Tall Poppies

This book is dedicated to

Rosie Cheetham, Susan Lamb, Barbara Kennedy-Brown, and Tall Poppies everywhere.

‘No! Stop it, we can’t do this!’

Nina squirmed away. She kept her eyes down, hoping he wouldn’t see that telltale glitter, her dilated pupils. Her face was flushed from wanting, but it was too soon.

‘Come on, sugar, gimme a break,’ Jeff said. His voice was rough, and she could see the outline of his hard-on through his grey flannel pants. Nina tried to be cool about it, like Judy or Melissa or any of those popular girls, and not think how much it would hurt if he put it inside her. Perhaps he wouldn’t get it in, Nina thought wildly. She’d checked herself out in the bathroom mirror last night - pretty small. He’d split her in two.

‘You drive me crazy,’ Jeff breathed, running his hands inside the burgundy school blazer, finding her voluptuous breasts under the thin cotton of her outsize shirt. She was wearing some kind of coarse, heavy sports bra to hold them back, just like she wore her kilt a size too large, to cover up her tiny waist and full, round butt - but not even Nina Roth could hide for ever. Jeff grinned with triumph as her nipples stiffened against his palm. He’d been after her ever since he’d come off the basketball court, thought he’d like a swim, and found Nina doing twenty laps. After hours, guess she thought she’d be by herself. Jeff had hidden in a corner to watch. Christ! Who knew? Nina Roth, scholarship girl, major nerd, charity

hair, trailing down across a cheap black swimsuit, outlining big firm breasts, a tiny waist, a flaring ass and long, curving legs. He’d felt his cock throbbing so urgently in his pants he had to slip into the guys’ bathroom and jerk himself off. That was three weeks ago.

‘Not here,’ she said, looking up and down the corridor, trying to back away. ‘Someone might see …’

‘So what?’ Jeff demanded sullenly. Nina was hard work for a chick that never had a guy look at her before. Sometimes he wondered if she was worth it. He had a hundred skinny blonde cheerleaders who’d jump through hoops for the chance to lay him. ‘Don’t you care about me?’

‘You know I do—’ The bell rang for third period and she jumped aside, shaky with relief, as kids came streaming out of their classrooms. ‘I have to go, I got physics. I’ll see you later …’

Melissa Patton came sidling up to Jeff’s locker, her arins laden with cute pink files covered in butterflies. Melissa was blonde, thin, bouncy, scraped by in most of her classes. She always talked about being an actress or a model. Real popular with the girls.

‘Hey, Jeffie … some of us were going to see Rage, that movie? D’you wanna come along?’ Melissa smiled invitingly, tossing one shiny blonde ringlet out of her eyes.

Glazer shook his head, liking the way her eyes moved appreciatively across his chest muscles. Missy and her

crowd never missed a football practice.

‘I’m going to hang in the park.’

‘With Nina Roth?’ Melissa’s manicured nails curled around her gold eternity ring. He could smell Chanel No. 5 mingling with the newly washed scent of her hair; his mom would love Melissa. Jeff shrugged.

‘I don’t know why you bother. She’s only into math,’ Melissa snapped, and flounced away, blonde curls flying.

Right! But Nina made Melissa look like a stick of spaghetti …

Jeff Glazer slammed the door of his locker.

Inside the quiet, gleaming classroom Nina Roth took deep breaths, taking in the smell of chalk and polish and disinfectant, trying to concentrate on what Sister Bernadette was saying. Normally this was one of her favourite classes; Sister Bernadette had been a research fellow at MIT before taking the veil, and it was cool to learn from somebody like that. But not today.

The class sat hunkered down at their desks, bored and restless, drawing in their margins with one eye on the clock. Rows of smart burgundy blazers and crisp cotton shirts, tailored linen pants or neat, swinging kilts were turned towards the teacher, eyes staring glassily at the blackboard where Sister was outlining equations in chalk. They did things the old-fashioned way here: the College of St Michael the Archangel was big, impersonal and expensive, one of the most prestigious schools in Park Slope. Brooklyn’s richest parents had been sending their kids here for decades, paying through the nose for the nuns, the uniform, the Catholic education. Most of the trust-fund babies ignoring Sister Bernadette were atheist or Episcopalian, but so what? St Michael’s was all about cachet, not the Church.

The kids shifted in their seats. One or two glanced over at Nina, the nerd, the scholarship girl. Her uniform was stretched and shapeless, but everyone knew she had to buy stuff secondhand. Anyway, she never cared how she

looked; she was always lost in her stupid books … ‘So, the sum of the angles is …?’ Silence. ‘Nina?’

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Nina jumped in her seat, dragging her mind away from

the feel of Jeff’s hands on her breasts. She flushed a dark

red.

‘Excuse me, Sister?’

The teacher pursed her thin lips. ‘Nina, what did I just ask?’

‘I - I don’t know, Sister.’

‘I’m not surprised. You’re miles away. How do you expect to get anywhere in life, Miss Roth, if you don’t pay attention in school?’

Mean giggles from the class. Nina felt the familiar haze

of humiliation creep over her again. They all knew she was the only one here who’d have to work her way up: heir folks were lawyers, doctors and bankers; hers were a retired cop, a slob who lived for beer and Jeopardy, and a wasted alcoholic who ran their rundown deli between blackouts.

‘Miss Whitney?’

‘Ninety degrees, Sister,’ Josie Whitney said smugly, shc?oting a look of triumph at Nina.

But Nina didn’t care, not today. Because she was dating Jeff Glazer, the hottest guy in the school. Maybe things would be different now, Nina thought as she scribbled furiously. Maybe her luck was finally about to change.

Nina Roth was an only child, which was just as well, since her parents couldn’t have afforded a second. According to her father, wheezing and complaining whenever he signed a cheque, they barely managed the first. Mark and Ellen Roth shared a dingy walk-up on South Slope and an air of bitter disappointment. They also shared a daughter, but for as long as she could remember, Nina had only got attention during their endless fights. A pawn to be squabbled over. Pop was in his fifties, fat, squalid, a major armchair jock. He

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mouthed off about the government and the Yankees and the weather in front of the TV, never shifting his blubbery body to do a thing about it. Pop said he was retired from the force, but Nina heard on the street he’d been canned for theft, siphoning off confiscated money and goods for himself. She never asked him about it. She knew it was true.

Then there was Mom. Nina thought she remembered a time when her mom loved her, took her walking in Prospect Park, bought her Italian ice cream on Court Street, or best of all, took her out to magical Coney Island in the summer, to ride the funfair and eat cotton candy.

But that was when she was very little. Before Dad had

come home. Before Ellen started to drink.

Then things got bad very quickly.

These clays Mom only hugged her in a drunken stupor, with her breath rank and tears of self-pity streaking her thin cheeks. Nina hated it, hated her, lreferred to be left alone. Ellen didn’t really love her daughter, Nina knew that. She took comfort solely in a bottle. Her mom was a sour woman, cocooning herself in an alcoholic fog from the misery of her life, often blacking out for entire days. She kept just enough control to staff the family store, a scuzzy 7-I with peeling Coke ads on the door and a loaded pistol under the counter. Ellen sold cigarettes, booze and candy bars and counted the money. Matthew took deliveries, stacked shelves once a week. The important stuff, like accounts and reordering, Nina took care of. She’d asked to do it when she turned thirteen. Somebody had to put bread on the table.

Nina was sixteen years old. She knew her rich classmates despised her. She hadn’t been popular at Beth Israel Elementary, either, when she was ten years old and studying desperately for the St Michael’s scholarship, but she didn’t give a damn, because school was the way out

Her whole life had one blind obsession: to get out of the South Slope, away from the drugs and the garbage, the graffiti, the gangs, the stray dogs.

Away from all the dirt and despair. Away from home. Even so, it hurt, the way the other kids shunned her, never inviting her to hang out, snickering at her patched up uniform and secondhand blazers. Nobody ever asked her to sit at their table at lunch. Nobody picked her for their team at games. She’d gotten the reputation for being a loner, and nobody ever bothered to disprove it - at least, not until three weeks back.

That miraculous day, Jeff Glazer had actually strolled

up to her locker after French, and casually asked if she’d

,like to go out with him.

At first Nina just stood there blinking, convinced this

had to be some particularly cruel joke. Glazer was seventeen, school quarterback, the only son of very wealthy parents, and a major hunk; muscular, tall, with Viking-fair hair and ice-blue eyes, Jeff had every babe in school flirting with him constantly. He’d dated and dropped half the best-looking ones already; ex-girlfriends swore he was a stud but a user, but that never stopped the next crop of giggling cuties trying out as replacements. Nina Roth would as likely fly to the moon as be asked out by Jeff Glazer.

But he was there. And he was asking.

‘Like a date?’ she stammered.

Jeff gave that indifferent shrug of his. ‘Sure. You want

to?’

OK, so it wasn’t exactly Romeo and Juliet, but when

he’d sat next to her at lunch, Nina wouldn’t have traded the envious stares of Judy Carling and her crowd for all the roses in the world.

She pinned her compass to the paper in front of her

and mechanically traced out a couple of angles. It couldn’t last like this, she knew that. Jeff wanted to make

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love to her, and if she didn’t let him, he was going to dump her. Even when she said she was too young, Jeff told her that everybody did it, she was way too uptight, and if she loved him she would make love to him.

Nina thought of the sniggering when Sister Bernadette said she’d have to get on in the world. They were all snobs and she hated them. But it didn’t matter when she had Jeff - he’d picked her, not them. And some of the guys on the football team, even some of the girls, had started including her in stuff since she’d been dating him. Was she going to give it up? Just ‘cause I’m chicken? Nina thought. He does love me, why would he touch me like that if he didn’t love me? And I know I love him …

Nina breathed in deeply, trying to stop her heart thumping so hard against her chest. She could be as good a girlfriend as Melissa or Judy or Josie … as any of those rich babs. Jeff was gonna expect an answer in Prospect Park tonight. And the answer was going to be yes …

The turrets of Caerhaven Castle towered black as coal against the twilight sky, darkened from the rain and wind. The bitter storm had raged all day, churning the sea to fury against the cliffs below and uprooting two pear trees in the castle orchards. But tonight nobody noticed the weather. Light streamed from every window in the medieval walls, from the sturdy marquee set up on the croquet lawn and from the stream, of Bentleys and RollsoRoyces crunching past the stone dragons on the front gates and up two miles of gravel drive.

The Countess of Caerhaven was giving a ball. ‘Goddamn it, Monica. Where is that wretched child?’ Tony Savage, Thirtieth Earl of Caerhaven, tugged at the waistcoat of his immaculate white-tie suit. He hated being defied. Not only was he holder of one of the oldest titles in Wales, lord of Caerhaven Castle and seven hundred acres of rich farmland, Tony was Chief Executive of Dragon plc., the family company. Founded on blood money from the slave trade, Dragon was a pharmaceutical giant, with divisions worldwide. It was publicly held; Tony Savage had eleven per cent.

At his side Monica shrugged, offering her hand to a new batch of arrivals. ‘Joanna, delighted you could come. Richard, how good to see you …’ Tall and elegant, the second Lady Caerhaven swished around in a sea-green Baleniaga, pearls looped round her neck, sapphire clips pinching delicate earlobes. She smiled dazzlingly at every unfamiliar face: Cabinet ministers, industrialists and

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investment bankers, along with the society set. She was charming to them all. So important for Tony’s business.

The earl nodded softly to himself. Monica looked wonderful, behaved perfectly. Never gave him a second’s concern. She knew her place was at his side. None of that feminist claptrap had ever sullied her brain; she just liked spending his money, hosting his parties and dazzling the Tatler set every season. Women envied Monica and men wanted her. She was the perfect wife.

Monica Savage had done her duty in every way. There was Charles, Lord Holwyn, and Lord Richard; the heir and the spare. And if she no longer welcomed him into her bed, that was fine too: Tony Savage had women whenever he wanted them. Monica pretended not to notice and got her little baubles from Tiffany or Gar rard’s as a reward.