Charm School

by Anne Fine

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Copyright

  About the Book

  Who cares if flower earrings are ‘Totally Yesterday’?

  Bonny doesn’t.

  Nor does she want to know how to bleach her elbows.

  She only wants to make new friends.

  But the other girls at Charm School are so self-obsessed.

  And they’ll do anything to win the much-coveted ‘Glistering Tiara’…

  Coming to Charm School?

  DON’T FORGET TO BRING:

  2 halves of lemon (squeezed)

  false eyelashes

  perfume

  earrings

  hairbrush

  hair comb

  hair curlers

  hair gel

  hair spray

  hair glitter

  hair bands

  hair clips

  hair ribbons

  Shiny Girl Sparkling Eye Drops

  hand cream

  cuticle sticks

  nail file

  lipsticks (assorted colours)

  lip gloss

  nail varnish (assorted colours)

  cotton wool

  cleanser – try Glow Girls’s phytolyastil V.I.A. complex tissue

  peptide VHJ with hygrascopic elements and natural ceramides,

  and a syntropic blend of unique Derma Bio Tropocollagen

  (otherwise known as ‘Glop’)

  dancing shoes (preferably diamanté)

  outfit for song-and-dance routine

  gown for the catwalk parade

  music tapes for your routines

  stain remover

  shoe polish

  travel iron

  spare tights

  emergency sewing kit

  pearl choker (2-strand, please. 3-strand is ‘Totally yesterday’)

  Il faut souffrir pour être belle.

  (You have to suffer to be beautiful.)

  CHAPTER ONE

  ‘I CAN’T CHOOSE anything,’ wailed Bonny, tossing the brochure on the floor. ‘Not out of this horrible lot. Why can’t I just stay here?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ scoffed her mother. ‘Spend the whole day alone here, in a house where the furniture hasn’t even arrived yet. Next door to people we haven’t even met, who might be axe-murderers. Oh, yes!’ She picked up the brochure. ‘Now, quickly, sweetheart. Choose one of the classes, or I’ll have to choose one for you.’

  Bonny snatched the brochure and went down the list again. ‘Copperplate Handwriting!’ she groaned. ‘Practical Parenting! Defensive Driving! And Charm School!’ She hurled it back down. ‘All right, all right! I’ve chosen. I’ll do Practical Parenting.’

  ‘You can’t do that. It says you need a baby.’

  ‘I’ll borrow one.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. You haven’t even met anyone your own age yet. How could you find a baby?’ Her mother glanced impatiently at her watch. ‘Now listen, Bonny. We haven’t time for any more of this. We have to leave now. This new job’s important to me. I only have one day to brush up my accounting skills and pass the test to get my certificate. And my class starts at nine. So choose now. Choose.’

  Bonny scowled horribly. The packing. The move. Losing her friends. A whole empty summer yawning in front of her, with absolutely no company, before starting again in a strange school. She was as miserable as she could be.

  ‘Why can’t I just come with you?’

  ‘What? To Bookkeeping (Advanced)? You don’t know anything at all about bookkeeping.’

  It sounded so babyish to say, ‘The way I feel, I’d rather just sit next to you all day, not understanding anything, than be sent off to do something of my own.’ Instead, Bonny said sullenly:

  ‘So? I don’t even know what copperplate handwriting is, I’m too young to drive, and I may never have a baby.’

  Her mother laughed and reached for the car keys. ‘You know what this means, don’t you, Bonbons?’

  ‘No,’ said Bonny. ‘No, no, no.’ She kicked out at the bright pink sheet of paper that had fallen from the brochure.

  ‘No!’ she said again. ‘I am not going to Charm School.’

  ‘Get in the car.’

  ‘No,’ said Bonny. ‘Not if you paid me forty million pounds. Not if you boiled me in oil. Not if you begged me with tears rolling down your cheeks like pearls.’

  ‘Get in the car.’

  ‘If you do this to me,’ Bonny warned her mother, ‘I’ll never speak to you again. I won’t take out the rubbish. I won’t make you pots of tea when you’re tired. I won’t bring home any of the notes from school. And I’ll grow up to be a round-the-world yachtswoman, so you won’t just have to worry about me for a few hours now and then. You’ll have to worry about me day and night.’

  ‘Charming!’ said Mrs Bramble.

  ‘See?’ Bonny said desperately. ‘I am already charming. I don’t need lessons in it.’

  Mrs Bramble glanced at her watch for the last time. ‘This discussion is over,’ she warned. ‘I have a job to keep, so get in the car and sit on it quietly before I smack it!’

  The woman behind the desk peered doubtfully at Bonny’s scowl and Bonny’s faded jeans.

  ‘Charm School? Are you sure? To me, she looks a little more like Woodwork 1, or Starting French.’

  ‘French only lasts an hour,’ said Mrs Bramble. ‘And Woodwork 1 doesn’t begin till tomorrow. It’s all today we need.’

  Seeing the puzzled look on the woman’s face, she went on to explain.

  ‘You see, I’m just starting a new job and I need to learn better accounting skills. And her father’s still sitting in a lay-by with a broken down furniture van. And obviously she hasn’t had any time to make any new friends yet—’

  ‘I don’t want new friends,’ Bonny interrupted sourly. ‘I want my old friends back.’

  Mrs Bramble bit her lip, then bravely carried on. ‘And what with the telephone not working yet, it wasn’t possible to find a sitter. So …’

  She peered anxiously at her daughter, who glared back in a mixture of irritation and humiliation.

  ‘Still …’ the woman said, still doubtful. ‘Charm School …?’

  ‘That’s all there is,’ said Mrs Bramble. ‘Apart from Copperplate Handwriting. Unless you let her off the baby …’

  ‘Oh, no,’ the woman said. ‘You can’t do Practical Parenting without a baby. You have to bathe it, you see.’ She gave Bonny a nervous glance, as if she feared someone who looked as sullen and resentful as Mrs Bramble’s daughter would just as soon drown a baby as wash it nicely behind the ears. ‘One all-day Charm School it is, then,’ she said, taking the money. ‘And one all-day Bookkeeping (Advanced).’

  She handed over the tickets. ‘You’d better hurry,’ she warned Mrs Bramble. ‘Bookkeeping always starts dead on time. Don’t worry about your daughter. I’ll point her in the right direction.’

  Mrs Bramble pecked Bonny hastily on the cheek. ‘Bye, sweetheart. See you later.’

  And she fled.

  The woman ushered Bonny into the lift. ‘You might as well take it,’ she said. ‘Even though you’re not carrying any of the usual stuff.’

  ‘The usual stuff?’

  But just at that moment the lift doors closed, and Bonny found she was talking to herself.

  Bonny got out of the lift on the third floor, as she’d been told, and stamped her foot.

  ‘Horrible!’ she muttered. ‘Horrible, horrible, horrible! I hate this town. I hate this place. I hate the world. I hate everybody!’

&nbs
p; ‘Wrong floor, I think,’ a voice beside her said.

  Bonny spun round and told the man hurrying round the corner into the lift, ‘This is three, isn’t it? Where I’m supposed to be?’

  He looked her up and down. ‘I don’t think so, Little Miss Grumpy. Unless, of course, you’re here to help Maura with the sound and the lighting. The only other people on this floor today are Mrs Opalene’s pupils.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Bonny said stubbornly. ‘And I’m one of them.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ As if to show how little he believed her, he put his foot in the lift doorway to stop it closing. ‘So where’s all your stuff?’

  A tinned voice spurted out of the lift ceiling. ‘Please check the doors for obstructions.’

  Startled, the man drew back his foot. The lift doors closed.

  Fed up with people as good as telling her to her face that she was a Charm-free Zone, Bonny seized the opportunity to stick out her tongue, dig her thumbs in her ears, and waggle her fingers.

  The lift doors opened again, and the man stared.

  ‘I was quite wrong,’ he said before they slid closed again properly. ‘You were quite right. This is quite obviously the floor you need.’

  All along the corridor were photographs of dolls. All sorts of dolls, from innocent blue-eyed china dolls to mischievous dark-eyed dolls. But all had shiny eyes with curly lashes, and clouds of perfect hair, and pearly teeth behind their painted, triumphant smiles. They all had names as well, printed beneath their pictures. Miss Rosebud, one was called. Miss Sweet Caroline was another. Little Miss Cute Candy hung between Princess Royale and Our Million Dollar Baby. And Miss Stardust even had a wand to match her glittery frock.

  Along the corridor came the tea boy, pushing his trolley. ‘Are you lost?’ he asked Bonny.

  ‘No. I just stopped to look.’

  ‘Choosing your favourite?’

  Bonny stared at him coolly. ‘I don’t think so. I’m a bit old for dollies.’

  The tea boy nodded at the pictures. ‘Never too old to look like a twink.’

  Bonny took a closer look at Miss Cute Candy. ‘Are you serious? Are you telling me she’s real?’

  ‘Real?’ said the tea boy. ‘She’s a tiger, that one. She just this minute bit my head off for running a trolley wheel over one of her diamanté shoes.’

  ‘What’s diamanté?’

  ‘Don’t ask me,’ he shrugged. ‘That’s what she called it when she threw her little tantrum.’

  ‘Where is she now?’ asked Bonny, a little nervously.

  ‘Where do you think?’ said the tea boy. ‘She’s behind that door with the others, spending the day in Charm School.’

  Bonny was horrified. ‘It didn’t say!’ she wailed. ‘It didn’t say anything on the pink sheet about dressing up like dollies!’

  The tea boy shrugged. ‘So? It doesn’t say anything on the Woodwork I sheet about needing sticking plasters. Or on the Practical Parenting sheet about bringing your aspirins.’

  ‘It’s going to be awful, isn’t it?’ Bonny said.

  ‘It’s going to be worse than awful,’ said the tea boy. ‘It’s always awful. But usually on Saturdays it’s just Mrs Opalene’s Charm School girls. They’re bad enough. But on the one day a year she does the Curls and Purls Show, we get a flood of dippy twinks from The Little Miss Pretty Circle. So it’s worse.’

  ‘The Little Miss Pretty Circle?’ (It didn’t just sound worse. It sounded frightful.)

  He nodded at the photos on the walls. ‘You’ll see,’ he warned her. ‘Just go in and see.’

  Bonny pushed open the door, and peeped inside. A dozen girls her age were sitting on chairs facing a little stage. Their backs were straight. Their hands were folded in their laps. And they were listening.

  Up on the stage, a large, round, glittering lady strolled up and down.

  ‘You’re all Stars,’ she was telling them. ‘Every one of you. But when you come up on this stage, you’re going to be Superstars!’

  Bonny slid in the room and closed the door behind her. Nobody turned to look.

  ‘All day I want to see your Prettiest Eyes and your Prettiest Smiles!’

  Bonny took a seat on a chair in the back row, and nobody noticed.

  ‘All day,’ said the glittering lady, ‘I shall be watching you. And do you know what I’m expecting to see?’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Opalene,’ chirruped a dozen little voices, quite drowning out Bonny’s baffled, ‘No.’

  ‘I am expecting to see you walk as if you were on the brink of dancing.’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Opalene.’

  Mrs Opalene lifted a hand to her ear. ‘And all day long I shall be listening. And do you know what I’m expecting to hear?’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Opalene,’ chirruped everyone except Bonny.

  ‘I am expecting to hear you all talking as if you were about to burst into song.’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Opalene.’ Nobody sniggered. Nobody made a face. Nobody even turned to look at the person next to them.

  ‘And when you’re singing,’ said Mrs Opalene. ‘What am I expecting?’

  ‘To hear an angel trying to get it absolutely right,’ came the reply.

  ‘And when you dance?’

  ‘To be dazzled by our delicate footwork.’

  ‘That’s right. Lovely!’ She clapped her hands together. Her rings flashed. ‘So now we’ll just go ahead and do everything we usually do on Saturday mornings in Charm School. But in the afternoon we’ll have our special Curls and Purls Show.’ Her eyes shone with excitement. ‘And, just before you go home, we’ll have The Crowning of The Supreme Queen, who gets to choose her very own pretty name to wear all year. And haven’t we had some lovely ones!’ She pressed her hands together, remembering. ‘Miss Perfect Pearl! Miss Treasure! Dazzling Miss Daisy! Miss Sparkling Sue …’

  All round, everyone was clapping delightedly, except for Bonny, who sat with her head in her hands, even more sure now that she was in the wrong place, at the wrong time, with the wrong people. Should she get up and run? But there was something about the rising chatter round her, like sparrows squabbling on a fence, that made her feel even more homesick for her old friends.

  So she’d give it a go. Someone would have to speak to her some time, after all. And maybe, even in this unlikely cluster of goody-two-shoes, she might find some company to keep her going through the long, lonely summer, till she could make some proper, sensible friends in her new school.

  So when Mrs Opalene told everyone to take a little break while she set out her table for Beauty Tips, Bonny looked up. And when a girl she recognized from the photographs on the wall outside sailed past her, flashing a sparkling smile, Bonny said to her hopefully, ‘Hello, Rosebud.’

  The pretty vision twirled around. ‘Who said that?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Why?’

  Bonny stared. ‘Because I don’t know anyone here,’ she said. ‘And you just smiled at me.’

  ‘I didn’t smile at you,’ the pretty vision snapped. ‘I was just practising being charming.’

  And off she went.

  Rude, horrid baggage, thought Bonny. But it didn’t seem fair to judge the whole lot of them by one bad-mannered, haughty girl. So when the one that Bonny recognized as Miss Sweet Caroline strolled over towards her, smiling, Bonny tried again.

  ‘Hi, Caroline.’

  The smile vanished instantly. The eyes flashed sparks of fire. And Miss Sweet Caroline said to Bonny, ‘You say that again, and I’ll stick your head in a holly bush.’

  She swung on the heel of her shiny satin shoe, and stalked off, scowling. Bonny stared after her, astonished, until another of the girls came up behind. Though her hair was even longer and glossier than on the photograph outside, Bonny could tell it was Miss Stardust.

  ‘Brilliant!’ she said to Bonny. ‘You certainly showed her!’

  Bonny was baffled. All that she’d done to Miss Sweet Caroline was say hello.

  ‘Showed who?’ she asked.

&n
bsp; ‘Silly old Sarajane.’ Miss Stardust nodded after Miss Sweet Caroline. ‘That was a smart way to remind her of the last time she won anything – about a million years ago! And she certainly needn’t expect to win the glistering tiara today.’

  ‘What glistering tiara?’

  Miss Stardust waggled her pretty head from side to side in impatience.

  ‘Why, the glistering tiara of Miss Supreme Queen, of course. Weren’t you even listening?’

  Suddenly Bonny couldn’t even see her. A cloud of candy-floss hair had stepped between them. ‘You can’t be Miss Supreme Queen,’ it corrected Miss Stardust officiously. ‘You’d have to be “Your Highness, The Supreme Queen”.’

  ‘Well, thank you so very much, Cristalle,’ snarled Miss Stardust. ‘For wasting a whole corner of my brain by filling it up with something I don’t need to know.’

  ‘No,’ snapped back Cristalle. ‘I suppose you don’t, Angelica, since you have absolutely no chance of winning it.’

  Like Sarajane, she stalked off, just in time to pretend not to have heard Miss Stardust’s cross-patchy hiss of, ‘Neither have you!’

  Bonny stared. Were they all horrid? Why had she thought they were like sparrows squabbling merrily on a fence? These girls were more like vultures, all hovering unpleasantly over the next glistering tiara to be won.

  ‘Tell me,’ she said to Angelica. ‘Do you only get a photo on the wall outside if you’re the winner?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And, if you lose, do you have to wait a whole year to try again?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Angelica. ‘And, if you win, you’re crowned for the whole year.’ Coughing politely, she modestly inspected her perfect fingernails.

  Bonny took the hint.

  ‘So are you still Miss Stardust?’

  ‘Yes, I am,’ said Angelica firmly. ‘I am Miss Stardust until four o’clock this afternoon. That gives me six hours, three minutes and—’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Fifteen seconds.’

  Either she was a whizz at maths, thought Bonny, or she kept track by the second. Still trying to be friendly, she said to Angelica, ‘But you might win again.’

  Somehow, Angelica suddenly looked horribly anxious, and Bonny found herself adding hastily, in order to comfort her, ‘Not that it matters. After all, winning isn’t all that important.’