I’d always hated Honey and she had always hated me, but at least in the past I’d had the buffer of a wall. Now she would be sleeping in the same room, sharing the same air, the same bathroom and there would be no respite.
I watched her snapping her tinier and cuter-than-thou bejewelled mobile shut with a sharp clack. I watched as she flicked her long, artistically streaked blond locks over her skinny golden shoulders. I watched her violet contact-lens covered eyes as they surveyed the prettily decorated room with its breathtaking view of the old oak woods.
Last year my Year had been housed in rickety, run down Cleathorpes but this year we were in the main building which had been newly decorated and now had lovely marble bathrooms. I’d had a peek when I’d deposited my Body Shop specials in the bathroom cabinet. We all decant vodka into empty shampoo and conditioner bottles. That’s how we disguise alcohol so House Mothers don’t catch us. Getting sprung with alcohol usually means a gating – not being allowed out on weekends – but it can even lead to expulsion if you’re discovered revoltingly drunk. Anyway, the marble bathrooms were divine and even included a separate shower and a bath!
‘Oh, isn’t it dismal darling,’ Honey groaned, pressing her French-manicured hand against her botoxed brow. ‘Isn’t it all just sooo evil!’
I accidentally responded, blurting something tragic, like, ‘At least we have new mattresses this year.’ As I said, I am marvellously gifted when it comes to the art of the blurt.
She glared at me. ‘Excuse me? Was I speaking to you, American Freak?’
I looked over at Portia but she was immersed in her Tatler again. Honey pointed at my fencing kit, grimaced, and instructed Oopa to remove it from the window bed. Predictably enough, she ignored me when I muttered something ridiculously pointless about how I’d grabbed that bed already.
‘Oopa will you stop panting,’ she scolded as he wheezed and limped his way about the room. ‘It really gets on my nerves,’ she warned, pressing her fingers against her temples as if warding off a migraine. ‘I don’t want to have to call Daddy and have you sent back,’ she warned.
I cringed as I witnessed the fear that flashed across Oopa’s face. I might not know precisely where Oopa was from, but if it was worse than working for Honey it must be grim. I looked over at Portia hoping she’d concur with a raised brow but she remained immersed in her Tatler.
‘You are sooo NQOC,’ she whispered in an aside to me before turning away and leaning down to Portia for an air kiss. ‘But darling,’ she drawled in her OTT toff voice, ‘at least I’m rooming with you.’
‘Yaah darling, really looking forward to it,’ agreed Portia mildly as she flicked a page of her magazine, which slightly annoyed me because if it were my friend Star, she’d say something pointedly cutting like, ‘I’d rather chew through my own cheek than share a night in the same room as you.’
Rock stars’ daughters don’t take crap from the likes of Honey, you see. Then again, Honey would never even pretend to be glad to share with Star. She hates her almost as much as she hates me. In fact, if Star’s father wasn’t Rock Royalty and the richest father in our year, I suspect Honey would hate Star more than me.
I watched with horror as Honey roughly threw her mauve Prada pet carrier on her bed (the one by the window that had briefly been mine). Her rabbit was still inside and I was wondering if I could get away with rescuing the poor thing. But Portia put my mind at rest by asking, ‘Oh Honey, is your rabbit in there, can I hold it?’
I really wished Georgina would get here so I could cuddle little Dorothy Parker, the black rabbit we shared. Georgina looked after Dorothy on her grand country estate during half-terms and holidays. Star was always the last to arrive but surely Georgina would be here by now and she’d want to find where I was roomed . . . wouldn’t she?
Honey picked up her dyed-mauve rabbit, which was wearing a blue Tiffany collar and large diamond hoop earrings. They might well have been real diamond, as she boasted, but I was more worried about how very big they were. The poor rabbit’s ears were dragged down by their weight. She passed Absinthe, as she referred to the poor little thing, over to Portia with disinterest. Then she started calling people on her phone again to tell them about the hell of her journey, the shoddiness of her manservant and the evil American freak she’d been landed with.
‘Bless,’ said Portia as she stroked the rabbit. ‘Do you want me to take her down to the pet shed for you, Honey?’
‘No, I’ll sort out my packing first,’ replied Honey as if she was doing it herself.
I set about unpacking my own trunk, fighting for what little space I could find in the wardrobe allocated to my inferior bed. As I swung open the door I noticed a few designer jackets already hanging.
‘So sorry, darling, I simply didn’t have room in mine, hope you don’t mind?’ Portia asked, making a face of what looked like genuine shame and regret.
Portia was very beautiful, with long hair – albeit raven than the more typical blond of Saint Augustine girls – a willowy figure and the peach coloured skin of the English aristo. Her most significant feature was her aloofness. I don’t mean aloof in a madly superior way because that would have been unbearable and marked her out for secret-hatred. No, Portia was aloof in a quiet, self-contained way that you couldn’t really challenge. Nothing ever fazed her. Her hair was never mussed or sweaty, even after games. When I took off my fencing mask I had fluffy little bits that crowned my face like wet horns, but when Portia took off her mask and shook out her mane of long dark hair, she looked like she’d just come from the salon.
I was about to tell Portia that it was fine to steal my precious wardrobe space – which it was really, because quite honestly my clothing allowance is pretty meagre compared to the other girls – when I was distracted by the sound of clapping.
We all turned towards the direction of the clapping. A four-foot-nine hunchbacked woman stood leaningon a cane in the doorway of our room as she announced in a loud, screechy Essex whine, ‘‘Ello girls, my name’s Miss Bibsmore. I’m your new ‘ouse mother. Now, I don’t want any trouble ‘ere, so don’t you go getting ideas! Just because I’m short and hunched doesn’t mean I’m ignorant, understand?’
‘Yes, Miss Bibsmore,’ Portia and I replied in the Saint Augustine chant of perceived obedience. That’s the rule with House Mothers, you just let them rant on and hope they don’t try to hug you and eventually leave you be. House Spinsters, as we call them, love to wield their power so you definitely never cheek them, which was effectively what Honey was doing as she totally ignored Miss Bibsmore and loudly bossed Oopa about, telling him where to put her designer outfits and shoes while she sat on the bed and stroked the poor shivering Absinthe.
That was another thing. Pets weren’t allowed in rooms, and if she’d been anyone other than Honey she’d be trying to conceal Absinthe from Miss Bibsmore, not openly stroking her!
Miss Bibsmore entered the room in a series of awkward little steps and shuffles, her eyes glinting with the suspicion of a woman who can see inside a girl’s soul. Finally she was looming over Honey’s bed. Honey looked up at Miss Bibsmore as if she were a mad witch – “ which of course she must be, because all house mothers are mad, although perhaps Miss Bibsmore took mad to a new level. She had a jutting out chin and messily-arranged teeth. Her grey hair had been loosely gathered together in a bun that was doomed not to hold despite the net around it. Last year’s house mother, Miss Cribbe, seemed virtually normal by comparison. And Miss Cribbe had a beard!
‘I’m not here to pick up after you nor nothing neither, so don’t you go giving me none of your airy graces, madam, because I won’t ‘ave it, ‘ear?’
Honey sneered at her. Honey is the queen of the sneer. Actually she’s sneered so much that she’s upset the balance of collagen in her lips so that the sneer side has a permanent nasty swelling on it.
‘Did you hear me, madam?’
Honey ignored her. ‘Oopa, I said in the top drawer! Are you deaf, because if you are I’ll complain to Daddy,’ she screeched.
‘I mean it, madam. I’m not like the likes of ‘im, that fellow there. I’m not ‘ere to doff my cap to no one,’ she warned, making to prod poor Oopa with her cane.
But Oopa, like his mistress, sneered as he avoided Miss Bibsmore’s prod. Honey snapped, ‘Oh shut up and leave my manservant alone, you mad old witch.’
Portia and I looked at one another, and her look seemed to suggest she was as concerned as I was and equally uncertain as to whether we should do or say something to diffuse the tension between Honey and Miss Bibsmore. Arousing the wrath of a House Spinster at this early stage of the term would mean misery for all of us. Then Portia raised an eyebrow in Honey’s direction so I knew that she was as appalled as I was at the way Honey had just slacked Miss Bibsmore down. And that made me feel better, like maybe Portia was on my side and actually quite cool. Even her valet with his impeccable manners raised a brow. Portia nodded at him and he made a slight bow and departed.
Miss Bibsmore glared at Honey. Her eyes actually flashed. ‘Right, that’s it. Off ‘e goes. Go on, git out!’ she shrieked, hussling a confused Oopa out the door with her stick. The poor fellow looked terrified, but soon he was gone and Miss Bibsmore had Honey in her sights again. ‘There’ll be no bowing and scraping ‘ere, madam. Grandee or not, I’m warning you now, I don’t like the cut of your jib. You’ll be treated like anyone else while you’re in my dormitory, understood?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Honey shrieked back at her. ‘Do you know who I am? Daddy sued the last person who threatened to treat me like anyone else, and he won’t think twice about doing it again.’
I looked over at Portia again and our eyes met in a look of shared disbelief but the rest of her face was concealed behind the magazine. I suspect she was hiding her suppressed giggles — the ones I was trying to suppress by applying my lip-gloss.
Miss Bibsmore grinned. ‘He can sue ‘imself sick far as I’m concerned. I is what I is. I spent the first nine years of my life in a pram! If I wanted to see the light I ‘ad to peer out from under the canopy. No footman, no butler, no servant for me, just a pram and an old tartan rug that kept falling off. Then, when I was well enough to get out of the pram, they put my legs in these braces.’ With that, Miss Bibsmore hiked up her skirt and stuck one of her metal encased shins athletically up in the air. ‘So if you think I’m afraid of your father setting a pack of nancy, fancy lawyers on me, you’ll be disappointed.’
‘Well, perhaps the school will feel differently,’ Honey responded mildly but there was blatantly an obvious threat there.
Portia and I were struggling to stop our eyebrows riding up our foreheads by this point. Neither of us knew what to say.
Honey, on the other hand, was far from stuck for words. ‘. . . when my lawyers shower them in litigation suits for allowing an insane old witch like you to care for me.’
Miss Bibsmore’s eyes were glinting gleefully as she asked, ‘Insane, am I? Well then, you had better watch out all the more, ‘adn’t you?’
Portia rose imperiously from her bed, clearly deciding enough was enough. ‘Thank you, Miss Bibsmore. I think we’re all clear now and we wouldn’t want to keep you from your rounds,’ She spoke with a calmness of one who’s family traced their roots back to the Domesday Book and had survived the Catholic purgings of England with their title and lands intact.
Miss Bibsmore seemed to concede Portia’s suggestion. That is, she stuck her lower lip out and humphed. One thing was certain, though: she was on the warpath and Honey had been marked down as Enemy Number One.
‘I am so complaining,’ Honey muttered under her breath. Then she turned to Portia. ‘I’m calling Daddy now.’ She began to punch numbers into her phone but Miss Bibsmore snatched the tiny little gem of a mobile from her, popped it in the pocket of her long skirt and shuffled out of the room. ‘And you can take that poor creature down to the pet shed an’ all. No pets in rooms or I’ll have you rusticated.’
Miss Bibsmore didn’t officially have the power to rusticate girls, but the fact that she even used the word proved she wasn’t to be messed with. I was definitely going to regret the thought running through my mind, but as I watched Honey’s mouth open and close in uncharacteristic helpless shock; but I couldn’t help admiring Miss Bibsmore’s style. I was beginning to think I liked the cut of her jib. And as I caught Portia’s eye I got the feeling she might even be feeling the same way.