The next day was a Sunday and shortly after Mass Catherine received a text asking her to meet Meredith for lunch in the Apartment, a cocktail bar and restaurant opposite the City Hall. Deliriously happy at being invited to a one-on-one social event with Meredith and assuming that her relationship was the reason for this unexpected honour, Catherine dressed in her J. Crew finest and arrived five minutes early, prepared to discuss every detail of her newfound love affair with Blake Hartman. Meredith strolled in exactly on time, which was unusual for her and would have signalled to someone brighter than Catherine that this was no ordinary get-together. She kissed Catherine on both cheeks and sat down opposite her, ordering two Diet Cokes while they looked over their menus.
‘So, Catherine, how are things going with Blake?’ asked Meredith, carefully pulling her gloves off and setting them next to her on the table.
‘Oh my God – so well. It’s amazing, Mer-Mer. Like, we’re just so, like, well suited and stuff. You know, I was thinking of organizing a dinner and stuff next week at my house, so you can all get to know him properly. Would that be fun?’
‘Definitely. But before that can happen I need you to do me a favour. A huge one, actually.’
‘Sure,’ said Catherine as their drinks arrived. ‘Anything!’
‘Good. Well, where to begin? You weren’t here, because you were hiding from disgrace in Prague, but you know all about Michael turning up unexpectedly at Cameron’s birthday party back in December?’
‘Yes. That was so bad and stuff.’
‘The thing is there’s sort of been a sequel to that unfortunate incident,’ continued Meredith, running her fingers round the rim of her glass. ‘Kerry bumped into Michael on Wednesday, apparently, and he told her the reason he turned up was because one of Imogen’s best friends had texted him about it.’
‘Oh my God!’ gasped Catherine.
‘And Kerry has got it into her curly little head that it was me,’ said Meredith lightly, gazing down at her drink.
‘That’s so harsh of her!’
‘Actually, she’s right,’ she replied, still looking at the glass, gently tapping the floating ice cubes with her fingers. ‘I did text him. It was me.’
‘What?’
Meredith shrugged. ‘I don’t pretend it was my finest moment. In fact, looking back on it, it was quite stupid and very risky, but it’s done now and that’s all there is to it.’
‘But … I mean … What are you going to do?’
‘Well, as we both know, Kerry is incapable of leaving anything alone for very long. She’s already told Imogen, so it’s only a matter of time before there’s some kind of argument and when it happens it’s certainly going to be a big one.’
‘How big?’
‘End-of-group big.’
‘Oh my God … isn’t there anything you can do?’
‘No,’ answered Meredith, looking directly at Catherine, ‘but there is something you can do. I need you to go to Kerry and Imogen and tell them it was you who told Michael about the party.’
‘But I didn’t! I was in Prague!’
‘Say you did it before you left. Basically, Catherine, it was either you or me that told him and you’re the one that knows Michael’s family, so it would be believable if you said you’d done it. It’ll be much better for everyone if you take the blame.’
‘What? Why?’
‘It’s like a game of chess: it’s better to lose a pawn than risk the queen.’
‘I’m not a pawn!’
‘Now really isn’t the time to start lying to yourself, Catherine. If Imogen and I fall out, the group is finished. No more shopping trips, no more days at the spa, no more fabulousness, no more group holidays …’
‘Well, since I never get to go on them, that’s fine!’
‘Firstly, I don’t like being interrupted, Catherine, so please don’t make a habit of it. Secondly, you’re right: you weren’t invited on the group’s first holiday and there’s going to be so many more of them, none of which I had any intention of inviting you to – until now.’
‘What?’
‘I think I might have been wrong. You should come on the next group holiday,’ said Meredith, removing a ticket from her handbag and setting it down on the table, pushing it towards Catherine. ‘Our summer vacation is going to be in Mexico, at my cousins’ five-star resort, and this is your ticket. All already paid for. And when I do the Tatler interview next week, I will be mentioning you as one of my besties. You’ll finally be “in”, Catherine. No more being a half-member of the group … All you have to do is tell Imogen you told him. She’ll be mad with you, but it’ll blow over.’
Catherine stared at the ticket in front of her. There it was: everything she had spent four years of social-climbing trying to get. ‘No,’ she said quietly. ‘I don’t really think this is fair, Meredith. I don’t want it this badly … I don’t need this.’
‘Of course you do. What else do you have?’
‘Blake,’ she answered quickly. ‘I have a boyfriend now.’
‘And that’s a replacement for your friends?’ asked Meredith icily.
‘At least he would never do anything like this to me! Blake is smart and hot and kind and sweet and generous. But you! You’re trying to get me to save you by telling a lie that will make Imogen want to kick me out of the group!’
‘Look at it this way: if you do tell Imogen it was you, she might try and kick you out but, if you don’t tell her, then I will kick you out.’
‘You can’t do that.’
‘Don’t be stupid, Catherine, you know I can. If you don’t do this you’ll ruin the group, and if you do that I will take everything away from you.’
Getting up off her seat, Catherine looked at Meredith defiantly, for the first time in her life. ‘Well, you can’t take Blake away from me, Meredith.’
‘I wouldn’t have to,’ said Meredith, just as Catherine was turning away. ‘I could just get Cameron to do it.’
Turning back, Catherine looked too confused to speak for a moment. ‘Pardon?’
‘Oh, didn’t you know?’ asked Meredith sweetly. ‘Cameron and Blake kissed at his birthday party.’
‘No, they –’
‘Yes, they did. Sorry. Cameron told me when we were in Dublin – the trip you didn’t get invited to. Imogen and Kerry don’t know about it … yet. The only four people in the entire world who know are me, Cameron, Blake and now you. And it sort of depends on you for it to stay that way.’
‘You’re making this up,’ she said uncertainly.
‘Think about it, Catherine: Cameron and Blake used to be so close and then after Christmas, they practically stopped speaking. Haven’t you ever wondered why? Or why Blake suddenly became so interested in finding a girlfriend at exactly the same time? Now, I don’t know if he’s actually gay or just experimenting, but I don’t think people at school would really be concerned with the technicalities, do you? You know how cruel gossip can be. So if you want people to carry on being jealous of you having Blake as your boyfriend, rather than seeing you as a joke, then I suggest you sit down, put the ticket to Mexico in your bag and get ready to run through the details of what you’re going to tell Imogen.’
Catherine swayed slightly on her feet and, seeing her hesitate, Meredith leant towards her and spoke dangerously softly. ‘Catherine, you’re so close to being one of those girls who have everything. Don’t blow it all over something like this. Think of it as the final exam. You’ve done the revision – now you have to prove that you can pass.’
‘So Kerry ran into Michael last week,’ said Imogen over lunch the next day in school, ‘and he said something kind of weird – didn’t he, Kerry?’
‘Yes, he did.’
Cameron looked quickly at Meredith, but she was following the conversation between Imogen and Kerry as if it was all totally new information. Next to her, Catherine was staring down at her lap.
‘What did he say?’ asked Meredith.
‘He said one of my besties told him about Cameron’s b-day bash and invited him along, which means someone I trust set me up,’ said Imogen.
‘Oh my God,’ said Catherine, ‘I was hoping this wouldn’t come out. I’m so sorry, you guys.’
All eyes then turned on the interruption. ‘What are you sorry for?’ asked Kerry.
There was a pause, before Meredith spoke in an interested, almost concerned, tone. ‘Catherine, what is it?’
‘I told Michael about the party,’ she said quickly. ‘I told him.’
‘What?’
‘I’m so sorry, Imogen. Please don’t be mad. I just got so confused about the whole you-Stewart-Michael thing, that when I was talking to Michael, I asked him if he was going to Cameron’s and I was in Prague before I realized what a mistake I’d made. And by then … well … the damage had already been done, so I thought it’d be better to just stay quiet about it.’
‘How could you be so fucking stupid?’ yelled Imogen.
Cameron was trying hard not to look too much at Meredith, in case it gave away whatever game she was playing. ‘Really, Catherine,’ Meredith said patronizingly, ‘that was kind of retarded.’
‘What?!’
‘Whatever,’ huffed Imogen. ‘Just forget it. Ugh, Catherine, I’m so mad at you!’
The rest of lunch that day was spent more or less in various forms of silence: Kerry was huffing because her beloved theory about Meredith had either been proved wrong or, worse, they had lost the advantage of speed and Meredith had somehow managed to pull off a coup in the short time between her party and the beginning of school on Monday. Even Kerry, however, couldn’t quite see how she could have done it and she was therefore forced to grapple with the very unpleasant situation of having been wrong about gossip. Next to her, Imogen was silently seething about Catherine, while Cameron was wondering what the hell kind of a deal had been done and Catherine was trying to suppress her feelings of shame. It was only the apparently unruffled Meredith who kept up a steady flow of chit-chat, smiling and discussing pleasantries for the next half-hour.
‘God, I hate Catherine,’ snapped Imogen later, doodling over her Religion notes.
‘I know,’ agreed Meredith, ‘I kind of regret inviting her to Mexico now.’
‘Pardon me?’ asked Kerry quickly. ‘When was this decided?’
‘Well, people were starting to talk about the fact that she’s never invited along with us. It makes us look mean.’
‘Meredith, we are mean,’ reminded Cameron. ‘Not inviting Catherine on holidays is one of the many advantages of that reputation.’
Meredith shrugged. ‘Well, it’s done now and she’s already bought her ticket. The deal is done.’
Blake was sitting on the edge of Catherine’s bed when she burst in with a magazine clutched to her chest. ‘It’s here!’ she screamed. ‘Oh my God! It’s here!’
‘Calm down,’ he laughed. ‘What’s here?’
‘The March edition of Ulster Tatler!’ she answered, as if Blake had just asked her if the sky was blue. She sat down next to him and began flicking feverishly towards the lead article.
Every spring, Ulster Tatler ran a feature on the twenty most fabulous kids in the country. It was hardly a coincidence that every last one of them had a postcode that was either BT9 (Malone) or BT19 (Helen’s Bay). To make the feature, it wasn’t enough to be rich, you had to be fabulous, glamorous, an ‘it’ girl, a bright young thing, the daughter of a tycoon, the son of a major politician. You had to live in a certain place, attend a certain school, you had to be funny, attractive, clever and/or have some defining individual trait.
Meredith had first appeared in it when she was nine years old – a record – and her confirmation had earned a four-page spread two years later. Imogen and Cameron had premiered at fourteen and this year, for the first time, Cameron’s sister Charlotte was appearing, posing in a Chanel dress inside the Grand Opera House. Naturally, there were those who weren’t included: the touchiest exclusion being Kerry, who felt the humiliation keenly. She was one of twenty or so kids in Northern Ireland who always came close, but missed out by a narrow margin. Catherine had, of course, never been in it – or even close.
The article consisted of about fifteen pages of colourful extravagance, with the teenagers dressed in couture, grouped in pairs or threes, smiling radiantly or looking sultrily broody. They had a paragraph describing each of them, their lives, likes, loves, pet peeves, schools and the all-important connections. At Mount Olivet Grammar School, the March edition of Tatler sold like hot cakes and never had Catherine O’Rourke read it with more tingling anticipation than this year – the year Meredith had finally promised to mention her.
Inside the magazine, Imogen was posing on the Giant’s Causeway in a ball gown, with Anastasia Montmorency beside her. They had both gone for brooding, with the waves crashing over the rocks behind them and the wind fluttering their hair and dresses in a fabulously poetic way.
MISS IMOGEN DAWSON (16) is the only daughter of English entrepreneur, Edgar Dawson, and his charming wife, Clarissa Gristwood-Dawson. Born at the family’s home in London, Imogen moved to Belfast at the age of twelve when her father’s business happily brought him to our shores. ‘I adore Northern Ireland,’ she enthuses, ‘and I consider it my home. I feel myself to be the best of British – I’m as at home in London as I am in Belfast.’ An avid charity fundraiser in her spare time, Imogen is an active member of the Our Lady of Lourdes Events Committee, helping to organize their annual ball, as well as her school’s fundraising for the Royal British Legion’s Poppy Appeal this year. An avant-garde leader in teen fashion among her peers and certainly the life and soul of any parties she attends, Imogen describes her personal style as ‘eclectic, edgy, sexy-chic and personalized … I love accessories’. She is equally adventurous in her literary tastes, with her favourite television show being the risqué American series Queer as Folk, her favourite book is John Fowles’s dark psychological thriller The Collector and her favourite movie, the naughty but sentimental romp that is The Secretary. Her personal heroines are Argentine politician Eva Perón and American supermodel Kimora Lee Simmons, who she greatly admires: ‘They’re very different, I know. But they both manage to combine being a leader in their field with her own sense of glamour and individual style. I really like that.’ In her spare time, Imogen likes to holiday with her schoolfriends and accompany her mother on business trips to Japan, where she acquired her love of sushi.
Cameron had been posed in a designer jacket with jeans, next to Anastasia’s brother Sasha and another boy, Dominic, the son of a wealthy liberal politician. The three boys were standing against the white stone of Stormont Parliament Buildings, with the gushing blurb about Cameron reading:
MR CAMERON MATTHEWS (16) is the only son of businessman Alistair Matthews and his wife, Caroline Matthews, who is currently President of the Saint John the Evangelist’s Church of Ireland Ladies’ Charitable Society. The handsome and friendly young man is currently at Mount Olivet Grammar School, taking his GCSEs, with his favourite subjects being Religion and Drama. Does he hope to pursue a career in acting? ‘I’d love that very much,’ he says, adding modestly, ‘if I’m good enough.’ A fan of the television series Rome, Cameron also likes to unwind with more classic cinematic choices, such as his personal favourite All About Eve, or by enjoying lunch at Deane’s with his parents and younger sister Charlotte (overleaf) or dinner at AM:PM on Upper Arthur Street with his friends. He recently celebrated his sixteenth birthday there with a supper for his twenty closest friends, before setting off for a long weekend in Dublin with confidantes, hotel heiress Meredith Harper and socialite Imogen Dawson. He enjoys clothes that are elegant and mix traditional masculine concepts with the new metro chic. ‘Imogen [Dawson] bought me a lovely Armani jacket for my birthday,’ he smiles, ‘and I love it. I also couldn’t live without Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, Gucci or Abercrombie. But I like to mix a lot of designers, because I think they all have something to offer … I definitely couldn’t live without jeans or scarves, though. They’re my major indulgence.’
Finally, sitting in the gardens of Hillsborough Castle, looking radiantly poised and confident, Meredith Harper, photographed on her own, had two pages devoted entirely to her. The title read ‘The Girl Who Has Everything’, the very phrase she had thrown in Catherine’s face only a few days before.
MISS MEREDITH HARPER (16) is the only daughter of hotelier and tycoon Anthony Harper and his former wife, American socialite Diana Weston. Currently taking her GCSEs at Mount Olivet Grammar School, her favourite book is Gone with the Wind and her favourite movie, Dangerous Liaisons. With a flair for languages, Meredith’s favourite subjects are French and Italian. This elegant, beautiful and self-possessed young lady boasts such flawless style, in dress, complexion and manners, that one has every confidence in her future. Of course, being the sole heiress to the £295 million Harper family fortune must help? ‘Oh, I don’t think about money that way,’ she smiles, ‘I just feel incredibly lucky. In general, I try not to focus too much on the future either; I’m just enjoying the here and now.’ And how does she enjoy the here and now? ‘I like to travel, of course, but when I’m here in Belfast I like to surround myself with lovely things and my dearest friends – Cameron Matthews, Imogen Dawson, Kerry Davison and Catherine O’Rourke.’ And what about the rumours that she and young Mr Matthews are more than just good friends? ‘I would be truly lucky to have a boyfriend like Cameron,’ she laughs, ‘but, no, we’re just good friends. That’s what works for us. At the moment, there’s no one special.’ The gentlemen of Ulster must be breathing a sigh of relief!
Lying on her bed, shaking as she read the magazine, Catherine O’Rourke let out a squeak of joy and sank back on to her pillow. Meredith had kept her word and Catherine had been mentioned. Every girl and half the boys in school would be reading this magazine and, for the first time, Catherine had been described as one of Meredith Harper’s ‘dearest friends’. She wasn’t just a hanger-on any more; she was one of the club.
Forty-five minutes later, unable to take any more of Catherine’s shrill excitement and alarmed at the number of calls she had received from her friends outside the group, all of them chirping along in happy jealousy, Blake kissed her goodbye and left to catch a bus home. At the Europa bus station he stopped off at a small newsagent’s and bought a copy of Ulster Tatler, with a cover advertising the title of the main article, ‘Ulster’s Bright Young Bling’. Flicking to the page with Cameron on it, Blake read the interview over and over again as his bus sped home through the darkness to Carryduff, where he stepped off into heavy rain falling over the grey pavements, as the columns of commuter traffic slowly snaked their way out of Belfast, weaving their way round a roundabout, where a sodden Union Jack hung limply from a chipped flagpole.