A Royal Match (25 page)

‘I’m not here to pick up after you nor nothing neither, so don’t you go giving me none of your airy graces, madam, because I won’t ‘ave it, ‘ear?’

Honey sneered at her. Honey is the queen of the sneer. Actually she’s sneered so much that she’s upset the balance of collagen in her lips so that the sneer side has a permanent nasty swelling on it.

‘Did you hear me, madam?’

Honey ignored her. ‘Oopa, I said in the top drawer! Are you deaf, because if you are I’ll complain to Daddy,’ she screeched.

‘I mean it, madam. I’m not like the likes of ‘im, that fellow there. I’m not ‘ere to doff my cap to no one,’ she warned, making to prod poor Oopa with her cane.

But Oopa, like his mistress, sneered as he avoided Miss Bibsmore’s prod. Honey snapped, ‘Oh shut up and leave my manservant alone, you mad old witch.’

Portia and I looked at one another, both of us equally uncertain as to whether we should do or say something to defuse the tension between Honey and Miss Bibsmore. Then Portia raised an eyebrow in Honey’s direction so I knew that she was as appalled as I was at the way Honey had just slacked Miss Bibsmore down. Arousing the wrath of a House Spinster at this early stage of the term would mean misery for all of us. And that made me feel better, like maybe Portia was on my side and actually quite cool. Even her valet with his impeccable manners raised a brow. Portia nodded at him and he made a slight bow and departed.

Miss Bibsmore glared at Honey. Her eyes actually flashed. ‘Right, that’s it. Off ‘e goes. Go on, git out!’ she shrieked, hustling a confused Oopa out the door with her stick. The poor fellow looked terrified, but soon he was gone and Miss Bibsmore had Honey in her sights again. ‘There’ll be no bowing and scraping ‘ere, madam. Grandee or not, I’m warning you now, I don’t like the cut of your jib. You’ll be treated like anyone else while you’re in my dormitory, understood?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Honey shrieked back at her. ‘Do you know who I am? Daddy sued the last person who threatened to treat me like anyone else, and he won’t think twice about doing it again.’

I looked over at Portia and our eyes met again in a look
of shared disbelief, but the rest of her face was concealed behind the magazine. I suspect she was hiding her suppressed giggles – the same ones I was trying to suppress by applying my lip-gloss.

Miss Bibsmore grinned. ‘He can sue ‘imself sick far as I’m concerned. I is what I is. I spent the first nine years of my life in a pram! If I wanted to see the light I ‘ad to peer out from under the canopy. No footman, no butler, no servant for me, just a pram and an old tartan rug that kept falling off. Then, when I was well enough to get out of the pram, they put my legs in these braces.’ With that, Miss Bibsmore hiked up her skirt and stuck one of her metal-encased shins athletically up in the air. ‘So if you think I’m afraid of your father setting a pack of nancy fancy lawyers on me, you’ll be disappointed.’

‘Well, perhaps the school will feel differently,’ Honey began mildly, but there was an obvious threat there.

I looked at Portia and Portia looked at me. We were struggling to stop our eyebrows riding up our foreheads by this point. Neither of us knew what to say.

Honey, on the other hand, was far from stuck for words. ‘… when my lawyers shower them in litigation suits for allowing an insane old witch like you to care for me.’

Miss Bibsmore’s eyes were glinting gleefully as she asked, ‘Insane am I? Well then, you had better watch out all the more, ‘adn’t you?’

Portia rose imperiously from her bed, clearly deciding enough was enough. ‘Thank you, Miss Bibsmore, I think
we’re all clear now and we wouldn’t want to keep you from your rounds.’ She spoke with a calmness of one whose family traced its roots back to the Domesday Book and had survived the Catholic purgings of England with their title and lands intact.

Miss Bibsmore seemed to concede Portia’s suggestion. That is, she stuck her lower lip out and humphed. One thing was certain, though: she was on the warpath and Honey had been marked down as Enemy Number One.

‘I am
so
complaining,’ Honey muttered under her breath. Then she turned to Portia. ‘I’m calling Daddy
now
.’ She began to punch numbers into her phone, but Miss Bibsmore snatched the tiny little gem of a mobile from her, popped it in the pocket of her long skirt and shuffled out of the room. ‘And you can take that poor creature down to the pet shed an’ all. No pets in rooms or I’ll have you rusticated.’

Miss Bibsmore didn’t officially have the power to rusticate girls, but the fact that she even used the word proved she wasn’t to be messed with. I was definitely going to regret the thought running through my mind, but as I watched Honey’s mouth open and close in uncharacteristic helpless shock, I couldn’t help admiring Miss Bibsmore’s style. I was beginning to think I liked the cut of her jib. And as I caught Portia’s eye I got the feeling she might even be feeling the same way.

Within seconds of Miss Bibsmore’s departure, Star and Georgina burst into our room in a tumble of long limbs, long hair and laughter. They tripped over my fencing kit, which had been dumped on the floor by Oopa, and landed on the floor in a giggling heap.

‘Guess what!’ asked Star, untangling herself from Georgina and dive-bombing onto Honey’s bed by the window. I looked at Honey, anticipating fireworks, but before she could formulate her put-down, Georgina declared, ‘It’s the best news ever!’

I thought they were going to mention how we’d all had our navels pierced in the break. I hadn’t had the mettle to tell them that Parental Control had made me take mine out. Star pulled Georgina onto the bed and waved me over.

‘Please tell me, Star’s finally being sanctioned?’ Honey hazarded sarcastically.

‘We’re sharing!’ cried Georgina, throwing her arm over Star’s shoulder. The two of them started bouncing up and down on the bed, punching the air with their fists.

‘Wow, that’s soooo cool,’ I told them enthusiastically, although really I couldn’t help feeling a bit disappointed. I remembered a time when Star and I were considered the school freaks – not that I enjoyed being the school freak, obviously, but it meant we were closer than close. Besides, as far as Star was concerned, Georgina and Honey et al. were the school freaks. She hadn’t even wanted to be friends with Georgina initially – that was my idea. Now they were finishing each other’s sentences.

Georgina went, ‘Calypso! You have
got
to meet Indiamaca …’

Pulling a stray lock of her strawberry blonde hair from her mouth, Star added, ‘Yaah, she’s a new girl, an
actual
princess from Nigeria. Only she calls herself Indie.’

They were still jumping up and down on Honey’s bed. I guess Honey probably felt she wasn’t in a position to say anything as Georgina was the closest thing she had to a real friend. Even though Georgina knows how toxic Honey is, the two of them have known each other since they were four, when they were packed off to school at Hill House in Knightsbridge. They learnt to ride together, ski together, use Daddy’s plastic together and pull together. Plus their biological fathers still attend the same hunt meet, so I guess that gives them a bond that won’t ever totally be broken.

Watching Georgina’s exuberant bed-jumping, I was quite glad it
wasn’t
my bed now. The mattresses at Saint Augustine’s are about as comfortable as lying on lumpy porridge because we all jump up and down on them.

‘Calypso, she’s soooo nice you have to love her and also she’s got this amazingly cool limited edition Hermès bag. They covered it in a purple Nigerian fabric just for her. So individual,’ Star enthused.

‘And loads of vintage clothes, all purple because that’s her favourite colour,’ Georgina added.

‘Oh, how cool,’ I said, trying to get into the swing of their enthusiasm for this new girl.

‘And she plays guitar! I showed her one of my songs, Calypso, and she
totally
got it,’ Star said.

I should explain that Star writes these Gothic anthems about the despair and pointlessness of being a successful rock star’s daughter and the miserable privilege of her life in an all-girls boarding school. Love Star though I do, even
I
want to eat my own tongue when she starts playing her minor chord compositions.

‘She said she loved my angst. Isn’t that gorgeous?’

‘I love your angst too!’ I blurted for want of something more ridiculous to say.

Thankfully though, Star didn’t hear my pathetic suck-up attempt because Georgina had cut in breathlessly. ‘She used to go to Cheltenham Ladies’, only she said it was too plebbie. She’s already pulled loads of Harrow boys.’ Harrow on the Hill, known as The Dump on the Hump, was
another toffer-than-thou school for boys. There was always a lot of debate amongst the girls of Saint Augustine’s about whether it was cooler to pull Eades boys or Harrow boys. Eades was a lot closer to us, which made Harrow seem more exotic, although that was mainly because we didn’t pull as many of them and they didn’t get to break our hearts as much.

Star went, ‘I told her about you and Freddie, Calypso, and she can’t wait to meet
you
. We both love her, don’t we, George? She’s our new best friend.’

‘I can’t wait to meet her either, she sounds really cool,’ I sort of lied. I say ‘sort of’ because while I was thrilled that my friends were in a great room together, I couldn’t help feeling a bit jealous. Okay, make that hugely jealous. Especially about Indiamaca, because if she was their New Best Friend that made me … the
old
best friend! And when did Georgina become George anyway?

I looked out over the lawns that trailed into the oak woods with their flaming leaves and wondered how long before the trees would be bare and we’d have snow. I love snow. Star and I used to sneak off up into the woods on our own in winter to make snow angels.

It’s a Saint Augustine’s tradition to have snowball fights with the new Year Seven girls. Once a year, someone has to throw a snowball at Sister Constance as she steps out for her morning perambulations (that’s what she calls her meditative wanders though the school grounds and woods). Sister just laughs these attacks off and throws
snowballs back at us – unlike the lay teachers, who, if you hit them with a snowball, shower you in blues.

Once Star was gated for hitting Ms Topler, our evil English teacher. It was not only an overreaction but resulted in Star’s parents and every member of Dirge turning up at the school to complain. Star’s mad extended family is like a pack of wild things when they’re on a mission. All the members of Dirge and their roadies and friends think of Star as a surrogate daughter. It’s so sweet when they all turn up for Parent Teacher Day, and the school is infiltrated with long-haired tattooed men and their wildly dressed rock chick girlfriends.

Star says parents don’t pay the equivalent of twice the average annual wage in order to have their daughters taught by teachers who have no sense of fun. I think Sister Constance agrees because she overruled the gating and Ms Topler got a telling off.

But now as I sat listening to my friends’ excited chatter about their new exotic
friend
, I wondered if maybe Star would prefer to do snow angels with ‘George’ now, or purple star angels with Indie! So much for Sister Constance’s rule about not sharing with the same girl two terms in a row, I thought to myself bitterly.

‘So much for Sister Constance and her rule about not sharing with the same girl two terms running,’ Honey sneered, eerily echoing my own thoughts.

‘Sod’s Law, darling.’ Georgina shrugged as she air-kissed Honey. ‘But anyway, tell me about your summer
in Kenya, darling,’ Georgina asked airily. I noted the way she pronounced Kenya
Keenyah
. ‘Star and I had the
best
time in LA with Calypso,’ she told her, grinning at me fondly.

I was always very aware of the way the other girls spoke when I came back from LA. The way you speak defines you, and after four years here, I pretty much sound like them. Even so, my accent still lets me down when I spend too long in LA, which leaves me open to very bad pisstakes of the way I speak. Ironic, given that in LA everyone does very bad piss-takes of my English accent.

‘Absolutely terrific,’ Honey replied, stroking Absinthe’s mauve fur with her mauve-coloured nails.

I wondered what Miss Bibsmore would say about her nails. I suppose Miss Bibsmore hadn’t terrified Honey that badly or she would have legged it to the pet shed with Absinthe.

I was looking over at Portia, who had barely said a word. I wondered if, like me, she was feeling left out, or whether she was really absorbed by the magazine she was reading and rereading.

Suddenly Honey dropped Absinthe like a bag of sugar on the bed and started posing in front of the mirror. ‘Goffy – that’s what we call Mummy’s latest husband, Lord Aginet – bought me Oopa,
the
most adorable manservant ever.’

Star and I rolled our eyes at one another, but Honey didn’t notice as she played with her expensively long,
Nicky Clarke-personally-coloured hair. ‘Portia met him,’ she continued. ‘Darling, didn’t you think him adorable?’ she asked rhetorically, not even looking at Portia for confirmation. ‘He was a refugee. The luckiest refugee in the world as it turns out. Goffy discovered him in Nairobi and said I could have him.’