A Royal Match (32 page)

Honey almost imploded with shock at the suggestion that she’d never pulled. Before she could respond though, Indie began admiring my wristband. It was just one of those plastic charity bands that cost less than a pound, like the yellow LIVESTRONG ones, only mine was a blue BEAT BULLYING one.

‘They’re the only jewellery she can afford,’ Honey sighed heavily, as if this was of great sadness to her.

Indie went, ‘That’s probably because she spends all her money on patience putting up with you.’

Portia and Star, who were in the room at the time, laughed, so they didn’t actually see what I saw. Honey’s face twisted into a look of pure hatred, only it wasn’t Indie she was looking at; it was Portia.

The big drama of our first week back came on Friday night – a night that would be known forevermore as
The Night of the Soggy Boggies
. We’d often lie on our beds and shoot soggy wads of paper up on the ceiling or onto the mirror using the plastic casing of our Bic pens. But on this particular Friday night, things got a little out of hand.

One minute we were practising our cool dance moves in front of the mirror – well, Honey was anyway, and I think I speak for the world at large when I say she looked absurd – doing a sort of slinky tango with herself. Portia was reading an American
Vogue
I’d brought back from LA. I was pretending to read txt messages from boys who weren’t sending them, because there was absolutely no way I’d practise my dance moves with Honey. Of course I
practised my dance moves, but I’d slip down to Star’s dorm these days for that sort of thing. Everyone looks a bit mad practising dance moves in front of a mirror, but as sorry a business as it is, there’s no escaping it.

It’s like Star says, ‘English boys can’t dance for toast so we girls have an obligation to hold up their side as well as our own.’ Naturally Indie was immediately voted the most phenomenal dancer in our school – after Tobias, who has been taking special lessons all his life.

(Aloof demeanour note to self: Stop focusing on how marvellous Indie is!)

Anyway, there we were, having a typical Friday night, when Clemmie, Arabella and Georgina came storming into our room, and Arabella propelled a sodden loo roll at us.

Splat!

The noise was enormous, like the sound of a wet bag of sand hitting a wall. It landed on the pin board above Honey’s bed (the one where she keeps all the paparazzi shots of herself with famous people). We all watched in stunned silence as the loo roll virtually crawled – like it was alive – slowly down the wall, eventually flopping lifelessly in a soggy mass on Honey’s pillow.

Predictably, this was enough to escalate the soggy boggy prank into a full-on dorm war, with sodden loo rolls being hurled through dorms by everyone at everyone. We were behaving ‘proper mad,’ as the shopkeepers in the village would say.

Miss Bibsmore hobbled up the stairs just in time to
catch Honey, who had filled our bin with water and loo rolls and was dragging it up the wet corridor for an apocalyptic onslaught on Clemmie’s dorm.

Miss Bibsmore raised her walking stick and then raised her voice to a level that could shatter glass as she screamed, ‘Stop right where you are, Miss O’Hare, you spawn of Satan, you.’

Everyone froze, apart from Honey, obviously.

‘Don’t. Move. A. Muscle,’ Miss Bibsmore repeated.

We all giggled because she was speaking the way superheroes speak when they are heavily armed with super-strength weapons and powers. All Miss Bibsmore had in the way of superpowers was a limited ability to distribute blues, a history of childhood illnesses and a walking stick.

It surprised no one that Honey totally ignored her. I can’t think that even Miss Bibsmore, scary as she is, actually imagines that Satan’s spawn are in the least bit receptive to obeying orders squawked by mad House Spinsters, but still she persisted. ‘I’m warning you, Miss O’Hare, my temper is on a very short fuse.’

Honey flicked her gorgeously long, blonde, expensively streaked locks across her shoulder and replied calmly, ‘Might I remind you who pays your wages, Miss Bibsmore?’

Miss Bibsmore had her bottom lip out. She raised her cane and waved it about menacingly to show she
really
meant business. ‘No, Miss O’Hare, you may not remind me of any such thing. However, you might well find
yourself gated, or worse, if you don’t stand stock-still this minute.’

Honey turned, and for a moment I thought she was about to hurl a soggy boggy at Miss Bibsmore. Instead she mildly remarked, ‘We’re in the middle of a soggy boggy war here and the battle has reached a crucial stage, if you don’t mind!’ Which implied that soggy boggies were on par with hard sums or letters home to parents.

Portia, Star, Georgina and all the rest of the girls who were watching the spectacle from the doorways of their respective rooms giggled. Hate Honey though I do, I couldn’t help admiring her total lack of fear. Even Georgina was awed. ‘Bless,’ she said as Honey turned and continued imperiously up the corridor to Clemmie’s room and slightly less imperiously commenced propelling her wet missiles at the shrieking girls inside.

I think we were all secretly impressed by Honey’s audacity at that moment. Even Indie was giggling at her mettle as the shrieks and laughter of the girls inside being splattered with soggy boggies filled the corridor.

Miss Bibsmore wasn’t so in awe, though. Not even slightly. In fact, she used her stick to smash the fire alarm glass, setting off the sprinkler system, and we all ran shrieking into our rooms to rescue our bedding.

Although hitting the fire alarm and setting off the sprinkler system is an age-old favourite with House Spinsters, they usually only resort to it in times of imminent disaster. Because as effective as the deluge is, it means
calling up the local fire brigade, waking up the whole dorm, and setting in motion the fire emergency procedures where we all storm off to the tennis courts for registration and a report is filed with Sister, who would be less than impressed.

But Miss Bibsmore is no ordinary House Spinster.

Portia sensibly ignored the procedure, as we knew there was no fire, and started rolling up her duvet, pillow and sheets. I followed suit. Then we helped one another to squeeze our duvets and mattresses out the window of our room onto the hedges below. We weren’t the only ones, either. Everyone was on the same page as to what needed to be done. There were mattresses, pillows, duvets and clothing flying from all the bedrooms on the first floor. By the time we got to Honey’s bed it was already pretty soggy and heavy, but after a hefty struggle we eventually managed to hurl it out the window as well.

Then we all charged off to the tennis courts for registration, where an explanation of the dud emergency was given to Sister. Our dorm was all totally drenched and freezing by the time we returned to our building, but that didn’t stop Honey screaming her head off about Miss Bibsmore being an insane witch and how her father was going to shower her in litigation suits.

Everyone took their place back in the doorways to watch the spectacle. In the silence that followed Honey’s rambling rant, Miss Bibsmore calmly and quietly informed Honey that she was officially gated, and then, turning the
corridor lights off, she hobbled away. We listened to the
tap, tap, tap
ping of her stick on the stone stairs as we all stood in the soggy darkness, contemplating our behaviour and the possible repercussions to come.

Amazingly enough though, apart from Honey, we all got off scot-free. Well, free-ish. We spent most of the night mopping up the mess and struggling up the stairs with our duvets, mattresses and pillows. Honey’s mattress was too wet to sleep on, though, so she went and slept with Georgina in her bed.

‘Honey’s having a rough ride with wet mattresses this term,’ Portia remarked as we lay in the dark. Even though we were exhausted from all the excitement, it was hard to get sleep.

‘Perhaps we won’t have to murder her after all, darling,’ I replied, referring to our joke when we’d swapped mattresses.

‘Bob and Sarah will be disappointed,’ Portia sighed.

‘I know, they would have loved that silver cup.’

‘Perhaps we’ll have a cup made up anyway and award it to you for your work with mattresses in the dormitory community.’

‘You deserve that cup more than me,’ I teased.

‘No, but you can keep it, darling. Eaglemere is choking on generations of trophies already.’

I fell asleep soon after that. It was the best night’s sleep I’d had since coming back. I never would have imagined that sharing a room with a girl like Lady Portia Herrington Briggs could turn out to be the blessing of lifetime.

The next morning was Saturday, so after breakfast, cleaning our rooms, going down for registration, attending chapel and two long hours of study followed by lunch, we all decided to take taxis into Windsor for an afternoon of Eades boy spotting. All of us apart from Honey, that is, because she was gated.

This was the first year that we could actually go off on our own into Windsor, so we took quite a lot of time dressing in our most casually stunning outfits and applying and reapplying lip-glosses. I almost felt sorry for Honey when we left her sitting on her bed, her arms folded, a pouty expression on her face.

When Portia asked her if she wanted anything from town she replied archly, ‘Why, are you offering to bring me back a fit boy?’

I didn’t say anything apart from muttering goodbye.

Sister Constance and her agents (also known as the teachers and House Spinsters) were always reminding us of the school rule for trips into town – ‘Go out in threes, stay in threes and return in threes’ – so I can’t say I was surprised when Star, Georgina and Indie came tumbling into our room and breathlessly announced that they’d meet us in town. I mean, they shared a dorm together, so it was natural that they’d all go into town in a group; and even though local taxis
can
take four passengers, no one wants to sit next to the driver. So it would be childish to take something like that personally, but I did.

This meant that Portia and I had to find some random horsey girl called Anastasia, whom we really didn’t know that well, to go to Windsor with us. The whole two miles were spent listening to her endless tales of how many polo players she’d pulled that summer. ‘I am such a slut, darlings,’ she told us, as if being a slut was a talent. ‘But honestly,’ she sighed. ‘I can’t help myself, they are just so gorgeous in their tight jodhpurs. I think I like the Argentineans best, but some of the Australians were rather nice this year. I really am the most dreadful slut, aren’t I, darlings?’

Portia and I muttered agreeably and as non-judgementally as we could. Star would have pressed her elbow into my rib to try and make me laugh, but Portia was too aloof for that sort of thing. And I was trying to be.

We had the taxi drop us off at the stone bridge that curves over the River Thames and leads to the castle walls. As Sod’s Law would have it, as we walked over the bridge into Windsor, the first Eades boys we spotted were Billy and a bunch of his fit friends. I was determined to be aloof – as serene as a throne – but my face was going to betray me. I knew it was going to as we approached them and the blood started travelling up my feet towards my head. Then Billy’s posse peeled off, and it was just Billy walking towards Portia, Anastasia and me, like in one of those cowboy showdowns.

Portia offered to leave too, but I begged her not to. I needed her aloof demeanour as backup, in case my own fell flat on its face. Also Anastasia was still with us. I think she was still babbling on about her polo pulling score over the summer and groaning about what a slut she was.

All thoughts as to why Billy hadn’t sent me a txt since Monday flew right out of my head, replaced by the memory of all the steamy txts he
had
sent me. As my legs grew weak from lack of blood, I envisioned myself swooning into a faint like a Victorian heroine, and Billy sweeping me into his arms and snog-aging me into a blissful reality.

My heart was pounding and my pulse was racing as I introduced Anastasia, but once she’d established that Billy wasn’t a polo player she strode off on her own to find her polo buddies.

Billy was as fit-looking as ever and wearing really cool
trousers and trainers. He was also wearing a charity band like mine in green. Maybe that was a sign?

‘Haven’t heard from you in a bit,’ he muttered, shoving his hands in his pockets, seemingly unable to make eye contact with me. This was bad. The blood was rushing round my head but I kept my cool(-ish).

‘Funny that,’ I remarked idly, as if I didn’t care in the slightest about his recent lack of txts. I wasn’t going to give him the pleasure. Also, looking at him, as a light drizzle started to fall, I realised something else. Now that my initial nerves had subsided, I couldn’t help noticing that while my blood may have been displaced from one part of my body to another, my tummy wasn’t doing funny tumbly things and my palms weren’t sweaty. Could it be possible that I had only
imagined
that I fancied him all this time?