Georgina doesn’t like to get involved in Honey’s issues with other girls. None of us does, really, and so, keen to change the subject, Georgina grabbed the Tatler Portia was reading and asked her, ‘So darling, what about you, good summer?’ Calypso, Star and I had our navels pierced, see!’ She and Star both lifted their shirts to expose their rings.
I was about to come clean and ‘fess up, when Portia looked Georgina straight in the eye and replied, ‘Hardly,’ her voice laced in pain.
I suddenly felt really guilty and self obsessed. I hadn’t even bothered to ask about her summer when she’d asked about mine.
‘Mummy was killed in a car accident,’ she explained flatly and then picked up her magazine and adopted an absorbed look. None of us knew what to say to that, apart from Honey of course.
‘Darling, how absolutely devastating,’ she remarked breezily, gathering up her rabbit and popping her into her matching mauve Prada pet bag. ‘I’m so sorry, but these things do happen.’ Her lower lip dropped in a look of regret as she gave the room a little wave. ‘I’m just going to take Absinthe down to the pet shed before the hideous Miss Bibsmore returns.’ She rolled her big violet eyes at the thought. ‘Do you want to come, darling?’ she asked Georgina.
Georgina looked up at her but not with the sort of look you could interpret. Star claims that one of the major reasons parents pay exorbitant sums of money to send their girls to Saint Augustine’s is so they can develop a poker face — known to the toff parents as an Aloof Demeanour, a sort of non-look. Honestly, if you could buy an Aloof Demeanour, effortless charm and a sense of entitlement on Bond Street, England’s boarding schools would be out of business in a day. Nuns are very good at poker faces. They’re very good at poker too. Sometimes when they invite us around for tea they cut us in on a game. They always beat us, but we only play for sweets, which they then insist we eat or take with us afterwards, so that’s OK.
Honey chose to take the look as a no. ‘Well, ciao, ciao!’ she called as she swept out of the room on a cloud of eau de parbitch.
We all turned our attention back to Portia. ‘Darling, what happened?’ Georgina asked gently, sitting down on the bed and rubbing poor Portia’s back. Star was sitting beside her and so I sat beside Star.
The thought of Portia’s loss distressed me. The tears were banking up behind my eyes as I tried to think what I might want someone to say to me if anything happened to Sarah.
Portia put down her magazine and replied calmly. ‘It was the first day of the holidays. We were shopping, she was walking across Sloane Street, only not at the pedestrian crossing and this Range Rover ran over her. It was all so fast. I was right there . . .’ Her voice faded, and Georgina took her in her arms and kissed the crown of her glossy raven head.
If it had been me, I would have cried. As it was I was wiping back a tear at the horrible sadness of it all. I was too paralysed by the shame of my own awkwardness though to join Star and Georgina in hugging her. I knew I was being inept and I wanted to say something more . . . I don’t know . . . ept, I guess, so I got off the bed and sat on my haunches in front of Portia and passed her my lip-gloss.
‘Do you want some lip-gloss?’ I asked, attempting a smile.
Portia took the lip-gloss, smiled bravely at me and applied liberally as I added, ‘I’m really sorry I didn’t ask about your break before, Portia. Actually, I mean I’m sorry about your mother and everything else too obviously, it’s so sad . . .’
Portia gave me another brave smile as she passed me back my lip-gloss. I told her to keep it as I had loads, which was true. ‘Honestly, it’s so sweet of you, but I’ve dealt with it now,’ she said. ‘Honey’s right; it’s devastating, but these things happen. It’s Daddy I’m worried about, rattling about all alone in that big house.’
By all alone, of course there would still be gamekeepers, butlers, valets and staff galore, but her sadness and concern were real and my heart went out to her. Suddenly my text alert sounded and without thinking I dug my phone out of my pocket and read:
CAN’T GET YOU OUT OF MY HEAD. X FREDS
I smiled, mostly because I had invented the nickname Freds. How cool was that; I had invented a nickname for the heir to the throne who couldn’t get me out of his head? No one seemed to notice me reading the text but the inappropriateness of my joy wasn’t lost on me though and I shoved the phone straight back into my pocket.
‘I met your mother loads of times,’ I told Portia. ‘She was always lovely to me. She was so tall and beautiful and I loved the way she would always kick her shoes off and fall asleep at the back of the chapel on your father’s shoulder during Mass.’
A half-smile broke across Portia’s face. ‘And snored,’ she added. ‘She always snored.’
‘Well, Father Conran can go on,’ Star said, which made Portia laugh, even though I noticed a solitary tear running down her cheek, and then we all laughed in the way you do when crying is the only other option and you know tears won’t help.
‘Thanks,’ Portia said, wiping her tear away. ‘Since the funeral I’ve been so miserable and pathetically wrapped up in my own self-pity. I’ve just stayed in my room and tried not to think about Mummy, but I can’t help it. Daddy’s lost loads of weight.’
‘What about Tarkie?’ Georgina asked, referring to Portia’s older brother Tarquin, the Marquess of Eaglemere, who attends Eades in the year above Freddie.
‘Tarkie’s dealt with it by throwing himself into partying,’ she replied. I sensed she was being economical with her feelings about Tarquin’s partying in that upper-class way of the English which had taken me so long to adapt to. Actually let me amend that, I am still getting used to it. ‘He went to Rock with friends straight after the funeral.’
‘What? Surfing?’ I blurted, shocked at what I saw as Tarquin’s callous abandonment of his sister and father.
‘Yes, well it was pretty gloomy in Eaglemere and we’ve always spent that fortnight in our house in Rock . . .’ She trailed off as if remembering past summers with her family when it was complete.
‘But what about you? What about your father?’ I asked, frustrated by my own inability to say anything useful and annoyed that I was saying anything at all, because it was pretty obvious by the way Portia’s head was bowed and her demeanour in general that she didn’t want to answer questions, didn’t want to discuss her mother’s death any more than she had to.
‘Daddy locked himself away,’ she answered politely, as if I’d asked about the weather, but she was looking at her hands which were folded neatly in her lap. ‘He told me to go with Tarkie. My ghastly grandmother came to stay.’
‘Oh,’ I replied as if I genuinely thought the arrival of a ghastly relative made everything OK.
Then Portia looked up at me. ‘And she told me I should have gone with Tarkie to Rock too and so I locked myself away from her.’
I could see she was about to tear up again and I felt bad. ‘Boys are different,’ Star said, then pinched me in the ribs, which made me squeal, and Georgina pinched me too.
Portia smiled as I beat off Georgina and Star. She was clearly relieved that my probing was over.
‘Honestly, Tarquin’s been brilliant. He sent Daddy and me a postcard every day. Daddy said he wasn’t even sure Tarquin could write before that.’ Then a real smile broke across her beautiful features as if she was remembering the brightly-coloured postcards as they were placed on the table at breakfast by the butler. ‘Actually, do you mind if I don’t talk about it?’ she asked, looking at me almost pleadingly. ‘I mean I can’t stop missing Mummy but it did feel good to laugh again just then.’
‘In that case,’ Star urged, pulling Portia to her feet, ‘you have got to come to the pet shed and see Hilda. She’s learned this really cool new trick.’
‘You’ve taught her to talk?’ Portia asked teasingly.
Star’s always trying to teach her rat, Hilda, and her snake, Brian, to do clever tricks, but all Brian does is slither about and all Hilda does is run herself stupid on her little rat wheel. If you ask me, those two are a lost cause as far as tricks go.
‘Almost. She can beg for her little rat pellets now.’
‘Ooooh, bless,’ Portia said. ‘Let’s go.’
‘Just one sec,’ Star said as she rushed off to her dorm room, returning with a can of Febreze concealed inside her blazer so she’d be able to have a fag at the pet shed and spray the smell away.
We all traipsed downstairs and outside across the
school grounds. As we passed our old dorm, Cleathorpes, I remembered our last term there when Star and I had first become friends with Georgina. Soon I was straggling behind, musing about what sharing with Portia and Honey was going to be like this term.
My parents had big hopes for me this year they’d told me as they waved me off at LAX. This year we’d be sitting our GCSEs, which meant the work would be piled on us; but far more important to me were the National Fencing Trials in December. As one of the top sabreurs in the Under Sixteens, Portia was probably focusing on the trials as well, which could bond us on one hand and make us competitors on another. I had to rate in the trials if my big dream to fence in the Olympics was going to come to anything. Freddie’s message couldn’t have been further from my mind until my text alert sounded again.
SO GOING TO SLAY YOU ON THE PISTE NEXT WEEK! BILLY XXX
Three kisses from Billy, one from Freddie . . .