I can make a total arse of myself when I try. Sometimes even when I don’t try.
Georgina looked at me strangely for a moment, but then she just said, ‘Yaah, you are so right, darling,’ in her drawly way. Then she added that she was thinking of giving up too. I was so amazed I almost fell backwards like Star’s dad!
‘I’ve really got to give up trainers,’ Star declared from her position on the floor, breaking the spell of my little bonding moment with Georgina. ‘They are totally taking over my life.’
Georgina and I watched as Star jammed the last of her six hundred black trainers in her cupboard and slammed the door with her foot.
Georgina looked Star up and down – from her shoes to her hair and then down from her hair to her shoes again. She has a lot of dismissive looks like this down pat. All the cool girls have this ability to shrivel your confidence with withering looks.
Star didn’t shrivel easily, though. I guess the fact that her father was way richer than Georgina and her cool pod of friends put together gave her confidence a boost – or maybe she really just doesn’t care.
Star had a saying which had always helped us survive the slings and arrows of Georgina and her friends’ jibes: ‘Wear Your Pain Like Lip-Gloss.’ The first thing any girl does when she’s in a jam or stuck for words is reach for her lip-gloss. So whenever we’re nervous or someone says something bitchy to us, we pull out our lip-gloss and apply.
I pulled out my lip-gloss and applied, but Star didn’t notice because she was busy giving Georgina her own withering look, which, as looks go, is like a cross between the gym mistress’s pre-menstrual scowl and a tiger growling – i.e., pretty damn frightening.
Then Georgina gave Star another look of her own.
I’m telling you, it was a war of looks.
I have always admired Star for standing up to Georgina and the other girls, because I was completely terrified of them. It’s not like Star was bursting with confidence either. I mean, she was fully self-conscious about her weight – not that she was a chubba or anything, but like I said, Saint Augustine’s had a reputation for producing tall, willowy girls, whereas Star was more your classic ordinary-sized girl with red hair (she calls it Titian, but it doesn’t alter the fact that she’s always being teased for being a ginga).
Star always says that she envies my figure. I keep telling her she has nothing to worry about because she has a lovely figure and beautiful hair, but she still says she’d rather trade with me. I suppose I am tall – although I’m more gangly than willowy. My mom says I’ve got stunning cheekbones, but the older girls were always coming up to me and pinching my cheeks and saying stuff like, ‘You’ve got the cutest little chubby cheeks.’ I hated that.
‘God, you’re a loser, Star,’ Georgina sighed as she put her Gucci sunglasses on (presumably to save her eyes from the glare of our ugly rays).
I wanted to defend Star – not that Star would have wanted me to, and anyway, anything I said would only have made things worse – but then something almost magical happened. Georgina turned to look at me through her sunglasses and smiled. ‘Bet he was a great kisser, darling,’ referring to Jay. ‘You can always tell by the lips.’
‘Definitely,’ I lied, trying not to puke at the thought of kissing Jay. I mean, yes, he’s fit and all, but HELLO, he is SO gay. He practically walks on tippie-toes.
Georgina lowered her glasses down her nose slightly so she could give me the searchlight look, only without the dismissive sneer that she used on Star. I could tell she was genuinely awestruck by my pulling prowess. Well, maybe not awestruck exactly – I mean, Georgina is no beginner in the art of pulling. At the last social she pulled five boys!
But she was rattled, I could tell.
I was shaking my duvet into its cover when Honey and Arabella came in and slumped on Georgina’s bed. ‘Hey, check this out, darlings,’ Georgina urged, pointing to my photographs. ‘Calypso has pulled an actual hottie.’
The girls clambered over onto my bed and scrutinised the photo. ‘Wow! Calypso, he’s really fit,’ Arabella agreed.
‘So what’s his name?’ Honey asked nastily.
‘Erm, Jay.’
‘Jay?’ she squealed. A look of undiluted disgust flashed across her flawless It-Girl face. ‘How tragically American is that?’ Then she started saying ‘Jay’ with an exaggerated American accent, which set the other girls off.
I went bright red.
Star looked over at me pityingly, then made psycho stabbing motions behind the other girls’ backs, which almost made me giggle.
‘Did you seduce him on your teen duvet, then, Calypso?’ Arabella asked bitchily, referring to the Club’N cover I was trying to shove my duvet into.
It was the cover my mom had bought me when I first came to Saint Augustine’s – back when Club’N were cool. I know, tragic. OK, so maybe I had begged her for it at the time, but I was only eleven! The picture of Club’N was fading, but it was still a Club’N cover and way embarrassing. It was also made of synthetic fibres, and a single bed duvet, not a goose-down double like all the other girls had.
I should have made my mom get me a new cover, but I’d hardly seen her the entire break. I should have made up a cooler name for Jay too, but I was so thrilled about the photo gallery success that I hadn’t given the matter any thought. Stupid, stupid, stupid, Calypso.
‘Actually, Jay is just short for James,’ I lied, suddenly inspired (James being a much posher name than Jay).
The cool girls nodded, clearly satisfied with this explanation.
Star flopped onto my bed with the others. ‘I snogged that Rupert guy,’ she groaned. ‘My tongue got caught in his braces. It was so embarrassing.’
‘You’re embarrassing, Star,’ Georgina said with another sneer. ‘I can’t believe I’m going to be sharing a dorm with someone called Star. What’s up with that anyway? Were your parents stoned out of their heads?’
I was shocked. Not about how nasty she was – I was used to that – it was just that usually it was me she said stuff like that to.
Star didn’t seem bothered. That’s what I love about her. Even with her name and her weird parents she’s really chilled about herself. Also, like I said, she thinks Georgina and Honey are the freaks.
Honey did her screechy little fake laugh. She looks like a hyena when she laughs, although it was obvious that she’d had Botox (to give her eyebrows ‘a lift’) in the break. She’d already had collagen injected into her lips at Christmas.
Honey is a total psycho toff; in fact, she makes Georgina and the other posh girls seem positively friendly. I always got the impression that even they sometimes find Honey too much. But Georgina’s father and Honey’s biological father go to the same hunting meets and the two of them had to stay overnight together at a hotel for posh tots in Chelsea called Pippa Pop-Ins. Then when they were four they were packed off to the madly grand Hill House in Knightsbridge, which was where Prince Freddie, his father, Prince George, and, well, all the grandest children went. Georgina and Honey even learned to ski together at the school’s Swiss annex. So when anyone dared to question Honey’s behaviour, Georgina always stuck up for her.
Honey’s mother is a way-famous It Girl who presents a programme on celebrity homes for a cable station called ‘E.’ She had Honey when she was about seventeen, so she still looked incredibly stunning.
Georgina might have had a somewhat grander-than-thou way about her, but Honey was a genuine Class-A bitch. She was always giving Georgina a really hard time about her weight and her looks, even though Georgina was really stunning and slim. Also, everyone knew that Georgina’s had huge food issues, mostly on account of her parents’ divorce.
Just about everyone at Saint Augustine’s has issues with food – and not just because they feed us slops that taste like sewage. In fact, the nuns tick your name off at lunch and dinner and check your tray when you stick it in the cart to make sure you’ve eaten everything because anorexia is so rife. If you miss two meals,
you have to speak to Sister Dempster in the infirmary about how anorexia can make your bones brittle and even kill you.
Last year when Georgina’s parents separated she became bulimic. Star says that sometimes bulimia and anorexia are ways to control something when you feel everything else is out of control. Star actually tried to be really helpful, pointing out that anorexia and bulimia can cause your hair to go thin and fall out and make your skin go all old and wrinkly looking, but Georgina just told her to piss off. We heard she stopped throwing up her lunch and supper, though, so I think Star might have hit a nerve. Georgina’s hair is beautifully long and straight and luxuriously thick and I know she’d hate it to fall out.
‘I’m going for a fag. Anyone coming?’ Star announced, stuffing her cigarettes in her bra and her Febreze in her bag.
The smokers always sprayed themselves with Febreze to take the smell away after a visit to the tennis courts for a fag. Then they’d come up to non-smokers like me and ask, ‘Do I smell?’ and I’d have the responsibility of sniffing them. Of course if a teacher later smelled smoke on them, I’d get the blame.
At least Star smokes, I thought enviously. At Saint Augustine’s everyone smoked, even the nuns. I tried to smoke once, but I threw up because I’d just come from an interschool fencing tournament and was totally starving. Anyway I actually don’t want to smoke because it would affect my health and even though I haven’t even told Star this, I really, really love fencing, and I actually dream of fencing in the Olympics one day.
The smokers trailed out of the room, leaving me to finish my unpacking. I was just about to take my fencing gear down to the armoury when Clementine Fraser-Marks came running into the room. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said, clearly disappointed. ‘Erm, hi, how was your break?’
‘Oh, yaah, fine,’ I replied, pretending that I believed she actually gave a shit.
‘Great. Where’s Georgina?’
‘Up on Puller’s Hill.’
‘Fair enough.’
I could tell she was uncomfortable having to be alone in the room with me but was too well brought up to show it.
‘You sharing?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Cool. Well, Antoinette is selling listens if you want.’
‘Cool.’
‘Is that your boyfriend?’ She pointed to the photographs.
I shrugged. ‘Guess.’
‘Fit. He looks like an adult sort of thing.’
I said, ‘Yaah, well, that’s on account of how he is … an adult sort of thing.’
‘Wow. Well, it’s Blake from Cell anyway, if you’re interested. She’s only charging fifty p on account of how it’s the first day back.’
Cell was the hottest new band of the year. They’d had two number ones already and had also admitted taking coke. Blake, the lead singer, was Antoinette’s brother.
It was a Saint Augustine’s custom to sell ‘listens’ of mobile phone messages left by famous family members or really fit brothers or boyfriends. They didn’t always have to be famous, but you got more money for a famous listen. After the social last term when Georgina pulled five guys and they all left messages she made a small fortune and the queues snaked down the corridors.
Jay had promised to leave a message on my phone.
I was actually starting to believe that he was my boyfriend.
FOUR:
The Royal Sport
There were only about twenty girls who fenced at Saint Augustine’s and only three were on the sabre team – Star, Portia and myself. None of the willowy cool girls took fencing that seriously, which made the fact that I was the captain a badge of shame. Tennis, lacrosse or riding were the sports that were taken seriously by Saint Augustine girls. The other girls only did it because, aside from drama, it was the only opportunity to have contact with boys during school.
I couldn’t help myself, though. I loved fencing. I was fifth in Britain in the under sixteens – and I wasn’t even fifteen yet.
It was my mum’s idea that I take up fencing when I was a little kid at the Lycée. In those days I didn’t realise I could have a say. Now that I was almost fifteen, I could have stand-up screaming matches with her if I wanted, but it was too late for me to chuck it in now and make a fool of myself on the tennis courts.
Actually, forget that. What am I saying? It’s never too late for me to make a fool of myself.
In Year Seven, Star had a tragic crush on our fencing master, Professor Arthur Sullivan. Neither of us mentions it anymore, although I suspect that Star still carries a torch for him. I mean, he’s a nice guy and everything (although there is a rumour that he once wore a cravat), but he’s at least thirty-five or something ancient like that. He’s extremely grand and only teaches fencing because of his love of the sport. He’s absolutely loaded and drives four Jaguars (not all at once, obviously) – a racing green one, a powder-blue one, a black one and a silver one. I like the powder-blue one best.
Professor Sullivan always spoke to us in French during fencing training because he thought it made us think harder. ‘Fencing is a physical form of chess, an intellectual debate between two bodies.’
He was always telling us stuff like that … only in French.
Once he drove Star and me to Star’s house on an exeat (in the powder-blue Jag) and for a brief nano-moment we were the envy of all (being driven to London by a teacher conferred a special status, especially if the teacher was even mildly fit).
As it turned out we had the whole house in Chelsea to ourselves because Star’s parents forgot to show up. Star said it was probably because they were too stoned. I guess she was used to it, and anyway it meant we could do anything we wanted!
I’d like to boast that we threw a wild party with fit boys and alcohol, but we were only twelve and largely friendless so we just ate loads of sweets while Star enjoyed the luxury of smoking cigarettes without spraying herself with Febreze.
On the Saturday night we went out to the cinema covered in make-up and managed to talk our way into a 15. Later we wandered down the Kings Road, which is where boarding school kids went to pull on exeats. They do a sort of promenade up and down the street, trying to look cool, checking one another out and trying to get into pubs. All Star and I managed to do was strike up a conversation with a homeless guy and his bedraggled dog, Ralph, whom we patted and fed Jelly Babies to.
I would have loved to have a dog, or any pet, for that matter. We are allowed to keep rabbits and hamsters and things in the pet shed, but then we have to take them home in the breaks and I can’t exactly take a rabbit back with me to LA all the time. Also customs would confiscate the poor little thing and shove it in quarantine.
Star had a pet rat called Hilda and a python called Brian. Even though we weren’t officially allowed to keep snakes they made an exception for Star after her dad donated loads of money to build a new music wing. Georgina and Honey were always threatening to sue if Brian so much as hissed at their rabbits, Arabesque and Claudine.
I wasn’t too keen on Hilda and Brian myself, but out of loyalty to Star I always made a huge fuss of them when we went up to see them and asked if I could hold Hilda.
‘I’m worried Hilda’s got a cold,’ Star told me as we were doing our warm-ups in the fencing salle. The salle or rather salle d’armes was the latest addition to our sporting complex. It was like a squash court only far, far bigger. The floor was sprung, there were three pistes and the surrounding walls were flanked with fencing masks, weapons and ancient photographs of Saint Augustine’s teams triumphing at tournaments.
‘Poor Hilda,’ I said, in my best fake-sympathy voice.
Star was always paranoid that the rat had picked up an infection even though Hilda was the healthiest pet in the pet shed. She fussed over it all the time, treating her as if she were a gentle, nice animal like a hamster or a bunny instead of a vicious rodent with beady eyes.
We always had to give Hilda vitamin drops in her nasty little mouth and she would sometimes bite me while I tried to pa
rt her yellow teeth so Star could squeeze the dropper in.
‘Yaah, she had a little sniffle when I went in to visit her at lunch,’ she said sadly as she lay on the floor doing her leg raises.
‘Oh no. Poor Hilda,’ I sympathised as I stood up and moved on to my stretches and my lunging exercises.
The Eades College boys were here for an interschool tournament, but most of the Saint Augustine team girls were too busy flirting to bother with warm-ups, so it was left to Star and me to make fools of ourselves with our sidelong leaps down the fourteen-metre piste while the others looked on sneeringly. Like I said, the other girls mostly only did fencing as another way of meeting boys – also I was pretty sure they weren’t immune to the fact that the all-white fencing outfits made tall, thin, gorgeous girls look even more stunning.
The Eades boys were mostly there for the girls too (rugby is the serious sport of Eades), but there were a few who were serious about the sport. Eades is the most exclusive boys boarding school in the country – maybe even the world. Royalty and rich people from all over the world send their sons there for a pukka British education. So do lots of ordinary rich people, some of whom made their money in their own lifetime (slightly tragic by Eades standards), doing not-so-pukka things.
The school has been around for hundreds of years, so they can get away with their mad traditions, and with making the boys wear tailcoats and funny shirts with stiff collars and things called ‘ribbons’ around their necks.
Loads of the girls at Saint Augustine’s have brothers at Eades, which gives them extra status (but only if their brothers are older, obviously).
Honey said that Eades has gone awfully downhill since her father went there. She said it is full of plebs and the sons of East End gangsters, known collectively as kevs. My father asked me why we called these boys kevs and then got all champagne socialistic and hot under the collar when I told him that Kevin was a lower-class name in England and so kev was an alternate word for pleb.
A Royal Match Page 3
