Perfect Liars Page 6

  ‘And that’ll be all from me, girls. Welcome back, and please do make this a productive and worthwhile term. Oh, and don’t forget to have fun!’

  A polite smattering of applause started to ring out across the hall, but as it did, there was some movement on the stage. Nancy cocked her head to one side, interested. The redhead was getting to her feet.

  ‘Thank you so much, Mrs Easton, and don’t worry, girls, I’m not going to keep you here much longer. I just wanted to take a moment to introduce myself, to speak to you all about the year ahead.’ She spoke with an accent Nancy couldn’t quite place.

  Ballsy. Surely if Mrs Easton had wanted her to speak, she would have been invited to speak. ‘I’m Miss Brandon,’ she said abruptly, waiting for the name to sink in a moment before continuing. ‘I’m the new housemistress for Reynolds House, and I’ll be teaching History. I’m sorry I wasn’t here yesterday to welcome you all back, but I was flying home from New York.’ She brushed her hair self-consciously behind her ear. Was she trying not to look nervous? She had to be five years younger than any other teacher in the school, apart from maybe Georgia’s pervy drama tutor. What was she doing here?

  ‘I’m so looking forward to taking over the sixth-form boarding. I’m also going to be head of pastoral care for you all, so I’m your first port of call if you want to chat about anything, whether it’s exam stress, uni applications … men.’ Miss Brandon giggled and, to Nancy’s shock, so did the girls in the rows around her.

  It looked like she was getting comfortable now. Like the laughter had made her feel safe. She had propped her notes up on the lectern, the one Mrs Easton had been using, but she was standing at an angle, her hip popped to one side, her weight on one foot.

  ‘To be serious though,’ she went on, ‘it wasn’t that long ago that I was right where you guys are, dealing with the huge pressure which comes with being a young woman on the brink of entering higher education, so I truly do know how stressful it can be. My aim is to support you in any way that I can.

  ‘And the one last thing that I wanted to say is that each week I’ll be setting you a challenge. This week, I’d like you all to take some time to talk to someone you haven’t spoken to much before. I know how easy it is to think that you’re too busy to make new friends. That’s simply not the case. And life is about getting on with everyone. You never know who you’re going to end up networking with in the future, so it’s good practice to start now.’

  And suddenly, just like that, the dorm allocations made sense.

  It was Miss Brandon who had taken the triple room away from them.

  ‘Thanks so much!’ Miss Brandon beamed, finally retreating to sit down. To Nancy’s horror, the girls began to clap. Was Nancy being paranoid or were they clapping a little more enthusiastically for Miss Brandon than they had for Mrs Easton?

  Mrs Easton stood. ‘Thank you very much for that, Miss Brandon,’ she said. Even she was smiling.

  Every girl in the room got to her feet, and Mrs Easton descended the steps of the stage, followed close behind by her little grey deputy, and her cocker spaniel. Once the huge wooden door had closed behind them, a roar of chatter went up.

  ‘Did you see her shoes?’ said Lila. ‘I’m pretty sure they were vintage Valentino.’

  ‘Do you think I could get away with being a redhead?’ Nancy heard Lydia, a painfully stupid blow-up doll of a girl who, rumour had it, had to have her father donate a science lab to be allowed to stay for sixth form, asking one of her friends. ‘Like Kate Winslet in Titanic red, not ginger.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Georgia asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ replied Nancy.

  ‘You look really pissed off,’ Georgia wheedled. ‘Like, stabby levels of angry.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Nancy snapped, too quickly.

  ‘Really happy,’ Lila screeched back.

  ‘Over the moon,’ hissed Georgia, trying their old joke. But their levity wasn’t even touching the sides of Nancy’s mood. The idiots, they had been taken in by a decent haircut and a load of hot air.

  ‘Seriously, what’s wrong?’ asked Georgia, sidling up to her. There was something faintly desperate about the way that Georgia always wanted to ‘be there for you’ the second something went wrong. It wasn’t about being nice, Nancy knew that perfectly well. It was about ingratiating herself. Being part of something. It was selfish.

  ‘I told you, there’s nothing wrong,’ Nancy muttered. ‘Jesus.’

  ‘Are you still doing community service?’ Lila asked Georgia, clearly trying to change the subject. It wasn’t like her to play the peacekeeper. ‘Saint Georgia?’

  ‘Oh, fuck off, Lila,’ said Georgia, laughing to take away the sting. ‘Not all of us are trying to go to art school.’

  ‘You seriously think they care about it? At all?’ asked Nancy. The crowd of girls ahead of them was slow-moving, everyone still swapping gossip about the holidays, no one desperate to get back to their lockers and start their lessons for the day.

  ‘No idea, but my parents have decided it’s important for my scholarship, so I’ve got to do it. No point arguing.’

  A low note of panic registered in Nancy’s stomach. She didn’t approve of fear. ‘Fear is the mind-killer,’ her father always said. But it was there, nonetheless. What if Georgia’s parents, uneducated as they were, happened to somehow be right? Everything they made Georgia do was aimed at getting her made a prefect, and then getting her into Oxford. Nancy might have university licked, but an embarrassing part of her yearned for the Head Girl badge. It would be tragic, mortifying to admit, but she liked the idea of addressing parents at speech day and being responsible for charming prospective students on open day. Her own parents hadn’t said anything about volunteering or university applications, but they were unlikely to. Nancy had often turned to Georgia’s parents for advice. Not directly, of course, that would be tragic. But occasionally she squirrelled away second-hand wisdom that Georgia would repeat. It was interesting to know what actual parenty parents thought.

  Her own mother and father were wonderful, obviously, but it wouldn’t do for them to be seen as helicopter parents. People were interested in them, their lives, their writing, the choices they made. Adults would quiz her on their more famous articles. Did her father really encourage her to try drinking and smoking at home? Had her mother really allowed her to choose her own schools from the age of four? Didn’t she mind being written about in the supplements almost every weekend?

  Of course she minded. Her parents took it in turns to sell stories about her, trying to one-up each other with how liberal their parenting was. After all, no one was going to commission either of them to write some long glossy feature, complete with photos of Nancy posing in her bedroom, about being a normal parent.

  ‘Maybe we should all do community service,’ Nancy announced.

  Lila and Georgia stopped dead, slowing the queue of traffic even further. ‘You are joking?’ said Lila.

  ‘No. I think we should do it.’

  ‘Why the fuck would we want to?’ Lila’s eyebrows pinched together.

  Nancy sighed. ‘Don’t make me say it.’

  ‘Say what?’ Georgia asked innocently.

  ‘I hate you.’

  ‘Ohhhh go on. Say it.’

  ‘What is it, Nance?’ Lila did not seem happy with Nancy’s change of heart.

  ‘Because Georgia might be right, OK?’ She drew out the word OK, making it longer and higher pitched than the rest of her sentence. They loved it when she showed any kind of weakness. It was exciting to them. ‘If we want to be prefects, we should probably show willing. Georgia’s right! OK? Does that make you happy?!’

  ‘Ecstatic,’ beamed Lila, pushing Sophie Heilbron who was standing in front of her. ‘Hey, Heilbron, move, we’ve got shit to do.’ Nancy followed Lila’s lead and shoved past Sophie. ‘I’m not doing it,’ Lila went on. ‘I don’t care if I’m a prefect.’

  ‘You’ll care when we get to eat at the prefects’ table an
d we get late-night Thursdays to go to the village, and you’re stuck on your own,’ said Georgia.

  ‘She’s not wrong,’ Nancy added.

  Lila rolled her eyes and sighed, like she always did when she didn’t get her own way. ‘Fine,’ she said, ‘but I’m not touching anything gross, and I’m not wearing any kind of uniform at the weekend.’

  ‘Deal,’ said Georgia. ‘Come on. We’re signing up now,’ she added, ‘before you change your mind and I have to do it all on my own.’

  Despite the fact that the common room was, technically speaking, crap, there was something deeply exciting about having a new space to make their own. It was a long, low room, partially below ground level under the oldest part of the school. The stone walls were damp to the touch, and the armchairs and sofas which lined the walls were torn and sagging. There was a kettle and a toaster and a decent set of speakers. The TV weighed about seven stone and was the size of a small fridge. It was fuzzy and only got four channels. But to the girls of the lower sixth, it was paradise. Already it was filled with screaming and laughing and bickering and the smell of toast.

  ‘You’re sure?’ asked Georgia, pulling a biro from her bag. ‘I’m writing you down. S’cuse me,’ she said to Heidi Bart, who was holding her pen and standing by the sheet. Heidi looked affronted. Or maybe that was just the way that her squashed face always looked. Not for the first time, Nancy thought how tragic it was to have a name like Heidi – a name that conjured visions of blond plaits and milkmaid prettiness – when you looked like a pug.

  Nancy watched as the blue ink filled the little black box on the piece of paper. Nancy Greydon. Camilla Knight. Georgia Green.

  ‘I was doing that,’ said Heidi in a small voice.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Georgia, not sounding sorry at all. ‘I’m done now.’

  Heidi’s teeth were too small for her mouth, and there was something odd about the way that she held herself. She thrust her hips out too far, and her back curved oddly. Years ago Lila had informed everyone that the scars they saw on Heidi’s back when they changed for bed were from an operation to correct a hunched back. Unimaginatively, everyone had called her Quasimodo for a year after that.

  ‘You’re not supposed to just push in,’ said Heidi.

  It was clearly costing Heidi a great deal to say this. Something about the effort Heidi was making to stand up for herself made Nancy irrationally irritated. ‘Why do you care?’ she asked. ‘Does it actually matter?’

  ‘It was rude,’ said Heidi bluntly.

  ‘Leave it, Heidi,’ said Lila.

  The three of them turned to walk away. Heidi had a habit of bursting into tears and then telling a teacher on whoever had upset her, despite the fact she was seventeen.

  ‘I guess I’ll see you all at Mrs Easton’s lunch next week, then,’ Nancy heard Heidi call to her turned back. Nancy picked up her backpack, trying to ignore the comment. Heidi must be making it up. There was no lunch. If there was, she would have been invited. It was impossible that the school would overlook her as a prefect.

  ‘What lunch?’ snapped Georgia. Great. Georgia couldn’t just freeze Heidi out, she had to engage. Her blond head was on the verge of spinning off with fear that she might have missed some vital prefect invitation.

  Nancy shrugged. ‘I have Spanish. Come on, let’s go.’

  ‘Aren’t you invited?’ said Heidi, following them.

  Heidi’s smug, ugly face made Nancy’s stomach tighten. How dare she look so pleased with herself.

  ‘Shut up, Heidi,’ said Georgia.

  Nancy took a deep, calming breath. What the hell had got into Heidi? She’d always been a crybaby, and she’d always been hideous, but she would never have dared start a fight with her and Georgia before. And where the hell was Lila?

  ‘Georgia, are you coming?’

  Georgia picked up her bag. ‘Yeah, let’s not be late. Also, there’s a really weird smell around here.’ She gave Heidi a pointed look. It was a petty, childish thing to say, and Nancy was annoyed with herself for being pleased by it.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ muttered Georgia.

  ‘What?’

  ‘She’s following us,’ said Georgia. ‘Heidi. What the hell is going on with her?’

  Nancy turned around, still on the stairs which led up to the main corridor. ‘We’ve made it pretty fucking clear that we don’t want to speak to you. Will you take the hint and piss off?’

  Nancy watched Heidi’s face soften and followed her eyes, which were focused on something behind where she and Georgia stood. Turning slowly she saw, a few steps above them, the woman with the red hair from assembly. She was smiling the kind of isolated, frozen smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

  ‘Is everything all right, girls?’

  ‘Fine,’ Nancy ground out. ‘It’s a private discussion.’

  ‘Is that true?’ The woman was looking past Nancy, down to where Heidi was standing with a wounded expression on her face. Nancy pushed her nails into the palm of her hand, counting in her head. She couldn’t lose her temper, not this early in the term, not while they were still petitioning to have their dorms reassigned.

  ‘I’m OK,’ said Heidi in a small voice. ‘I was just going to Biology.’

  The red-haired woman, Miss Brandon as they now knew her, looked unconvinced. ‘All right,’ she said, after a moment’s pause. ‘Off you go. And you,’ she looked down at Nancy, ‘might want to moderate your language. I’m sure you’ve got a far better vocabulary than that.’

  Without a word, Nancy accelerated up the stairs, along the main corridor and towards her classroom, repeating the words ‘head girl’ over and over in her mind to prevent herself from punching a wall.

  ‘Um, can you slow down, please?’ came Lila’s voice from behind them. ‘I had to get my shoes.’

  Lila’s refusal to ever wear shoes if she didn’t absolutely have to was precisely the kind of affectation that Nancy’s mother adored. She’d made some reference to it in a column months ago and Lila had stuck it on her pinboard.

  ‘Oh, you want to talk now? Why not before?’ said Georgia. ‘Trying to keep the peace with your new roomie, are you? Did you see what she just did?’

  Lila’s face clouded. ‘You know it’s not like that. I can’t stand the bitch.’

  ‘It didn’t seem like that,’ said Nancy.

  ‘I couldn’t think of anything to say.’

  ‘Are you sure it’s not just that you’re so overjoyed to have your best friend back?’ said Nancy. It was like pressing her finger into a heavy bruise. Lila’s friendship with Heidi, best friendship even, might not have lasted beyond their second year at Fairbridge Hall but it went right back to junior school. They had been real, proper, playing together in the paddling pool friends. Until Heidi had grown stranger and stranger. For a time, she had been weirdly obsessed with Lila, trying to stop her from hanging out with the others.

  ‘She’s not my friend,’ replied Lila, too quickly, her voice too high-pitched. ‘OK? We used to be friends and now we’re not, and I’m sorry she was being a bitch to you, OK?’

  The bell rang, giving them a perfect excuse to decline to comment, to leave Lila wondering what had happened for the rest of the day.

  NOW

  Georgia

  ‘Gee, I’m going upstairs for a wee – someone’s in the downstairs loo,’ called Lila from the corridor. Georgia steadied herself. She needed to make the salad dressing and put serving spoons on the table.

  There was no need to panic. Larissa had emptied the bins. She was fastidious, that was why Georgia paid her twice as much as any other cleaner in the area got. And Georgia had double-checked the bins herself, polishing them until they shone. Charlie had always disliked the bins in the bathrooms. He had said they were a bit ‘Weybridge’ – a favoured expression of his to mean that they were a bit lower middle class. A bit new money. All things which it would apparently be disastrous to be. He would never have admitted his snobbery to anyone but Georgia. His career forbade it. Eve
n letting it slip to a member of the press could bring his party into disrepute and ruin his ambitions. It was a well-guarded secret; most MPs had secret wives or second homes that they wanted to keep quiet, but Charlie’s secret was his snobbery. These days the party that was all about having money and keeping money was supposed to pretend that it didn’t care about money at all. As if it could be a surprise to anyone. Boarding school from the age of eight, Oxford and then the Army. Were people really so stupid to think that he was ‘one of the boys’? It seemed so. He wouldn’t be doing so well at work if he wasn’t a master of the illusion. Georgia might not understand much else about what Charlie did, but she knew that.

  Perhaps that was why he was so polite to her parents. It was good practice for talking to other people who he looked down on. They loved him, naturally. He always said it was because he had the same sense of humour as her dad. But she knew it was more than that. They kowtowed to Charlie because they admired him. They thought his smart education and smarter parents, his title and his easy accent made him a real catch. Every second Christmas when they packed up the car and went back to her parents’ happy little house, she would watch her mother fawning over him, the way she would blush a deep pink when he complimented their taste, and wish that they knew how he took the piss out of them behind their backs, how he poked fun at their manners. She never said anything, though. They would be mortified. Heartbroken. They saw Charlie as another son (unlike Charlie’s parents, who never seemed to regard Georgia as much more than a decorative accessory who once accidentally called the ‘loo’ the ‘toilet’).

  But that was why she had been so upset, all those years ago, in Peter Jones, when she suggested they buy the chrome wastepaper bins. The words ‘they’re a bit Weybridge’ had passed his lips and she had dissolved into hot, angry tears, stuttering to try and get words out but unable to make him see why she was so angry, gagged by her hurt. Charlie had been mortified. He had plied her with kisses and when she stopped crying he’d told her he was sorry, like he truly meant it. His eyes had been huge and he had looked terrified, as if he would do anything in the world to stop her from crying. Georgia had stopped because she couldn’t bear to frighten him. They had bought the Weybridge bins and gone home in a taxi together, falling into bed the moment they got through the door. It was the first time they had tried to make a baby. Or rather, the first time they hadn’t done anything to prevent it. They hadn’t been ready, not really. She had been twenty-six at the time. Too young, or at least that was what she had told herself. Maybe that was the mistake. Maybe if she had started then, things would have been different now.