A Royal Match (47 page)

I couldn’t remember the exact directions to Star’s estate, but if I could, I swear I would have jumped out of the fourth-floor window and walked there, even though it would have taken two weeks.

Sunday was better, as Honey needed to re-bond with me for the ball. She came into my room and woke me up with a lovely cup of tea she’d made herself. ‘Sorry about being such a bitch yesterday,’ she said. ‘Oh darling, look at this room, it’s uninhabitable,’ she cried out as if genuinely alarmed and ashamed at how I’d been treated. ‘The bed doesn’t even fit in the room!’

‘I know, I had to sleep with my legs up in the air!’

‘Oh, poor Calypso, will you ever forgive me, darling?’ she asked, her lower lip wobbling.

‘And this blanket seems to have brought me out in a rash,’ I told her as I scratched at the bumps that had come up all over my body during the night.

‘Ghastly! That’s soooo Oopa’s fault, darling. He’s an evil old devil. That blanket belongs to Mummy’s dog, Chanel.’

She went to hug me, but I pulled away, scratched and said. ‘I’ll forgive you if you lend me your mobile to make a call.’

‘Of course, darling,’ she gasped. ‘Anything. You know that.’

I couldn’t believe it. ‘Really?’

‘Absolutely. Who do you want to call. Are we missing Billy darling? Are we missing our boyfriend?’

‘No, actually, when we were at Calm-a-sutra on Friday, Peregrine gave me a message from Freddie. He wants me to call him.’

Honey’s face clouded over. ‘Darling, you can definitely use my phone but, well, I didn’t want to tell you, but as you’re clearly deluded, I guess I’ll have to. Freddie and Portia are an item.’

‘No.’ I shook my head firmly. ‘No, Portia said she’d rather go to Star’s. I need to call Freds, Honey, really. I really do,’ I pleaded.

Honey took my two hands in hers and looked into my eyes. ‘Darling! For all my wicked flaws and silliness, you know how much I care for you, don’t you?’

No. ‘Yes, of course I do, but …’

‘Misery Briggs hates you, Calypso. She never stops going on about how much she
loathes
you with every fibre of her aristocratic body. The simple fact is, she’s a snob.’

However muddled my feelings for Portia were, she wasn’t really one for bitching. ‘That doesn’t sound like Portia.’

‘Have you already forgotten her outburst on the moonwalk? I almost slapped her for you, darling.’

‘No, I haven’t forgotten anything,’ I said, choosing my words carefully, ‘but if I could just borrow your phone and …’

Honey held her hand up to silence me. ‘No, Calypso.
It’s for your own good. I’m your
real
friend, probably your
only
friend these days. If I don’t look after you, who will, darling? Leave Freddie and Portia to get on with their royal fling. We’ve got a ball to prepare for. You need all the self-esteem you can get, and I’ve promised myself I’m going to make sure you get it.’ It sounded like a threat more than a promise.

Had I really sunk so low that Honey was now my only real friend? I wondered later as I took a long, cool bath in the hope of getting rid of the ghastly rash. My body was like a relief map. Honey gave me some calamine lotion to put on it, which soothed the itching but made me look like strawberry mousse.

We spent almost the entire day getting ready, and by six o’clock, when Honey called Nobu for sushi, I was actually starting to feel excited about the ball again. And although Honey opened up the Aladdin’s cave of her wardrobe to me again, I couldn’t find anything nicer than the skirt and bejewelled cashmere top I’d bought in LA.

‘What bag are you taking, darling?’

I held up the little Gucci bag Sarah and Bob had given me last Christmas, but Honey wrinkled her nose job. ‘Darling, that’s not on trend, nor is it old enough to be vintage. Try this,’ she insisted, passing me a tiny little bejewelled fur Fendi.

‘Oh, Honey, I can’t – it must have cost thousands and thousands!’ I protested.

‘Only four or five,’ she insisted. She pressed the bag into
my hand, even though I didn’t really want the responsibility of such an expensive bag, especially as I planned to spend the night dancing and would have to leave it in the cloakroom or on a chair. But I didn’t really have a choice. Honey had a marvellous knack for getting what Honey wanted.

‘Darling, it looks perfect with the rest of your outfit. I’m going to do my eyes and just use a dab of lip-gloss, what do you think?’ she asked as if she really cared about my opinion.

I leaned over to examine her palette. ‘I love the browns; I think they’re really sultry and old-movie glamour.’

‘Exactly, let’s do old-movie glamour, darling,’ she agreed, smiling up at me. ‘But first you’ll have to put some make-up on that rash of yours; with all that calamine lotion you look like you’ve got measles.’

I took the foundation she passed me and despite my doubts, I went into her en suite to apply it. When I returned, Honey was holding my phone. ‘What are you doing with that?’ I demanded crossly; I didn’t want her deleting any more messages.

She looked surprised and hurt as she put the phone into the fur Fendi she was lending me. ‘I was just swapping all your stuff from one bag to another,’ she explained.

‘Sorry,’ I said, but she didn’t reply.

We were back on speakers by the time we climbed into the limo, thank goodness. I even accepted another one of the tiny Veuves from the fridge and sipped it through the
straw. My heart was racing as to what the evening was going to be like. Honey tried to get me to see the humour in the acute discomfort in which I’d spent the previous night, but I was still all bumpy with the rash.

‘Oh darling, don’t be mad. The foundation has totally covered them up; you’re so paranoid. No wonder you have such bad luck with boys, darling. Besides, who’ll be looking at you when I’m there?’ she asked, faux-jokingly. Then she pinched me, only not in a playful way.

‘My skin has the texture of a relief map, Honey. I look diseased.’

Honey laughed uproariously until not only did the collagen in her lip bubble up, but after a choking fit, she did a little vomit, which she spat in my handbag.

‘Sorry darling, it was the first thing to hand. Don’t worry, I’ll buy you another one tomorrow.’

I was beyond caring, though. I found myself saying, ‘That’s okay,’ and ‘Thank you, that’s so sweet of you,’ and ‘Actually no need – I mean, in fact it’s really your handbag anyway.’ She looked a bit cross then.

On our arrival I stood with Honey on the long snaking queue outside the Hammersmith Pallais, caked in foundation, holding my bag of vomit and trying to summon the feelings of excitement I had felt earlier in the evening. It wasn’t easy. I wondered how the party at Star’s was going. I imagined fit boys and all my friends lounging around Tiger’s chill room with the Angel of Death peeing Jim Beam over the black Japanese stones. I imagined them
dancing to Star and Indie’s music, and then I looked down the queue at the hordes of Year Eight and Nine girls and boys Star and the others had tried to save me from. There was the odd tragic parent on the other side of the road, sitting in their Range Rover, waiting to see their daughter get into the party safely.

This is when I had my epiphany. I think
hubris
is the word. We had studied the word both with Ms Topler and during Ancient Greek lessons.
To presume that one is greater than the gods
. Well, the gods were having a good old laugh now. I looked up at the sky as a few drops of rain fell on my foundation-coated body.

Honey’s phone rang.

‘Hi, darling, yaah, we’re here now about to go in. We had the maddest night at Calm-a-sutra on Friday. I pulled Charles, remember we met him …’

I tried not to listen in, but then Honey shoved her mobile hard against my ear. ‘Here, she wants to speak to you,’ she said in a really pissed-off way.

It was Georgina on the other end.

‘Hi, Georgina, how is –’ I started.

‘Demand Honey give you back your SIM card immediately!’ she insisted firmly.

‘My SIM card’s in my phone, I already checked.’

‘Believe me, that is not
your
SIM card.’

‘I don’t understand … ?’

‘So just trust me because I know Honey a lot better than you do, okay? We always used to nick the SIM card out of
one another’s mobiles in Year Ten. Well everyone’s mobile, actually, you know, just so we could check who was receiving txts from whom. It’s easy to do. We always kept a whole collection of the various pay-as-you-go cards and replaced them.’

‘That’s horrible.’

‘Yaah, I know. Sorry. I don’t do it now!’

I whispered into the phone with my back turned on Honey. ‘Honey’s a complete bitch, Georgina. I’m having a horrible time!’

‘Calypso, you didn’t just work that out? Anyway, we don’t have time to discuss this now; just ask her for your SIM card back,
now.’

Turning around, I casually said, ‘Honey, can I have my SIM card back, please?’

Honey rolled her eyes.

‘What did she say?’ Georgina asked. I could hear a party in full swing on the other end of the line.

‘She rolled her eyes.’

‘Repeat these three words out loud, then: Village. Pleb. Shag! And then say you know and you’ll tell everyone if she doesn’t hand it over this very moment.’

I turned to Honey, who was looking at me beadily. ‘Village. Pleb. Shag!’ I said, enunciating each word carefully, slowly and loudly so I wouldn’t have to repeat them. ‘I know everything and I’ll tell everyone,’ I warned her with a bravado I didn’t feel.

‘Fine.’ Honey rolled her eyes. ‘It was for your own good,
if you must know,’ she sneered. But she took her phone back, shut it and, after a scramble in her bag, passed me over what must have been my real SIM card.

‘But why?’ I asked, confused.

‘It amused me.’ She shrugged her skinny sun-kissed shoulders.

‘It amused you?’

‘Yes – do you know how sickening it was, watching Portia becoming best pals with a pleb like you! Treating
me
as if
I
were the freak! It was just soooo
wrong,’
she said as if she was being madly logical or something.

‘So, you stole my SIM card and deleted my txts to redress the social balance?’

‘Yes. I mean no, I borrowed your SIM card occasionally and then put it back occasionally. I didn’t delete the messages, well, not strictly speaking, anyway. I forwarded the messages to my SIM and just deleted them from your SIM, so you see they’re not really deleted. I was just borrowing txts from your txt library, really. Think of it that way.’ She smiled sweetly.

I was aghast at her total lack of shame – I don’t know why.

‘And it was going to be a surprise but you may as well know I did you the most
enormous
favour. When you were putting the body makeup on I forwarded all the messages I borrowed back onto your SIM so everything is just as it should be now. Don’t get so worked up about it. I always nick SIM cards, like any normal person does. Even your
precious friend, Georgina does. In fact, it was her idea,’ she added.

‘Her idea to steal my SIM card?’

‘Not
your
SIM, obviously. But when she was
my
best friend we used to steal everyone’s, apart from yours because we wouldn’t have had much fun with your SIM before this year, would we, darling?’ She laughed. ‘We used to do it together before you came along and ingratiated yourself into
our
world and ruined everything!’ she explained crisply as she shuffled forward with the moving queue.

As we moved ever closer to the entrance, I tried to absorb what her game had meant to my relationship with Portia as well as with Freddie and Billy. Without Honey’s interference how would the half term have played itself out? I reflected on the first time we went to Windsor, and I bumped into Billy on the bridge. I remembered leaving him alone with Portia, the two of them chatting away happily. Was that when they realised they liked each other?

‘And don’t think
you’re
so special,’ continued Honey, gathering outrage as she ranted. ‘I nicked Portia’s SIM too. Only of course I had to put hers back more frequently because she has a family that loves her and she gets loads of txts. When I first found out you were txt-flirting Billy and Freddie, I thought it might be amusing. Then once I discovered that Billy was keen on Portia, I couldn’t resist. Darling, it was like watching a gripping soap opera unfold.
You can’t blame me, not when you pushed in on my world, stealing Georgina and chumming up with Portia.’

‘I bloody well can blame you and I will,’ I told her furiously, realising now that she must have deleted that txt Billy had asked me about. All the time I had been considering pulling Billy as a second-best, less complicated boyfriend, Portia had already pulled him. Actually, rather than her stealing Freddie, I had been stealing Billy – at least that’s how it must have appeared to Portia.

I felt sick.

Honey smiled at me and poked her tongue out. ‘So sue, sweetie,’ she shrugged. ‘I still love
you!’

At that moment we arrived at the head of the queue and Honey handed her ticket to the door gorilla and skipped in to join the warm dry throb of the party.

I followed, handing the door gorilla my ticket.

‘Stand aside, luv. That’s not valid.’

‘But my parents bought it online,’ I told him desperately.

‘Like I said, you isn’t valid, move aside.’

‘But can’t I go in with my friend?’ I begged – using the term ‘friend’ loosely, you understand. ‘It’s raining.’ I did my special little-girl-lost face, but it didn’t work.

‘Stand aside, you’re blocking the door,’ he repeated without so much as looking at me as he continued to check and take tickets from others on the queue and allow them through. ‘You isn’t valid.’

‘Honey,’ I called out, ‘he won’t let me in.’

She didn’t come out but spoke to me from behind the door gorilla. ‘Never mind, darling, just wait there for me. I’ll be out at two when Oopa is picking us up. The servants have the night off or I’d suggest you wait for me at home. Big kiss!’ With that, she shrugged and disappeared into the noise and bright lights of the ball.