to someone being sectioned; it must be a case of cause and effect, right? She definitely didn’t want to say the wrong thing so decided it would be best to take her lead from Jennifer.

  ‘I know, I know.’ Jennifer smirked and started tapping her right foot incessantly against the flagstone floor. ‘I’m not an anorexic, or a bulimic, or any of it. Look at me, I do look great and I know it! It’s that bloody woman. She just couldn’t stand it when I started going out with Todd. Actually, that’s not quite right. I’ll tell you what the fucking witch couldn’t stand about Todd – the fact that he’s not going to university and works at Tesco in Bournemouth.’

  Jennifer sighed and lit another fag from the end of the one she’d just finished, never once ceasing the tapping. ‘She is such a fucking snob. All she wanted was for me to end up married to one of the Bedales
boys. Christ, you should have seen her at sports day, running round and sucking up to them all – I nearly died of embarrassment every time she got out of the bloody car. She’s like my fucking pimp or something. Anyway, she couldn’t stand Todd and when she found me crying after we’d had a stupid row – it was only about where we were going clubbing that weekend for Christ’s sake – she convinced Dad I was going mad and decided to have me locked up. She hoped it would make me “come to my senses” as she put it. But I know how her twisted mind works – she knows those places are full of celebrities and she hoped I’d hook up with one of them and forget the “shop worker”, as she called him.’

  ‘But …’ Jinx paused again to take a thoughtful sip of her wine, still not convinced that Jennifer was quite the full ticket.

  ‘Yah, I told you about Jorge on the phone, didn’t I!’ Jennifer’s tapping intensified and another load of ash landed a few millimetres from the end of Flash’s squashy nose. The dog sighed, stretched and ambled off, pushing his head against the swing door that led into the dining room no doubt planning a happy day spent shedding hair all over Caroline’s best upholstery. ‘Gorgeous, just gorgeous. He’s a Hugo Boss model you know.’ Trying hard to maintain a straight face, Jinx nodded.

  ‘Of course,’ Jennifer sighed wistfully, ‘we couldn’t really talk to each other, what with the language barrier and everything.’

  ‘Right,’ Jinx was relieved the conversation was at last moving on to if not familiar, then at least accessible territory, ‘but I bet the sex was worth it?’

  ‘Yah,’ Jennifer stubbed her cigarette out and reached for the bottle of wine on the low table in front of them, ‘it was.’ She sighed again and gulped half the huge glass down in one. ‘But I still miss Todd. In fact, I hope you don’t mind, Jinx, but he’s picking me up from here in a couple of hours. I told Mum I was staying the night with you. She’d probably have us both killed if she knew we were still seeing each other.’