A Royal Match (14 page)

More or less.

Star had popped in to say goodbye and brought a mock-up of the
Nun of Your Business
magazine to cheer me
up. Sister Regina thought it was hilarious and asked if we couldn’t include some of the nuns. ‘We do love a giggle,’ she confided. ‘Especially now that the telly is on the blink. They’ve only gone and taken us off Sky.’

Sky television had hundreds of channels and the Sixth Formers were allowed televisions with Sky. ‘Why?’ I asked.

‘The governors didn’t think we needed it. Costs too much.’ She folded her little arms across her chest and shook her head grimly. ‘It’s all about money these days.’

‘That is so mean. How are you meant to stay up-to-date with life?’ I asked.

‘You tell me. They’d have us drawing water from the well like monks if it wasn’t for the fearsome grief they’d get from Mother Superior.’

I can’t really explain why, but I started to cry. I knew that I didn’t have to draw my water from a well, but everything had been going so well and now, here I was, spending the night of the Eades social in the infirmary with a nun, discussing school governors, when I should have been pulling my handsome prince. And no doubt Honey was dancing her heart away in my dress. OK, so it was her dress, but whatever.

Sister Regina made me pour my heart out, and ten minutes later, I was sitting in the passenger seat of her old Citroën 2CV, with a stash of special tablets to ‘keep the cork in,’ wearing a little black dress made by some Sixth Former for her textiles exam.

She must have been a funny shape, and that’s all I have
to say on the matter … it was miles too short and too baggy. Sister Regina insisted on using safety pins (the really big ones like they use on babies’ nappies) to pin it up at back.

‘Just keep your back to the wall,’ she warned, ‘and no one will even notice.’

It was all very Shakespearean, with a bit of Wagner thrown in for good measure. Wagner’s ‘Ring Cycle’ was blasting out on the cassette player as we skidded around hairpin bends, through the woods and down the unlit fern-clad lanes that led to Eades. Sister Regina was singing along in her thin little high-pitched voice.

At four-foot-nine she could barely see over the steering wheel and I had to tell her when to turn. Occasionally, I even had to resort to grabbing the wheel.

‘It’s been very difficult driving since the governors took away our cushions,’ she commented at one point.

I told Sister Regina I would write to them and complain.

We screeched into Eades and I dashed across the floodlit quad where men with sniffer dogs were patrolling for drugs and bombs.

Sister Regina tooted her horn and called out to me in her thin little voice, ‘You just mind you keep your back to the wall so no one sees your safety pins, luvvie. I’ll say a decade of the Rosary and you shall be the belle of the ball.’

Thank God only the security guards and the sniffer dogs heard.

I felt like a Lilliputian in a land of giants as I entered the enormity of the Eades dining hall, with its grand chandeliers and mahogany wall panelling. The first face I saw – the only face I searched for – was Prince Freddie. He was sitting next to psycho toff Honey. My heart thudded to the floor – I even thought I could hear it echo throughout the hall. I felt like such a fool for even coming.

The brat of the ball was nibbling away on her main course and Freddie didn’t even look up. A costumed usher led me to the table where I was to be seated. As I made my way through the lines of long dining tables I saw Freddie craning his head to hear something hilarious that Honey was saying between nibbles.

I scanned the packed room for Star, but there was no sign of her anywhere.

I felt like backing out of the room and running back to
Saint Augustine’s. This night was doomed, and it wasn’t just because I was the Queen of the Doomsday Prophesies that I knew it. For a start there was no way I was going to be able to conceal my safety-pinned dress. I would have to sit down all night, which meant that I couldn’t dance.

Nor could I eat, due to the state of my stomach.

All I could do was sit and watch in silence while Honey pulled Freddie.

Fabbo.

Oh, bloody hell, where was Star?

The costumed usher led me to a seat at the table parallel to Freddie’s. In fact, I was seated directly behind him, so, in effect, the only thing my back was going to be against was him. The boy sitting next to me was spotty and clearly keener on his trout than he was on chatting. I watched, while my empty stomach rumbled, as he dissected his fish and removed its bones, placing them clinically one by one on his bread plate.

On my other side, the chair was empty. I smiled bravely at the huge portraits of whiskered men on the wall – because they were the only faces in the room prepared to make eye contact with me.

‘Good evening,’ the male teacher at the end of the table eventually announced. He looked a bit like Lurch in the Addams Family. I shrank farther into my high-backed, elaborately carved Victorian chair as he raised one single eyebrow at me.

I’ve always been intrigued by people who have the
ability to do that. I had practised raising one eyebrow a lot when I was younger, but eventually I’d realised I just wasn’t the type. Still, I gave it my best shot – only I think it made me look a bit drunk.

Lurch looked down his nose at me and frowned, so I flapped my napkin onto my lap and tried to stop my face turning bright red – a nasty habit my face picked up when I was quite young.

I still couldn’t see Star anywhere. What had I been thinking – letting myself be talked into coming to the Eades social, wearing a dress fastened with large safety pins at the back by a nun who couldn’t even see over a steering wheel?

The voice behind me seemed to come from a long way away.

‘My darlink, at last. You finally decided to grace me with your beauty.’

It was Freddie, leaning back in his chair. I could smell an intoxicating mix of limes, oranges and lemons, but that turned out to be the sorbet and I finally began to relax and even managed to ignore Honey’s nasty looks.

I leaned back. ‘Vy, of course, darlink,’ I replied, mimicking his Russian accent as best I could – at least I think it was Russian. It could just as easily have been Polish or Romanian, or even Glaswegian for that matter. I can only really do an LA Valley Girl accent with any conviction.

For the duration of the meal we tried out every accent we could think of, finally settling on Cockney – although
I had to give up when it came to the rhyming slang. It turned out that the empty chair on the other side of me belonged to a boy called Kevin, and he actually was from the East End of London and one of Freddie’s best mates.

‘Oh, so you’re the sabre champion everyone’s been going on about!’ Kev announced as he returned to his seat, which made me go so red that my head almost exploded.

Then the band started up and I finally had to stand and face Freddie – I put my hands behind my back to hide my safety pins, but the main thing on my mind was the anticipation that he would invite me to dance.

But that privilege went to Honey, who asked him first.

Kevin was really sweet and asked me if I would do him the honours, in a piss-take of an OTT posh accent – even though, like all of the Eades boys, his accent is madly posh anyway. I think the school probably offers that assurance to all prospective parents: ‘Eades will guarantee that your son will leave this hallowed institution sounding like an upper-class prat’ – or words to that effect.

On the dance floor, I tried to keep my back to the speakers to hide my safety pins and decided to be philosophical about things-although, to be honest, philosophy is my worst subject. What sort of madness was I thinking of anyway, imagining I could pull the heir to the throne of England?

Still, he was fit. The fittest boy in the hall, in fact.

Georgina sidled up to me just as the philosophical thing was starting to work and Kevin and I were getting on really well.

‘We’re just going on a mercy run with Honey – coming?’

Mercy? Honey? I don’t think so.

I thought I was just thinking it to myself, but apparently I actually said it. Even Kevin, who must have overheard, looked startled at how mean I sounded.

‘She drank too much vodka before we came. She’s busted if one of the teachers sees her swaying on the dance floor like that,’ said Georgina.

I looked around and sure enough there was Honey, totally bladdered and moments away from a suspension.

Just then, Freddie came up to us and said to Kevin, ‘So, can I cut in on your trouble, mate?’

‘You keep your pork pies off my trouble’s bacon, if you know what’s good for you,’ Kevin replied.

I didn’t have a clue what they were on about and my blank look must have given me away.

Freddie explained as Kevin went off. ‘“Pork pies” is eyes. “Trouble” is trouble and strife – wife. And “bacon” is bacon and eggs – legs.’

‘Obvious, really,’ I said as Freddie clasped me to his chest for a slow dance.

He asked me what LA was like. ‘I’ve never actually been there,’ he said, ‘but I understand it’s quite spread out.’

‘Yaah, that’s why it’s called the city that never walks!’ I told him, which made him laugh.

I rested my head on his shoulder. This was so cool.

‘Hang on, what’s going on back here?’ he asked, feeling my safety pins.

‘Erm, well, yes. Bit embarrassing, but I didn’t have a dress for tonight so Sister Regina sort of gave me someone else’s from the textiles class, only it was too loose and –’

‘Enough,’ he said, holding up his hand. ‘Don’t spoil the Elizabeth Hurley-ness of the moment,’ then he moaned in a really turned-on sort of way. I couldn’t believe that a girl like me could create an Elizabeth Hurley moment!
Hello!
The dress
she
wore (the one with all the safety pins that exposed most of her body – and made her famous) was made by Versace … not the oddly shaped Charlotte Chapman of the Lower Sixth at Saint Augustine’s. I was also quite pleased about him stopping me mid-ramble or I might have mentioned my diarrhoea – in fact, I definitely
would
have, predisposed as I am to verbally digging my own grave when nervous or embarrassed, or madly keen on a prince.

I said a silent prayer of thanks to Mary for sending an angel like Sister Regina, whose large dose of Lomotil had done the trick. My tummy wasn’t even rumbling.

‘Would you like to go outside for some air?’ he asked, when the music stopped. Well, I almost swooned – if swoon’s the right word. Anyway, I felt all light and giddy. I think the horsey girls call it skittish.

Freddie led me down a series of dark passages so we could lose his security guards. None of the musky, dark-panelled windowless corridors looked very promising. Finally, we stopped and he tapped on a heavy old mahogany door. When no one answered we entered the most magical room I had ever seen.

The entire room was lined from floor to ceiling with books. There was even a wooden ladder that slid along the shelves so you could reach the high books, and above that there was a balcony with still more books which you could examine, strolling along a little walkway. We had a fabulous library at Saint Augustine’s, but it was manned (or rather, woman-ed) by the horrendous anti-bookist, Ms Parkes, who wore old men’s suits that smelled like the men had died in them.

Ms Parkes always followed you around the library and if you reached for a book she would grab it before you could, and then pass it to you suspiciously as if you might be a book burner. She also stood over you while you read it (muttering things about how defacing books is a criminal offence) and if you asked to borrow it, she’d remark, ‘I shall bring it to your dormitory room after lights out,’ which meant we could only read it by torchlight.

It didn’t make for a very comfortable reading atmosphere.

This
library, on the other hand, seemed like heaven, and I would have liked to check out the books more thoroughly, but I thought it might spoil the moment, and besides, Freddie was holding my hand and pulling me along.

I wanted to ask him lots of things about what it was like being a prince, but I didn’t want to seem tragic, so I relaxed into the silence that seemed to spread over us like the darkness.

He pulled off his tailcoat and asked me to hold it while he drew back the purple velvet drapes and lifted one of
the large sash windows so we could climb out into a darkened …

Erm … bush, actually. A big prickly bush. But I didn’t mind in the slightest because Freddie put his jacket around my shoulders and guided me gently through the bush and into a tiny clearing where he kissed me.

Sister Regina had given me a couple of Curiously Strong Mints before she dropped me off, so I wasn’t worried about my breath being gross, but I wasn’t absolutely positive about my kissing technique either. Of course I knew that when the other girls asked what it was like I was going to say ‘amazing.’ But as it was my first time, I was not quite sure what to do with my tongue and lips and the other bits and pieces of my mouth. My brain was not helping. All I could think about was kissing, and how I’d never done it. Freddie’s tongue, meanwhile, was gently fencing mine. It was quite nice, actually, so I tried to concentrate on Freddie, and on his lovely boyish smell, and his soft, warm lips. Suddenly he moved his hand up my back along the safety pins and slipped his hand under my hair and rested it supportively at the back of my neck. My stomach went
whoosh
, my heart started thumping and my brain stopped and it was the loveliest feeling ever.