The Exclusives

by Rebecca Thornton

  ‘Ah, yes, of course,’ I say. ‘Freya’s been talking about that for absolutely ages. Sent out the invites about a month ago.’ I smile, knowing Verity was of course, not on the original invite list. ‘I think I might even have lost mine.’

  ‘Oh,’ Verity falters and looks at her watch.

  I smile and look up at the stone-arched ceiling. ‘Well, anyway,’ I say, ‘I can’t make this one. I’m studying.’ A look of bovine confusion crosses Verity’s face. ‘Have a really lovely time, though.’

  Verity starts to leave then turns back round. ‘You’re talking about Freya’s monthly gathering? It’s not that. It’s something different. That was last night. It was great. No, no, tonight’s another thing altogether. I’m thinking of starting up a new society and I’ve asked Freya to help. To get some people together.’ Verity’s lip is twitching and I’m at a loss for words. Her mouth puckers up to one side and she flicks her curls over one shoulder.

  ‘Ah. Well good luck with that. God, I can’t even find time to go to the bathroom at the moment,’ I say, keeping tight control of my voice. ‘So, if you’re going soon, may I?’ I begin to take The Times and she’s caught between wanting to keep it for herself to annoy me and making another big show of going to see Freya. She hands me the paper.

  ‘OK then. Perhaps we’ll catch you later.’ The emphasis on the ‘we’ stings me as it’s meant to and I sit down, opening the paper, unable to concentrate. Ten minutes later and I still haven’t managed to absorb anything. That Verity has the power to do this to me is making me furious, and I begin to get a headache. I go and lie down, and wonder if I’m still tired from what happened. And then I wonder if Freya is feeling tired too. Clearly not if she’s so busy partying and chummying up to Verity. But perhaps this is a good thing? I mean, if she’s doing that maybe she’s moving past it. Maybe this is her way of forgetting too.

  However, by a few days later when I’m due to go through my final UCAS application with Mrs Kitts, Freya and I are still avoiding each other. Or rather, Freya is avoiding me. It’s been a week and I’m so busy that I shouldn’t have time to think about the distance between us, although, of course, it creeps into my mind every so often. I’ve tried to find her a few times but the last time I saw her, walking across the lacrosse pitch, she had turned in the other direction. I thought at first she hadn’t seen me but then she had kept turning her head to check I wasn’t following her. Looking back now perhaps I should have run after her, pleaded with her to talk to me. I need to keep her onside, after all. Instead, I had been so shocked, so angry, that I had thrown my lacrosse stick on the ground. ‘Jesus, be careful, that caught my foot,’ Lindsay Pardell had said. And then realising it was me said, ‘Josephine, sorry, sorry. Just that hit me pretty hard.’ I feel constantly on edge – every time I’m called to a meeting, I think that Freya’s opened her mouth.

  ‘Josephine?’ Mrs Kitts is saying. ‘Put whatever’s troubling you away. Josephine, stop losing concentration, it’s not like you.’ She crosses her legs and her black skirt rides up her thighs. She sees me looking and she pulls it back down.

  ‘So, if you get an interview, they’re probably going to want to know how much you know about Eisenhower. I hear History’s getting more and more popular so we’ve got to cover all bases.’ I’m praying, given Father’s lifelong inculcation into me that History is so all-important, that I will have all bases covered. ‘Yes,’ I reply. ‘That’s fine.’ I look at Mrs Kitts and carry on talking. ‘Will they ask about my personal hobbies, do you think? I’ve written about them on my application.’ She’s handing me a notebook full of reading matter. Our fingers touch and I pull my hand away.

  ‘They’ll want to know you are well rounded, yes.’

  ‘I hope I’m not,’ I say, blowing up my cheeks. Mrs Kitts looks surprised I’ve attempted a joke and forces a brittle laugh.

  ‘Sorry. Lame,’ I say. ‘So I can tell them about the societies I run? And of course I’ll have the editorship of The Lens, so that’ll be great.’

  ‘Oh, yes of course. I forgot Head Girl edits the paper.’ Mrs Kitts is leaning forward and the insides of her nostrils glow pink in the light. ‘That’s excellent, they’ll like that very much.’ We run through some more History discussion and, when we finish, she clears her throat and looks at me shrewdly.

  ‘How do you think Freya is, by the way?’ she asks.

  ‘She seems OK.’ I pause and she doesn’t fill the silence. She waits for me to say more and I want to know why she’s asking, if she knows anything, but I’m fuming and upset at the mention of her name, so I collect my things and disappear. It’s only when I leave that I realise my anger towards her has replaced any feelings from that night. The numbness has started to dissipate and all my emotion, energy, seems to be targeted at Freya ignoring me and working out how I’ll stop her from telling anyone.

  I go to the School Hall, where I’ve called a meeting for The Lens. The school newspaper has been running for nearly one hundred years now and I’m honoured, as Head Girl, to edit this year’s edition. I’m determined to make it the most spectacular publication yet. I’ve asked Father to get an interview with the PM. He’s agreed, of course; he’s desperate for me to make this year’s paper the best as well.

  ‘Show Rollo a thing or two,’ he laughed when I last spoke to him. Rollo is Editor of the Sunday Herald and will also be thrilled if I produce a good paper. The meeting is at four o’clock. Normally Freya and I meet at the school gates at three thirty, just before tea. I know Freya won’t be there, but I take the route past the gates, just in case she is waiting. She isn’t. Disappointed, I walk into the Big Hall and there are already about forty girls in the room. I remember Freya has promised me she’ll help but, again, she doesn’t show up. Verity, who is meant to be helping me edit, is not there either.

  ‘Girls,’ I call. My voice comes out higher than normal. ‘You can all sit down,’ I say, adopting Mrs Allen’s brusqueness. ‘Right. So you’re all here because you’ve expressed an interest in helping out with The Lens. As you know the school newspaper is read avidly, and not just in these four walls.’ I stop and guide my hand around the room. ‘This year’s paper simply has to be the best. It’s our one-hundredth edition and so we want to be part of something that’s going to make us proud. I want each and every one of you to write, edit and get the greatest quotes you can. Remember, make everything entertaining, readable, sharp. Yes, Annie?’ I look down towards Annie Rogers, who is grinning at me like a friendly elf.

  ‘How do we know what we’re all writing?’ she asks.

  ‘Well, Annie.’ I’ve ended up sounding patronising. ‘Well,’ I start again, ‘when you initially all signed up to help, I listed your names and subjects on the Main Board outside here.’ She nods. ‘Now, each category has four people attached to it. I want all of you to hand something in and I’ll be choosing the best ones to publish.’

  ‘When do you want the pieces in?’ Mary-Louise asks from the corner of the room.

  ‘Erm, end of next month latest, please. I’ve left editorial instruction on the Main Notice Board, so you can have a look there for word count and tone.’ The room is quiet.

  ‘Oh and we also need anonymous titbits for the “Guess Who?” section. Obviously that’s the fun bit every year and so we need to make it good. Please post in my pigeonhole and spread the word.’

  ‘What kind of gossip?’ Mary-Louise puts up her hand again. ‘And where’s Freya? She said she would work on a piece with me.’

  ‘Freya’s been called to a meeting.’ I force a smile. ‘And, as for gossip, absolutely anything at all. Have a rifle through the old editions of the paper and you’ll see the kind of thing, but this year it has to be explosive. I want lots of people talking about it.’ The girls nod and I signal for them to disappear. A dismissive wave of the hand which makes me feel at first powerful and, soon after, foolish.

  ‘Thanks very much,’ I call, as an afterthought.

  The next few days are spent with Freya
still avoiding me. I see her a few times but every time she clocks me, she whips her head in the opposite direction so I can’t even see her face. All of this is distracting me from my work, making me hot with fury. In the boarding house, she works hard at ignoring me. There are two entrances to the house, one for the Juniors at the back, and the big yellow door at the front is for the older years. Every time I see Freya, though, she’s making her way round to the back gate. In the Dining Hall, she turns up late, scouting around for me and purposefully walking to the other side of the room. Freya and I usually take our places in the back left-hand corner but when I decide to brave it one night and sit there, I find Verity in my place, who gives me a half-wave, before her lips disappear into an undisguised smile. Freya looks straight down, just carries on pushing the food around her plate. Fuck you, Verity, I think. I will not turn back now, but all the other spaces on the table are taken. I put down my plate on the corner, next to Gracie Lovell, before going to get a chair from another table.

  None of the other girls at the table speak. They are all busy looking at me or Freya, pulling their mouths into sympathetic shapes. I haven’t told anyone that Freya and I aren’t talking, so either it’s totally obvious to the entire school, or Verity’s been shooting her mouth off.

  Finally, Gracie asks for the salt. Freya doesn’t make any eye contact with me at all. I notice rough patches of skin, just below her elbows and around her neck, where it’s all pink and a weird greenish-blue colour and she’s tried to cover it up with foundation, normally banned on the school premises. It’s probably killing her – I’ve never, until now, seen Freya’s skin look anything less than perfect. I don’t taste any of the chicken on my plate, just cut, chew, cut, chew.

  Gracie turns to Freya and says in a loud, self-satisfied voice, as though she’s brave enough to be doing everyone a favour, ‘You guys have to make up, you know.’ She throws me a look. And tilts her head back and laughs. ‘It’s weird you not talking. Makes things awkward for everyone. What are you arguing about anyway?’ There’s a bit of food stuck in the crossover of her two front teeth. Everyone looks down in a hurry, so no one has to tell her. Gracie arrived late to the school and has been trying to make everyone’s business her own for the past few years. Freya had always told me she was well meaning, until we discovered she had been pitting Freya against me in an effort to become closer friends with us both.

  ‘Doesn’t she realise we tell each other everything?’ Freya had said. ‘Stupid girl.’

  I’m reminded of this as Gracie gives us both a falsely sympathetic look. Verity half stands up and leans over to Freya, puts her arm round her shoulders, darting poison at me with her eyes. ‘Freya’s fine. Aren’t you? I’m looking after her.’ Freya doesn’t say anything, just wipes her nose.

  ‘We can’t really tell you what’s been going on,’ Verity is saying. ‘It’s something between Freya and Josephine.’

  What do you know? I think and shoot a furious look at Freya, who is still staring at her plate. I force myself to breathe. Freya isn’t that stupid, I reason. She’s just toying with me, trying to get a rise.

  ‘Girls, that’s enough. Surely you all have plenty to be getting on with besides idle speculation,’ I say. I’m aware I sound like a total idiot, but there’s nothing else I can do. Everyone falls silent and Freya tries to put her fork down but it drops onto the floor. But later when Mrs Kitts calls me into her study after supper, my heart palpitates with fear that Freya has said something.

  ‘Are you alright?’ she asks. Her cat, Twiggy, leaps onto my knee.

  ‘Yes, I’m fine,’ I say. ‘Why?’ Twiggy is rubbing her nose against the pad of my thumb and I stroke her black fur.

  ‘You seem . . . I don’t know. Tired. Not on it. Are you feeling alright? Is this all too much?’

  She doesn’t know. My heartbeat starts to stabilise.

  ‘Is what too much?’

  Twiggy purrs.

  ‘Everything. Head Girl, A-level mocks, The Lens, just . . . everything.’

  ‘No.’ I lean in to Twiggy’s stomach and breathe in her animal scent.

  ‘Good. I just thought . . .’

  ‘No, I’m fine. Really.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. I’ll let you know if there’s a problem.’

  ‘Good. Because we’re always here to help. Whatever you need. You’ve handed in your essays to Oxford now, so that should be a big weight off your shoulders.’

  I want to ask about Freya but I don’t trust my voice not to tremble, so I nod my head and, when I walk out, Freya is standing there, outside Mrs Kitts’s study, waiting to come in. She doesn’t look at me. I make a very slight movement, as though I’m about to stop her. Not quite enough that she could be entirely sure I’m doing so, but just to give her an opportunity to respond. She doesn’t. Just marches right on into Mrs Kitts’s flat and I see her combing her hair with her left hand as she knocks on the door. But this time I am not going to let her just ignore me. I need to know what she is playing at. So I wait for her to finish, sitting outside Mrs Kitts’s flat for a full hour before she comes out. But before I get a chance to say anything I see a smug look on her face, as though she’s privy to some highly sensitive information. She raises an eyebrow and smooths down her hair. My blood races, at what they might have discussed. ‘Freya.’ I jump up. My voice is shaking. ‘Freya!’

  She turns to face me and the dry patch of skin flares red. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I just . . . I wanted to talk to you.’

  ‘Why? What’s there to talk about? You don’t seem to want to talk about anything at all, do you? Just had to make sure I was quiet. Didn’t care about me.’ She’s now snarling like an angry cat. I walk towards her.

  ‘Go away,’ she’s shouting. ‘Get the fuck away from me. Don’t touch me. Don’t come near me, you fucking bitch!’

  I can hear girls outside and I want to tell her to shut up but I daren’t. I’ve never seen her like this.

  ‘You don’t even care now, do you? Just worried someone will hear you.’ Freya opens the door, swinging it back so it slams against the wooden chest that holds our house trophies. They rattle and, for one minute, I think they’re all about to fall to the floor. ‘Here, everyone can fucking hear now!’

  ‘Please, please Freya, please be quiet. I just wanted to chat, alright? I can explain . . .’

  ‘Explain? Explain what? You wanted me to be vulnerable so I wouldn’t tell anyone, didn’t you? Well, let me tell you something. I’ve told people. Don’t worry, I’ve made sure they won’t say anything. But you’d better watch your back.’

  ‘Who? Who, Freya?’ And I grab her shoulders to shake the answer out of her but she rears back and knocks my fingers away with a savage blow, hissing at me. I wipe away flecks of saliva from my face. In all the time I’ve known Freya, I’ve never, ever seen her so much as raise her voice. Before these past weeks, the angriest she’d been with me was when I kissed a boy she liked three years ago. She didn’t speak to me for half an hour, before she had reached over and taken my hand. ‘Stupid boys anyway,’ she had said. And now, she’s here, eyes being pulled back into the top of her skull, lips white then red. Her hair is still immaculate and, out of nowhere, she sits down, winded.

  ‘No one. Just screwing with you. I probably won’t say anything, but I can’t be sure.’ She’s smirking. Looking at my reaction, waiting for me to beg. I want to, but I can’t seem to speak.

  ‘OK,’ I finally whisper. The threat in her words . . . she’s never played games with me like this. She looks taken aback that I haven’t pleaded, then tired and her limbs soften in their stance.

  ‘Just go,’ she whispers. Mrs Kitts opens the door and points to the phone receiver. ‘Girls, be quiet,’ she’s mouthing. She looks at Freya, who then looks at me with her lips all pursed and I finally leave. I decide to go to the library for some solace. As I leave, I see Verity outside the front door.

  ‘Josephine,’ she says, c
urls bouncing. ‘We’ve got our weekly meeting with Mrs Allen today, don’t forget,’ she says.

  ‘Oh, is that why you’re up here?’ I had forgotten. I can’t believe I had forgotten. All this Freya stuff is knocking me off my game. That has to change.

  ‘Oh, no it’s not now. Freya and I, we arranged to meet . . .’ She looks towards the woods, where we normally smoke together. ‘I won’t . . . I mean . . . I’m not. I’m just keeping Freya company whilst she . . . in fact, I’m just walking her to the edge of the woods and she’ll go on from there.’

  I walk off but she follows me, threading her arm through mine. I can’t very well push her away so instead I drop my arm and, in the end, she is forced to remove hers.

  ‘We’re just hanging out,’ she says, defensively. ‘But we can hang out too.’ Her eyebrows shoot up towards her low hairline and she does a little jig. ‘Mrs Allen said we had to work together, remember?’

  I narrow my eyes. I can sense Verity wants something from me.

  ‘No, seriously. I mean, just ’cos you and Freya are . . .’

  ‘Are what?’

  ‘Well, you know . . .’

  ‘No, I don’t.’ I will not give her the satisfaction. She does that stupid jig again and pretends to swipe an imaginary tennis racket in the air.

  ‘Oh, well anyway. We’ve got to work together as a team now. So let’s try and not make things awkward, eh?’ How dare she try to push this on to me.

  ‘Yes of course,’ I reply, before realising that, where Freya’s concerned, getting close to Verity might not be such a bad thing. ‘Want to come for tea? I was going to the library but . . .’

  ‘Well . . .’ She looks back up towards the house and I know she’s waiting for Freya to come back down and my heart begins to beat out a curious rhythm.