High Jinx

by Sara Lawrence

  The first year was blushing like anything as she handed over the note from her own form teacher; she practically fell over in her haste to back out of the open door she’d kept a foot stuck in to aid her speedy getaway.

  ‘Sweet little things aren’t they with their tiny ties all done up wrong? Like little smurfs, aren’t they? Now, where was I?’ Mrs C had clearly forgotten all about Liv and the issue of the wet hair and was back in a great mood.

  Jinx ripped the corner off a page in her prep diary, scribbled something on it and chucked it over Stella’s desk to Liv. Liv stifled a giggle as she read: ‘the benefits of bipolar: discuss’ and Mrs Carpenter began banging on about the weekend she’d just spent hill walking in the Fens.

  Apart from the fact that Liberty turned her back every time Jinx was near her – which was a lot, as they studied pretty much all the same subjects – and Charlie was kicked out of their swimming lesson with Strumpet for dive bombing into the pool right next to her and soaking her completely, the rest of the day passed uneventfully.

  Liv, Charlie, Chastity and Jinx sat in a booth downstairs at Gars, their favourite Chinese restaurant in town. It was so expensive they normally only went there with their parents but Chastity’s mum’s not-so-new boyfriend was so keen to get her onside he’d phoned earlier and when she told him they were going out to eat, he’d told her to take the girls wherever they wanted and that he’d pick up the tab.

  ‘Result, Chas,’mumbled Charlie through a mouthful of the chunkiest and most delicious sesame prawn toast any of them had ever tasted, ‘this is the nicest meal I think I’ve ever had.’

  ‘Yep, cheers to Mr Ian,’ sighed Liv, raising her glass of Sancerre rosé to the middle of the table. ‘Oops, I think we need another bottle. This is going to be extortionate Chas – will he really not mind?’

  ‘Nah,’ Chastity smiled, obviously very pleased with the situation, ‘he’s minted. And he’s desperate to get me onside. Let’s just say he’s going about it the right way! He told me to take you wherever we wanted and said we should push the boat out. He’s not bad at all really – and Mum does really seem taken with him.’

  They finished their starters in record time and were already on their third bottle of wine. As the empty plates of prawn toast, salt and pepper ribs and crispy fried wantons were taken away the waitress – who’d asked them if they were really, really sure they wanted to order so much food – reverentially placed a whole duck with a basket full of pancakes and a dish swimming with plum sauce in front of them.

  ‘Yesss!’ They all fell upon it like gannets, gannets that hadn’t eaten for a month.

  ‘I swear I will never understand anorexics,’ Liv said as she loaded up another pancake, ‘apart from anything else, where do they get the bloody willpower from? If my life depended on it I don’t think I could stop myself from eating for even, like, two days.’

  ‘I don’t think I could do one day,’ Chas said, motioning for another bottle of wine, ‘and do they drink at all, or is booze too fattening?’

  ‘I don’t think they do,’ Liv said, thoughtfully sipping her wine. ‘I mean, if you want to kill yourself, why not just slit your throat or something? It’s so much quicker and easier than starving yourself for years and years until your organs fail one by one leaving you a brain dead paraplegic in a home waiting out the bitter end, surely?’

  All this talk of anorexia reminded Jinx what she’d wanted to speak to them about in the first place, and when all their glasses had been topped up again she began to tell them everything that Jennifer had told her at the weekend.

  She didn’t leave anything out, and the girls gaped at her as she talked. Liv was the first to interrupt.

  ‘OK,’ she said, picking crispy bits off the duck leg and dunking them in the remains of the sauce, ‘that is an amazing story and it does sound as if she totally made it up to get one over on that poor drama teacher man and the girl who got the main part, but what can we do with it? It’s not like she’s even mentioned anything about it to us and Mrs Bennett obviously believed her or she wouldn’t have let her start at Stagmount.’

  ‘Yeah, I was just thinking that.’ Charlie had her elbow on the table and was leaning her face on her hand, clearly in thoughtful mode. ‘But what about all the lies she’s told us? The way she tells it she was the most popular girl in the school – in all the teams, best friends with everyone, editor of that fucking stupid magazine and all-round bloody genius.’

  They stopped talking as the waitress began laying out plates filled with sizzling fillet steak in pepper sauce, Singapore noodles, kung po chicken, pak choi in oyster sauce, fried rice, boiled rice, prawn crackers and garlic prawns. As there wasn’t enough space on the table for their many dishes she had to stick some of it on the next table.

  If they had been of a different mentality, the girls might have been embarrassed. As it was they whooped and cheered and thanked her so profusely the chefs came out of the kitchen to see what the commotion was. They laughed and bowed as the girls gave them a standing ovation and for a few minutes there was no talk as the girls shovelled food into their mouths. Ian would have been beside himself with delight at the number of times the girls clinked their glasses and drank to his good health.

  ‘So,’ Jinx said, putting down her fork and leaning back in her seat, ‘Stella is obviously a lot more evil than your common or garden bitch, but what are we going to do about it?’

  ‘You know, I’m not sure there’s anything we can do,’ said Liv, surreptitiously undoing the top button of her extra-tight Joseph black cords under the table before breathing out with relief, ‘apart from sit on it until something comes up. She’s clearly a total psycho but she’d not stupid and whatever the Bedales drama man thought about it she’s practically a world-class actress too. We don’t want to get burned.’

  ‘It’s just so fucking frustrating,’ added Chastity, ‘and I’m worried about Lib. It’s not like we can tell her any of this because it’ll look like sour grapes after everything that’s happened.’

  ‘I know,’ Jinx said frowning. ‘The only person Stella cares about is Stella, and she knows how much we all love Lib – although I have to say I am rapidly going off her.’

  ‘No you’re not,’ Charlie smiled. ‘Come on, you’re just cross that she’s not talking to you at the moment, but she’ll get over it. How many rows have we all had? Loads, that’s what, and we’re all still here.’

  ‘Yeah, you’re right,’ Jinx sighed and looked at her watch. ‘Shit, guys, it’s nine-thirty – we should call a cab.’

  ‘Yep,’ said Chastity waving for the bill, ‘we don’t want to be late back, especially after last night.’

  They were joshing and laughing as they walked through the door of Tanner House at five to ten, shoving each other and giggling manically. They were absolutely stuffed to the brim with all the delicious food and more than a little drunk.

  Jinx was walking ahead of them. When she stopped suddenly as if she’d been shot they all piled into the back of her and shrieked loudly with more drunken hilarity.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Jinx asked, staring in an appalled fashion at Mrs Gunn who was sat on the foyer sofa, her huge bulk filling the whole thing even though it was a two-seater. ‘Where’s Mr Morris?’

  ‘Hello, Jane.’ Mrs Gunn’s fat face was split in two by its most terrible smile. ‘Good evening, you others. I don’t know your names yet but I’m very sure we’ll make each other’s acquaintance. And that will probably be,’ Gunn smirked evilly again, causing her jowls to shudder beneath where her chin would have been had she not been so fat, ‘sooner rather than later.’

  Liv stepped forward and held out her hand. ‘Olivia Taylor,’ she said brightly as a somewhat confused Mrs Gunn gingerly took Liv’s beautifully French manicured hand in her own huge paw, ‘simply delighted to meet you. Mrs Gunn, isn’t it?’

  The others, who’d been holding their breath and wondering what the hell was going on, collapsed into a fresh fit of snorti
ng, snuffling, crying laughter, totally unable to stop themselves. Gunn, belatedly realising Liv was taking the piss, hefted herself off the sofa and raised herself to her full height.

  ‘Well well well,’ she said, ‘if that’s how you want to play it, there are going to be some changes around here, mark my words. Now go to bed all of you. Immediately.’

  ‘But Mr M …’ Chastity was about to tell her that once they were back in the house they were allowed to go to bed whenever they liked. It was a lower-sixth privilege, and Mr Morris trusted them to look after themselves.

  ‘I don’t care what Mr Morris did or said.’ Gunn immediately went bright-red in the face, a clear signal to all who knew her she was about to start shouting at the top of her voice. Sure enough, the bellowing commenced.

  ‘I’M IN CHARGE NOW AND YOU WILL ALL GO TO BED THIS MINUTE OR FACE THE CONSEQUENCES!’

  The girls didn’t need telling twice. They gave each other gloomy looks all round but trudged off to their respective rooms rather than spend another minute in the company of the terrible Gunn.

  As they had next-door rooms, Jinx and Chastity walked off together, in silence until they reached the safety of their corridor.

  ‘What the fuck is going on, Chas?’ Jinx was seriously put out. She’d counted down the days for three years to get away from Gunn, and was horrified to find her nemesis with apparent squatting rights in her beloved Tanner House.

  ‘Don’t worry about it, Jin.’ Chastity was still giggling a bit about Liv and Gunn’s subsequent outburst and had no idea how vindictive Gunn could be. ‘Morris has obviously been taken ill or something. She’s not going to be here for ever – she’s got Wollstonecraft to look after anyway. He’ll be back soon I’m sure of it – he was fine when I saw him this morning.’

  Jinx said goodnight to Chastity and lay down on her bed, feeling very out of sorts indeed. She was freaked out even further when she heard the unmistakable thud of Gunn’s huge footsteps patrolling the corridor outside at least three times in the night. It transported her back to her most miserable times in the junior school when Gunn had seemed determined to destroy her spirit and everywhere she turned that fat face was staring malevolently at her. After tossing and turning for a bit, Jinx got up and rammed her desk chair underneath the door handle to ensure no unwanted visitors could get in to spy on her in the night, but even so she didn’t sleep well at all.

  Jinx was even less amused when she woke up the next morning to the incessant sounds of someone stomping around the house and vigorously ringing one of the loud school handbells. They never had a bell in Tanner – Morris trusted them to get themselves up and sorted out in the morning. They were seventeen after all.

  She groaned and swore and put her pillow over her head, but whoever was ringing that bell was determined that not one member of Tanner House could possibly avoid hearing it. Jinx had a pretty good idea who the bell-ringer was too.

  She switched her bedside radio on, fiddled with the volume to try to drown out the sound and looked at her watch. It was seven-fifteen! She lay back against her pillows and sighed deeply. None of them got up until at least an hour later than that normally and they always stayed in bed longer if they could help it.

  She was grinding her teeth in time with the bell when Chastity walked in and collapsed on the end of her bed. Chastity looked as terrible as Jinx felt, her blonde hair standing straight up and the remains of last night’s mascara in black rings underneath her puffy eyes. ‘What the fuck is this?’ she moaned, shielding her eyes with her hand, ‘it’s that bloody Gunn woman, isn’t it? What the hell is she playing at? This is like a bad episode of Bad Girls. Jinx, I’m shattered.’

  Jinx was just getting up – a long process that involved rolling the duvet, inch by torturous inch, down to the end of the bed – and listening to Chastity’s moans of impotent rage, when Gunn’s voice came into the bedroom loud and clear.

  ‘Good morning, Tanner House!’ she shouted, ‘I repeat, good morning Tanner House!’

  Jinx threw her duvet off, jumped out of bed and turned to Chastity. ‘I don’t bloody believe it,’ she said, aghast. ‘The fucking old witch is using a freaking loudhailer.’

  ‘No way!’ Chastity jumped up and opened the door a crack, peering out into the foyer, before slamming it shut and leaning against the door with an equally shocked expression on her face. ‘You’re fucking right. She’s standing out there shouting orders like a sergeant fucking major.’

  ‘I want every girl down here, fully dressed and ready to go in five – I repeat – FIVE minutes to sign the register.’

  ‘What register?’ Chastity wailed as she raced out of Jinx’s room to get herself sorted, ‘we don’t have a morning register! This is a fucking nightmare.’

  As Chastity ran out Liberty ran in, the shock of Gunn’s arrival had obviously pushed the feud right out of her mind.

  ‘Jinx! What’s going on?’ Liberty was wearing the boxer shorts she slept in, one sock and her bright pink bra, and clutching her favourite Lancôme mascara wand in her hand. ‘What’s she doing here? What’s happened to Morris?’

  ‘I don’t know, Lib.’ Jinx was pulling on her tights with one hand at the same time as plucking a few stray hairs from underneath her eyebrows with the other. She was obsessed with her eyebrows and nothing – not even a screaming Gunn – would make her appear in public if they looked ragged. ‘You’d better get dressed, sweetheart, or she’ll do something terrible – you know how unpredictable she is, and she hates us anyway. I’ll see you outside, we’ll talk about it then.’

  ‘ONE MINUTE TO GO, GIRLS, I REPEAT, ONE MINUTE TO GO.’ Gunn was obviously enjoying using the loudhailer – not that she probably really needed it. There was a perky tone to her voice that Jinx had never heard her use in Wollstonecraft, or anywhere come to think of it. The whole business was becoming more suspicious by the second and she felt highly unsettled as she wandered into the foyer with a few seconds to spare and saw that Gunn – clutching her loudhailer as if she were a five-year-old with a favourite new toy – was marshalling the lower sixth into a row along the path outside the front door. It had just started to rain for Christ’s sake.

  Jinx joined the row next to Lulu Cooper and was delighted to find Charlie and Liv lining up behind her.

  Charlie’s short brown hair was standing on end and she was still wearing her pink-spotted pyjama bottoms, which she’d tucked into a pair of very grimy Ugg boots. ‘I take it all back, J, she is fucking mad,’ she said. ‘We always thought all you Wollstonecraft lot were exaggerating when you told us stuff like this.’

  ‘So did we,’ whispered little Lulu, who looked positively terrified. ‘We thought you were terrible show-offs. What’s this in aid of?’

  ‘Who knows,’ Jinx said grimly. ‘She’s a power-hungry motherfucking psycho bitch from hell and knowing her this is probably only the start of it.’

  The sixty or so girls who made up the lower sixth were all standing in a ragged line outside in the spitting rain by now, in various states of undress and lots of sleepwear with big fluffy hooded parkas buttoned up over the top.

  Gunn, who was striding back and forth in front of them, had obviously taken the army theme to heart. She was wearing a pair of steel toe-capped DM boots that Jinx had certainly never seen before and had wound a khaki scarf around her thick neck. In her right hand she was holding tight onto the handle of one of the red and white loudhailers the sports staff used at tournaments and school sports days. In her left she was gripping an official-looking clipboard on which a few sheets of white paper, containing what looked like a list of names, were being spotted with drizzle.

  Despite the fact that she was standing only a few feet in front of them and that none of the girls was saying a word, having been shocked into silence by the weirdness of the morning, Gunn raised the loudhailer to her thin lips.

  ‘STAND UP STRAIGHT!’ she yelled. ‘WHEN I CALL YOUR NAME YOU WILL RAISE YOUR RIGHT HAND AND SAY “HERE”. YOU WILL NOT TALK, YOU WILL NOT LA
UGH AND YOU WILL NOT LOOK AT EACH OTHER. YOU LOT HAVE HAD IT TOO EASY FOR TOO LONG AND I’M GOING TO SHAPE YOU UP WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT!’

  ‘Excuse me,’ Liv raised her hand. ‘I don’t mean to be rude, but I really don’t think it’s necessary for you to speak to us through that thing. I mean you are only standing a metre in front of us.’

  ‘Oh you don’t, do you?’ Mrs Gunn was standing right in front of Liv and using what Jinx immediately recognised as her fake-reasonable voice, easily the most dangerous. ‘Well, take it from me … Olivia Taylor isn’t it?’ Gunn made a note on the top sheet of paper. ‘What you might think is necessary and what I think is necessary are two very different things. And since I am the one in charge here I’ll thank you to shut up and not interrupt me again.’

  Gunn turned away before spinning round and screaming into the loudhailer right in Liv’s face, ‘AND YOU’RE GATED FOR THE REST OF TERM. THAT SHOULD TEACH YOU NOT TO CHEEK ME AGAIN.’

  Most of the line recoiled in horror and Lulu started crying. But Liv stepped forward and opened her mouth to speak again.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Gunn, but that is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. I certainly won’t be spoken to like that and I shall be seeing Mrs Bennett about this at the earliest available opportunity. You’re absolutely mad.’

  Although none of them could decide whether Liv was being incredibly brave or very, very stupid there were lots of nervous giggles and snorts of horrified laughter at this.

  Gunn stood stock still as if she couldn’t believe her ears. She probably couldn’t, thought Jinx, who was dead impressed with Liv.

  ‘Oh you will, will you?’ Gunn’s voice was even silkier than previously. ‘I want you in my office at the end of registration. NO ARGUMENTS.’

  ‘Fine,’ Liv said combatively, looking and sounding like she didn’t give a shit, ‘see you there. Oh, and before I forget – where exactly is your office? I only know where our housemaster’s room is.’ Liv folded her arms and cocked her head to one side expectantly, hoping to wrong-foot Gunn with this mention of Mr Morris.