A Royal Match (42 page)

My face stung with the unfairness of his attack. I was only trying to cheer him up. ‘I don’t like your clothes, really,’ I assured him.

Dig, dig, dig, Calypso, a voice in my head was heckling. So I grabbed the shovel. ‘I was just, well, I was just trying to be nice to you, to cheer you up. Not that your green flares aren’t cool in a retro (I think I actually said ‘sad,’ but I hope I didn’t) sort of way. It’s just that they’re not my sort of thing. See, I wanted to say something kind after what Honey said to you. Besides, my mummy, that’s Sarah, doesn’t have any contacts, and my daddy, that’s Bob, doesn’t even
believe
in plastic!’

The vet clicked his tongue at me in disgust. That was so going to be the last time I ever complimented an older man, however fit and kind he might seem. Because that’s the thing – you never know when grown-ups are going to turn on you. One minute they’re all, ‘Let’s be pals and I really, really, really care’ and the next it’s all, ‘Time for bed, lights out, blues all round, and I’m filing a report.’ Star’s right: grown-ups exist only to subjugate us.

‘I shan’t be sending a bill,’ he told Honey in a grand voice he hadn’t shared with us earlier. ‘I can assure you, however, that I will be making a full and detailed report about this school and your treatment of animals.’ He made the word ‘report’ sound like a weapon of mass destruction.

We were all cowering as he glared around the room at Portia, Honey, Indie, Star and myself as if we were Honey clones, when really we were as appalled by Honey as he was. The difference was, we’d suffered Honey for so many years we were virtually immune to her toxic psycho toff take on life.

‘I can’t believe he went off at you like that,’ Indie said after he’d gone. ‘I thought you were really nice to him,’ she told me gently, rubbing my back.

‘I even complimented him on his flares,’ I added, shaking my head at the injustice of life.

Star said, ‘It just proves what I’ve always suspected. Grown-ups are not to be trusted.’

Supper was fish fingers, my favourite, but not that night – I had no appetite. None of my friends with pets did. A rumour had swept through the school that the pet shed was to be closed, pending an investigation, and that the vet had spoken sternly to Sister Constance about the animal rights issues of allowing girls to pierce rabbits’ ears and place large, heavy hoops in them.

We were in a complete state and none of us could eat our food. It wasn’t just the pet shed we were upset about, either; we were more worried about Georgina’s fate. Sharon, the lady on tray duty that evening, took our names and said we were all going on report for not eating.

‘Fine, report yourself, stupid,’ Star told her as she slammed her full tray into the slot with a crash.

‘Don’t you take your food issues out on me, dearie, or I’ll report you for disrespecting a dinner lady innit!’

But Star had already stormed off.

‘What is it with everyone and their reports today?’ Honey asked gaily, skipping along beside us happily – just to wind us up, I suspect. ‘Report, report, report. Is it the word
du jour
or something?’

Now was not a time for skipping and I told her so. ‘You can imagine howpanicked Star and I are about the fate of our own pets,’ I told her as we headed off to Sister Constance’s office after supper. ‘And we’re also worried about Georgina.’

As we waited on the bench outside Sister’s office for our summons, Honey taunted us for our ‘sickly sentimentality,’ which, in case we hadn’t heard, was soooo last millennium. Then she blabbered on about not being in the least bit fazed about the possible closure of the pet shed, as she was soooo over pets.

‘Oh, shut up, will you, Honey!’ Star snapped – only Honey looked shocked, and she’s never shocked by Star telling her to shut up. Also, she was looking at me. That was when I realised that I, Calypso Kelly, unshielded by Daddy’s plastic and Mummy’s contacts, had just told The Ultimate Psycho Toff to shut up.

‘Sorry, Honey,’ I muttered.

Honey merely ignored me and began studying her manicure.

Star was abnormally silent. She was glaring at Honey, and Honey was glaring back at her as Sister Constance finally cried out, ‘Enter!’

When we wandered in, we weren’t invited to sit down.
Sister Constance didn’t even look us in the eye. She looked stricken. The serene calm that characterised our Mother Superior seemed to have been drained from the inside of her soul, and her face seemed to have shrunk into her nun habit.

Star and I stood there with Honey between us. I felt Star nudge her, because Honey fell into me theatrically, as if Star had used superhuman force. Actually, knowing Star, she might have. Normally I would have done nothing, but hating Honey as I did at that moment, I nudged her myself – really, really hard – and she fell right back into Star’s elbow.

‘Ow!’ she complained. ‘Sister! Did you see what they just did to me?’

Sister Constance didn’t look up, let alone reply.

‘I have a preternatural tendency to bruise,’ Honey whined, rubbing her arm. ‘I wouldn’t want to have the nurse look at me and jump to conclusions regarding abuse,’ she muttered, knowing that no one gave a damn what she did at that particular point in time.

Again, Sister refused to comment.

Eventually Star asked about Georgina.

‘Georgina has left the school,’ Sister Constance replied. We waited for a bit for her to go on, but all she did was take a butterscotch from the box on her desk and begin to suck on it really loudly.

‘What? For good?’ Star asked.

Sister Constance nodded. ‘Miss Castle Orpington has
left the school grounds of her own accord,’ she explained, the butterscotch rolling around in her mouth. ‘She, along with Tobias, fully accept responsibility for the flask of vodka, but other than that, her father has refused to discuss her future at Saint Augustine’s. He’s in Morocco at the moment and cannot be disturbed.’

‘But
you
will let her back?’ Star demanded to know.

Sister sucked hard on the sweet, which made the most revolting noise. ‘That is a matter for the school board, Star. More to the point is the spiritual bankruptcy that led her to seek refuge in alcohol.’

Honey rolled her eyes. ‘I think she probably just wanted to get drunk, Sister.’

Star and I both had to suppress a giggle.

‘Girls!’ Sister warned.

But Honey continued, ‘I think you’re blowing this out of proportion. Why, Eades boys wander about their school sucking on flasks all the time and no one bats an eye. A boy from Marlborough I know said they can even buy it at the school tuck shop. And by the way, now that we are on the topic of tuck shops, all the boy’s schools seem to have the most enormous shops. That is soooo unfair, Sister. They can even buy clothes and order Saville Row suits at their schools, whereas our tuck shop is just a windowsill that’s only open once a week, and even then we can only buy sweets. We can’t even buy phone credit! It is soooo babyish.’

Sister Constance, daintily taking her butterscotch out of
her mouth between thumb and forefinger, replied, ‘Miss O’Hare, you do say the most ridiculous things. And the older you get, the less tolerance I have for your ridiculousness. So, for the love of Mary, will you just shut up!’

All our jaws collectively dropped to the floor as Sister popped the sweet back in her mouth and sucked on it loudly.

After a few minutes of rude sweet-sucking noises, Sister spoke again. ‘Georgina isn’t my only concern, though. I had the vet in here earlier, and he has grave, grave concerns about the attitude some girls have towards their pets, which I must admit I fully share. He furthermore expressed doubts about the viability of the pet shed after the unfortunate fate of your rabbit, Miss O’Hare.’

‘Fine, shut the pet shed,’ Honey said. ‘I’m so over animals anyway. Unless we’re talking those little furtrimmed Gucci shoes. I think I’ll have them in mauve. I know, maybe if I give them Absinthe, they’ll give me a discount,’ she added, giggling at her awful joke.

That was when Star thumped her across the back and Honey fell theatrically across Sister’s desk and got a bit of a nosebleed – not because of how hard Star had hit her, but because of her theatrical fall. Plus, after you’ve had as much cartilage removed from your nose as Honey has, your nose tends to bleed quite easily.

Sister ignored Honey and the spot of blood on the end of her nose as she sucked serenely on her sweet for a moment. I thought she wasn’t going to say anything about
it at all, but then she did. Not to Honey, just to Star and me. ‘Take Honey down to the infirmary,’ she instructed me. ‘Star, I have called your father.’

Star remained strangely silent, but I couldn’t stop myself. ‘Sister, that’s soooo unfair! You saw what happened. Honey launched herself, and besides there is barely a drop of blood. If we take her to the infirmary, there might be a, well, a report or something!’

Sister gave me a look that spoke volumes – volumes as in, ‘Don’t push it or you’ll be the next one launched.’

On the way down to the infirmary, Honey, in keeping with her Honey-ness, immediately dialed the police. ‘Hello, officer? I have just been attacked by a ferocious girl. A famous rock star’s daughter, and I’ve been badly injured….’

I snatched the phone off her and pressed the END button.

‘What?’ she asked, blinking with innocence. ‘This’ – she pointed to her completely bloodless nose – ‘is GBH; that’s Grievous Bodily Harm. Star will
have
to be charged and I hope incarcerated.’

The only grievous thing about it all was Honey, and I told her, ‘You’ve hardly even been hurt. The bleeding was totally negligible and you used Star’s mild whack to launch yourself onto the desk intentionally. Besides, it didn’t even
bleed properly, it was just a spot, and there’s no sign of blood now.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Honey snapped, pinching her nostrils together as if stopping a torrent of blood. She called the police again.

It wasn’t the first time the police had been called by Honey to have a fellow student arrested. Once she’d tried to have Star done for having red hair – in Honey’s eyes a crime against aesthetics! And anyway, Star’s hair isn’t even red, it’s strawberry blonde – after several sprayings with
Sun-In
, anyway. The point is, Honey’s frantic call about GBH didn’t have the police hopping around the way she’d hoped. They arrived but wandered into the infirmary in a bored sort of way, accompanied by Sister Constance. They didn’t seem even mildly keen on the idea of charging Star or anyone else. Honey had to implore them even to open their pads and write something down, and even then they only wrote down her name. By this stage, there was no evidence that Honey had even
had
a nosebleed, and Sister Constance, whom they justifiably considered a reliable witness, said it was all just a storm in a teacup and offered them butterscotches. They were more than happy to accept both Sister’s version of events and her butterscotch and wander off back to their police car.

Just the same, a rumour had swiftly spread that Star had been led from the school grounds in handcuffs for assaulting Honey. The truth was, her father, Tiger, had picked her up and taken her home along with Brian and Hilda,
because as he told Sister Constance, he didn’t consider Saint Augustine’s a safe environment. He wasn’t so easily bought by the offer of butterscotches, apparently. Either that or Sister had downed them all herself by the time he arrived.

For me, Georgina and Star leaving was like the theft of my two closest friends, although I felt sorriest for Indie because now she’d have to go to bed and wake up alone in an empty room.

‘It’s worse for you,’ I told her. ‘You’ll have no one to chat with at night.’

‘You could always come and stay with me,’ she suggested hopefully. That was when I first realised that Indie and I had become proper friends in our own right, as opposed to two girls with shared friends. ‘Otherwise I’ll sneak into your room,’ she promised.