Lady in Waiting

by Lady Victoria Hervey

  And I like the sound of girlfriend… “Is that what I am, then?”

  “What? The master of breaking in? I don’t know, I’ll have to see you in action first before I let you have that title.”

  I huffed and rolled my eyes.

  “Oh, you mean girlfriend? Of course—what else would you be?”

  “I don’t know…but I like it.” I smiled.

  Peter grinned and kissed me quickly again. “You know what this means, don’t you? You’re going to be inundated with letters from me.”

  “Good, I can’t wait.”

  After a quick glance around and confirming there wasn’t anyone within peeping Tom distance, Peter pulled me closer for a deeper, proper goodbye kiss.

  When we all trudged upstairs to dump our luggage, Jemima appeared from the common room. “Thank God you’re all back. I’ve been on my own for a few hours and it’s deathly boring being here by yourself.”

  Cassandra yawned and pushed past Jemima. “Bummer. I’m going to bed—travelling exhausts me.”

  “And me,” Annie agreed as she headed into her own room.

  Jemima caught my eye and paused. She scanned me from head to toe, frowning as she met my gaze again. “Why does Freddie look like the cat that got the cream?”

  “Maybe because she did. Only instead of cream, she got Harriet’s brother.” Athena gave Jemima a broad, fake smile. “You remember him, right, Jemima? Peter Davenport?”

  Jemima frowned. “I’ve never heard of him before. Harriet never introduced us to her brother.”

  “Maybe not, but you met him at the dance last year.” Athena held her hand a foot above her head. “About this tall, lovely green eyes, handsome? I think you had the last dance with him…”

  Jemima’s eyes widened as realisation sank in. “That…was your brother?” she asked Harriet.

  “I guess so,” Harriet said with a shrug. “I hope you two won’t fight over him!” She laughed.

  “Don’t worry, it wouldn’t be much of a fight,” I said, smiling at Jemima. “Would it, Jemima?”

  She opened and closed her mouth for a moment, looking like a fish out of water. Jemima knew she had been caught out in her lie, and the heated anger in her eyes said she probably realised that I knew her dancing with Peter had been to intentionally upset me.

  I gave her a wide smile as I brushed past her to get to my room. Only time would tell how Jemima reacted to the news about me and Peter. While I was still hurt and upset over her actions, I wasn’t about to ostracize her. For all intents and purposes, our friendship was over. But for the sake of our group of friends, I could fake it for a few months.

  The new term at school saw me busier than ever. A-Level exam pressure was amped up and it set my nerves on edge. All my free time was spent pretending to study while really I was anxiously contemplating my future, writing to Peter, or daydreaming about him.

  I managed to squeeze in a trip to Upton the week after the Christmas holidays. I got the train—well, two trains and an underground, technically—up to see him and he met me at Upton station where we kissed and acted like love-struck teenagers.

  Upton was ridiculously easy to sneak into—I literally just walked into the place. I had to hide in Peter’s room the entire time, which I didn’t mind at all. His desk was neat and tidy, with sheets of writing paper and an assortment of fancy pens. His shelves were crammed with books, and his tuck box was full of sherbet sweets. I had a feeling he’d stocked them just for me.

  We curled up together on his bed and talked late into the night about absolutely everything—books, films, music, friends. Peter in particular seemed to like my anecdotes and tales of mischief and never got tired of hearing them. Which was good, because I seemed to have an unlimited supply of them.

  He laughed so hard tears rolled down his cheeks when I told him about the time I got into a huge fight with my friend Daisy and I threw her new leather briefcase down the stairs and it ripped. Peter called me a hothead and when I threw him a dirty look, he appeared stricken and asked me to please not throw any of his things down the stairs.

  Sneaking out was a touch harder as the place was busier when I had to leave, but I rolled my hair up to hide it under a cap. I wore Peter’s school uniform and pretended to be an Upton boy. No one suspected a thing.

  I couldn’t decide if that was a good thing or not…

  It would be a few weeks before we got the chance to see each other again because of my history trip to China.

  Where a plane on an internal flight had just crashed.

  Honestly.

  Everyone went mad with worry until the school decided that we would take the train during our trip instead.

  It couldn’t be that much longer on the train, surely.

  Cassandra was the only one of my friends in my history class, and it would be fun to go with her.

  We flew from Heathrow and it took twice as long to get to the airport as the silly Tour de France was starting in Kent, so half the roads were closed and the other half were clogged with cycling enthusiasts and their ruddy camper vans. It took around three hours to fly to Tel Aviv, then a further six and a half to get to Beijing.

  I felt dead on my feet as we trudged to the hotel. Although once there, I soon perked up. We were staying in the Beijing Kunlun Hotel in the Chaoyang District. The hotel was fairly new, and an absolutely stunning piece of architecture. It soared skyward, easily the tallest building in the immediate area.

  Cassandra and I were sharing a room with two other girls and it was like being back in a dorm again. The first night we tore through the supply of snacks we had brought, leaving next to nothing for the rest of the trip. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on the sherbet that our school friend Venetia, who lived in Hong Kong, would bring in her tuck box.

  She hadn’t been able to come on this trip because she wasn’t in the class, but Venetia had given us a list of treats we just had to try.

  That was the problem with going to school with a bunch of girls who came from all over the world—they gave you a taste for yummy sweets you could hardly ever get.

  Our trip schedule was jam-packed and our first day in China we visited The Forbidden City and the Temple of Heaven. We also headed to Tiananmen Square—the fourth largest city square in the world.

  And crikey…was it ever.

  The place teemed with people, and huge, intricately built architecture rose up from the ground. Mausoleums and monuments that looked like nothing I had ever seen before attracted thousands of visitors.

  Armed soldiers patrolled the area, and we school girls snuck glances at them. We’d found out there had recently been shootings in the area and it made me more than a little nervous. We stayed close together in our group, never straying from each other. I scanned the crowds, the buildings and the people, completely enraptured with this city.

  A leaflet was shoved into my hand and I whirled around to see a bunch of other people sneakily handing them out. It was obviously in Chinese, but it looked like some kind of propaganda. One of the armed guards spotted them, and started shouting. He ripped the leaflets out of tourists’ hands, shouting as he did.

  On a whim, I shoved mine up my jumper.

  It could make a good souvenir.

  We left shortly after, and that evening, we boarded a sleeper train to Xi’an.

  Our teacher assured us it was the nicest train China had, which was good because apparently we were in for a long journey. We had our own cabin that had bunk beds attached to the walls and I could see the tracks below when I went to the toilet. Which was really weird. And disconcerting when I had to use it.

  At some point during the journey, there was a knock on our cabin door.

  Cassandra opened the door to a small boy whose entire hand was covered in blood.

  I gasped and rushed forward. “Oh my gosh, what happened?”

  His mother stood behind him and gestured to the boy’s hand. “He trapped finger—you have bandage?” she asked in poor English.


  Cassandra glanced at me. “Mr Richards will have a first-aid kit— I’ll be right back.” She rushed out to fetch our teacher.

  I nodded and gestured for the mother and son to come into the cabin. Cassandra returned a moment later with Mr Richards who quickly cleaned up the boy’s finger and wrapped a bandage around the cut.

  The woman nodded her thanks as they left.

  “Why did they ask us?” Cassandra wondered aloud.

  “They probably realised with us being on a school trip we would have a first-aid kit,” Mr Richards said. “Hopefully there won’t be any more excitement on the trip.” He left the cabin, and Cassandra pulled a face at me.

  “Was that weird?”

  “What was weird was that the boy didn’t make a sound—Louisa who would have screamed bloody murder.”

  The China not written about in guidebooks whizzed past our window. China was like a whole other world to me, and really…it was. There were hardly any cars. At all. Everyone cycled everywhere and all I had seen were bicycles and yet more bicycles.

  People lay outside on their metal beds, making the place look bleak and desolate.

  I also found out exactly how much longer it was to get a train to Xi’an than it was to fly.

  A day. That was how long it took to get a train from Beijing to Xi’an.

  We arrived in the afternoon and I trudged off the train stiff, tired and feeling grimy. There was no time to rest, and after dropping our things at the hotel we visited the Big Wild Goose Pagoda—a seventh century Buddhist pagoda that housed ancient scriptures.

  “Just think…a hot shower, some dinner and bed…” Cassandra murmured as we walked behind the teacher who was busy telling us all about the pagoda. He sounded like he had memorised everything from a history textbook. Which he probably had.

  I groaned and examined my fingernails. “I can’t wait. I’ve never wanted to wash my hair more in my entire life.” Now, I was no stranger to travel. But there was something about this mode of transport, a confined and stifling hot mode of transport, that left a layer of filth on my skin.

  “Rock, paper, scissors for who gets the first turn in the bathroom?” Cassandra asked.

  I grinned. “You’re on.”

  We fisted our hands and pumped them three times.

  “Girls, are you paying attention?”

  Cassandra and I shared an amused look before chorusing, “Yes, sir.”

  The next afternoon, Cassandra and I were in better spirits thanks to long showers and the ginormous McDonalds lit up like Disneyland that we had found near the hotel.

  “What’s the deal with this place again?” Cassandra asked as we headed to the museum entrance.

  “Honestly, didn’t you look at what we would be seeing on this trip?” I asked with a laugh.

  Cassandra rolled her eyes. “Yes, cheeky. But I forget. There’s only so much China I can absorb.”

  I sighed. “This is the museum of the Terracotta Army.”

  “Which are?”

  “An army made of terracotta,” I said, smothering a smile. “Some farmers discovered the pits and called in proper archaeologists. It turned out the pits contained funeral art that was buried with Qin Shi Huangdi and there’s over eight thousand soldiers.”

  “Wow. That’s pretty cool. This place must be huge.”

  It turned out that Cassandra was right. The museum that was built around the pits where the Army was discovered was colossal. It attracted thousands of visitors and I was humbled to be one of them.

  The next day of our trip we visited the Great Wall and the Free Market. I was charmed by the market and all the different wares on sale, and I found a couple of wristbands to take home. But then we found the food, and all the live animals being sold to eat. Rabbits, chickens, turtles, snakes…baskets and crates full of them, and people were eyeing them up like they were a delicious cheeseburger!

  I had never craved English food so much in my entire life.

  The last thing I wanted to do was board the train to take us back to Beijing. I loved the trip to Xi’an…but I never wanted to do that journey again.

  The train was hot and stuffy, with tons of bodies crammed into such a tiny space. We girls had a cabin again, but we all got cabin fever at being trapped in such a small space. We all complained of numb bums and stiff legs—especially me, being the tallest and therefore having the least legroom.

  “Remind me to never do this again,” I mumbled to Cassandra as I rested my head against the clammy glass window.

  Cassandra sighed. “Me, too. But, I can’t wait to come back. I’m definitely seeing more of the Far East in my gap year.”

  I turned around to face my friend. “What gap year?”

  She nodded. “Yeah, didn’t I tell you? I talked about it with my folks over Christmas. I’m blowing off college for a year and travelling the world.”

  My eyes widened. “I had no idea. By yourself?”

  “I guess so. I have friends everywhere, so it’s not like I’ll be in isolation for twelve months. I’m meeting people in Australia, India, and I’m definitely going to hook up with Venetia in Hong Kong. Maybe Thailand, too.”

  “That sounds amazing,” I murmured.

  “Mmm. I can’t wait. Only a few more months and then I’m out of here, so to speak. Just imagine—you’ll be in another classroom, living in another dorm with loads of other girls again, and I’ll be skipping across the continents with the world as my classroom.”

  It felt like someone was laying a heavy slab of concrete on my chest. She hadn’t been intentionally cruel, but her words hurt all the same. I pictured our two different paths in my head, and couldn’t help but see Cassandra’s as a bird soaring through the sky…and mine as a shackle.

  “Have you thought about it?” Cassandra asked, snapping me out of my reverie.

  “What? Doing a gap year?” I asked. I shook my head. “No way. Mummy would kill me.”

  “Uni won’t go anywhere. It’s not like you wouldn’t ever go, you’re only delaying it for a little while.” Cassandra shrugged and opened her magazine. “Besides, wouldn’t it be a blast if we spent some of it together?”

  “The Mapleton Manor girls take on the world,” I said with a chuckle.

  Cassandra laughed. “Exactly. And think how many wristbands you could collect.”

  My mind swam. It sounded incredible and so, so tempting. But I couldn’t…could I?

  Shaking my head again, I pulled out the postcard I had bought of the Terracotta Army to send to Peter.

  Dear Peter,

  Right now I am (not) enjoying the longest train journey of my entire life.

  China is pretty cool—the Great Wall is really long and bendy and the Terracotta Army is massive. Did you know there are over 8,000? Mad! I’ve bought you some seaweed to try—it’s actually really nice. It’s one of the nicer local treats to eat—I didn’t think you would enjoy the chicken foetus. I’m looking forward to getting off this train and stretching my legs! It takes an entire day to get to Xi’an.

  I can’t wait to

  The train jerked and clattered, making me scratch a long, sharp line through my words. It almost felt as though we had run someone over.

  “What was that?” Cassandra asked, sitting up straighter in her seat. She leaned over me, smacking me in the face with her ponytail as she tried to see what was going on out of the window.

  The train shuddered to a stop, earning many complaints I couldn’t understand from the other passengers outside our cabin.

  Mr Richards poked his head inside our cabin. “Stay in your seats, girls! I’ll find out what’s going on!”

  Twenty minutes later, an announcement was made over the train speaker system in Chinese. I didn’t understand a word of it. The grumbling passengers cleared the aisle, seemingly unperturbed by the news.

  Mr Richards came back, seeming flustered and his face an alarming shade of grey. “We’ll be moving along in a few minutes girls, just be patient, please.”

  �
�What happened, Mr Richards?” Cassandra asked.

  “We seem to have gone over a body,” Mr Richards said. He let out a high-pitched giggle. “They’re getting him moved out of the way now, it won’t be long.” He giggled nervously again and started heading back down the aisle.

  Cassandra turned around to face me, her eyes as wide as saucers. “No way.”

  “Look around—no one even cares. This is so weird,” I whispered as we glanced through the window and into the aisle.

  “Maybe it happens all the time,” she wondered.

  “That’s comforting.” I sighed as I looked at the mess of the postcard. Well, there was nothing I could do about it—I was hardly going to ask if we could make the journey again so I could buy another one.

  Sorry about the scribble…we just ran over a body.

  Can’t wait to see you!

  Freddie x

  There was a reply from Peter waiting for me at school when I returned.

  Dear Freddie,

  I hope you have recovered from your visit to China, it sounds like you had a lot of fun. Bit concerned about the running over of a body by the train though…

  Can’t wait to hear all about your adventures when I see you next weekend. My days have been like wilted flowers waiting for your return—void of life, drooping under my sorrow. I need my Freddie Sunshine to put a bit of life back in me. (How was that—romantic? Or too much?)

  Peter x

  I wrote him back immediately.

  Dear Peter,

  Perfect.

  Just like always.

  Freddie x

  The train couldn’t go fast enough for my liking. I had been waiting with my backpack at the doors for well over fifteen minutes so that I could be first off when the train finally stopped at Upton.

  It was strange how time played tricks on you. The train in China had literally taken more than a day to reach its destination. But I would swear down dead that this train took longer.