Letters to a Princess (4 page)

I didn’t understand why she was trying to impress Jason Chee with this stuff when he was already mad about her.

Zoë hooked her arm through mine and told me all about Xian Cho’s latest nerd-tantrum. Xian’s
way
competitive and
way
successful even though she’s only been in Australia for three years and she’s had to learn English from scratch.

‘So I was talking to Xian after the English test and she was really mad,’ Zoë gossiped. ‘She said she flew through the grammar part but she was spitting chips about the writing assignment! “I mean who has a
Picnic in a Lift
?” she raged, and what was the teacher thinking setting a topic like that? It wasn’t fair blah blah. I told her it was
Panic in a Lift
and I couldn’t help laughing my arse off!’

Zoë and I had a good laugh about that even though I felt a pang of sympathy for the tiresome goody-goody Xian.

‘She won’t get her usual 95 per cent!’ Zoë crowed. It was just as well we
could
laugh because we were both in deep shit with Miss Pate over the last English assignment we’d done together.

Miss Pate said our next assignment was ‘make or break’ and would determine whether or not she’d reconsider our marks. ‘It has to be spot on, girls,’ she
said in that unsmiling way of hers. ‘And I mean spot on!’ I hate the way Miss Pate’s lips work when she talks. They are thin and mean-looking, and so is she.

‘She’s your teacher, darl,’ Babs said whenever I compained about her. ‘English is an important subject for you, you said so yourself. So you just have to cough it sweet!’

Dear Princess Diana,

I’m counting down the days until you arrive on Australian soil. Zoë and I have talked through all the details, and of course I’ve talked to Babs too. We can hardly wait. But I have to confess, news of your visit was pushed off the radar a few days ago when I found out I was going on a trip of my own—to Melbourne.

A wedding invitation for ‘The family’, arrived in the mail. As if we are a family!

‘Your cousin Aronda’s getting married, Di,’ said Graham. ‘Nice girl, that Aronda.’

I didn’t want to go and said so. But Zoë, who loves any occasion to dress up, said she’d lend me an outfit. And she pointed out that I have the best shoes to go with it—a pair I found in Vinnies and that we’d fought over. Luckily
her feet are a bit bigger than mine so I scored them in the end.

Zoë vaguely knows of my cousin Aronda. She always says Aronda is the worst ‘made-up name’ she’s ever heard. When she found out Aronda’s marrying someone called Beauregard, she exploded with laughter.

‘Wonder if he’s a made-up man, too?’ I chuckled.

‘Now listen up, Di-Di, you have to go to this wedding and you have to call me from the hotel and tell me every single detail. Think of the goss, Diana!’

So I’ve borrowed the dress which goes perfectly with the shoes. And I’ve agreed to go.

I’m surprised Graham’s been invited to the wedding, let alone me. But for some reason, Aronda’s mother Ingrid has become friendly with Graham since Mum died. She says she calls him to check up on me but she’s never really liked me so this doesn’t figure. I know they talk a lot about real estate and shares on the phone because I can hear Graham’s voice booming all over the house. His tone lifts when he’s talking to Ingrid. He reports bits and pieces back to me. As if I care!

Graham says Aronda is working for an up-market investment bank and this is where she met Beauregard, ‘a lovely young banker who simply adores her’. For a man
who doesn’t usually have much to say, Graham is pretty chatty with Ingrid.

‘Your mother would want us to go,’ Graham insisted on the night he opened the invite. That really shook me because he rarely mentions Mum.

‘Is Marcus invited too?’ I’m always cautious.

‘It’s Saturday and he has footy—so no.’

‘I don’t really want to go,’ I repeated, but he could tell I was weakening … Travelling to Melbourne with Graham was bad enough, but a weekend home alone with Marcus would be torture.

‘Ingrid really wants you to come,’ Graham added. ‘She wants to see you.’

More likely she wants to see you, I thought.

‘Aronda’s not even my real cousin,’ was all I could think of saying.

‘But she’s a cousin of a cousin so she’s a second cousin or a cousin once removed. That sort of thing. Anyway, it’s a relative and blood is thicker than water you know!’ Graham argued.

Getting deep now, big Graham, are you? Deep as well as talkative?

‘Even if Ingrid and Aronda don’t like me?’ I couldn’t resist asking.

‘Now c’mon Diana. You know that’s not true.’

As I’ve mentioned, Aronda is six years older than I am so I’ve never really known her very well. My mum always said Aronda was a real beauty and super-talented. Whenever Mum said this I felt plain and untalented, even though I knew Mum didn’t mean it that way. But the few times I’d met Aronda and Ingrid they confirmed my feelings of inferiorty.

‘I don’t quite know who Diana takes after Cherie, do you?’ harped Ingrid. This made me feel like a foundling, or at the very least, a dishrag. ‘She’s not tall is she? Not willowy like you are, Cherie. And that curly dark hair? Who’d have thought?’ Ingrid made me feel short and insignificant, and possibly a burden of ugliness to my good-looking, straight-haired blonde mother. I privately cursed my curly-headed Spanish dad—whoever he was.

But I actually reckon Ingrid was always jealous of Mum because she seemed to work at making Mum feel insecure too.

‘You should re-train Ches. Working at the Pizza Hut at your age. I mean, really! And this Graham you’re going out with. He seems sweet enough dear, but not the type you usually go for. He’s short and that hair—no style whatsoever. You’ll really have to work on him to get rid of the tweed sports coat.’ Mum just laughed off these kinds of comments.

Mum couldn’t see it at all. She said I was being overly critical, even when Ingrid couldn’t make it to Mum and Graham’s wedding—and didn’t phone us for ages after. And then when Ingrid eventually did visit, she seemed to be all over Graham, loud sports coat or not. She really made me sick.

But Mum insisted that Ingrid was a good person. She said she’d done such a great job bringing up Aronda as a single parent and, after all, we were related. And now Ingrid has summoned me to the wedding.

‘Isn’t that nice of Ingrid, thinking of you,’ Graham said the morning after the invitation arrived. Talk about rubbing salt into the wound.

‘Thinking of you, mate!’ I wanted to say, but didn’t have the guts.

Graham’s decided we’ll fly down to Melbourne for the wedding weekend, which is one cool thing, I guess. Better than a weekend in Bondi with Marcus anyway. Apparently we’re staying in a ritzy hotel. I know that’s not a big deal for someone like you, Princess Di, but I’ve never stayed in a hotel at all.

In the lead-up to the wedding, Graham kept banging on about how fabulous Ingrid is. ‘She’s just been so clever at getting a good rate for all her interstate guests,’ he babbled. It really made me want to puke.

‘She must be spending a fortune,’ I said.

‘It’s all top-secret but Aronda’s chosen one of the most expensive designers in Melbourne for her dress.’ Graham talking about fashion? It was too funny! ‘So it’s just as well the groom is picking up a lot of the bill,’ he continued.

Wonder how Ingrid’s conned him? I thought.

After another one of his lengthy phone calls with Ingrid, Graham told me I’d be sharing a room with Aronda’s secret ‘going away’ outfit and the rest of her extensive wardrobe. Zoë reckons that it’ll be kind of cool to check out all Aronda’s gear, especially her undies. I must admit, I’m beginning to get a bit caught up in the excitement.

This might not be the best thing to bring up right now but I’ve seen the video of your wedding because Mum used to watch it over and over. She said it was the most beautiful wedding ever and that your dress really was perfect for a princess. I couldn’t believe your train extended halfway down the cathedral! I never got tired of seeing your entrance and the way Mum would say, right on cue, ‘Spectacular!’ Because it was.

Zoë thinks Aronda will probably be dressed like a meringue, top designer or not, but just in case she’s not, I’m to take special note of the wedding dress so I can report back to Zoë.

‘Why, are you thinking of getting hitched to Jason?’ I teased her.

‘Well, our kids would be half Dutch, a quarter Aussie, and a quarter Chinese-Vietnamese … hmmm … worth thinking about.’

‘Yeah, your kids could be the attendants at your wedding and go to NIDA with you.’

‘No way! You can babysit them! Now come and look at this eye make-up that Mum got as a free sample.’

Zoë really can be a good friend. She showed me how to apply the eyeshadow and then did my face with her new make-up. I was surprised by the difference it made. I started to feel really mean about being jealous of Zoë. She’s never jealous of me. Not even about my trip to Melbourne. Zoë is a generous soul.

I’ll write to you about the wedding when I come back, but probably not for a few weeks. Zoë and I have a major assignment to do for Journalism and we’re trying to make it about you! So I’ll be writing about you, instead of to you, if everything works out.

Your admiring fan,

Diana M

Aronda was heaps friendly from the moment we arrived in Melbourne. I had an ‘exclusive’ with her about the guest list. She briefed me on the cool and the uncool people coming.

‘Yes, darling, I’ve been forced to invite some total losers.’

I had to laugh when she told me about her Uncle Tarquin whom she said I should avoid at all costs. Ingrid had invited him because he is fabulously wealthy and ‘might come in helpful one day’. ‘But,’ protested Aronda, ‘he is such an old fart.’

Just then, a friend of Aronda’s interrupted us. His name was Rob and he was really cute and looked like he’d just been playing polo. I took the chance to slip away and write down everything Aronda had said so I could report back to Zoë.

Later, Aronda showed me her dress. It was gorgeous—elaborate, but beautifully so—and her fabulous wardrobe for the Bali honeymoon.

I called Zoë and I guess I just gushed.

‘It’s so gorgeous, Zoë, and Aronda says it’s a one-off. It’s a top secret design and I’m sworn not to tell anyone about it. So I can’t really give details because Aronda says there are designers out there who’d kill just to take a peek at it right now. You’ll have to wait for the photos.’

Zoë wasn’t impressed. ‘Scalp the design, Diana, for goodness sake. It’s your duty! Anyway, what’s all this “Aronda says” stuff? You don’t even like the woman!’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘she seems to have changed. A lot.’

‘And Ingrid the Witch?’

‘Not so much,’ I admitted. She still has a way of making me shake.

‘Just watch it Di-Di!’ Zoë warned. But I was too happy being Aronda’s gopher to listen. What would Zoë know anyway? I figured.

In all the pre-wedding flutter and excitement, I wondered why it was I hadn’t warmed to Aronda long before this. Maybe it was that jealousy thing again.

‘You’re so grown-up now Di,’ Aronda said to me the next day. ‘You were a bit of a pain, you know, as a little thing. Actually, you were quite a big thing from what I remember. And now, well, maybe you’re a bit on the skinny side, but you’re soooo improved!’

I don’t know why Aronda’s opinion mattered so much to me. Maybe it was because she made me feel part of a family again. She kept hugging me and getting her fiance Beau to take photos of the two of us. She even held my hand and spoke about my mum with tears in her eyes.

‘Ingrid and I are like that!’ she said, crossing one elegant finger over the other. ‘I just can’t imagine life without Ingrid, you know?’ She never called her Mother or Mum, just Ingrid, which I thought was pretty cool.

I didn’t even mind when Aronda talked about my ‘eating disorder’ in front of Beauregard. She confessed that when she was my age she was also on one diet or another.

‘I just needed to learn to like myself more, which you can do too, Diana, can’t she Beau? I mean I was pretty successful at it!’ Without cracking a smile she glanced adoringly into the mirror that was opposite us. I had to try hard not to giggle. I wouldn’t have dared.

‘And don’t get sucked in by those counsellor types—mostly they’re nut-jobs themselves,’ Aronda warned me.

‘You’re like a little sister to me,’ Aronda purred, ‘I want to see you happy.’ Beau didn’t say much, he just gazed at Aronda and nodded in agreement every now and then. He seemed so understanding. I liked him immediately. I thought that for sure they would have a happy marriage. Maybe I could even visit them from time to time? All sorts of fantasies went through my mind.

When I told Zoë about these cosy sessions with Aronda, she said it made her wonder why I hadn’t been asked to be one of the four bridesmaids. But Aronda had already explained why.

‘I hate to say this, Di, but if I’d known how thin you are now … Look honey, last time I saw you … honestly if I’d known, I’d have had you for my bridesmaid like a shot.’

Zoë said this was disgusting which I thought was a bit rough on Aronda. Zoë didn’t seem to understand … Aronda kept calling me her little sister and it made me feel important, bridesmaid or not.

There was only one problem with the trip at that point. Ingrid still hated me. Her dislike for me was so obvious whenever I was near Graham and her that I kept as far away from both of them as I could. I hung out with Aronda instead, and I wasn’t simply happy to do anything she asked, I
suggested
things I could do for her and Beau.

I grabbed coffees, I re-ironed dresses, I brushed her hair. She even let me rub her back, ‘something Beau simply loves doing’, when she had a backache after a long stint at the hairdresser. And then she helped me with my wedding outfit.