Devil You Know

by Bagshawe, Louise

  Her internal monologue made her laugh. Victoria Campbell heard it. She was twirling stiffly to “Venus” by Bananarama at the edge of the dance floor.

  “Don’t laugh at me, you fat cow,” Victoria hissed, flushing.

  “Hard not to,” Daisy said. “You can’t dance. You should hang out by the drinks table.”

  “Excuse me,” said a voice.

  Daisy turned around. There was a tall, very lanky boy standing next to her. His suit fitted immaculately, but she could instantly see that he was as skinny as a rake.

  “May I have the honor of this dance?”

  Victoria tossed her hair triumphantly and made toward him, flashing her green eyes at Daisy, but he shifted, and extended one bony hand to Daisy.

  Victoria drew back like a snake poked with a stick, but Daisy hesitated. How did she know this wasn’t just a cruel joke?

  She glanced up at the boy’s face.

  It was terrified.

  Daisy knew that look. She wore it every day. It was the look of waiting for the humiliation to happen.

  “I’d love to,” she said, smiling radiantly at him.

  He beamed, a mixture of pleasure and relief. “Shall we?”

  Victoria stage-whispered, as Daisy passed her, “Couldn’t you do better than that, Markham?”

  Isobel, dancing with Tom Rhys, saw to her astonishment that Daisy was on the dance floor.

  “Who’s that boy?” she asked.

  “Edward Powers,” Rhys told her. “Very good family. Very rich. Clever. Bit eccentric. Who’s the fat girl? It’s like Jack Sprat and his wife.” He laughed.

  Isobel hit him. “Lay off.” She waved frantically at Daisy. “This is brilliant. Everyone can see her dance.”

  *

  When Daisy said goodbye to Edward at eleven, he kissed her hand. She felt overwhelmed with gratitude toward him and had to bite her lip to stop from saying so.

  “I hope I shall see you again,” he said, with old-fashioned courtliness.

  “Of course,” Daisy said. She wasn’t remotely attracted to him, but there was no way she’d allow him to suffer one second’s worth of humiliation. “Here’s my phone number.”

  Miss Crawford shepherded them all back on to the bus, and as Daisy climbed on, everybody went, “Woooh.”

  She thought it was one of the happiest moments of her life.

  Nine

  “And we want to congratulate Daisy Markham,” Sister Clare said in her booming voice at Assembly. Her wrinkled hands gripped the polished wooden podium firmly as she looked out over the rows of girls sitting quietly in their neat navy uniforms. “Daisy has been placed third in a national writing competition and although she did not get the prize, she has won a certificate of merit. I’m sure we’re all very proud of her.”

  Daisy sat on her polished wooden bench between Isobel and Emma, who clapped enthusiastically. The whole school gave her some dutiful applause. Behind her, Daisy could hear Victoria going “Oooh” sarcastically. Miss Crawford, up on the teachers’ dais, looked satisfyingly green with aggravation.

  That was nice, but it really didn’t make Daisy feel any better.

  Third. As in, not first and not even second. Basically, not close.

  “Come up here and get your certificate of merit, Daisy!” barked Sister Clare excitedly.

  Daisy lumbered to her feet, putting on a fake smile. She couldn’t let Sister see how disappointed she’d been. Gutted, in fact. Everybody loved their old Headmistress, with the twinkle in her eye and the stout tweed skirts she habitually wore. Sister Clare always liked to see “her girls” do well at anything.

  Clearly, Sister thought this was a pinnacle of achievement for Daisy. Her results streamed her into a university, but not Oxbridge, and not even the second rank of London, Edinburgh, Durham, and the rest. She had avoided being put in the polytechnic class, but only barely, so there were not to be any great academic laurels for Daisy.

  Instead, though, there was this stupid certificate of merit, Daisy thought, as she stumped up the podium steps.

  “Well done, dear!” Sister Clare said brightly, thrusting the gold-embossed piece of paper at her. “Smile for the school magazine.”

  Oh, God. Now this humiliation. Daisy blushed and twisted the scowl on her face into a rictus grin. Some impossibly tall Upper Sixth-former, eighteen with coltish legs, neat little breasts, and the long, glossy trademark St. Mary’s hair, was standing there snapping her for the Gazette.

  Now all the parents would know she hadn’t made it, as well as the entire school.

  I ought to feel grateful, Daisy told herself.

  But she didn’t. She couldn’t.

  She felt like a big loser who had blown her only chance.

  “You can go back to your place again now, dear,” said Sister Clare.

  “Thank you, Sister,” Daisy muttered.

  *

  “What about this one?”

  Isobel threw the prospectus across at Daisy. It landed with a little thud on top of all the other glossy brochures that were strewn across her coverlet.

  “Rackham University,” Daisy read. “A small university set in the heart of the ancient City of Oxford … oh, come on, there’s only one university in Oxford. All the other ones are secretaries’ colleges and places with ‘college’ stuck on the end of their names so they can overcharge stupid Americans who think they have something to do with actual Oxford University.”

  Isobel sniggered. “Mostly true. But Rackham’s not all that bad. They have an entrance requirement of a B and two Cs. You could make that easily. You’d make three Bs if you bothered to pay attention to any of your subjects.”

  Daisy pouted. “But they’re so boooring.”

  “You’re telling me. But no pain, no gain. They specialize in the arts. History, French, English, History of Art … and it’s near the university. Near Christ Church. Just think of all the interesting people you could meet there. In fact, I hear,” Isobel said slyly, “that Edward Powers is going to study at Christ Church.”

  Daisy sighed. “Subtle as a brick, aren’t you?”

  “I had a date with Tom last weekend.”

  “How did that go? I’m much more interested in your love life than in you trying to fix me up.”

  “And he mentioned,” said Isobel, not to be put off, “that Edward wanted to know where you were going to go to university.”

  “Edward Powers is very nice.”

  “So you said after your last dinner with him.”

  “But,” Daisy said, putting her foot down, “I don’t fancy him. Not at all, not even a little bit. I don’t like boys that are really skinny. I like muscles. Now, I know I am not a big catch and I should be grateful to Edward for dancing with me and being interested at all, and I am. But I’d rather be alone than date somebody just because I’m—I’m the desperate fat girl who should take anybody that’ll look twice at me.”

  Her cheeks had gone shiny pink with high spots of red right in the middle, like they did when she was more than common-or-garden embarrassed. This might be the most honest she’d ever been with Isobel. And herself, come to that.

  For a second her friend was stumped.

  “But you could like him as a friend,” she said.

  “Of course. He is my friend.” Daisy smiled. “He’s so clever. And he’s such a gentleman. How could anybody not like him?”

  “Well, then. I’m trying for St. Anne’s. So that would make two friends. And you always said that beauty mattered to you.”

  “It matters so much.” Daisy finally paid attention. “I couldn’t bear some grim, industrial town somewhere. I need trees, or at least beautiful buildings.”

  “Rackham’s red-brick,” Isobel admitted, “but it’s near everything beautiful. Walking around is gorgeous in Oxford. And it’s full of music, lots of chamber performances, debates—you can join the Union…”

  Daisy looked at the prospectus.

  “You can read English.”

  “If I have to
study one more Shakespeare play, I think I’ll burst. Friends, Romans, Countrymen, fuck off,” Daisy declaimed.

  Isobel burst out laughing. “You’re awful. It’s Miss Crawford, she can make anything seem crap.”

  “Maybe History of Art. I wouldn’t mind taking lots of trips to museums and galleries.”

  “There you go, then.” Isobel grinned. “Thank your lucky stars you’re not me. I have to cram three hours a night for the Oxford entrance examination.”

  “Yeah.” Daisy smiled at her friend, but her thoughts were sarcastic. Thank heavens she wasn’t in a class like Isobel! What a stroke of luck, Daisy wasn’t going to Oxford University, she wasn’t going to distinguish herself in any way.

  Close, but no cigar. It seemed to be the story of her life.

  *

  Daisy spent the next six months doing some halfhearted studying. The teasing had pretty much stopped since Edward Powers had called at the school to see her. Victoria Campbell and her cronies made cruel remarks about Edward being a nine-stone weakling, but not too many; they were, Daisy had realized with a delicious jolt of pleasure, jealous.

  It didn’t really matter to girls like Victoria if a boy wasn’t all that good-looking if he had money and was the heir to a title.

  When Edward’s father died, he would be Sir Edward, and his wife would be Lady Powers. Daisy hadn’t realized the depths of Victoria’s snobbery until she watched her reaction when Isobel told her about Edward being the son of a baronet. Her enemy had gone pale around the gills. Later, Daisy had had the delicious pleasure of catching Victoria poring over a Burke’s in the library, open at the Powers page.

  “Hadley Park,” Victoria was muttering to Catherine Jackson, her new lieutenant. “Eighty acres of deer park, built in the eighteenth century, with a lake and…”

  “I wouldn’t bother, Victoria. He’s taken,” Daisy had said triumphantly. Then she’d felt bad, because she knew she wasn’t interested in Edward, not like that. But the look on Victoria’s face was enough for her.

  “I wasn’t looking at that. Mr. Skinny-Minny, you can have him,” Victoria said, but she blushed scarlet. “You two will make a perfect ten.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Daisy patted the ink drawing of the Powers coat of arms and grinned smugly. “Bothers you, doesn’t it?”

  Then she had walked out, without getting the history textbook she’d wanted. But Daisy knew how to make an exit.

  Victoria had avoided Daisy after that. Most of the crueler girls did. Daisy understood. They judged a person’s worth by men’s standards. A rich boy wanted Daisy, and so now she wasn’t such a loser. Even though she was exactly the same plump dumpling she’d always been, with the same bad grades.

  Daisy worked out her time at school with nobody paying attention to her. Even Isobel didn’t bother with her quite as much, because she didn’t need so much defending. And she wasn’t writing anymore. A sense of listlessness and lethargy overcame her. Daisy coasted through her exams, and managed two Bs and a C, which both her parents and the school were thrilled with.

  She knew she could have done better, but she didn’t see the point.

  Rackham accepted her for History of Art, and Daisy called to confirm she was taking up her place. When her parents came to pick her up from St. Mary’s for the last time, Daisy felt a sense of relief. School was done with.

  Now she was an adult. Oxford would be different, it had to be. Something had to change in her life.

  Ten

  “Stop living paycheck to paycheck!”

  The beaming faces of the people in the infomercial stared back at Rose. A man in his early twenties wheeled a yellow Porsche onto the screen as he pulled up to a comfortable-looking suburban house with a landscaped garden.

  “Yes!” said the booming voice. “You too can reach for your dreams with real estate! No need to rent! Houses can be purchased for no money down! Start with no credit! Put cash in your pocket every month!”

  Rose reached up and turned the TV off.

  “Mom,” she said, “how’s your credit?”

  Her mother laughed, tossing the pasta.

  “What credit?” she said.

  *

  After her dinner, Rose told her mother she was going to the library.

  “That’s real good, honey.” Mrs. Fiorello smiled proudly, glad that Rose was finally going to do some homework. Her grades had plummeted, but her parents had attributed it to stress. Rose was so responsible, they just knew she’d come around.

  Rose walked to the large, uninviting brick building three streets away. Her backpack was empty of schoolbooks. She walked straight to the real estate investing section, then to the personal finance section. Ten minutes later she was back in her apartment with a full load of books.

  “I’ll be down later,” she told her parents. “I’m studying for something special.”

  “What is it, honey?” Daniella asked.

  Rose thought about it. “Just a project.”

  She went into her new bedroom, shut the door, and laid the library books out on the secondhand desk Paul had found her at the consignment store. Her bedroom was plain, apart from the posters. Other kids her age had Def Leppard and Mötley Crüe staring back at them from the walls, maybe with a touch of Madonna or the Beastie Boys.

  Rose Fiorello had pictures of skyscrapers. New York prints in black and white, tattered around the edges so she’d gotten them for a discount; fifty cents, mostly. She was in the low-rise, low-rent, dirty Bronx, but she had glittering dreams; soaring buildings, covered in wraparound granite and sparkling glass, with smooth black tinted windows, jabbing into the sky.

  And now she had these books to start off with. Eagerly, Rose bent her lovely head, her glossy raven hair pooling onto the chipped wood in front of her, and started to read.

  After less than an hour, it became clear to her that “no credit” was a crock. The chapters for “no credit” dealt with how to get yourself credit.

  “Take a thousand dollars and deposit it in the bank, then ask for a secured loan and—”

  And where was she supposed to get a thousand dollars?

  “Borrow it from a relative,” the infomercial king suggested.

  Um, yeah. So many desperate people would pay three hundred dollars for the infomercial course to find out the first great “secret” was to borrow money from a relative. If you had a relative rich enough to loan you a thousand bucks, you wouldn’t need these books, would you?

  Rose refused to be put off. After all, if you could buy real estate for free with no credit, nobody would be renting. Her parents paid their rent check each month and never saw that money again. Nobody would do that unless they had to.

  Still, there had to be a way.

  She thought about the money she’d saved up so assiduously from her summer job at the accountant’s. There was over two thousand dollars there, just sitting in a bank. Her parents’ credit was worse than nonexistent. Rose mulled this over, then turned back to her books.

  It seemed simple enough. Get enough money together for a two-family house, rent out one unit, live in the lower one … that way, you would get rent to cover the mortgage, each month.

  Of course, you needed to find the right property, cheap enough. And the right loan, and you’d need to join a credit union, and check tenants, and you’d need to buy in an area with great rentability and one which was improving …

  Rose read until darkness fell, then switched on her light and read some more.

  She was startled when her door opened sharply, and her father stood there, shielding his eyes in his worn-out bathrobe.

  “What the…? You know what time it is, Rose?”

  “No.” Rose rubbed her eyes. They were aching, but she hadn’t noticed.

  “It’s two A.M. Get to bed, now! You got school tomorrow.”

  She tumbled into her bed and tried to sleep, but she was too excited. Rose tossed and turned, full of adrenaline. There had to be a way to find properties better than the crazy stuff th
ey put in the get-rich-quick books. Rose wasn’t a sucker; she knew it was all a load of crock. “Driving for Dollars,” “Hand Out Flyers,” “Hold a Real Estate Seminar” … Puh-leese. And what were you supposed to do in the real world? She wasn’t going to start her empire that way.

  What did the professionals do?

  Rose finally got to sleep a few fitful hours before dawn woke her. She never drew her curtains; natural light was the best alarm clock in the world. When she rubbed the sleep from her eyes, she felt a crackle of excitement, despite her tiredness.

  All the books talked about appraisals. An independent appraiser would value the house for the bank. You could hardly buy a house without one. Mostly, the get-rich-quick books talked about ways to avoid paying for the appraisal, which could be well over a hundred dollars. But wouldn’t appraisers be the best-placed people in the world to know what a house was worth, and what it cost? They might even get to know where the bargains were. At any rate, they wouldn’t get ripped off. How could they, their job was to know what everything was worth.

  Rose figured she had two years to learn. She’d be eighteen then. She made a vow; on her eighteenth birthday she was going to own a house.

  She packed up the real-estate books in her backpack and got dressed in her school uniform, ready to take the bus into Manhattan to go back to school. Her parents had been determined not to break that last link to their old life, and Rose agreed. She wanted to be in Manhattan.

  That was where the action was.

  At school that day, in between paying as little attention as she could get away with, Rose studied her books at break. At lunch she went to the phone booth in the hall, which kept a copy of the Yellow Pages chained to the wall. Rose took a pen and her rough notebook, flipped to the Property section, and started writing down names and numbers.