A Royal Match (20 page)

He looked genuinely pleased to see me. But then that’s how Eades boys are brought up to look.

‘Hey, Calypso. How’s it going? I heard you trounced my bro at sabre last week. Well done.’

I giggled like … well, a schoolgirl, I suppose.

‘So, erm, how’s Freddie, then?’ I asked, craning a look over his shoulder for my prince.

‘Down with some stomach bug, unfortunately. He said to say hi.’

Clemmie skipped over and my window of interrogation had closed. So I stood there at the entrance, clinging to my pathetic message.

Freddie said to say hi.

What could I read into that? Answer: A LOT.

I mean, did he say, ‘God, I’m gutted that this stomach bug has prevented me from resting my eyes on the beautiful, intoxicating sight of Calypso Kelly, but say hi for me, will you, Kev?’ Or did he say, ‘If you see what’s-her-name, the fencer girl – Calypso, is it? – tell her hi.’

Or worse still, did he say nothing at all, and Kevin, not wanting to make me realise how irrelevant I truly was, had made up the ‘hi’ to save my feelings?

I watched as Kevin and Clementine disappeared through the secret stage door.

Sister Veronica was polishing her spectacles.

Sister Hillary was eating a scone.

Clemmie was hotly followed by Star with Rupert, and Georgina with an Eades Sixth Former.

‘So, Calypso, can you talk to mere mortals, or do I need to petition Zeus?’

I spun around. ‘What?’

‘Billy. We met at …’

‘I know. Hi, how’s it going?’ I got that funny wiggly feeling again. Maybe I was coming down with Freddie’s stomach bug? Wouldn’t that be romantic, sharing a gastric flu … or not! The thing was, my wiggly feeling didn’t feel gastric, it felt sort of … nice, really.

‘It’s going fine. Cool magazine, by the way. I love the satires, especially the one on Honey.’

And then I remembered. ‘Oh, that’s right, you go out with Poppy, don’t you?’

He looked embarrassed and did that funny I’m-going-to-look-at-my-feet-now thing that boys tend to do. ‘No …’

‘Oh, OK. It’s just that, erm …’

He still looked embarrassed and he didn’t take his eyes off his shoes. He sort of shuffled them a bit, shoving his hands in his pockets, and he looked so cute.

‘We went out a few times over the Easter break,’ he explained. ‘You know, down the Kings Road – that sort of thing. Nothing major. But we’re not like
going out
, going out.’

‘Darling! I wondered where you’d got to.’ It was Poppy, looking divine in a breathtakingly short, pink, wispy number with matching Jimmy Choo sling-backs. She threw her arm around Billy in a proprietorial sort of fashion. ‘Quick, darling, this way. I’ve got some vodka in my bag.’

With that, she took him by the hand and led him towards the stage passage. He looked back at me like a man being led off to a firing squad.

With a wardrobe like hers, it was no wonder Poppy could pull a boy like Billy. I looked down at my carefully constructed outfit, bought the night before for a fiver from one of the Lower Sixth girls. It was last year’s cut, last year’s colour, and the shoes I was wearing were a label no one in England had ever heard of, which I’d bought in LA in the sale at Bloomingdale’s. Honey had declared them
‘Don’t-Fuck-Me Shoes!’ But then I didn’t really give a toss what Honey said, did or thought any more.

Besides, it wasn’t all doom and gloom. In fact, it was really cool, especially when Jono, famous for his views on world debt, arrived. He looked quite cute standing on the stage next to Sister Veronica – they were about the same height – especially when he put his arm around her and she started to giggle.

Hello
, was Sister Veronica flirting?

He gave a stirring speech about why the rich countries of the world should cancel the debt of really poor ones, and everyone cheered.

He said it was really cool that we’d put so much effort into raising all this money. Then Star’s dad, Tiger, got on stage with Elsa, the supermodel Star and I had chatted with at the party, which was just totally random and unscripted.

Tiger was wobbling a bit when he grabbed the mike off of Jono and asked us if we were having a ‘rocking good time.’

Everyone screamed back, ‘Yes!’

Then he said, ‘That’s cool, but just remember, if all the rich arsehole countries in the world cancelled world debt, ninety million girls in Africa could have an education.’

Everyone clapped and I looked over at Star to give her a supportive smile about her dad being dead embarrassing, but she didn’t look in the least bit embarrassed. In fact, she looked proud. And once I thought about it, I could see why. It was a very good point.

Then Elsa took the mike and she very sweetly reminded everyone that the magazine wouldn’t have got off the ground if it wasn’t for Star, Calypso, Arabella, Clementine and Georgina and their friends, and everyone clapped.

Then the party really kicked in.

I ended up dancing with a few random boys, but I didn’t even really look at their faces – apart from Rupert’s (he must have got the thumbs-down after his no-braces kiss with Star).

It was a fantastic party, but the only thing I pulled that night was a good laugh when we arrived back at our dorms.

Misty had weed all over Honey’s duvet.

You could hear her scream throughout Cleathorpes.

The week after the launch no one could talk about anything other than the party – or rather, who’d pulled whom.

Even though I’d pulled a grand total of nil, I was still caught up in the excitement. Also, both Freddie and Billy had sent me text messages and voice mails afterwards – but to tell the truth, pulling boys was the last thing on my mind. I was more excited about the next meeting of the Lit Chick Writing Salon.

We’d decided to wait until Friday to discuss our strategy for the next issue of the magazine because we wanted to find out exactly how much money we’d raised altogether.

Sister Constance made the announcement at Thursday’s assembly and it was unbelievable. With the twenty-pound tickets all sold out, and with roughly eight hundred boys from Eades and four hundred girls from
Saint Augustine’s, we’d made loads of money. Also people like Tiger and Jono had made extra donations.

Sister Constance had stood on the hall stage flanked by two ancient statues of the Virgin Mary. There were enormous vases of lilies surrounding them. The other nuns were all gathered on the stage with her. The elderly ones (all those over ninety) were sitting on chairs. It was like a conceptual girl-power exhibit – in a nun-ish sort of way.

She announced how much we raised, unable to suppress a smile. It was much more than the Lower Sixth girls had managed the year before.

No one even clapped at first. I think we were all too shocked. After a moment’s silence the nuns all clapped for us and Sister Constance congratulated Star, Clemmie, Arabella, Georgina and me. Suddenly everyone burst into applause and threw their ties in the air, as is the tradition at Saint Augustine’s. (Any excuse to rid ourselves of the revolting bows. We would have thrown them in the air if we’d raised five quid, to be honest.)

When the deafening noise had died down a little, a girl from the Saint Augustine’s Old Girls Society took the microphone and talked to us about how much that money would mean to the Children of the World charity.

It was one of the most fantastic days of my life … well, it was up until the point when Camilla (the Old Girl) asked Georgina, Star, Clementine, Arabella and me to come up onto the stage.

Talk about catastrophically random; no one had
even hinted that we might be called upon to embarrass ourselves in front of the entire school. We all immediately started applying lip-gloss as we made our way through the aisles. The whole school started stamping their feet (even the nuns – apart from Sister Constance, who never lets her austere demeanour drop for a moment) and demanding, ‘Speech, speech, speech!’

Sister Constance took the microphone and asked for hush. Everyone fell silent immediately.

‘Now, I’m sure you’d all like to hear from one of the girls responsible for raising all this money,’ she said, handing the mike over to me.

The school responded in the affirmative. ‘Erm, well thanks,’ I mumbled. ‘I mean yeah … brilliant. This is so random and totally unexpected,’ I stuttered. My mouth went all dry and so I applied a dab more lip-gloss.

Here I was, on stage in front of the entire school, a sea of girls all looking up at me, expecting me to say something profound or at least comprehensible.

How could this happen? So I tried to pretend I was Nancy Mitford or Dorothy Parker (the writer, not the rabbit) and say something poignant and witty, something inspirational – and not to mention how our writing salon, from which the magazine had sprung, all started with a food fight in the canteen. I had quickly decided that wouldn’t sound very inspirational.

I did one of those little cough thingamies that Oscar winners do in the hope that it would add some glamour to
the occasion, and then I just let my subconscious do the rambling for me, figuring it couldn’t do a worse job than my conscious self – which couldn’t think of much apart from whether my hair was sticking up and if it was possible to apply lip-gloss while holding a microphone and speaking. I must have said something vaguely reasonable, though, because I heard the applause. Also no one teased me afterwards.

When it was over I went to the technology room and sent Sarah and Bob an e-mail about it. I thought about texting Freddie, but couldn’t think of an excuse that wouldn’t seem tragic, so I joined the celebratory dorm party.

Georgina invited Clemmie, Star, Arabella and me (and Dorothy Parker, of course) to spend half-term break at her massive stucco house on Eton Square.

We spent our mornings lying in the spring sun of her vast garden square, sipping on various health drinks dreamed up by her housekeeper, after which we would head off to Sloane Street and do a bit of shopping.

Sarah and Bob had finally upped my allowance to a reasonable level – not to the heady heights of Georgina, Star and the others, but at least I could afford to chip in for a pizza now. Sarah and Bob said it was because next school year I was going to be turning fifteen, but I suspect they also felt that after the Rough-and-Tumble episode, my character had been built up as much as it was ever going to be.

The best part, though, was in the evenings, when we
dressed up in all our finery (even Tobias put on his best suit) and set off for the Kings Road to pull boys.

The Kings Road Promenade. It was a tradition. A tradition that up until now I had never properly felt a part of. Girls and boys from boarding schools from all over England came in droves, like homing pigeons, to march up and down the Kings Road in Chelsea. American teenagers went to malls; we strolled up and down the road every evening, checking one another out and trying to pull.

The boys tried to look all cool and wasted, like they didn’t give a toss, and the girls, having spent hours trying to make themselves look effortlessly stunning, pretended not to look at the boys while arguing the fitness and pullability rating of each.

Clemmie and Kevin were an official item now. Star and Georgina both found her fascination with him immature and teased her mercilessly about stuff like when were they going to set the date for their marriage, etc.

My pulling rate that half-term was pretty low, mainly because I had Freddie on my mind. Although I did kiss Hugo, this totally fit boy from Downside (a posh Catholic boarding school), who was writing a novel.

A novel! Imagine that. An actual book. And it sounded really cool and witty too. I could have listened to him talk about it all night, but I had kissing on my mind and we had an eleven o’clock curfew, so I just flung myself at him.

Shame he was such a crap kisser – well, compared to Freddie anyway.

I’d heard/read that Freddie was away with his family in Scotland so I didn’t expect to hear from him … well, I tried not to expect to hear from him – although I did see him on television one evening, looking all gorgeous and charming. He was standing outside one of the royal retreats with the Queen and King and his mother and father, but just the same, I was disappointed he hadn’t called.