A Royal Mess (34 page)

We were all sprawled on our beds, listening to our iPods, scrolling through txt messages and listlessly flicking through magazines, when Miss Bibsmore hobbled into our room. She’d gone back to wrapping carpet and duct tape around her walking stick, so we hadn’t heard her approach.

‘’Ello, girls,’ she screeched.

I think I speak for all when I say her appearance came as a shock. I mean, Miss Bibsmore’s no runway model at the best of times, but that evening she was crumpled over her stick even farther than usual. More freakish than that, she was wearing a massive pair of fluffy dog slippers with big floppy ears and plastic stick-on eyes. Animal slippers are de rigueur for house spinsters, so it was really the tatty old dressing gown over the floral flannel nightie that cracked me up.

‘Are you alright, Miss Bibsmore?’ I asked, slightly concerned by her appearance.

‘Don’t you worry about me, luvvie. I’m just feeling a bit
orf – it’s the menopause, you see. My womb hurts something chronic and my back’s playing up. It’s a cruel god that cursed us with these ‘ormones, dearie, I’ll tell you that for free,’ she said.

As if anyone would pay for that gem of philosophy! None of us really knew how to respond, so we just nodded.

‘All unpacked I see,’ Miss Bibsmore remarked with approval. ‘Not like some I could mention.’ She was looking at the door as she spoke, and I turned to see Honey.

‘What will you be after then, Madam?’ Miss Bibsmore asked my anti-friend. ‘This isn’t your room last time I looked.’

Honey’s always doing battle with house spinsters, or anyone else she sees as inferior, which is basically anyone who doesn’t want to take her photograph and place it in
Tatler.
The exception was Miss Bibsmore, who wasn’t in the least bit rattled by Honey’s poisonous put-downs. Which was probably why all Honey said was, ‘Oh, shut up, you insane old woman,’ before walking off in a huff. Mild by Honey’s standards.

‘How was your Christmas, Miss Bibsmore?’ Indie, Clemmie and I asked as we each took one of our two earphones out.

‘Oh, it was triffic, luvvies, simply triffic.’ Her eyes travelled about the room, which was clean, thankfully. ‘Lovely job you’ve done on the room, girls,’ she remarked, hobbling across the room to feel the fabric of the curtains. ‘That’d be silk an’ all. Real class, that’s what that is and it’ll
be all your work, I’ll hazard, Your Highness,’ she said to Indie.

‘I really wish you’d call me Indie, Miss Bibsmore,’ Indie told her, while continuing to rock her head in time to the music.

‘Oh, I couldn’t do that, Your Highness,’ Miss Bibsmore said, horrified by the thought. ‘It wouldn’t be right, not with you being proper royal an’ all,’ she insisted.

The truth was, there were a number of royals at my school, including a few princesses, loads of countesses and ladies and the odd duchess. But none of them got royal highness-ed like Indie. Using your title at school was considered
de trop.
Freds is next in line to the throne but even he never uses his title. The plain truth was, Indie had charmed her way into Miss Bibsmore’s heart.

‘Well I’ll be off then. Me rheumatism is playing up something rotten,’ she moaned. ‘Mind you, don’t get muck on the princess’s spreads with those shoes of yours, Miss Fraser Marks,’ she warned Clemmie.

‘Deffo,’ replied Clemmie, scrutinising her
Tatler.

‘And ‘ow’s your poor mother, Miss Kelly? Staying on a bit in England by all reports now yer father is up and joined ‘er.’

‘Yes, Miss Bibsmore.’

‘That must be nice for you, luvvie. I ‘eard as much. It’s the nuns, yer see. They like a good natter. Not that I’m one for gossip nor nothing.’

‘No, Miss Bibsmore,’ we all agreed in the Saint Augustine’s tone of perceived obedience and respect.

‘Well, I’ll be gittin back on my rounds, then. Cheerio, girls. Good-bye, Your Highness.’

‘Bye, Miss Bibsmore,’ we called after her, as if her visit had been the highlight of our day.

‘What do you think of Star’s idea about our dumping our boyfriends?’ I asked casually, as if I wasn’t at all desperate for support from my roommates.

‘I don’t have a boyfriend,’ Indie replied as she lazily scrolled through her txts on her little bejewelled purple phone.

‘What about Malcolm?’ I asked, hoping to rattle her.

Indie was saved from responding by Clemmie, who blurted, ‘She didn’t say we couldn’t
pull
boys, just that we shouldn’t get all clingy about any one boy in particular.’

I looked over at Indie, but she was still scrolling away, seemingly unbothered by Star’s Operation Dumping Boys.

I decided to visit Lady Portia Herrington Briggs. She was on the national sabre team with me and had been my fencing partner since Star had chucked sabre to focus on her minor chord compositions. Given that Star and Portia were sharing this term, I wondered if Star would start giving Portia grief about her boyfriend, who happened to be Kev’s older brother, Billy. The dating habits of English public schools are très, très incestuous.

Portia is blessed with one of those cool aristocratic demeanours. She’s aloof without being in the least bit
arrogant. I’ve never seen her ruffled or rattled or acting loopy like other teenagers. Even when we fence, her luxuriously thick, long raven mane remains hair-commercial perfect. If she wasn’t so lovely and sweet, her perfection could easily mark her out for secret hatred. As it is, no one has a bad word to say about her, not that she’s a pushover. Even Honey tempers her psycho-toff rants when Portia’s around.

When I walked in, Star, Portia and Arabella had a Lower Sixth girl in their room selling ghastly handmade jewelry as part of the school’s Enterprise Awareness scheme. The scheme claimed to provide girls with the skills needed to be entrepreneurial businesswomen. I think that was stretching it. The fact of the matter was the students only bought whatever the Lower Sixth came up with because the proceeds went towards the Sunday Supper, which was a treat our year was now privileged to enjoy.

I picked up one of the gaudy plastic beads on coloured string and asked how much it was.

‘A tenner. We’re doing a really cool music night and getting in the caterers from Eades to do a proper Burns Night feast,’ the older girl explained. ‘Sans haggis, naturally.’

‘What will you pipe in then?’ I asked, relieved as I relived the memory of last year’s horrible haggis. Burns Night is one of those mad Scottish traditions like caber tossing, reeling and kilt wearing. The Scots really are
exquisitely bonkers. Take Clems and Malcolm for example. Burns Night is a cool idea though as it’s the celebration of their national poet – and there isn’t enough celebrating of national poets, if you ask me.

‘A giant pizza,’ the Sixth girl replied.

‘Cool.’

‘The real news is that we’re performing,’ Star added, holding out an arm covered in coloured bead bracelets. ‘So buy up big darling.’ Even though most of the Enterprise Initiative products are often revolting bits of jewelry or hoodies with mad slogans emblazoned across them, we all buy and wear them. It’s sort of a cult thing. Occasionally they even turn up on eBay, where they are snatched up for exorbitant sums of money by girls who missed out. The trouble is that these cult items bring new depth to the saying “so last term.” No girl would be seen dead in last term’s Enterprise Initiative.

‘Wow, that’s really cool about you and Indie playing. Does Indie know?’ I asked.

‘No, but I’ve told you,’ Star insisted, ‘because I want you to write something for it. It will be our first big gig, and if it goes well, we can lay down the tracks on CD,’ she explained. ‘You did say you wanted to write some songs for us.’ Her green eyes were sparkling with infectious enthusiasm, and in that moment I decided she was probably right. Not about the boy thing, but about focusing on our dreams. It wouldn’t do me any harm to try my hand at writing lyrics.

‘I’m on the case,’ I assured her as I studied the bracelet horrors I was about to blow my term allowance on. ‘I’m just waiting for the, erm … inspiration.’

Star rolled her eyes and shook her head at my dismal lie. The best and worst thing about best friends is they know you so well.

I purchased a bundle of plastic bead horrors, and when groups of girls started piling into the room, I snuck off down to the pet shed and rang Freddie.

‘Hey,’ he answered. ‘What’s up?’

‘Just wanted to hear your voice,’ I told him as I watched Hilda running herself ragged on her little rat wheel. ‘And to make sure we’re still on for Saturday afternoon,’ I added casually, in case, like Star, he thought I was a lovesick puppy.

‘Definitely,’ he agreed, before ruining my life by adding, ‘unless something comes up.’

TEN
Peace, Love and Buddhist Security

The next day, Clemmie, Indie and I slept through the 6:45 a.m. bell. Miss Bibsmore had to come and poke us in the ribs with her stick after the third bell. By then it was 7:10, giving us twenty minutes to clean our teeth, get dressed into our vile uniforms and leg it to the ref and devour what food we could before chapel. I couldn’t find any of my horrible maroon pleated skirts.

Clems offered me one of hers, which was indecently short on me. I’d definitely get a blue if not an ASBO for lewdity.

Fortunately, after four years, we were all experts in the art of flying down the narrow stone steps. In the ref, we grabbed a couple of croissants (one for each pocket) and gulped a hot chocolate each.

Mass had already started by the time we crept into the chapel. Father Conway was banging on about how our mortal bodies belong to Our Lady and that we shouldn’t allow anyone to defile them. I hoped the nurse from the
infirmary was listening. She was always defiling our bodies with violent needle jabs.

As if reading my mind, Indie whispered, ‘We’d best remind Sister in the infirmary about that next time she gives us our flu jabs,’ which sent me off giggling.

We always had a full Latin mass on the first day back. After that it was just a twenty-minute prayer and hymn service, unless it was a feast day. I heard my tummy rumbling and was madly tempted to sneak-eat my pocket croissants, but not even Honey would be that sacrilegious. Eventually Father Conway wrapped up his sermon with a fervent wish that this would be another successful academic term, and being a new year, an
annus mirabilis.

After mass we had to race back upstairs for room inspection. I had another look for my buggery skirts, but they had obviously done a runner. Probably too embarrassed to be seen on my freakishly long stick-like legs.

I was so self-conscious of how high Clem’s skirtwas riding up that I developed a special bent-knee run, pulling the skirt down as I scuttled about the corridors, which was how I happened to bump into Honey’s new security guy. I’d like to see the kidnapper brave enough to take on Honey. Not that this man in orange robes looked particularly hard. Maybe he would meditate the kidnappers into surrender?

‘Sorry, miss,’ he said as my head hit his orange-robed knees.

Sister Constance wasn’t too keen on personal security guards. At Eades they were part of the furniture. They
even had their own housing block, which had resulted in all sorts of tragic nobodies hiring security just to show off.

‘That’s okay,’ I told him. ‘It was totally my fault.’ Then I waddled off, still tugging my skirt down while Honey screamed about how she would sue the knickers off me if I damaged her bodyguard.

‘What’s wrong?’ Portia asked after she’d watched me waddle into class and take my seat beside her in Latin. Only four of us were doing Latin for our GCSEs. For some unfathomable reason, parents find small classes a good thing. But then they’re not the ones having to defend themselves against the madness of Miss Mills and her ilk without backup.

‘My skirts have done a runner,’ I explained. ‘Clems leant me one of hers, but it’s too short.

Portia smiled. ‘You can borrow mine, darling. At least we’re closer in height. Listen, I didn’t get to finish the translations we were meant to do over the break. Do you think Miss Mills will believe me if I say,
Canis meus idcomedit?’