A Royal Match (12 page)

Georgina laughed and sat on the bed beside me. ‘Oh darling, we simply must. I need something to cheer me up.’

I definitely agreed with that, anyway.

Miss Cribbe wandered past and said, ‘Well, aren’t we all the best of friends today then, girls?’ and we fell apart laughing – more about the way she said it rather than what she had said. But I suppose that was when it first struck me that Georgina and I really were sort of becoming friends. And that even though up until recently, it had been Georgina and her type that had made my life at Saint
Augustine’s sheer hell, I was seeing another side of her now. Maybe she was seeing another side of me too? Or maybe it was only when she wasn’t around Honey that she was the Georgina I liked.

Whatever the reason I wasted no time in agreeing to the salon and insisting we try to find members immediately.

‘Well, there’s already the six of us,’ she pointed out. ‘Our dorm room and Honey’s dorm room.’

All of a sudden a feeling of doom swept over me. The thought of having anything more to do with Honey filled me with horror. And I could just imagine Star’s reaction.

We held our first salon later that evening after lights out, by torchlight. As I’d predicted, Star confided in me while we cleaned our teeth that she had her doubts about being stuck in a writing salon with Honey. Actually what she said was, ‘Are you dead or just mad? Hell can freeze over and Miss Cribbe can be made Queen but there’s no way I am going to be part of a group with that evil bitch.’

I pleaded and did my jokey sad face – the one where I let the toothbrush hang limply from my mouth and make weepy-eye gestures. ‘OK, but this is going to take a lot of lip-gloss,’ she said. ‘A lot!’

Writing has never really been Star’s thing; in fact,
books
have never really been Star’s thing. I’ve tried to get her into Nancy Mitford, but it takes her forever to read a book. She just prefers music. Sister Hillary – who simply adores Thomas Hardy (erk) – says you can’t really push these
literary things, you either like something or you don’t. Ms Topler should listen a bit more closely to Sister Hillary on that point. When the girls snuck into our room (Honey wearing her high-heeled Jimmy Choo slippers), Star rolled her eyes and reached for the lip-gloss.

‘I don’t see the point of all this writing rubbish, darling,’ Honey said. ‘Can’t we just break out the vodka and talk about boys?’ Even though it was too dark to see each other properly, I could imagine the pouty face she’d be pulling.

‘No, just listen, Calypso and I think it would be a fab way to raise money for Children of the World. You know, for our punishment.’

Had I heard correctly? Had Georgina just united our names in the same sentence?

Honey groaned.

‘When did this happen?’ Star asked.

‘Erm, while …’ For a moment I was about to say, ‘Right after Georgina finished making herself vomit,’ but stopped myself in time. ‘You were, erm …’

‘Look, think about it,’ Georgina interjected. ‘We’ve got to make this money somehow and Calypso came up with this fantastic idea that we could ask everyone in our House Block to write something satirical, which they would then have to read out loud at a literary party.’

My head was spinning, but Georgina didn’t so much as draw breath. ‘We could fine non-contributors five pounds.’

‘Oh, I like that,’ Honey added. She would make a great traffic warden; she’s always trying to introduce fines for
things. During our first term she had tried (almost successfully) to introduce a fine for girls who didn’t have long, straight hair.

Star said, ‘Erm, maybe I’m just being stupid, but will everyone know what we mean by satirical?’ She was looking pointedly at Honey as she did this.

‘Correct, you’re just being stupid,’ Honey replied with a sneer.

‘OK, so what does it mean, brain drain?’ Star challenged.

Honey, holding her torch to her face, rolled her eyes. Obviously she had no idea what it meant herself.

‘Erm, well, actually, I don’t know what it means,’ offered Clemmie.

‘It’s sort of a piss-take, isn’t it?’ Arabella asked, looking to me for comfirmation.

‘Exactly,’ I agreed. ‘A tease, really.’

‘There, so it doesn’t really matter whether people know what it means – we can simply ask them to do a tease,’ Georgina suggested. ‘Only cleverly done and fun, not nasty,’ she added, looking at Honey as she spoke.

‘Yes, funny rather than vicious,’ I added, thinking of Honey although I didn’t dare look at her.

Honey groaned again and flopped back on my bed, her feet on my pillow.

I rose above her – not literally, because I was lying on the floor – and suggested that we start with a reading from Nancy Mitford, the greatest literary tease of all time.

I read out the part of the book where her father hunts
the children with hounds and how all the locals thought him a total sadist. (Of course, all the hounds did was lick the children, but perhaps they imagined they tore them to pieces and ate them.)

We muffled our laughter with our dressing gowns and then Georgina read a Dorothy Parker poem about being misunderstood.

‘It is awful to be misunderstood,’ Georgina said with a loud sigh at the end of the piece, as if she knew firsthand what being misunderstood was all about.

Star was looking fidgety, so I asked her what was up.

‘Well, I just don’t think it’s fair to fine people who can’t write,’ she announced firmly.

Everyone raised their professionally sculptured eyebrows (apart from me, of course, because I pluck my own). Fines, after all, were a part of life at Saint Augustine’s – like betting, smoking and selling listens.

‘Why, can’t you afford it?’ Honey asked cattily.

Star curled her lip. ‘No – because we’re meant to be raising money for charity. I don’t think fining people is really the best way to go about that, do you?’

‘Why not? We could raise the money in an evening if we went down and terrorised the Year Sevens.’ She laughed her hyena laugh so loudly that I don’t think she noticed that no one else was laughing with her.

Star shook her head in disgust. ‘God, you’re loathsome, Honey. Maybe we could raise money hunting
you
with hounds.’ She was looking at Honey with such undisguised
hatred that even I felt afraid.

‘Better still, we could have your wretched rat put down!’ Honey giggled. ‘I’m sure the whole school would chip in for that, wouldn’t they, darlings?’ She looked around at everyone (apart from Star and me because … well, we didn’t actually exist as far as she was concerned).

But Georgina started to cry. Clemmie and Arabella tried to calm things down by offering her a cigarette.

Star, Arabella and Clemmie joined her on her bed so they could blow the smoke out of the window. I sprayed the room with Febreze, just in case. Then just as I finished spraying, Honey lit one up in the middle of the room.

I wondered if I sprayed her with Febreze whether she’d explode or self-immolate.

‘We could always call the fine a donation so as not to upset anyone,’ Clemmie offered, poking her head in from the window.

Honey tipped the ash from her cigarette into the slipper by my bed – my pink Hello Kitty ones that I love to pieces. I was really annoyed, but I didn’t know what to say.

Georgina, coming in from the window, said, ‘Hey, that was Calypso’s slipper you just used!’

Honey shrugged. ‘Oh, sorry, darling, I didn’t notice.’ Only she didn’t say it to me.

Star emptied my slipper out of the window and sprayed it with Febreze. Then she squirted Honey’s back with Febreze. ‘I can see it’s a good idea for fund-raising, but all
my writing is morbid and gloom-laden. Witty writing isn’t exactly my strong point.’

‘Funny, I wasn’t aware you
had
a strong point, Star,’ Honey began.

But Georgina turned to Star and said, ‘Gosh darling, don’t worry about not being a literary genius.’ Then she whispered, ‘Tobias can’t read a word; he’s completely illiterate, actually.’ As she spoke she held her hands over his ears to save him from the shame of it all.

Honey groaned. ‘Well, I think the whole thing is a waste of time anyway. It’s just a stupid punishment, for heaven’s sake. Let’s just have our fathers donate big fat cheques – charities love those. Let’s leave it at that.’

I could see my writing salon dream dissipating before my eyes. ‘That’s
not
what all this is about, though,’ I explained.

‘Oh? I forgot, your father can’t afford it, can he, Calypso?’ she remarked in a syrupy voice as she stood up and smiled down on me like a cat that’s just licked the cream. ‘I suppose the rest of us can always chip in for your share.’

I was shocked out of my embarrassment by Georgina. ‘Better still,’ she said. ‘Honey, why don’t you just fuck off!’

I couldn’t believe it. I was totally stunned.

Actually, everyone was. Honey included. Honey
especially
. She stood there for a few moments, staring blankly at Georgina, wondering if it was all a joke, or if she’d heard correctly.

Everyone stared at her and said nothing, which in a
way, said everything. Honey had made a fool of herself. She had gone too far and you could actually watch the realisation hit her as it sank in. But in true Honey fashion, she pulled herself together and declared, ‘I don’t want anything to do with your stupid salon anyway.’ She flounced off, slamming the door really loudly as she went.

We stayed silent as her Jimmy Choo slippers clipped down the corridor.

‘She’s losing it,’ Clemmie said, looking at Star as if they’d discussed Honey together, maybe on one of their long drives back to their country piles in Star’s dad’s limo. ‘Mummy thinks it’s because her mother’s still waiting on Lord Aginet to propose and blames Honey and Poppy for his hesitation.’

‘Vodka, anyone?’ I asked, trying to change the mood. Even though I loathed Honey with every fibre of my body I wanted to get the writing salon going and not waste the evening bitching about Honey.

‘Yes, let’s toast our salon,’ Georgina agreed. ‘You know, I think this is going to be the start of something really good.’

I nipped into the en-suite and grabbed my humble vodka stash. Once I had passed around the five Body Shop Specials, we held them up in a torch-lit toast. Georgina put her arm around Star and told her that she’d better not bottle out, and I think Star was about to collapse at the shock of it all, but then we heard the heavy footfalls of Miss Cribbe’s Hush Puppies squelching towards our dorm room.

There was a mad scramble as we screwed the tops back on our vodka bottles, switched off our torches and dived under the duvets.

Clemmie and I were clutching each other and trying not to giggle as we waited for Miss Cribbe to wave her torch around the room and listened to her wheezy breathing as she moved our bin and used it to prop our door open.

None of us dared breathe.

When we finally heard her Hush Puppies shuffling back down the corridor we turned on our torches and pulled the bin away and used pillows to muffle our laughter.

Later on, Star said, ‘Actually, I might have a bit of an idea. Instead of fining girls, why don’t we start a school magazine, you know, like a satirical sort of thing with teases about the teachers and prefects? We could even do illustrations – and charge money for it. If it were funny, I’m sure everyone would want to buy it.’

Star’s father was right. She was a genius.

‘That is a great idea!’ Arabella agreed, almost squealing with excitement.

‘We’d need a really cool title,’ Clemmie added.

‘What if the teachers won’t let us do it, though? Ms Topler, for example?’ I reminded them. ‘She’d probably think it was going against the laws of her literary snore curriculum to have fun with writing.’

‘Well, then she can bugger off,’ Georgina giggled.

‘
Nun of Your Business
?’ Star suggested.

‘What?’

‘
Nun
– as in N-U-N –
of Your Business
! For the name?’

Georgina held her teddy to her ear. ‘Tobias just said he totally adores that!’ she squealed and threw her bear in the air.