A Royal Mess (30 page)

‘Erm, no,’ I told him with the authority of a person who gets her information on the royal family from Google. ‘Just give me some cash,’ I said firmly, wrestling with his wallet. ‘You’re meant to leave your tip
after
your stay.’ Well, that is the deal for country house stays – according to www.englisheysnobs.com – and this was sort of like a
country house, just a really, really big one with turrets and a moat.

‘But
we’re
not staying,’ Sarah pointed out reasonably enough. ‘We’re heading off for our romantic weekend after luncheon.’

I wished they’d stop banging on about their ‘romantic’ weekend. I really didn’t want to imagine what they planned to get up to.

‘No, but I’m staying,’ I hissed, not wanting the lurking footman to hear. ‘So give it to me.’ I tugged the wallet out of Bob’s hand, deftly relieving it of a bunch of readies.

Bob gave me one of his “one day you’ll go too far, Calypso Kelly” looks, but Freds had come out by that point, so Bob didn’t say anything. I know this sounds shallowand culturally small-minded, but I was quite pleased that Freds wasn’t wearing a kilt. Not that I don’t love a kilt on a boy, it’s just, well, it makes me feel like grabbing his arm and doing the Gay Gordons or some other loony reel.

But Freds was sans kilt and his black hair was doing that wildly wonderful sticky-outy thing I loved so much. His eyes looked bluer than blue too in the Scottish air. It was a crisp, bright day, and he looked soooo fit in his regulation navy blue Ralph Lauren thin knit jumper over pale blue Ralph Lauren shirt, neutral-coloured trousers and some sort of hiking-type boot, which my mother pointed out. Trust Sarah. The boy is a god and all she could say was, ‘See how sensible his shoes are, Calypso?’

Seeing Freds resplendent in all his worshipful beauty, I was glad I’d pulled out all the stops on my own outfit. I was wearing no makeup (apart from six inches of lip-gloss and lashings of mascara), because boys really go for the natural look. I had also splurged on a new brown corduroy miniskirt from Top Shop, and the green cashmere jumper Star had given me for Christmas matched my green sequined slippers perfectly. To think that Sarah had actually tried to make me change into Wellington boots before we left! Yes, Wellington boots.

‘Believe me, his parents will respect you for it,’ she’d said as I was dressing to leave. ‘Scotland can be very wet and boggy.’

I didn’t even know what boggy was, but I’m sure the royals don’t muck about in it. So hoping to silence Sarah with my royal knowledge, I asked, ‘Who thinks Wellington boots are suitable footwear for lunch with the royal family?’ I asked, and then I said, ‘Mr and Mrs No One. That’s who.’

You’d think that would have silenced the mad madre, but no, she went on and on for another ten million years about the virtues of Wellington boots over sequined slippers. I have no idea how she ever pulled Bob if her idea of seductive footwear is a pair of rubber boots.

To tell the truth, I don’t want to know.

I pretended to faint just to shut her up, only coming to when it was time to get in the car. My new swooning/fainting strategy had proved an invaluable weapon in this war against parental insanity.

My parents had been invited to “take luncheon with Their Majesties,” which sounds madly grand, but as it turned out, luncheon consisted only of nasty cold meats, a selection of peculiar cheeses that smelt like a hiker’s sweaty socks and some horrible old red wine.

Bob and Sarah seemed totally at home with Queen Adelaide and King Alfred. And being Bob and Sarah, they were calling them Addie and Al by the time they left. I was mouthing ‘don’t’ and waving my hands to stop them all through lunch, but they refused to acknowledge me. Apart from Bob, who mouthed ‘paranoid’ back at me.

As I stood beside Freds to wave them good-bye, they kissed one another
again.
I decided that was soooo going to be the last time I took them to meet a boyfriend’s parents. Not that I planned on having another boyfriend or anything. No, Freds was the perfect boyfriend for me. Although I wouldn’t mind if he grew a few more inches.

THREE
The Most Spectacular Fib

Actually, Freds’ parents had taken a shine to Bob and Sarah. Me, on the other hand? Well, apparently they thought I was ‘sickly and sniffly.’ Okay, so I had forced Freds to tell me what they thought of me. I just think he could have put it a tad more kindly.

‘I think it was the runny nose,’ Freds added, by means of explanation.

Oh yes, my cold. My genius excuse for not going on the shoot the following day. It was really a most spectacularly elaborate fib. I’d even gone to the trouble of cunningly rubbing a handkerchief with chili oil to produce the glassy-eyed, runny nose effect. It was a tip I’d picked up at Saint Augustine’s to get out of a class.

So, while the royals were off killing things, I sat in the library (just like at Saint Augustine’s only sans computers). Freds’ twinkly-eyed gran sat with me. She was quite sweet and very merry, knocking back sherry after sherry and
prank calling the staff. We got on quite well in a drunken old duck/sober teenager sort of way. Unfortunately her two old Labradors kept nipping me. ‘That’s their way of saying hello, don’t you know,’ Gran had explained as they gnawed my legs off.

Sarah’s parents had died in a car accident when I was small, and Bob’s parents lived in Kentucky, so I barely ever saw them. When I did, they obsessed about my milk intake, like I was some sort of calf or something. Freds’ gran, on the other hand, made me try a glass of sherry, which tastes like cough mixture. I think I may have got a bit tipsy, because I started calling her Bea instead of Ma’am. Also, I let Bea use my mobile to call the butler, who was refusing to answer her calls on the house phones after numerous pranks informing him of all sorts of scandalous untruths about what he got up to in his free time. Honestly, she was soooo funny I chortled my knickers off.

I was still chortling away like the Laughing Cavalier in that famous painting that hangs in the Wallace Collection when Freds and his ‘rents came back from killing innocent creatures. The Laughing Cavalier in the painting doesn’t look like he’s laughing – he looks like he’s grinning in a knowing, pervy way if you ask me.

So I suppose that didn’t look too good.

Freds gave me a disappointed look as we all gathered in the drawing room, which looked out onto a lovely loch. I was peering out in the hope of seeing a monster or
something fascinating like that when the queen asked, ‘How’s your cold, Calypso?’

‘My what?’ I replied, having completely forgotten my elaborate ruse.

‘Your cold?’ Freddie reminded me – a bit sternly.

‘Oh, that.’ I produced my handkerchief and took a deep sniff, which set me off coughing, which in turn set the Labradors off on another nipping attack on my legs. ‘A little better, I think.’

‘Oh marvellous,’ the king replied, slapping the arms of his chair with delight. ‘We wouldn’t want you to miss your mother’s marvellous show because of illness.’ Honestly, Freds’ ’rents were as bonkeresque as mine. First toast and now this!

I’d love to have missed Sarah’s ‘marvellous’ show. I think Freds knew that, because he gave me one of his cautioning looks, which were becoming far too regular for my liking.

‘No, no, I can’t get enough of
Harley Village,’
I told them with a great deal of feeling. I was getting scarily good at this lying thing.

Harley Village
is
the
most agonisingly dreary dramarama about a village in Yorkshire where a missing pig is frontpage news. It had been Britain’s highest-rated series for fifty years or something, and Sarah was sadly proud to have this new gig. I don’t know why she couldn’t have kept up her morning celebrity slot. The boys at Eades adored the madre’s morning show – which of course meant kudos for me.

Sarah could talk about how atmospheric
Harley Village
is until the cows came home, but as far as I was concerned, it was a show about miserable wet people arguing over whose umbrella was whose.

‘Splendid,’ said the king.

‘Excellent,’ agreed the queen.

‘Bollocks,’ blurted Bea. For a micro-moment, I actually thought the exclamation had come from me. Then Bea winked at me, and I had to snort so deeply into my handkerchief to smother my laughter, I almost passed out.

That was the worst thing about the weekend: my fake cold. Once I’d faked the cold to avoid the shoot, I couldn’t exactly make a miraculous recovery without everyone becoming suspicious. It was merde! I had to sniffle and cough all weekend. And as it turned out, my cold was totally pointless.

As I was having my good-bye kiss alone with Freds in one of the turreted towers that smelt of moss, I naively confided in him about how and why I’d lied about having a cold. He knew how much I hated shooting animals, so I thought he’d understand. Actually, I had hoped he’d laugh like a mad thing and spin me around in his arms, but all he did was give me another one of his disappointed looks. I hated his disappointed looks. Every time he gave me one, I felt myself becoming dimmer in his eyes. Then he said, ‘It was a
clay
pigeon shoot, Calypso. I am perfectly aware how
anti
you are.’

I don’t know how he does it, but he manages to make my dislike of murdering animals sound like treason.

Is it my fault no one ever tells me anything? Buggery boyfriends and their stupid expectations and disappointed looks. It wasn’t easy sniffing on that chili-soaked handkerchief all weekend. But did he give me any thanks, or any respect, or encouragement? No.

Now his parents thought I was sickly and sniffly and they would probably banish me from all their castles forever, and Freds and I would be confined to cafés and pizza shops like ordinary girls and boys. Merde, merde and double algebra merde.

Basically, the weekend was not the triumph I had hoped it would be, and I returned to London in a major sulk. The icing on the cake was that my green bejewelled slippers got all soggy when Freds took me walking in some bogs. ‘You should have worn Wellingtons,’ he told me.

And then just when I thought life couldn’t get any worse, I ended up with a really nasty cold.

FOUR
Witness to Madness

I left the castle feeling less than magical.

When I arrived back at the house my parents were renting in Clapham, London – The Clap House, as my evil anti-girlfriend Honey O’Hare had named it – my life took another nosedive.

Sarah and Bob pitched up to my bedroom, swung open the door (without so much as a courteous knock) and declared in one voice, ‘We have decided to get married, Calypso.’

All I said was, ‘Fine,’ because, well, the ’rents are always lobbing up and saying the most random things.

I was listening to my favourite song on the really cool green iPod they’d given me for my combined birthday/Christmas present. Oh, and txting Freds at the same time because some ancient Greek chap in a toga (or was it a bath?) once said, ‘Life is too short to limit oneself to one activity at a time.’ Then again, I might have read that it in a fortune cookie.

However, my parents’ announcement slowly began to
seep into my consciousness, and I pressed Send before I’d even added any x’s. I turned around to face them, ripped my earphones out of my ears and stated the blindingly obvious. ‘But you
are
married!’