A Royal Match (46 page)

‘We’ll have a glass of bubbles and then I’ll take you to your quarters,’ she babbled away excitedly, flopping on her antique four-poster bed. ‘Chopin once made love to George Sand on this bed,’ she moaned as she writhed around ecstatically.

I muttered something lame like ‘How splendid,’ but I wasn’t really paying attention. Everything in her room was so unexpectedly tasteful, and I was envious that she actually owned a bed that Chopin and George Sand
had made love in, even though that image was a bit gross. I wasn’t a great fan of George Sand, but she was still an author and, more importantly, she was brave and wild-spirited, like Star.

‘Why didn’t you go to the premiere in LA with your mother and sister?’ I asked her.

‘I don’t think that’s any of your business,’ she snapped at me in the way people do when you’ve touched a raw nerve. But she soon gathered herself together and added, ‘So, I’ve called in Stephan to do our hair and Mimi to do our nails, and then I thought we could just drink champagne, eat sushi and pop out to Calm-a-sutra for a bit of a laugh.’

‘Calm-a-sutra?’ I enquired as I gazed at the sad, vast gorgeousity of her bedroom.

‘The nightclub in Kensington,’ she explained, looking at me like she just realised what a big mistake she’d made in bringing an unsophisticated nobody like me into her world.

‘Oh, sorry, of course I
love
Calm-a-sutra, it’s really cool, isn’t it?’ I gushed. I’d never been there in my life, obviously, but like everyone, I knew of it through the social pages. I almost said, ‘But it’s a club and we’re only fifteen’ – well, I was only fourteen and ten months actually, but I tried not to remind the other girls about that.

‘So show me what you’re wearing to La Fiesta, darling,’ Honey demanded.

‘Oh, we bought these adorable outfits in Los Angeles,’ I told her enthusiastically. ‘You know, when Georgina and Star were out there.’

I thought I saw a look of irritation flash across Honey’s face at the mention of Star and Georgina being in LA with me, but it disappeared quickly as we heard a knock at the door.

‘Come,’ Honey called, and Oopa staggered in, buckling under the weight of a heavy silver tray bearing an ice bucket, a bottle of vintage Dom and champagne flutes.

‘Shall I be of the pouring man?’ he asked in heavily accented English.

‘Just do what you’re paid to do, you wretched little ungrammatical cripple. I’d hardly ask for champagne if I didn’t want to drink it, would I?’ she snapped.

I bet she would, I thought to myself, already beginning to wonder how long I could keep my hatred of Honey secret. I was starting to think the price of going to La Fiesta was going to be very costly indeed. A week seemed like an impossibly long time to spend in the sole company of the most toxic psycho toff in the world. And with Honey knocking back the champagne at this rate, it would be even worse. I began to make escape plans. The Ball was on Sunday night, so there was the possibility that I could make an excuse and leave on Monday to join Star and the others, except that I had no money of course. Maybe I could call Star and plead with her to send one of her father’s roadies to pick me up. Star would understand. She had probably anticipated my call pleading for rescue, knowing Star.

Oopa did as he was bid and then backed out of the
room, tugging his forelock (not really, but I bet Honey wished he had been).

After Honey had downed another glass of champagne (I’d taken care to take only a sip of mine), she showed me my quarters. It was a room in the basement, a quarter the size of hers but still very nice with a massive king-size bed, a fireplace with a plasma screen above, and an en suite bathroom even nicer than the one at school.

‘This is soooo cool,’ I told her, looking around.

Honey wrinkled her nose job. ‘Anyway, let’s go back to mine and work out what we’ll wear tonight,’ she said, grabbing my hand and leading me back upstairs.

It was actually quite fun preparing for Calm-a-sutra. We put MTV on, and Honey encouraged me to try on all her cool designer outfits, and we danced about gaily and jumped on her bed. At eight o’clock the sushi, Stephan and Mimi arrived at once. I’d had loads of manicures and pedicures in LA with Sarah but I’d never had my hair dressed!

Stephan and Mimi guzzled the rest of the champagne and picked at our sushi and fawned and chatted away to us as if we were really grown-up clients. After they left, Honey and I helped one another put on our make-up. ‘You’ve got madly long lashes, darling,’ she remarked approvingly as she applied a mile of mascara to them.

‘Thank you,’ I said, even though I was worried I looked a bit overdone.

I stood up and did a twirl in the full-length mirror
stand, thinking I looked amazingly grown-up, but Honey threw another strappy dress at me. ‘Try this one, actually; it might be a better fit.’

It was a sort of dark green colour with a copper thread running through it so it spangled, only not in a tacky way. It was longer than the tangerine one I was wearing but completely backless.

I held it up against my figure. ‘This is stunning, Honey.’

She glanced at it before turning back to her wardrobe for another rummage. ‘It’s not a label or anything. I just found it at Vanilla, rummaging around one day.’

I slipped off the dress I was wearing, which was worryingly short, and tried the non-label on. ‘I love it.’

Honey nodded. ‘Keep it. I’m never going to be tall enough to fit into it.’

‘Wow, are you sure?’ I asked, uncertain about accepting a gift from this girl who until recently had been so cruel to me.

‘Don’t be mad, it’s nothing. Besides, that other dress made you look like a slut.’

‘Thank you,’ I told her. ‘I mean about the dress, not the slut thing.’

She dismissively waved off my gratitude and turned her attention to the pile of jewellery on her dressing table. ‘These earrings or these?’ she asked, holding up two pairs of wildly glamorous chandelier drop earrings.

They were both fabulous. I pointed to the ones in her left hand.

‘Typical. They’re the cheap crystals from Accessorize; you can wear those if you want. These are the diamond ones,’ she explained, holding up the others. ‘One of Mummy’s husbands bought them for her at Graff. I
always
get her castoffs,’ she sighed, as if receiving expensive diamond gifts was one of the many crosses she bore.

We arrived at Calm-a-sutra around midnight, tottering out of the limo in our impossibly high Christian Louboutin shoes.

The doorman recognised Honey instantly, and we were ushered to one of the private booths, which were really large white beds with soft white faux fur throws and matching pillows. A flock of fit Eades boys from the Upper Sixth immediately came over and started to chat to us. I recognised Charlie, Sebastian and Peregrine from the pub in Windsor and got the impression they were expecting us. I looked at their cocktails worryingly, anticipating the boys tipping them over one another later in the evening.

I agreed to a try a sip of Peregrine’s mojito, which tasted really nasty. Honey of course said it was delicious and demanded Charlie get her one of her own. I was bored very quickly, as Honey focused her attentions of heavy flirting with Charlie. All the other conversations at our bed seemed to centre on other trustafarian teens I didn’t know and glamorous places I’d never been to.

‘Do you ski at Klosters or Val-d’Isere?’ Peregrine asked me in a generous attempt to include me.

Honey dragged herself away from Charlie to answer for
me, ‘Oh, don’t ask her, darling, she probably doesn’t even know how to ski.’

‘I do know how to ski, actually, but … erm … well, I live in America.’

Sebastian, who was soooo seriously châteaued by this stage that he couldn’t focus properly, told me I was ‘a babe.’

‘That’s sweet of you,’ I said moving even farther away from him in the bed, which practically placed me on Peregrine’s lap. He was very nice about it though and not at all sleazy. When he asked if I wanted to dance, I saw it as an opportunity to get Honey away from Charlie.

‘Excellent idea, let’s all dance,’ I agreed, forcing Honey, Charlie and the others to join us.

Honey’s dancing practise by mirrors actually seemed to have paid off, and soon she was in another world, thoughts of pulling Charlie, and seemingly everything else, far from her head as she closed her eyes and danced in mesmeric movements to the music. In fact the two of us ended up dancing together while Charlie, Sebastian and Peregrine did that sort of English public school boy dance – you know the one – it looks a bit like old men with Zimmer frames attempting a rugby scrum.

After a few dances we started to head back to the bed booth when Peregrine took me aside and asked, ‘Are you and Freddie an item or what?’

‘Or what,’ I replied, wishing I had an answer to give him. ‘Why?’

‘Well, I don’t know him that well but he asked me if I saw you, to tell you to call him.’

‘Let me get this straight.
He
asked
you
to tell
me
to …’

But I didn’t get a chance to clarify what Freddie might have wanted Peregrine to tell me because Honey grabbed my arm. ‘Come on, we’re leaving. The car’s outside,’ she shouted in my ear, and that was when I realised how wasted she was. Her eyes were glazed and her speech was slurred.

‘I have to get Honey home,’ I told Peregrine.

Charlie and Sebastian offered to see us out, and noticing the paparazzi gathered around the door in force, they were really responsible and had security help hold back the paps so we could climb discreetly into the limo. The last thing I needed was another episode in the tabloids.

‘Make sure she drinks loads of water when you get her home,’ Charlie advised, but I wasn’t paying attention. Honey was slumped with her eyes closed at the other corner of the limo. I opened up my phone. It was too late to call Freddie, but I decided a txt-flirt would be okay. That way he would get it when he woke up. I smiled at that thought. I still had no address book, but that didn’t matter because I knew his number off by heart – and that heart was pounding as I punched in my message.

Just spoke to Peregrine. Call me! C

I pressed SEND and waited, but the message came back: NO SERVICE. I checked the signal, but that was fine, and I knew I still had credit left.

I jabbed Honey with my foot to wake her. ‘Honey, can I borrow your phone to send a message to Freddie? My phone isn’t working.’

Even though she’d looked me in the eye as I’d asked, she suddenly collapsed back into her seat and started snoring loudly.

‘Honey!’ I yelled, but she resolutely refused to budge, apart from when I tried to nick her phone from out of her bag, and then she hit me.

‘Sorry, darling. I thought you were a pikey trying to steal from me,’ she explained before drifting back to sleep.

‘No, I just really need to make a call and my phone is out of …,’ I tried to say but it was pointless.

She was still snoring when we arrived back at the mansion. I gave Honey same water and asked her again if I could use her phone, but she firmly dispatched me to my quarters.

I was feeling sleepless, so I took a bath in the luxury of the large black marble Jacuzzi that had steps leading up to it. The Aveda products smelt heavenly, and the towels were all fluffy and enormous. It was like being in a movie, only not one I wanted to stay in. To be honest I’d have preferred to bathe in pond water if it meant I could have a mobile that worked.

I was awakened by a buzzer going off in my room the next morning. I looked for where the noise was coming from and saw a red light flashing above a sign with the words

written underneath in swirly-whirly writing.

I clambered into my jeans and t-shirt and rushed upstairs, expecting the worst – perhaps she’d got trapped in her duvet or was being strangled by her eye-mask.

‘Open my curtains,’ she screamed hysterically. ‘I can’t see a thing.’

I stumbled in the dark over to the curtains and tried to open them, but they wouldn’t budge.

‘Use the button by my bed, you idiot,’ she howled from another side of the room.

So I crawled over to her bed, found the switch on her bedside light, found the button for the curtains and let the grey autumnal light flow in.

Honey was lying crumpled in a corner by her bathroom door.

‘Are you okay?’ I asked when she didn’t get up. I could see a little bit of blood coming out of her nose.

‘I was trying to go to the loo,’ she sobbed. ‘I bashed my nose on the door.’

And that was when it happened – when I finally lost my ability to hold in my secret hatred for Honey a moment longer and burst out laughing. ‘It’s a shame you threw that beak away – it was obviously really handy.’

‘You bitch,’ she snarled. ‘Maybe you’d be more comfortable upstairs with the servants.’

‘Sorry,’ I said, kicking myself for losing control.

But there was no going back. Oopa was instructed to remove me from my quarters to the servants’ floor upstairs, where I was confined. I wasn’t actually locked into a cell, but as good as. I didn’t feel comfortable leaving the room in case I ran into Honey, so I lay on the camp bed in the tiny box room. It was so small the bed was too long to completely fit, which meant it was a bit buckled in the middle, and I couldn’t stretch out completely. I spent the day meditating on the mess I had made of things, and I don’t mean with Honey. I mean with everything – with Portia, with Freddie and most of all with the choice I’d made to choose a stupid ball over my friends. I’d been
naïve to think that it would be any fun at all at La Fiesta without Star and the others. In the pursuit of a childish dream I’d gone – in the words of my father – too far.