After Miss Bibsmore left, Portia expressed what I’d been thinking. ‘She’s really gunning for you, Honey.’
Honey turned on her torch and tore off her eye mask, ‘Oh, don’t worry, darling. I’ve already called Daddy on one of my other mobiles and his solicitor is writing a letter as we speak. Her days are numbered and Daddy said he’ll make sure she’ll never get a reference.’
Suddenly the florescent strip lights flickered on again and framed in the doorway was the ghostly figure of Miss Bibsmore. ‘I warned you, Miss O’Hare. I might not be bright but I’m blessed with a nose for trouble, I am, and I’ll not have your kind having one over on me. Do you understand?’
With that the florescent lights flickered off again.
‘Would you kindly allow us to sleep you mad old witch. It’s against the Geneva Convention to wander in and wake us up you know!’ Honey spat, but the tap, tap, tap of Miss Bibsmore’s stick was already fading away down the corridor.
‘Did you get much fencing practice in during the break?’ Portia whispered to me about ten minutes later once we heard Miss Bibsmore descending the stone staircase. I could see that the stone staircase was going to be a great advantage if our dorm did ever become fun. We’d hear Miss Bibsmore coming easily.
‘Yaah, a fair bit but it’s hard finding decent opponents over there. The standard just isn’t as high. Fewer people do sabre in LA so the competition isn’t great. I worked on my lunges and footwork though. What about you?’
‘Daddy hired me my own fencing master. We’ve got a piste in the gym at home so I was planning to be practising all the time, but then, after Mummy . . .’
‘We’ll be back on the piste tomorrow,’ I reassured her, not wanting to torture her further over the loss of her mother. She’d made it quite clear she didn’t want to talk about it and I was going to respect her wishes.
‘We’ll both need to push ourselves with the BNFTs coming up in December. It’s such a ghastly time for Professor Sullivan to take a sabbatical.’ She sighed.
‘Has he left?’ I asked.
‘For a term at least.’
This was an enormous blow to me. Professor Sullivan had been my fencing master since I first came to Saint Augustine’s. I hadn’t counted on this turn of events at all. ‘You mean we have a new fencing master?’
‘Mr Wellend. I doubt he’s a Mr Sullivan but he sounds the business. Olympic silver, quite old apparently but madly accomplished, apparently,’ she explained.
‘Oh, I’m just surprised Professor Sullivan didn’t mention anything.’
‘He probably thought we’d make a fuss of him. Besides he’s not gone for ever. This Wellend chap used to coach the Eades team so I’m sure he’s the business. I’ll go down tomorrow in the break to speak to him to see if he’s willing to give us extra lunchtime tuition.’
‘Do you think he’s unlikely to?’
‘If you don’t mind, some of us are trying to get to sleep,’ Honey hissed.
Portia ignored her. ‘Hardly. He’s not obliged but now’s the time to ask. Plus it is in his interest for us to distinguish ourselves.’
‘Our success being his success, you mean.’
Honey groaned and moved about noisily in her bed.
I ignored her. ‘Well, if you don’t mind going alone I’d really like to check on how Dorothy’s doing back at the pet shed during break. I really missed her over the summer,’ I explained.
Honey switched her lamp on, pulled off her eye mask – which was embroidered with the word HEIRESS – and scowled. Portia smiled conspiratorially at me, blew me a teasing kiss and said, ‘Not at all, darling. You check on Dorothy and I’ll report back.’
‘Deal,’ I replied almost delirious with hope that Portia and I were going to be friends or at least get along despite Honey’s poisonous presence. I’d thought that Honey would devote her time to putting me down while Portia immersed herself in magazines or pretend to be absorbed by the view.
‘You two are really annoying me,’ she said as she switched her lamp off and groaned again.
A few minutes later, Georgina, Star and a third girl I took to be Indie crept into our room on all fours with their torches in their mouths which made them look like a pack of pyjama clad dogs on the prowl. Silently moving the bin and shutting the door, they climbed into our beds. I was pleased that Star climbed in with me.
‘My feet are frozen, I need socks,’ she told me.
‘Drawer underneath the bed,’ I told her.
She stayed under the covers as she opened the drawer and riffled round for socks.
I watched with mixed feelings as Georgina climbed in with Honey and started tickling her and the two of them started giggling together. Just like old times – until a voice piped up from the shadows.
‘Hi, I’m Indie,’ the new best friend whispered as she stood up and shone her torch around our room, finally shining it under her own face so we could see her properly. She was smiling. She was so stunning I was shocked. She looked like Naomi Campbell and she was almost as tall. ‘I’ve heard so much about you all. Especially you, Calypso,’ she said in the sweetest, poshest voice I’d ever heard.
‘Same,’ I replied brightly, determined in that moment to like her and stop being such a jealous bitch.
Portia invited her to jump in under her duvet. Even though it was only September the nights were already quite chilly, especially as they didn’t turn on the central heating in the dorm rooms until November – even if it snowed before that!
‘Isn’t Miss Bibsmore the weirdest?’ Georgina asked rhetorically.
I wanted to say I actually quite liked her but I knew it would only set Honey off.
‘Oh, she’ll be gone in a week, darling, I’ve got Daddy on the case. Do you know she even had the audacity to confiscate one of my phones! The pikey way she speaks, ugh! Fag, darling, fag?’ Honey suggested.
‘I’ve given up cigarettes,’ Georgina told her. ‘How about a spliff?
Even Honey seemed surprised and Honey doesn’t do surprised. It’s quite hard to do surprise when you’ve had as much Botox as she’s had, I guess. Still, even in the torchlight I was pretty certain it was a look of surprise I saw attempt to flash across her feline features.
A moment later, Georgina and Honey opened up the window to the cold night air, stuck their heads out and fired up their joint companionably.
‘Should you be doing that?’ I asked Georgina when she pulled in after blowing out some smoke and asked if anyone else fancied a puff.
Star pinched me, leaving me in no doubt I’d said the wrong thing.
‘Gee, are you sure you should be doing that?’ Georgina parroted in a bad piss-take of a Hillbilly accent.
Honey stuck her head in, blew some funny smelling smoke towards me and drawled, ‘Oh go back to LA will you, Calypso! All you Americans are sooo sanctimonious.’
Georgina giggled, just a tiny little bit, but it was a defining giggle.
Honey seized her advantage and carried on. ‘Or maybe you could set up an NA group for us, Calypso? You just love setting up little groups and salons, don’t you? Would you make Georgina and I confess our wickedness to a counselling group? Would you, darling?’
I declined to reply, consumed by embarrassment and squirming with all the old familiar feelings of being an outsider in their exclusive world with its maddeningly tricky English in-jokes which were so much a fabric of their lives. Here I was again, a foreigner in another world where despite the deceptive similarities, I didn’t really speak the language.
Not that any of that mattered because Honey was on a roll and anything I said would have only been used as more ammunition against me. This time she sent herself up as a clever way of sending me up. ‘Darlings, my name is the Honourable Honey O’Hare and this is my friend, the Honourable Georgina Castle Orpington and we’re the most ghastly spliff-a-holics.’
I descended deeper into my spiral of dread. What was happening here? Why was Star giving Honey free reign to go on like this? Why had Georgina suddenly done an about-turn and cosied up with Honey again? I waited for the inevitable paroxysms of smothered giggles, but instead Indie’s voice came out of the semi-darkness. ‘This is getting soooo boring.’
Honey shone her torch into Indie’s eyes. ‘Oh, go back to fruuping Cheltenham, will you?’
Indie shone her own torch straight back into Honey’s face, as the room fell silent in this war of torches. ‘Hardly!’ she said in a madly grand way. ‘I left because of a bitch like you.’
Honey looked around the room for support. Portia had her back to everyone, Georgina merely giggled and Star and I weren’t even on her radar. Resigned to the mood change, Honey announced, ‘I’ve got the munchies, anyone have sweets on them?’
I smiled at Indie gratefully and she smiled back. Between Miss Bibsmore and Indie, Honey was going to be facing some stiff opposition this term. I definitely wouldn’t want to get on the bad side of Indie, as beautiful as she was, when she’d gone for Honey just now, she’d looked terrifying.
Star stuck her tongue out at me to reveal the new stud in her tongue. She was only doing it to tease in a nice way. I knew that Star would never want to make me feel bad. She winked at me and gave me a cuddle as well but something had changed between us. Once she would have sent me a text to announce a step like tongue piercing. It had always been just the two of us, and while I was pleased that Indie had slapped Honey down, I couldn’t help wishing it had been Star.
The spliff was finally spliffed out and Star sprayed Febreze around the room and things went back to normal as if a tidal wave had receded. We chatted amongst ourselves, catching up on things generally, and Indie joined in as if she’d always been part of our group. It turned out she knew loads of the boys we knew and shared lots of the same opinions as us about them.
‘So, Calypso,’ she said to me. ‘I’m really looking forward to watching you fence. I wish I’d taken it up now; it looks so achingly cool in all those movies and ads on television. I adore the outfits and all the fit boys seem to fence now.’
‘Actually, it’s more aching than cool,’ I told her, and Portia agreed.
Honey made a sarcastic remark but everyone ignored her. She was sitting alone on the floor now wrapped up in her duvet devouring our room’s tuck stash with ridiculous abandon; stuffing herself with M&Ms and jelly babies like there was no tomorrow. I was really glad that Clemmie wasn’t here to witness it. She cries when people eat jelly babies because she thinks they look like her little brother Sebastian. I watched in disbelief as Honey consumed a term’s worth of tuck, while giggling dementedly to herself and talking drivel. I suppose it was the spliff, although all Star’s father does when he’s stoned is fall into unconscious stupors. As for Georgina, she didn’t seem stoned at all.
When Georgina suggested I bring out my Hershey’s Kisses, as Honey might still be hungry, I directed her to where she’d find them in my cupboard.
Georgina ate a few – well we all did – but Honey demolished most of the bag. Normally she’s really careful when it comes to sweets, being obsessed as she is with her figure and complexion. I’m sure Honey would have grazed on tuck all night if it we hadn’t heard the tap, tap, tap of Miss Bibsmore stick on the stone stairwell.
‘We’d better scarper,’ Star hissed. And then she did it again. Poked her tongue out at me and grinned. If a nun or even a non-nun teacher saw her stud, she would be gated if not suspended. But as I mentioned, the school was far from keen to damage relations with such a generous donor to school funds as Tiger from Dirge, so they were just as likely to turn a blind eye, I guess.
Georgina air-kissed me and Indie gave me a cuddle before she left.
‘It was really cool to meet you, Calypso,’ Indie said sweetly.
‘Same,’ I agreed.
‘Good luck with that, she said, pointing to Honey as if she was an unpleasant problem rather than a girl. Honey was still on the floor, wrapped in her duvet giggling to herself. ‘Please tell me she’s a one off?’ Indie begged.
‘Oh, she’s definitely special,’ I assured her.
Indie and Portia both giggled.
Then Indie carefully pushed the bin back and slipped quietly out the door.