A Royal Mess (32 page)

This was an emergency. Acting on instinct, I dove over Indie’s valet, who was carefully placing designer casuals in the drawer under her bed, clamped my hand over Sarah’s mouth, and cried out, ‘Stop saying that!’ Turning to Clems’ ’rents, I explained, ‘Honestly, they were married years before I was born! It was just a repeat performance. I don’t want any trouble.’

Mr and Mrs Fraser Marks looked at me as if I were a mad adolescent on hormonal meltdown. Then Clems’ madre spoke directly to Sarah. ‘Yes, Clementine told us about the blessing. Congratulations to you both.’

I removed my hand from Sarah’s mouth and pretended
that I had merely been brushing her face for crumbs. Sarah shook her head and frowned, so I planted a dutiful-daughter kiss on her nose.

Bob gave me one of his “you’re so paranoid, Calypso” glares. I slunk back over to Indie and Clemmie. Stupid, stupid, stupid Calypso – I wish I’d fainted instead.

Sebastian pointed at me and said, ‘Bad fox.’

‘He’s a cute little fellow,’ Bob said, and laughed when Sebastian sunk his teeth in my hand and said, ‘Bad fox, bad fox, bad fox.’

No one so much as scolded him. Star is right. It’s unbelievable what boys get away with.

Clems’ father said, ‘Clemmie was most upset she was unable to attend, but we were skiing.’

‘Star sent me photos, though,’ Clemmie piped up as she ran her Mason Pearson through her long straight blonde hair, which now hung below her waist.

‘Yes, we, erm, thought the cake looked very lovely,’ her parents agreed uncomfortably. Obviously they’d seen the tongue swallowing shot as txted by Star.

‘Swell,’ said Bob. Yes, he actually said ‘swell.’

‘You two make such a cute couple,’ Indie told my parents.

Why does everyone keep saying my ’rents are cute? If I said ‘swell,’ the whole of England would take the piss for the next ten zillion years. Yet for some reason everything Bob and Sarah say or do is met with cries of, ‘They’re soooo cute.’

Hello Kitty toasters that toast Hello Kitty faces onto your bread are cute. Bob and Sarah are vaudevillian paragons if anything. Why can’t they keep a pleasing balloon’s distance between them at all times, like normal parents?

‘Let’s take Dorothy down to the pet shed,’ I suggested to Clemmie, who had already taken my rabbit out of her carrier for a hop.

‘Good idea,’ she agreed as Dorothy gave her a punishing nip. Dorothy became quite the prima donna when left in her carrier for too long.

‘I’ll join you,’ Indie added, checking her modelesque figure in the mirror as she rearranged her purple pash around her neck. ‘Edwards, can you supervise the rest of the decorations?’ she asked her valet. He gave her a little bow.

‘We’re going to take Dorothy down to the pet shed,’ I told the loony madre and padre. They were still busy extolling the revolutionary effects of their remarriage to Clems’ parents. Would you believe my father was talking about writing a script based on their rapprochement? That’s what he was going to call his screenplay,
The Rapprochement!

‘Okay, bye, Calypso. Call us tomorrow and let us know how you’re settling in,’ Bob told me as he planted a kiss on my head.

Sarah, barely able to pull herself away from the conversation, just gave me the American hand sign for okay,
which made my friends tear up with laughter. When I first pitched up in this land of rain and drizzle, I soon learned that it is not de rigueur to make hand gestures to people who are actually close enough to hear you speak. I suppose I should be glad she didn’t try and high-five me. She does that too.

Sure enough, all the way down to the pet shed, Clemmie and Indie started dementedly hand-signing to one another. This is what the English do; take the piss (or as we say at school, extract the urine). It’s a national pastime. Even the nuns and staff do it.

SEVEN
Operation Dumping Boys

Star was already standing in the snow-frosted pet run with her pet rat and snake. She was wearing her regulation Doc Martens (pink today), tartan miniskirt and a ripped designer cashmere jumper. Her reticulated python, Brian, was slung around her neck like a pash, while Hilda the rat was peeping out her jumper, completing her rock royalty look. Even with punk accoutrements, Star still looked like a naughty cherub with her long strawberry-blonde hair, big green eyes and milky white skin.

I spotted Honey and Georgina sharing a fag in the trees of Pullers’ Wood. From a distance they looked like sisters with their willowy figures and long blonde hair. Like Honey, Georgina’s legs were completely exposed, but at least Georgina was wearing a black cashmere jumper and a baby blue pash around her neck as a nod to the weather. She was also hugging her teddy bear, Tobias, who is a full fee-paying student at Saint Augustine’s.

After an excited session of air-kissing, Star pointed into the trees and smirked. ‘Have you seen Honey’s new bodyguard?’

I spotted the orange-robed Buddhist lurking in the woods nearby, seemingly in some deep meditation-type activity.

‘Yaah, I saw him earlier. What’s that about?’ I asked.

‘Honey’s afraid there may be a plot to kidnap her now that her latest stepfather is in the House of Lords.’

‘But, erm, aren’t Buddhists meant to be all meditative and peaceful?’ I asked.

‘Yaah totally. But nonviolent security is really big at the moment.
Tatler
did some big spread on nonviolent security firms in Knightsbridge,’ Clems explained.

I felt like fainting with the madness of it all, but then Georgina spotted us and came running over.

After another air-kiss-a-thon, I passed Dorothy to Georgina, who co-owns her with me. ‘Dorothy! You’ve turned into a chubba lub!’ she told our plump little rabbit through chattering teeth. ‘You’ll never be model-spotted now, darling.’ She kissed Dorothy on the nose.

‘Blame Sarah,’ I told her, giving Dorothy’s ears a little scratch. ‘She wouldn’t stop feeding her scraps even though I kept telling her, she’s a sentient being and not a recycling bin!’

‘Hilda’s put on weight too,’ Star said, referring to her pet rat. ‘I’ve had to put her on the GI diet for rats. Mummy had a specialist flown out from New York to council her.’

The rest of us nodded gravely, as if having dietary specialists flown in to keep a rat’s figure trim was a perfectly reasonable thing to do. When I first arrived at Saint Augustine’s, I found everything about these spoilt, confident, sophisticated girls peculiar. I guess after you’ve lived with people long enough, though, you get used to their odd little ways.

When I was certain Honey couldn’t hear us, I asked Georgina, ‘Who’s Honey rooming with?’

‘Fenella and Perdita at Polo Central,’ replied Georgina, referring to the polo twins.

Fenella and Perdita were not only identical twins but mad keen polo players. Their ponies were stabled nearby, and they were wildly popular with the polo boys at Eades who only spoke in polo-speak.

‘It is seriously funny,’ Georgina continued. ‘Honey came to find me for a whinge. Apparently, every spare inch of wall space was already plastered with pictures of polo ponies and fit players by the time she arrived. She was absolutely livid, and Siddhartha, her security guard, kept telling her to breathe. Tobias laughed so hard he practically fell apart at the seams.’

We all knew how Tobias felt, because the first thing Honey did once her manservant had unpacked was to cover her pin board and wall space with paparazzi shots of herself. Honey adores society shots of herself chatting to other society clones. I could well imagine that she may have met her It Girl match with Fen and Perdita, who
didn’t rate anything outside the world of polo. They’d have absolutely no patience with Honey’s bitchy humour, which meant Honey would have to hang out in someone else’s room in order to get her bitch fix.

Oh no! Honey Hell, here I come.

Don’t be so paranoid, I told myself. Honey would probably go to Georgina’s room. After all, they went to nursery school together, and their bio fathers hunt together. ‘What about you, Georgina, who are you rooming with?’ I inquired idly, hoping it would be someone Honey-friendly.

‘Beatrice and Izzie,’ Georgina replied, failing to suppress her laughter. Izzie was quite scary, only in a less confrontational way than Honey.

I had heard on the txt-vine that Honey had pulled Izzie’s boyfriend at some New Year’s party in Val d’Isere. ‘Is it true that Honey had a lip-fest with Izzie’s boyfriend?’ I asked now as my panic began to set in.

Star and Georgina looked at one another and burst out laughing. ‘It was hilarious. When Izzie walked in and saw Honey in our room, she spat the dummy, darling. She gave Honey the most ferocious look, it almost melted Honey’s collagen!’

‘What did Honey do?’ Clemmie asked, her Tiffany-box blue eyes wide with curiosity.

Georgina shrugged. ‘You know Honey, she would have got on her high horse, but Izzie looked like she might slap her, so she brazened it out and denied everything. Put it
this way; I don’t think Honey will be visiting my room very much this term.’

I wasn’t being paranoid. ‘So hang on. If her room’s out because of Fen and Perdita, and your room’s out because of Izzie, where will Honey hang out?’ I asked, trying to keep the desperation out of my voice.

‘I’m rooming with Portia and Arabella,’ Star said. ‘So she won’t
dare
come near us.’

‘Don’t worry, darling,’ Indie said, reading my mind and throwing a comforting arm around me. ‘She hates me too.’

This was true, but while Indie would give as good as she got where Honey was concerned, her presence alone might not be enough to keep Honey away. The fly in the ointment was Clemmie, who was soooo nice to everyone, including Honey. I had been Honey’s torture toy from the day I arrived at Saint Augustine’s. With my American accent, lack of grand ancestors or old money, I was a red flag to a mad bull. It was as inevitable as brown slops on a Sunday. Our room would become Honey’s new torture parlour.

As if summoned by satanic forces, Honey tottered over to join us. Her orange-robed bodyguard followed at a serene distance. ‘Laters, peasants. I’m going back up to the institution,’ she groaned, flicking her butt at my feet as she sprayed herself with Febreze to get rid of the smoke smell. Then, confirming my worst fears, she added to Clemmie, ‘I’ll see you a la mo, Clems. I’ll be hanging out in your
room this term. Fen and Perdita are too polo for words, and I’ve soooo much to tell you, darling.’

‘Laters,’ Clemmie said, smiling sweetly at Honey.

‘Laters,’ we all added to Honey’s blue-with-cold back. But for me, the word ‘laters’ held more than a touch of menace.

‘I know she’ll haunt our room,’ I blurted after her entourage was out of earshot.

‘So did you dump Freds?’ Star asked, changing the subject in her usual radical way.

‘Why on earth would I dump Freds?’

‘Erm … because he makes you fall asleep and snore?’

‘He soooo does not.’

‘Well, he finds you disappointing.’

‘Don’t be mad. He does not find me disappointing.’

‘Well, why did you say he did?’

‘I didn’t.’

‘Yes, you did. And that’s another thing. All you do is go on and on
ad infinitum
about Freds.’

I briefly toyed with the idea of fainting to avoid this tedious conversational cul-de-sac, but then Georgina agreed with Star. ‘We
do
spend far too much time obsessing over boys.’

I looked from girl to girl. I was suddenly surrounded by an anti-boy cult. ‘Boys are a vital part of existence!’ I reminded them.

‘I quite like boys. Well, pulling boys anyway,’ Clemmie added. She was looking practically as horrified as me.

Indie didn’t look too keen on the boy-dumping idea either. She hadn’t said anything, but I was almost certain-ish she’d been fantasising about Malcolm all through the holidays.

Star looked directly at her as she said, ‘I’m going to be more like Indie and focus on my music.’

Indie nodded expressionlessly, blinded by the brightness of Star’s million-watt personality. There was also the small detail that Indie hadn’t actually pulled Malcolm yet.