A Royal Match (36 page)

About to go quad bike riding. x C:
Alright 4 some! Freds x

I was so pleased that he was impressed. Even though we didn’t actually
go
quad bike riding, it wasn’t a total lie. We did
talk
about riding the quads, and Star’s father, Tiger, was quad bike riding with friends all weekend.

The truth was we were so tired from three weeks of hard work all we could do was laze about in Star’s enormous, king-sized, black-patent four-poster bed, with its heavy maroon drapery, eating sweets and watching DVDs. Star is so laid back she even told me I could keep Dorothy in the room. Even though most rabbits aren’t house trained,
Star was positive Dorothy would do her wee and poos in the en suite, but of course she didn’t, so the whole room had to be sprayed with Febreze.

Star even tried to train her by rushing her off to the loo and rubbing her paws in the wood shavings like you do when you train a cat, but it wasn’t wildly effective. Hilda and Brian stayed with us too, and all three seemed to get on surprisingly well, apart from when Brian slithered over me in the night and I woke up screaming and had to pretend I’d had a nightmare. Star would be mortified if she thought I’d screamed because of Brian.

We kept talking about doing stuff, but neither of us pressed the issue. Even on Saturday night when a few bands and their flunkies turned up for a party, neither of us felt like going down or even playing our traditional pranks.

I was just happy to be alone with Star, hanging out just like we used to. Neither of us touched on any subject other than sweets, movies and our pets. We had a pet trick competition, but as we were the only two judges, it always ended up in a tie. But we liked that.

Star was trying to give up fags, and I was helping her by remembering to slap the nicotine patches on her.

‘Oh, Sister Nicotine, you’re such a good nurse,’ she said as I stuck a patch on her one evening.

I had developed a special make-believe voice and old-dear walk for my part. ‘Come on, luvvie take your medicine like a good little dear.’ Then, out of the blue, Star confronted me about Portia.

‘So what’s up with you and Portia?’ she said as I smoothed the patch on her shoulder.

‘What do you mean, what’s up? We share a dorm; we’re perfectly civil.’

‘Aaah yes, civil. Civility can cover a multitude of sins, darling, we both know that.’

‘Well, she started it.’

‘Started what?’

‘I don’t know what.’

‘Well then why don’t
you
stop it. Talk to her.’

‘But that’s just it. You can’t talk to
her
. She’s seriously …’ I struggled to find the phrase I needed – something other than stuck-up.

Star helped me out by suggesting words like ‘nice,’ ‘decent,’ ‘respectful’ and ‘loyal.’ ‘Look, Calypso, I saw you fencing with Portia the other day, going for her like you were Zorro or something. What were you thinking?’

‘You were there! In the salle? Why didn’t you tell me?’ I shouted angrily.

‘Calm down. Look, I came to see you, okay? If you want to know the truth I felt bad about everything. Dropping fencing, not spending enough time with you, everything. And then when I saw you going at Portia like that, I couldn’t believe it was you!’

I dropped my head. ‘I know,’ I replied quietly.

‘Why, then?’

‘Everything’s changed, Star,’ I told her, and as I heard the words came out of my mouth I felt like Pandora
opening up the box that would change the world forever.

Star ignored me for a bit, so I pushed the point. ‘Come on, Star, you know it has. You’re always with Indie now.’

She looked annoyed, and Star can look wildly scary when she’s cross. ‘Nothing’s changed, Calypso,’ she insisted in a voice that brooked no argument. ‘Nothing, apart from your attitude.’

I made a decision not to push the point, but the gulf between us was palpable in that moment. I knew both of us could feel it, just as much as we could feel our own hearts beating. And then Star said, ‘Shall we have another pet trick competition, then?’

And the gulf closed as quickly as it had opened. At least for the time being.

‘You do realise,’ she said on Sunday as we prepared to head back to school, ‘that we haven’t left this room, other than to go to the kitchen to steal food, all weekend?’

Our small weekend bags were already packed, Brian was wrapped around Star’s neck and Hilda was peeping out of her blazer pocket. I was cuddling Dorothy as I looked around the bomb site of the room. It wasn’t pretty with all our sweet wrappers and pizza boxes and DVD cases strewn about the bed and floor, not to mention the animal droppings.

‘I think it’s called growing old,’ I said, cuddling Dorothy into my chest and kissing her wriggly little nose.

‘No wonder my parents take drugs! Look at what we’ve become, Calypso!’ She marched over to her bed and left a fifty-pound note on the pillow for the cleaner.

‘We are disgustingly lazy,’ I agreed.

‘Even Daddy’s been quad bike riding most the weekend,’ she pointed out.

‘True,’ I agreed. ‘Also your mother’s been having her charity meetings.’

‘So, basically at the tender age of fifteen we’re already worse than drug-taking rock and rollers! We didn’t even drink any Jim Beam from the Jim Beam feature in the chill room! We’re boring slobs, and now I don’t even smoke anymore,’ she said as we clambered into one of her father’s Range Rovers, where Ray was waiting to drive us back.

Just then, Tiger and one of his friends pulled up beside us on their quad bikes.

‘Coming for a quick rage round the ranch, babes?’ Tiger called out to us over the roar of the engines.

We looked at one another, left our bags with Ray and jumped on the back of the bikes. I got on with Tiger and held on to his leather jacket tightly as we pelted at breathtaking speed out into the fields across the streams and trout-filled river, through the woods and rocky crags. The wheels churned up mud, splattering our clothes, our faces and our hair. Tiger’s friend rode beside us with Star. Even though we’d ridden the quad bikes on our own at the same breathtaking speed, we screamed and screamed and screamed like terrified children.

An hour later, caked in wet mud, we climbed into the Range Rover. I felt soooo deliriously happy, like a child coming off a fairground ride. I looked at Star, but instead of saying something relatable like ‘Wow!’ she said, ‘Why don’t you like Indie?’ in the tone of voice you might use if you were asking why someone didn’t like Brussels sprouts. Ray shut our door, and Star fumbled around to find the seat belt.

‘I don’t
hate
Indie,’ I said with a little too much force. After all, I didn’t hate Indie. How could anyone hate Indie? It was just that unlike me, she was so much like Star. They both loved their minor chord compositions, they were both brave and fearless, they were both self-possessed and cool.

‘Good,’ she agreed with an edge of warning to her voice. ‘It would really piss me off if you did.’ Then she gave my hand a squeeze as if everything was okay.

Back at school, the teachers ratcheted up the pressure another notch. But that was cool because with all the GSCE course work I didn’t even have the time to monitor my lack of txt messages. My parents relied on e-mails to communicate, and the rest of my friends were here with me at school, so apart from Billy and Freddie there was no one left to txt me. Still it was dispiriting, especially when Portia’s message alert was going off incessantly.

The longer I left it to patch things up with her the worse it became. I knew that, but I avoided the issue by hanging out in Star, Georgina and Indie’s room.

I didn’t want to make an enemy out of Portia, I really didn’t. I’d never had an enemy like Portia before. Honey, now,
she
was my idea of an enemy. Lady Portia Herrington Briggs, though, was far too magisterial to express her feelings about someone as lowly as me.

The most powerful weapon Portia had in her arsenal was my own guilt, and that included how I felt about
the photo of her family by her bed. Every time I looked at that photograph I wanted to make up. Even without the reminder of her loss, I actually liked Portia and I desperately wanted to sort things out with her. Before finding out that she was going to the ball with Freddie, we’d become close friends. But like I said, that was then.

Her wariness hovered over me like a cloud, darkening my every waking hour. The worst thing about it was that she wasn’t even a bitch towards me. She remained civil and decent to a fault, which was much harder to bear than Honey’s open nastiness. I’d never done anything mean to Honey, but I was totally responsible for Portia’s wariness of me. I could have sorted it all out with a simple apology, but I was too jealous and bent out of shape over Freddie to do even that. Especially as day after day, my mobile remained silent and hers merrily rang and beeped with messages.

Indie and Portia barely mentioned the ball again – only insomuch as it meant they couldn’t attend Star’s house party and what a bore it all was, but how at least they’d have each other. But as far as I was concerned, the Annual Euro Royal Bash Thingamee was still there, just like Portia’s title, just like her dislike of me, a constant niggling reminder that I would and could never be like her or part of her world, which, when it came down to it, was Freddie’s world too.

Freddie might like me, and I really think he did, but he
was a prince, and I was an American nobody. Unlike Indie, I was as close to being a nobody as he was ever likely to meet. I was like a random stranger trying on the glass slipper. ‘Close, but not close enough,’ the Prince’s enquiries would say.

As I lay in my bed night after night with Honey smoking herself stupid with the fake weed on one side of me, and Portia serenely reading on the other, I waited for my txt alert to sound. Checking I had a signal every few minutes, I finally convinced myself that Freddie probably only liked me for my wild-child Hollywood credentials – and even they were fake. I was about as wild as my pet rabbit, Dorothy, whose most reckless act to date was dropping her lettuce in her water.

‘Many txts from Freddie and Billy today, darling?’ Honey kept asking, sometimes even adding, ‘It must be hard for Billy.’

‘What?’

‘Well, I expect you are going to the Royal Bore with Freddie, darling,’ she said breezily, even though she knew as well as anyone else that I wasn’t.

‘Oh, that’s right, I keep forgetting, he’s going with
Portia
isn’t he,’ she’d add. ‘Silly Honey.’

Then one evening when Honey and I were alone and Portia was having a shower, Honey remarked, ‘Portia and Freddie seem pretty tight now.’

I flicked a page of
Nun of Your Business
as if I was actually reading it and replied nonchalantly, ‘Really? Why
do you say that?’ Then I flicked another page just to punctuate the point that I wasn’t the least bit interested in Freddie and Portia. The magazine, now run by the Year Tens, had gone downhill, and I was considering speaking to Sister Constance about it. It was meant to be a satirical look at Saint Augustine’s school life but had become a boring gossip rag. Oh my god, was I turning into Ms Topler, our English teacher, complaining about the state of modern-day writing?

Honey turned to face me, blew a billowing stream of smoke rings and smiled. ‘Well, they’re txt-ing one another like mad. I imagined you would have noticed?’

Then, as if set off by satanic forces, Portia’s txt message alert went off. She was still in the en suite, and Honey wasted no time in grabbing the mobile. I didn’t even bother to stop her. For one, Honey isn’t the sort of girl you rein in, and secondly, I was madly curious as she opened the message and shrieked, ‘Oh, look, Calypso, it’s from Freddie.’

She passed it over to me to read for myself in case I didn’t believe her. I didn’t want to believe her, and there were a thousand reasons why I shouldn’t. It’s not as if Honey has a close relationship with the truth, after all. So I ignored her offer and turned another page of the
Nun
. I began scanning an article I had written about fencing in a transparent attempt to suck up to Bell End, forcing myself to ignore the prickling sensation in my hand, which was itching to grab the phone and read the txt for myself.

‘Oh my god, darling, you have to read it now, it mentions
you
!’ she urged.

I looked her in the eye as she sucked hard on the last of her faux weed fag. She must have sensed my weakening conscience because the next thing I knew, the phone was thrust in my hand and my magazine was cast to the floor. Honey was right; if it was about me, I had every right to read it!

Can you tell Calypso …

But before I could scroll down further to read the rest of it, the phone was snatched from my hand.

I looked up and saw the look of hatred on Portia’s face.

She didn’t say anything. She wouldn’t. She merely placed her mobile on the bedside table next to the photograph of her family, plugged in her hair dryer, and started drying the wet tentacles of her long black hair.