A Royal Match (26 page)

‘He’s a man, not a discovery, Honey,’ I blurted before I could stop myself.

‘Yes, you really should pay more attention in biology, darling,’ Star added, dragging out the word daaaahrling in the OTT way Honey did.

‘Oh, what would you know with all your father’s plebbie hangers-on,’ Honey snapped back, referring to the roadies who hung around Star’s family’s estate in Derbyshire, where they did a spot of valeting (between spliffs) when the band wasn’t touring.

‘They’re roadies and friends, actually. At least I don’t go round referring to people as manservants or exploiting refugees. What century are you from anyway?’

‘Yes, darling, how old are you really? Underneath all that surgery of yours?’ Georgina teased. The smile on her face didn’t do anything to break the chill in the air, though. I had never heard Georgina openly tease Honey. She and Honey, well, apart from the odd falling-out, were always civil to one another.

Honey ignored the remark, or at least she appeared to as she began brushing her hair. ‘Honestly, Oopa would lay down his life for me and little Absinthe,’ she sighed, as if
relishing the idea of poor Oopa lying dead in a ditch for the sake of her and her rabbit. ‘But enough of me,’ she said, speaking directly to Georgina. ‘How’s
your
padre, darling? Daddy said he had a drink with him at his club recently and invited Koo-Koo and him to join us for Christmas in Saint Moritz.’

No one ever mentions Georgina’s father unless she does. Sure enough, I noticed her eyes welling up with tears. Her father divorced her mother a couple of years ago after his second bypass operation. After her mother had nursed him back to health, he had announced that he felt ‘suffocated’ by her and that if he was going to die in the near future – which looked highly probable – he’d rather do it in the arms of a younger, less intelligent (he actually used the words
‘supportive’
and
‘less demanding,’
but Star says it amounts to the same thing) woman than Georgina’s mother.

Georgina had a bit of a scary brush with bulimia over it and she’s still really cut up about it. Catholics aren’t meant to get divorced, although Honey’s mother does it all the time. Not that all the girls at Saint Augustine’s are Catholic. Some parents merely send their daughters here because it’s conveniently close to Eades, where their sons and heirs go.

Georgina’s father had married Koo-Koo over the summer at what was once Georgina’s family seat in Gloustershire. Georgina used being with me in LA as her excuse not to attend the wedding, and we all took our cue from
her and didn’t mention it. Koo-Koo is a twenty-nine-year-old and refuses to let Georgina stay overnight anymore. Koo-Koo says, ‘It’s better for everyone this way.’ As a consequence, Georgina barely sees her father now.

Honey knows about all this, of course. She was just mentioning him to get back at Georgina, to be cruel in the way small boys pull legs off bugs or older boys say they’ll txt you and never do.

Honey definitely hit her mark. Georgina looked miserable. I tossed her my lip-gloss but she didn’t even attempt to catch it, and it just landed on the floor, near her feet.

‘Oh my God, what’s that, darling?’ Star asked, breaking the toxic tension. Picking up a piece of dusty fluff from the top of the radiator, she held it up, pretending to examine it carefully.

‘Don’t worry,’ she announced in mock relief, ‘it’s just a piece of dust. For a minute there I thought it might be your brain, Honey.’

Georgina bent down and picked up the lip-gloss. She smiled at me as she applied it. Honey sneered, probably to give herself time to think up a sarcastic response, but Star pressed her advantage. ‘I always forget,
darling
, you don’t actually have a brain, do you, Honey? They sucked it out during the lipo.’

Georgina chucked me my lip-gloss and I started applying like mad. Who knew where this confrontation would end? Okay, so Honey was a walking advertisement for teen
cosmetic surgery, but suggesting that she may have had liposuction was suggesting she may have once been fat, a taboo topic at Saint Augustine’s, where specialists were on tap if any girl showed the slightest sign of developing an eating disorder. But as everyone knows, Saint Augustine girls are slim – mostly because they feed us inedible grey slops.

Honey smiled evilly. ‘Star, you are too, too hilarious. How fortunate your parents are giving you their full support to break into vaudeville.’

Star’s response was to pull the lip-gloss out of her pocket and apply it ostentatiously close to Honey’s face. ‘Wear your pain like lip-gloss’ was one of our secret mottos. Lip-gloss is a girl’s biggest asset when dealing with difficult situations. When Star and I were out of the cool-loop, we used to use it as a secret sign to show we weren’t dealing with something. It made me feel a bit better seeing Star use our special sign language.

And then out of the blue, Portia remarked, ‘Oh yes, lip-gloss. What a good idea,’ and although she didn’t apply any she smiled at me warmly. It seemed significant.

Georgina doesn’t like to get involved in Honey’s issues with other girls. None of us do, really, and so, keen to change the subject, Georgina grabbed the
Tatler
Portia was reading and asked her, ‘So darling, what about you? Good summer? Calypso, Star and I had our navels pierced, see!’ She and Star both lifted their shirts to expose their rings.

I was about to come clean and fess up when Portia looked Georgina straight in the eye and replied, ‘Hardly,’ her voice laced in pain.

I suddenly felt really guilty and self-obsessed. I hadn’t even bothered to ask about her summer when she’d asked about mine.

‘Mummy was killed in a car accident,’ she explained flatly and then picked up her magazine and adopted an
absorbed look. None of us knew what to say to that, apart from Honey, of course.

‘Darling, how absolutely devastating,’ Honey remarked breezily, gathering up her rabbit and popping her into her matching mauve Prada pet bag. ‘I’m so sorry, but these things do happen.’ Her lower lip dropped in a look of regret as she gave the room a little wave. ‘I’m just going to take Absinthe down to the pet shed before the hideous Miss Bibsmore returns.’ She rolled her big violet eyes at the thought. ‘Do you want to come, darling?’ she asked Georgina.

Georgina looked up at her but not with the sort of look you could interpret. Star claims that one of the major reasons parents pay exorbitant sums of money to send their girls to Saint Augustine’s is so they can develop a poker face – known to the toff parents as an Aloof Demeanour, a sort of non-look. Honestly, if you could buy an Aloof Demeanour, effortless charm and a sense of entitlement on Bond Street, England’s boarding schools would be out of business in a day. Nuns are very good at poker faces. They’re very good at poker too. Sometimes when they invite us around for tea they cut us in on a game. They always beat us, but we only play for sweets, which they then insist we eat or take with us afterwards, so that’s okay.

Honey chose to take the look as a no. ‘Well, ciao ciao!’ she called as she swept out of the room on a cloud of
eau de parbitch
.

We all turned our attention back to Portia. ‘Darling,
what happened?’ Georgina asked gently, sitting down on the bed and rubbing poor Portia’s back. Star was sitting beside her and so I sat beside Star.

Portia’s loss distressed me. The tears were banking up behind my eyes as I tried to think what I might want someone to say to me if anything happened to Sarah.

Portia put down her magazine and replied calmly. ‘It was the first day of the holidays. We were shopping, she was walking across Sloane Street, only not at the pedestrian crossing, and this Range Rover ran over her. It was all so fast. I was right there….’ Her voice faded, and Georgina took her in her arms and kissed the crown of her glossy raven head.

If it had been me, I would have cried. As it was I was wiping back a tear at the horrible sadness of it all. But I was paralysed by awkwardness and found I couldn’t join Star and Georgina in hugging her. I knew I was being inept and I wanted to say something more … I don’t know … ept, I guess, so I got off the bed and sat on my haunches in front of Portia and passed her my lip-gloss.

‘Do you want some lip-gloss?’ I asked, attempting a smile.

Portia took the lip-gloss, smiled bravely at me and applied liberally as I added, ‘I’m really sorry I didn’t ask about your break before, Portia. Actually, I mean I’m sorry about your mother and everything else too, obviously, it’s so sad …’

Portia gave me another brave smile as she passed me
back my lip-gloss. I told her to keep it as I had loads, which was true. ‘Honestly, it’s so sweet of you, but I’ve dealt with it now,’ she said. ‘Honey’s right; devastating, but these things happen. It’s Daddy I’m worried about, rattling about all alone in that big house.’

By all alone, of course she meant there would still be gameskeepers, butlers, valets and staff galore, but her sadness and concern were real and my heart went out to her. Suddenly my txt alert sounded, and without thinking I dug my phone out of my pocket and read,

Can’t get you out of my head.
Freds x

I smiled, mostly because I had invented the nickname Freds. How cool was that; I had invented a nickname for the heir to the throne who couldn’t get me out of his head? No one seemed to notice me reading the txt but the inappropriateness of my joy wasn’t lost on me, and I shoved the phone straight back into my pocket.

‘I met your mother loads of times,’ I told Portia. ‘She was always lovely to me. She was so tall and beautiful and I loved the way she would always kick her shoes off and fall asleep at the back of the chapel on your father’s shoulder during Mass.’

A half-smile broke across Portia’s face. ‘And snored,’ she added. ‘She always snored.’

‘Well, Father Conran
can
go on,’ Star said, which made
Portia laugh, even though I noticed a solitary tear running down her cheek, and then we all laughed the way you do when crying is the only other option and you know tears won’t help.

‘Thanks,’ Portia said, wiping her tear away. ‘Since the funeral I’ve been so miserable and pathetically wrapped up in my own self-pity. I’ve just stayed in my room and tried not to think about Mummy, but I can’t help it. Daddy’s lost loads of weight.’

‘What about Tarkie?’ Georgina asked, referring to Portia’s older brother, Tarquin, the Marquess of Eaglemere, who attends Eades in the year above Freddie.

‘Tarkie’s dealt with it by throwing himself into partying,’ she replied. I sensed she was being economical with her feelings about Tarquin’s partying in that upper-class English way, which had taken me so long to adapt to. Actually let me amend that; I am still getting used to it. ‘He went to Rock with friends straight after the funeral.’

‘What? Surfing?’ I blurted, shocked at what I saw as Tarquin’s callous abandonment of his sister and father.

‘Yes, well, it was pretty gloomy in Eaglemere, and we’ve always spent that fortnight in our house in Rock …’ She trailed off as if remembering past summers with her family when it was complete.

‘But what about you? What about your father?’ I asked, frustrated by my own inability to say anything useful and annoyed that I was saying anything at all. It was pretty obvious by the way Portia’s head was bowed and her
demeanour in general that she didn’t want to answer questions or discuss her mother’s death more than she had to.

‘Daddy locked himself away,’ she answered politely, as if I’d asked about the weather, but she was looking at her hands, which were folded neatly in her lap. ‘He told me to go with Tarkie. My ghastly grandmother came to stay.’

‘Oh,’ I replied as if I genuinely thought the arrival of a ghastly relative made everything okay.

Then Portia looked up at me. ‘And she told me I should have gone with Tarkie to Rock too, and so I locked myself away from her.’

I could see she was about to tear up again, and I felt bad. ‘Boys are different,’ Star said, then pinched me in the ribs, which made me squeal, and Georgina pinched me too.

Portia smiled as I beat off Georgina and Star. She was clearly relieved that my probing was over.

‘Honestly, Tarquin’s been brilliant. He sent Daddy and me a postcard every day. Daddy said he wasn’t even sure Tarquin could write before that.’ Then a real smile broke across her beautiful features as if she was remembering something happy. ‘Actually, do you mind if I
don’t
talk about it?’ she asked, looking at me almost pleadingly. ‘I mean, I can’t stop missing Mummy, but it did feel good to laugh again just then.’

‘In that case,’ Star urged, pulling Portia to her feet, ‘you have
got
to come to the pet shed and see Hilda. She’s learnt this really cool new trick.’

‘You’ve taught her to talk?’ Portia asked teasingly.

Star’s always trying to teach her rat, Hilda, and her snake, Brian, to do clever tricks, but all Brian does is slither about and all Hilda does is run herself stupid on her little rat wheel. If you ask me, those two are a lost cause as far as tricks go.