‘Okay, bye, Calypso. Call us tomorrow and let us know how you’re settling in,’ Bob told me as he planted a kiss on my head.
Sarah, barely able to pull herself away from the conversation, just gave me the American hand sign for okay, which made my friends tear up with laughter. When I first pitched up in this land of rain and drizzle, I soon learned that it is not de rigueur to make hand gestures to people who are actually close enough to hear you speak. I suppose I should be glad she didn’t try and high-five me. She does that too.
Sure enough, all the way down to the pet shed, Clemmie and Indie started dementedly hand-signing to one another. This is what the English do; take the piss (or as we say at school, extract the urine). It’s a national pastime. Even the nuns and staff do it.
SEVEN
Operation Dumping Boys
Star was already standing in the snow-frosted pet run with her pet rat and snake. She was wearing her regulation Doc Martens (pink today), tartan miniskirt and a ripped designer cashmere jumper. Her reticulated python, Brian, was slung around her neck like a pash, while Hilda the rat was peeping out her jumper, completing her rock royalty look. Even with punk accoutrements, Star still looked like a naughty cherub with her long strawberry-blonde hair, big green eyes and milky white skin.
I spotted Honey and Georgina sharing a fag in the trees of Pullers’ Wood. From a distance they looked like sisters with their willowy figures and long blonde hair. Like Honey, Georgina’s legs were completely exposed, but at least Georgina was wearing a black cashmere jumper and a baby blue pash around her neck as a nod to the weather. She was also hugging her teddy bear, Tobias, who is a full fee-paying student at Saint Augustine’s.
After an excited session of air-kissing, Star pointed into the trees and smirked. ‘Have you seen Honey’s new bodyguard?’
I spotted the orange-robed Buddhist lurking in the woods nearby, seemingly in some deep meditation-type activity.
‘Yaah, I saw him earlier. What’s that about?’ I asked.
‘Honey’s afraid there may be a plot to kidnap her now that her latest stepfather is in the House of Lords.’
‘But, erm, aren’t Buddhists meant to be all meditative and peaceful?’ I asked.
‘Yaah totally. But nonviolent security is really big at the moment. Tatler did some big spread on nonviolent security firms in Knightsbridge,’ Clems explained.
I felt like fainting with the madness of it all, but then Georgina spotted us and came running over.
After another air-kiss-a-thon, I passed Dorothy to Georgina, who co-owns her with me. ‘Dorothy! You’ve turned into a chubba lub!’ she told our plump little rabbit through chattering teeth. ‘You’ll never be model-spotted now, darling.’ She kissed Dorothy on the nose.
‘Blame Sarah,’ I told her, giving Dorothy’s ears a little scratch. ‘She wouldn’t stop feeding her scraps even though I kept telling her, she’s a sentient being and not a recycling bin!’
‘Hilda’s put on weight too,’ Star said, referring to her pet rat. ‘I’ve had to put her on the GI diet for rats. Mummy had a specialist flown out from New York to council her.’
The rest of us nodded gravely, as if having dietary specialists flown in to keep a rat’s figure trim was a perfectly reasonable thing to do. When I first arrived at Saint Augustine’s, I found everything about these spoilt, confident, sophisticated girls peculiar. I guess after you’ve lived with people long enough, though, you get used to their odd little ways.
When I was certain Honey couldn’t hear us, I asked Georgina, ‘Who’s Honey rooming with?’
‘Fenella and Perdita at Polo Central,’ replied Georgina, referring to the polo twins.
Fenella and Perdita were not only identical twins but mad keen polo players. Their ponies were stabled nearby, and they were wildly popular with the polo boys at Eades who only spoke in polo-speak.
‘It is seriously funny,’ Georgina continued. ‘Honey came to find me for a whinge. Apparently, every spare inch of wall space was already plastered with pictures of polo ponies and fit players by the time she arrived. She was absolutely livid, and Siddhartha, her security guard, kept telling her to breathe. Tobias laughed so hard he practically fell apart at the seams.’
We all knew how Tobias felt, because the first thing Honey did once her manservant had unpacked was to cover her pin board and wall space with paparazzi shots of herself. Honey adores society shots of herself chatting to other society clones. I could well imagine that she may have met her It Girl match with Fen and Perdita, who didn’t rate anything outside the world of polo. They’d have absolutely no patience with Honey’s bitchy humour, which meant Honey would have to hang out in someone else’s room in order to get her bitch fix.
Oh no! Honey Hell, here I come.
Don’t be so paranoid, I told myself. Honey would probably go to Georgina’s room. After all, they went to nursery school together, and their bio fathers hunt together. ‘What about you, Georgina, who are you rooming with?’ I inquired idly, hoping it would be someone Honey-friendly.
‘Beatrice and Izzie,’ Georgina replied, failing to suppress her laughter. Izzie was quite scary, only in a less confrontational way than Honey.
I had heard on the txt-vine that Honey had pulled Izzie’s boyfriend at some New Year’s party in Val d’Isere. ‘Is it true that Honey had a lip-fest with Izzie’s boyfriend?’ I asked now as my panic began to set in.
Star and Georgina looked at one another and burst out laughing. ‘It was hilarious. When Izzie walked in and saw Honey in our room, she spat the dummy, darling. She gave Honey the most ferocious look, it almost melted Honey’s collagen!’
‘What did Honey do?’ Clemmie asked, her Tiffany-box blue eyes wide with curiosity.
Georgina shrugged. ‘You know Honey, she would have got on her high horse, but Izzie looked like she might slap her, so she brazened it out and denied everything. Put it this way; I don’t think Honey will be visiting my room very much this term.’
I wasn’t being paranoid. ‘So hang on. If her room’s out because of Fen and Perdita, and your room’s out because of Izzie, where will Honey hang out?’ I asked, trying to keep the desperation out of my voice.
‘I’m rooming with Portia and Arabella,’ Star said. ‘So she won’t dare come near us.’
‘Don’t worry, darling,’ Indie said, reading my mind and throwing a comforting arm around me. ‘She hates me too.’
This was true, but while Indie would give as good as she got where Honey was concerned, her presence alone might not be enough to keep Honey away. The fly in the ointment was Clemmie, who was soooo nice to everyone, including Honey. I had been Honey’s torture toy from the day I arrived at Saint Augustine’s. With my American accent, lack of grand ancestors or old money, I was a red flag to a mad bull. It was as inevitable as brown slops on a Sunday. Our room would become Honey’s new torture parlour.
As if summoned by satanic forces, Honey tottered over to join us. Her orange-robed bodyguard followed at a serene distance. ‘Laters, peasants. I’m going back up to the institution,’ she groaned, flicking her butt at my feet as she sprayed herself with Febreze to get rid of the smoke smell. Then, confirming my worst fears, she added to Clemmie, ‘I’ll see you a la mo, Clems. I’ll be hanging out in your room this term. Fen and Perdita are too polo for words, and I’ve soooo much to tell you, darling.’
‘Laters,’ Clemmie said, smiling sweetly at Honey.
‘Laters,’ we all added to Honey’s blue-with-cold back. But for me, the word ‘laters’ held more than a touch of menace.
‘I know she’ll haunt our room,’ I blurted after her entourage was out of earshot.
‘So did you dump Freds?’ Star asked, changing the subject in her usual radical way.
‘Why on earth would I dump Freds?’
‘Erm … because he makes you fall asleep and snore?’
‘He soooo does not.’
‘Well, he finds you disappointing.’
‘Don’t be mad. He
does not find me disappointing.’
‘Well, why did you say he did?’
‘I didn’t.’
‘Yes, you did. And that’s another thing. All you do is go on and on ad infinitum about Freds.’
I briefly toyed with the idea of fainting to avoid this tedious conversational cul-de-sac, but then Georgina agreed with Star. ‘We do spend far too much time obsessing over boys.’
I looked from girl to girl. I was suddenly surrounded by an anti-boy cult. ‘Boys are a vital part of existence!’ I reminded them.
‘I quite like boys. Well, pulling boys anyway,’ Clemmie added. She was looking practically as horrified as me.
Indie didn’t look too keen on the boy-dumping idea either. She hadn’t said anything, but I was almost certain-ish she’d been fantasising about Malcolm all through the holidays.
Star looked directly at her as she said, ‘I’m going to be more like Indie and focus on my music.’
Indie nodded expressionlessly, blinded by the brightness of Star’s million-watt personality. There was also the small detail that Indie hadn’t actually pulled Malcolm yet.
‘What about Malcolm?’ I tested Indie.
‘Who’s Malcolm?’ she asked, blinking her chocolaty eyes with confusion – as if she wasn’t sick with love for him at all.
I looked around at my friends. They were all in this Dumping Freddie scheme together. It was a cabal of evil.
So I fainted.
EIGHT
In Defence of the Realm
‘I’m not dumping Freds,’ I told Star firmly after she’d put Brian on top of me to bring me round. She had even made him give me a little kiss with his flicky-out tongue.
‘It’s taken me all my life to pull a prince and I’m not about to throw him back now, just as things are going well.’ I passed Brian back.
‘We can still pull boys, though, can’t we?’ pleaded Clemmie again. Pulling boys was, after all, her favourite sport. The thing about Clemmie was, once she’d pulled them, she tossed them right back. And she never thought about them again.
Star ignored her. Placing her hands on my shoulders, she looked straight into my eyes. ‘You’ll be too busy for Freds, darling. Apart from your fencing and your GCSEs, you promised to help Indie and me with our lyrics, remember.’
Whoops. I had almost forgotten about agreeing to write lyrics for Star and Indie’s band. Their main interest was writing miserable minor chord compositions about the horrors of being rock royalty – or in Indie’s case, real royalty – and going to the most exclusive boarding school in England. Love them though I do, their songs made me feel like attending my own funeral. Star knows that lyrics aren’t her strong point, so when Indie came to the school with her guitar last term, Star started harbouring a dream that the three of us would combine our talents for the greater good of music. She’d sing and play bass, Indie would play lead guitar – or ‘the six strings of the devil,’ as Father Conway calls it – and I’d write the words.
‘But I haven’t written anything yet,’ I admitted. ‘I mean, with Bob and Sarah here and –’
‘I know, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. We’ve all got soooo much going on. Boys will just be in the way. Besides, Freds is too freakishly normal for you.’
I wished she’d stop saying that.
‘Star’s right,’ Georgina said as she placed Dorothy on the snow-frosted grass for a hop.
‘Et tu, Georgina?’ I cried, shoving an imagined dagger into my heart.
She nudged me affectionately. ‘Pulling boys is fun, but the whole boyfriend saga has become très, très, très boring, darling. No offence, Calypso.’
‘But what about love?’ I asked, deeply offended.
‘Now I feel like fainting,’ Star groaned. ‘I dumped Kev, and he was low maintenance, darling.’ What she really meant was, he did anything she said. ‘Freddie is far too high maintenance.’
‘He’s not a GI diet,’ I said crossly. ‘He’s my boyfriend. Whatever happened to “for better or worse”? It’s not as if we’re together twenty-four-seven or anything sad like that. I’m here at school all the time. Well, apart from exeats and weekends after Saturday classes.’
‘How many times a day do you txt him?’ Georgina asked me as she plaited her long, blonde, obedient hair.
‘I don’t know. A few.’ I shrugged, running a hand through my own rebellious blonde locks that never obeyed a single command.
‘Over twenty?’ Star asked, folding her arms and contorting her gorgeous features, taking on the expression of a menopausal matron.
I shrugged again. ‘Maybe. I don’t exactly chalk them up.’ I tried to flick my hair in a careless gesture of defiance, but it got stuck to my lip-gloss and I spent the next few minutes wiping it off. I picked up Dorothy, partly because I thought her little paws might be frozen but mostly for emotional comfort. She was all wiggly and eager to be put back down.
‘Okay, so, let’s say you txt him twenty times a day,’ Georgina suggested. ‘Then, for argument’s sake, let’s say he txts you back twenty times. That’s forty txts you’re reading and rereading.’
‘You’re scarily good at hard sums, darling,’ I told her sarcastically. Then to be horrible, I teased, ‘Maybe you should marry Mr Templeton?’ Mr Templeton was our horrible little maths teacher who would have put even dear old Einstein off his hard sums.
But all Georgina did was roll her eyes.
‘Plus, you agonise for ages and ages over your txts. And then you analyse whatever he txts you,’ Star added.
‘That is soooo untrue,’ I lied.
Star and the others all giggled. I suppose I have forwarded a lot of my txts to Star before sending them to Freds. But still, she shouldn’t have put the Doc Marten in like that.
‘I’ve had soooo many conversations with you, Calypso, agonising over the number of kisses you should send Freddie and analysing the significance of how many he sends to you. And then there are all those txts you forward me.’
Talk about betrayal. ‘Hah!’ was all I could say to my traitor of a friend. I looked to Clemmie and Indie for support, but their eyes remained fixed on Star. Star can be très, très persuasive.
‘I just think we should get the whole boy thing into perspective, Calypso.’
‘What does “into perspective” mean?’ I asked, rolling my eyes like a loon.
‘Spending less time focusing on boyfriends and more time focusing on the things we really want to do, like music and writing.’
‘I just like pulling boys, really,’ Clemmie piped up.
I loved Clemmie.
Star looked at our boy-mad friend and smiled. ‘Pulling them is fine, I’m not talking about that. It’s just once you start hanging out too much with one boy and daydreaming about him, it becomes a pain.’
I didn’t find daydreaming about Freds the least bit painful. But I didn’t say anything. He was the perfect boyfriend. He had the most lovely sticky-outy black hair and kissable lips and he always made me feel wonderful, apart from when he gave me disappointed looks. But that hadn’t happened for, well, since the other day. Which proved he must be getting used to my odd ways. Which meant now was not the time to dump him.
Star clicked her fingers in front of my face. ‘See! Look at yourself, Calypso. You’re drifting off into Freddieland right now. I can see it in your eyes. They’ve gone all moon-shaped.’
And so another circus of laughter ensued.
A snowflake landed on my nose. As more flakes followed, I put my hands out to catch them. I usually loved it when it snows, but all I felt then was a horrible sense of doom. My mother calls me the Queen of Doomsday Prophesies. But then again she also thinks boys will respect me more if I wear Wellies.
‘How did Kev take the dump?’ I asked Star, hoping to divert attention away from Freds and me.
‘Oh, he cried,’ Star replied. If it wasn’t Star, I would have sworn I detected a wobble in her voice. ‘And then I cried,’ she added. ‘It was quite the cry-fest, actuall
y.’
‘That’s really sad,’ I told her, but all she did was shrug as we both watched the white snowflakes falling on her pink Doc Martens.
Yaah, but then I told myself: Indie, Calypso and I are going to be flat out with Sloaney Trash, and I did a cartwheel.’
‘What’s Sloaney Trash?’ asked Clemmie.
‘That’s what we’re calling the band,’ Indie told her. ‘We only decided last night.’
A Royal Mess Page 23