A Royal Match (37 page)

My face was burning. No, not with shame, not with guilt at reading another girl’s txt message, but with fury, because all the half-formed suspicions I’d been harbouring about Portia and Freddie now seemed fully warranted.

‘I believe you have a message for me from Freddie,’ I told her, raising my voice above her turbo dryer.

Portia carried on drying her hair in front of the mirror as she replied quietly, ‘As you appeared to have read it yourself, I deleted it.’

Honey was lying on the bed, flicking through the social
pages of the latest
Tatler
, looking for photographs of herself.

I winced. ‘I didn’t actually get a chance to read the whole thing,’ I admitted as I began to acknowledge how wrong my behaviour actually was.
Say sorry, say sorry, say sorry
, my better self pleaded with my wicked self. But I couldn’t apologise. I folded my arms and gave her a filthy look.

Portia eventually turned to me and, smiling serenely, said, ‘Perhaps it would be better if you spoke to Freddie yourself, Calypso?’

I flopped on my bed. That was the whole point. I couldn’t call Freddie to whine about only half reading a txt he hadn’t sent to me. Portia knew that. I guess it was the toff equivalent of telling me to lock myself up in the Tower of London and throw away the key.

I didn’t tell Star I’d peeped at Portia’s message when she dumped her books in the booth beside mine during study period later the next evening. Star’s jaundiced feelings about Freddie were one thing; her feelings about me sneaking a look at Portia’s private messages from him would be another matter entirely.

At boarding school, you might share makeup, sweets, fags, phone listens and messages, but you didn’t just help yourself to other people’s phones without asking. I was in the wrong and I knew it and I didn’t need anyone else to point it out to me – especially my best friend. So I sat in my study booth, poring over my Latin books as if I cared deeply about conjugations of verbs.

Honey felt differently about sharing my shame. I reddened as I heard her telling Georgina, ‘Did Calypso tell you, she stole Portia’s phone and read a message from Freddie telling Portia to tell her …’

That was the end of my focus. The examiners may as well fail me now, I decided, as my face went through every shade of red before finally settling on a nasty shade of heliotrope.

‘It wasn’t like that,’ I protested.

Star looked disgusted. ‘Calypso?’

‘Look, Honey showed me a message which was about me, and then Portia walked in and …’ That was as far as I got because Portia actually did walk in then and heard herself being discussed.

I fled the scene and went into the computer room because I was about to burst into tears. I was struggling with my course work, at war with my closest fencing partner, and had no idea if I had a boyfriend or not. I decided a bit of self-pity was in order, but the teacher in the computer room didn’t agree. She told me to get back and do my study, so I did, only this time I sat amongst another group of girls from my year and logged on to my laptop to see if I had any e-mails from my parents.

Unlike the other parents, who send postcards and letters, Bob and Sarah don’t
believe
in snail mail, so I have to settle for e-mails. Essentially this means I have nothing from my family to pin on my pin board, which makes me look like an unloved child.

I was feeling very unloved at that moment.

But there wasn’t an e-mail from Bob or Sarah – well there was, but I didn’t look at it, because right underneath there was one from Freddie.

Dear Calypso, given your resolute refusal to respond to my txt messages, voice mails and phone calls this week, I am giving you the opportunity to communicate with me by e-mail. F.

This set my mind racing. Freddie was trying to contact me. Maybe the problem wasn’t him? Maybe it wasn’t even me? Maybe it was my bloody ancient brick of a phone? I started typing rapidly.

I’m sorry but I didn’t get any messages
, I began to type, before immediately deleting it, deeming the message too seriously tragic. I tried again, but
Soz darling
… was also deleted. It sounded soooo Honey. In the end I settled on:

Sorry, I am a wicked girl also I think my phone might be fruuped. x C

He e-mailed me back immediately. He was online, I was online. If this wasn’t fate, I didn’t know what it was.

Sorry about my previous engagement, I really would have rather gone to the La Fiesta Ball with you but
there is no way I can get out of this. I promise, I would if I could.
Best,
Freds

And I knew it was cheeky, but I immediately e-mailed back:

In that case, any chance you can take a date to this Euro Royal Bash Thingamee? xx C

I pressed ENTER before I could reconsider and an answer came straight back.

Can I come back to you on that? It’s not that simple. I’ll see you at fencing Monday anyway, we can talk then, Freds.

Two things stood out.

1) He hadn’t sent me a kiss in either e-mail (note: I had sent him two!).

2) He
had
used the special nickname I had given him.

There was no way I was going to be able to concentrate on my course work now. I logged off without even reading Sarah and Bob’s e-mail.

I was half expecting what happened next. After lights out, when Portia and Honey were both asleep – actually even I was fast asleep – Star snuck into my room and woke me up.

‘I’m really worried about you, Calypso,’ she said as I made room for her under the covers. ‘Don’t you think this problem you’ve got with Portia is becoming, well … a bit insane?’

Even though I thought she was right, I replied, ‘Not at all.’ And then to change the subject, I added. ‘Freddie e-mailed me tonight.’

‘Look, Calypso, maybe he does like you, maybe he doesn’t, the point is you do have other things in your life.’

‘I don’t understand what happened that day in Windsor. Freddie and I were really getting on well,’ I told her.

‘You mean because you shared a pizza with him?’ Star reasoned, her tone dripping with cynicism. I hadn’t told her about our kiss nor the txts I’d received when we were on exeat in Derbyshire.

‘The point is, as soon as I left, he met up with Portia and shared a pizza with
her
.’

‘
Quelle horreur
!’ she cried out silently, throwing her hands to her cheeks in mock shock. ‘That a boy might share two pizzas in one day!’

‘Seriously, Star! Is he just mucking about with me or does he think of me as a mate? And this sending messages to Portia about me – it’s all so demeaning. If he wants to give me a message why doesn’t he give it to me himself?’

‘You just told me that he e-mailed you.’

‘Yaah, but there were no kisses on the end.’

‘Mmmm. It’s a tough one. The only person who can help you though is Freddie, so unless you’re prepared to confront him personally you’ve got to drop this thing with Portia. It’s not her fault and she’s got enough to deal with, don’t you think?’

‘I know, I want to, but I just keep …’

‘Blurting?’

‘Yaah.’

‘Why don’t you do this to start with? Forget Freddie and his pathetic Royal Bore because that’s what it is, darling, a lot of old royals showing off their jewels and titles to each other. Forget the La Fiesta Ball. If I’m not in London you can’t stay in our London house alone, which means you don’t have anywhere to stay because everyone’s coming to Derbyshire. So here’s the plan. Come up to my house party.’ She nudged me. ‘Come on darling, it’ll be a laugh. And without you I’ll only pine.’

I smiled in the darkness at my friend’s concern. The gulf didn’t seem so huge now – and then I remembered. ‘I’ve already bought my ticket, though … we all did.’ She didn’t reply, but we had a cuddle, and she scuttled back to her own room, leaving me in the dark as it slowly began to dawn on me that she was right. Without Star’s London house, I had nowhere to stay during the half-term break. I was going to have to let go of my long-held dream of attending a Capital VIP ball. Like so many of my dreams.

‘You can always stay at my house,’ Honey’s voice piped up out of the darkness, and for a bit I thought she must be talking in her sleep. ‘It’ll only be you, me and the servants. Poppy and Mummy are going to LA for the Dulson premier,’ she whispered.

The Dulson film was
the
most hotly awaited film in the world.

I told her I’d think about it in an out-of-body-ish sort of way, still wondering if I’d really heard properly. I could see the flame of her lighter as she lit a cigarette. She opened the window up an inch and blew out a puff of smoke.

Could it be true that Honey, my nemesis, the girl who had made my life hell all these years, was offering to have me as a house guest in her famous Chelsea mansion?

I didn’t get time to dwell on this as we heard the
tap, tap, tap
of Miss Bibsmore coming up the steps. Any sensible girl would have put out her cigarette and sprayed the air liberally with Febreze. Honey continued to lay there in the dark though and smoke.

The fluorescent lights flickered on.

‘I thought I smelled smoke, Miss O’Hare.’

‘Oh, bugger off. I can’t sleep without a cigarette. It’s not my fault they make cigarettes addictive. Speak to the tobacco giants, Miss Bibsmore. I’m just a victim of their corporate might.’

‘Hah. You’re about to become a victim of my might, Miss O’Hare an’ all. Twenty pounds please.’ She stuck her hand out for the cash.

Honey pulled her duvet up around her chin and looked at Miss Bibsmore like she was a crazed lunatic. ‘Leave me alone.’

‘Come on, open up your tight little fist and hand over the readies. Twenty pounds on the spot fine, that’s school rules an’ all. You knows it, I knows it, so if you have a problem with it, you can speak to your corporate giants innit!’

Honey put her cigarette out ostentatiously and pulled twenty quid out of her top drawer. ‘There, you miserable old witch. Take the money I was saving up for my cancer treatment.’ She threw the note at Miss Bibsmore and watched as it fluttered to the floor.

Miss Bibsmore creaked and groaned as she bent to pick it up.

‘You really need to exercise more, Miss B. Your joints are creaking,’ Honey told her in a voice of faux concern.

‘Well I ‘ope your joints hold up over the next week an’ all. You’re on litter duty, starting tomorrow. Nightie night, girls.’

Saturday was one of those beautifully sunny days you occasionally get in England in autumn. I couldn’t wait to feel the sun on my face, but Star and Indie decided to spend the day in one of the music rooms working on their latest track about a girl who feels burdened by the enormity of her privilege. Apparently it was
seriously
coming along, and for the first time I didn’t really mind that it was Indie having to share that experience rather than me.

Georgina elected to stay and listen, but I’d already heard most of what they were working on and it sounded like a bag of cats being murdered, so I jumped at Honey’s suggestion to share a taxi to Windsor with her and Portia. At the back of my mind, I guess I thought this might be my chance to make peace with Portia.

‘What about your litter duty?’ I asked Honey.

‘Oh, I paid a Year Seven to do it for me.’

‘Frightened one to death to do it, more like it,’ I thought I heard Portia mutter, but I didn’t see her lips move, so I decided I must have imagined it.

I was feeling a bit quiet and self-contained myself as I ran through the apology and make-up speech I needed to make.

Honey, sitting between the two of us, chatted away merrily. ‘Even though I’ve decided it is too, too tragic to pull school boys at my age, I think, as I’ll be sixteen next term, realistically I’m going to have to settle for them during term time darlings. Such a drag, but there it is.’